Stolen Child (Coastal Fury Book 13) - Matt Lincoln (ebook reader library .txt) 📗

“Oh, that way,” Smith said, pointing to their left, away from the food court. “They would’ve been stupid to take him past the parents. They must’ve been watching the family. Targeted him. That was my impression, anyway.”

“There’s another entrance down this way?” Nina asked, pointing in that direction as well as a chill ran up and down her spine at the thought of these disgusting men creeping on the family for who knew how long. “How far away is it?”

“That’s the thing, it’s pretty far,” the woman said, shaking her head again. “You’d think someone would’ve stopped them. Do you have footage of them? You must. There are so many shops between here and the other entrance.”

“You let us handle that,” Nina said, forcing a smile.

They didn’t have more footage, though. That was another strange thing. If the entrance was so far away, there should’ve been more. Smith was right about that. So either these men had a more coordinated plan than Nina had thought and had managed to stop the other security footage, or they had exited the mall somewhere else, taking cover somewhere until the ruckus died down and then slipping out of the food court entrance, or leaving some other way that Nina hadn’t thought of yet.

“Hey, look!” Smith hissed in Nina’s ear, pointing back toward the crowd.

Nina followed her gaze and immediately saw exactly what Smith did. It was the man from the video, the one in the brown jacket. He’d discarded the jacket, just wearing a plain flannel shirt now, but it was him, alright. The sunken face and pockmarked cheek proved as much.

The man was standing off from the crowd, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he seemed to be scrutinizing the crime scene with his eyes narrowed and his expression piercing.

It was exactly as Nina had predicted. He had returned to the scene of the crime, unable to stop himself from checking on the cleanness of his work. He was probably blissfully unaware that he had even been caught on tape in the first place.

“Go,” Nina said sharply to Smith. “Run back to the food court. Tell the police what you saw and where. Tell them they need to get all these people out of here now. This place needs to be completely shut down and should’ve been hours ago.”

The woman hesitated, and for a moment, Nina was afraid that she was going to freak out and give away that they had seen the man. But she didn’t in the end, returning to herself and running off to go alert the officers and security guards to the presence of the man.

When Smith was safely out of the way, Nina silently drew her gun and crept toward the man, who had moved a few feet closer to the crowd, each moment seeming to get braver in his curiosity about what was going on behind the caution tape.

As Nina drew closer, for a moment, she thought that he wasn’t going to notice her. But at the last moment, he did, and he pulled his own gun out from under his shirt.

“Dammit,” Nina cursed under her breath. Then, holding up her own gun and calling out to him, “FBI! Stop now, or I’ll shoot.”

His eyes widened at her words, and she saw panic there. He had expected the police, even from out of town, but not this. Not the FBI. Nina had seen that look countless times over the years. It usually was followed by a surrender. But every once in a while, as the panic set in, it elicited a fight-or-flight response that truly defied reason.

Unfortunately, this was one of those times, and the man seemed to choose both options at once, running as fast as he could in the opposite direction, away from the food court, and wildly shooting his firearm at Nina at the same time.

As the shot rang out, the crowd was alerted to the man’s presence, and pandemonium ensued as everyone screamed and fled, looking around quickly to try to see what was happening.

Nina managed to duck down and get out of the way of the errant shot, and the bullet ran right into the pot containing the plant she had looked at earlier, causing a series of crashing noises as it broke apart and the small tree fell to the ground with a clunk.

People were all over the place then, obstructing Nina’s vision. She looked around wildly, trying to find the man again in the crowd as the shot continued to ring in her ears, and the screams and raging of the panicked people around her vied for her attention.

The crowd’s members were running in all directions, not knowing where exactly the shot had come from and who had created it.

Nina leapt into action, pushing around the people frantically trying to find an exit and desperately searching for the pockmarked man in the flannel shirt.

Finally, she caught another glimpse of him, disappearing around a corner not far from the shoe store.

“Move it, move it!” she called to them all.

She ran and screamed out, telling people to get out of the way, but it didn’t register, and a large man crashed into her, not having seen her in his pursuit of an exit.

Nina was disoriented from the fall, and her shoulder hurt, so much so that she barely registered the man who had run into her rushing apologies and then standing back with his arms in the air when he saw her gun.

She didn’t respond to him, merely getting to her feet the best she could under the circumstances and hobbling after the escaped perp. She looked everywhere for him around the corner, and the police helped her search the entire mall later on.

But it was no use. He was gone.

2

Ethan

The MBLIS office was crawling with FBI agents when I arrived one morning several weeks after my return from New Orleans, where I had interviewed the hotel owners who had accepted the