Puppetmaster (Coastal Fury Book 8) Read online

  “Who is in Florida, Paulie?” Mr. M sounded impatient.

  “The Holms.” Paul’s announcement silenced his father. Rosie heard nothing for a moment until Paul repeated his answer.

  “Do we have an address?” Mr. M asked. His voice was calmer and more contained now.

  “Not yet,” Paul informed him. “We do think they are in the Miami area in order to be closer to their son, Robert.”

  “What about the daughter?”

  “Not yet,” Paul admitted sheepishly. “We are still working on Veronica.”

  “Well, get it done.” Mr. M’s voice resumed its usual commanding tone. “I want them handled. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Handled, Dad?”

  “You know what I mean.” Mr. M’s voice took on an ominous tone. “Now get out. And since you’re heading that way, why don’t you grab the shipment by the back door and drop it off at the Queens location?”

  “Aww, c’mon, that’s Billy’s job.” Paul’s voice took on a whiny note that wasn’t particularly attractive.

  “Well, Billy ain’t here, is he?” Mr. M snapped. “Now, do it. Before your mother comes back here and sees you arguing with me.”

  “Ugh.” Paul came back out of the office, and Rosie refocused her gaze on the table. Paul noticed her and froze for a moment. His eyes flickered with minor concern before he grabbed the two large cardboard boxes that Rosie assumed were filled with baking supplies and carried them out the back door. There were two other boxes still there, so Rosie put her rag down, wiped her hands clean on her blue and white striped half-apron, and hustled over to help him. She was in the process of struggling to lift one of the unexpectedly heavy boxes when Paul came back in.

  “Don’t touch those.” His voice was as sharp as a whip, and Rosie dropped the box a bit too roughly. A small white cloud of what she presumed was flour billowed out from the seams. She grimaced.

  “Sorry,” she replied, her voice mousy and apologetic. “I was just trying to help.”

  “Yeah, well,” he grumbled, “they’re heavy. Besides, it's my job. Mother would freak if she saw you helping me instead of wiping the island down.” Rosie noticed his voice soften as he spoke. “We all know time is money.”

  Time is money. Rosie had heard Mrs. M say that more times than she cared to count. She conceded, backing off and letting Paul lift the two boxes.

  “Thanks for your help, though,” he added, smiling at her before heading toward the door. “See ya around.”

  “Yeah, see ya.” Rosie felt warmth creep up to her cheeks, and she quickly turned around and got back to work before anyone could notice.

  As she finished wiping everything down, she replayed the conversation in her head. She doubted that they knew she could hear her, not that she had anyone to tell. Mr. M’s order was a bit alarming. Who were these Holms, and why did they need to be handled? Did he mean to handle them like the mafia handles people that cross them?

  Rosie giggled to herself. Mr. and Mrs. M may be tough, but they were good people. They paid her well and respected her hours. They were friends of the family. There was no way that statement could be interpreted as hostile in any way, shape, or form. She had clearly misheard them or misunderstood them.

  By the time Rosie was cleaned up and ready to clock out after her shift, she had forgotten all about what had happened. The only thing that lingered was her memory of Paul’s smile and the small, forgotten bit of flour that had floated down to the floor after she had dropped that box.

  Chapter 2: Ethan

  I looked down at my phone and saw that I had an email response from none other than Alejandra García. There were no words in the email. It simply had a colon followed by half of a parenthesis… a smiley face.

  Alejandra and I had spent a lot of time together recently on an MBLIS case down in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Her father happened to be the President of the Dominican Republic, and when he needed our help, he assigned Alejandra to us as a liaison. She and I kept in touch after I had returned home to Miami, and I had finally gotten around to emailing her the digital copies of the pages out of the journal we had recovered from a shipwreck that I had discovered, the Searcher’s Chance. The journal had been more of a Captain’s log than a journal, but it did have a lot of information in there. It turned out that Captain Winston Marcus took very detailed, if not sloppy, notes. I had promised to share the pages with her, but with all the chaos surrounding the case, I never did get around to it, or to read much of it myself, either.

  Anyone that knew me knew that I had been on a lifelong hunt to track down one particular ship. The search for the Dragon’s Rogue had been a project I had started as a kid with my grandfather, and after stumbling upon a major clue on a South Florida beach a while back, the clues seemed to be lining up one after another for me. Along the way, I had met some wonderful people, and I had even found a genetic connection to the man who commissioned the ship.

  As it turned out, Lord Jonathan Finch-Hatton was a direct ancestor of mine, and that fueled my search even more. The Dragon’s Rogue was eventually taken over by Pirate Captain Guilford ‘Mad Dog’ Grendel. Winston Marcus, Captain of the Searcher’s Chance, was hellbent on hunting Grendel down and killing him. I found out recently that Grendel was a sort of Robin Hood of sorts. He stole from the rich and helped the poor, and Marcus, the bastard, was not a fan of Grendel’s work. In light of everything I’d learned recently, I’d never felt closer to finding the Dragon’s Rogue.

  Our adventure in Puerto Rico had put a temporary hold on any further research into the whereabouts of the ship, and now that I was back, I found I had ample opportunity to make up for lost time. I looked up from my phone and around MBLIS headquarters. From my desk, I could see almost everyone, and what was usually a bustling and noisy floor was now mostly quiet. Holm and I hadn’t had a case since we had gotten back from our island adventure, and Diane Ramsey, our boss, had blamed the ever-increasing budget cuts on our lack of pending cases.

  “What are you up to?” Holm asked as he sat down at the edge of my desk and twirled his pen between his fingers. “You have that goofy smile on your face. You’re talking to a woman. Tessa?”

  “No,” I chuckled. I tossed the phone back onto my desk and leaned back in my swiveling office chair as I looked up at my partner. His blonde hair was gelled neatly in place, and he looked well-rested. Yeah, we definitely had more free time on our hands these days. “It’s Alejandra, actually. I finally got around to sending her Winston Marcus’s journal pages.”

  “From the Searcher’s Chance?” he asked, his eyebrow popping up with intrigue. “Have you found anything interesting in there yet?”

  “Not yet,” I admitted, “but to be fair, I haven’t had much of a chance to dive into it yet.”

  My phone began ringing, the sharp tone jarring against the otherwise quiet office. I glanced down and saw an unfamiliar local number. I silenced it and turned back to Holm.

  “Yeah, we’ve been kind of busy,” Holm conceded, not missing a beat. “I guess now’s your time, huh?”

  “Yeah, looks like it,” I replied, looking around the unexciting office for effect. “Maybe I’ll actually find the ship with all this spare time on my hands.”

  Holm laughed dryly. There was nothing funny about this situation at all. Our jobs were being threatened at this point. We were getting paid to solve cases, and if we couldn’t afford to take on cases, then we may as well be out of a job. I shuddered at the thought, but Holm didn’t notice.

  “Marston! Holm!” Diane’s voice boomed from her office. Holm raised an eyebrow in my direction, but I shrugged as we got up to head over to her. I had no idea what she wanted.

  Diane’s office was the only one with a view, but the late morning sun blocked most of it as it pierced through the oversized windows onto Diane’s white and silver furniture. I thought back to the sunglasses on my desk, though I knew she wouldn’t have appreciated the fashion choice.

  She stood before us with
her hands planted firmly on her hips and her lips pursed. She always managed to look flawless in the mornings, but lately, the stress was showing, mostly through the dark circles under her eyes. While the budget cuts meant less work for us, unfortunately, it had the opposite effect on her.

  “I have bad news,” she began, to no surprise.

  “Go on,” Holm urged gently.

  “As of right now, we can only afford to handle one case at a time. Muñoz and Birn are busy working theirs at the moment, which means both of you are sitting on your hands until they are finished. My hands are tied, you two. I’m sorry. I know this is frustrating. Trust me. I don’t want you two moping around the office any more than you.”

  “I’m not really feeling a sense of job security,” Holm muttered, more to himself than anything else.

  “You shouldn’t.” My head shot up at Diane’s words. She looked remorseful, although I knew that none of this was her doing. “I’m trying my damnedest to keep everyone employed here. If I alternate cases, it means I can keep all four of you on the payroll, but honestly? It’s like putting a damn Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. This is only going in one direction, and that direction isn’t up.” Her voice cracked at the end, and I could have sworn I saw a single tear well up in the corner of her right eye, but she blinked, and it was gone. She’d never been the type to cry in front of us.

  “You may want to start putting feelers out,” she continued after a moment of centering. “If anyone finds alternate employment, I urge you to take it. It would lessen the strain on everyone else here and keep us afloat a bit longer. I promise you, if things turn around, there’s no question about pulling the team back together. I can’t ask you to wait it out, though.”

  Damn. I knew things were grim, but not quite this grim.

  “Holy crap,” Holm muttered, staring down at the dark blue patterned industrial carpet. “This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill bad news.”

  “Sorry, boys,” she replied, sounding defeated. “I hate everything about this.”

  “Hey.” I straightened up and looked her directly in the eye. “None of this is your fault. We all know you’re doing absolutely everything you can.” I gestured wildly around the office outside her glass-paneled walls. “No one is blaming you, and no one is upset with you.”

  “Yeah,” Holm added. “As a matter of fact, we all appreciate everything you’re doing to try to keep us afloat. The fact that I’m still employed is completely credited to you.”

  “Yep.” I nodded in agreement.

  “Thanks, boys.” She looked at each of us in turn before toughening up her demeanor. “Now knock the sappy shit off and take the rest of the day off. We’re just spinning our wheels, anyway.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” I agreed. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” she confirmed. Holm and I walked out of the office, and I headed back to my desk to grab my belongings. I noticed that the missed call from earlier had left a voicemail, so I listened to it on my way to the garage with Holm right behind me.

  “Anything good?” he asked as I haphazardly shoved my phone in my pocket.

  “Yeah, actually,” I replied cheerfully. “Do you want to join me at the university? It sounds like we may have gotten a hit with that Searcher’s Chance journal.”

  “No kidding!” Holm perked up at the news. “Absolutely! After Ramsey’s bombshell, I am in desperate need of some positivity.” We walked together into the garage, our voices echoing against the cold concrete.

  “Meet you there?” I asked as I pulled out my car keys. Holm nodded as he walked away toward his bright blue Mitsubishi Lancer. He did have the option of choosing a company car, but he turned it down in favor of driving his dream car to work every day. He’d always wanted a blue Lancer Evolution. He may have been presented with the opportunity a bit later in life than he expected, but he loved every minute behind the wheel of that thing.

  I, on the other hand, had left my two babies, my Mustang and my Corvette, behind in favor of my bright red Charger. In hindsight, it was a bit of an obnoxious paint color for a company car, and one that had already threatened to bite me in the ass once, but I loved it nonetheless.

  The university wasn’t far from headquarters, and it was a gorgeous day out. I left the windows down, drinking in the late morning sun that would have otherwise been dulled by our office windows. There was something about getting out of work early that always carried an irrational sense of freedom. With the traffic light and my work-related worries relegated to the far reaches of my mind, I felt much more cheerful by the time I reached my destination.

  I pulled into the mostly empty parking lot and saw Holm pull in beside me less than a minute later.

  “What do you think he found?” He closed the door of his car and squinted against the sun as we walked together in the direction of the anthropology building.

  “I have no idea,” I mused. “I might have if I’d had a chance to read through the pages before now. Regardless, I’m dying to find out.”

  “You and me both,” he replied excitedly as he followed me up the stone steps.

  We were here to see Dr. Silver, a good friend of Bill Meyer. Bill owned Coins and Things, the shop where I had been bringing my findings to. I met Bill through his daughter, Emily. She was teaching at a university in Barbados now, but we still kept in touch. Her father had been thrilled to see the first coins I had brought him, and even though Emily was no longer nearby, I continued to bring my findings to him. When Bill saw the swollen wooden box, he referred me to an expert friend of his.

  Dr. Silver sat at the end of a long table, his thin frame dwarfed by the piles of books sitting beside him. He had narrow wire-rimmed glasses perched on the edge of his nose and was wearing a pair of disposable gloves as he carefully handled something delicate with thin metal rods sticking out haphazardly at awkward angles.

  “Dr. Silver,” I announced gently. His head popped up, and a broad smile crossed his face.

  “Special Agent Marston!” he beamed, snapping his gloves off and abandoning his delicate project to hustle over to us.

  “Ethan, please,” I reminded him as he reached out to shake both of our hands. “You remember Robbie Holm.”

  “Indeed, I do. Welcome!” He waved us both over to a separate table where a computer screen showed a page of the transcript from Marcus’s log.

  “I’ll be honest with you. I have not had much time to flip through these pages,” I forewarned him as we gathered around the screen.

  “He isn’t kidding,” Holm added. “We had a hell of a case down in Puerto Rico that basically put everything else on hold.”

  “Not to worry,” Dr. Silver said cheerfully. “I was doing a bit of research and reading through this in my downtime. Something stood out to me. I could have told you over the phone, but this is exciting enough to do in person.”

  “I completely agree.” This was too important for me to relegate to a voicemail. I was glad I was here.

  “Okay,” Dr. Silver continued. “Well, as we discussed, the last two dozen pages focus almost entirely on his pursuit of Grendel. There are two brief notes here in regard to a capture.”

  “A capture?” Holm leaned forward as Dr. Silver jumped to the last section of the log. “Did Marcus actually catch Grendel?”

  “Yes, it looks like it. The writing was tough to transcribe, so some of the words didn’t come through clearly. With a bit more effort, we were able to clean it up. He didn’t have Grendel in his possession for long, though. Someone helped him to escape.”

  “Who?” This was news to me, and I needed to know more.

  “That’s the problem,” Dr. Silver responded. “I don’t know. The name isn’t mentioned here. There’s one other thing, though.” He flipped through the digital pages until he landed on a page with a crudely drawn map. “It looks like he was chasing Grendel up the East coast. This is great news for us.”

  “How’s that?” My eyes wandered over the map as I asked the question, no
t seeing the benefit.

  “I have a friend,” he replied cheerily. “He works mostly out of New Jersey but comes down here now and then. He is a historian, and we have worked together on multiple projects. I reached out to him with the name Winston Marcus. He immediately knew who he was. I know he has additional information about Marcus that may or may not help you connect the dots to your ‘Mad Dog’ Grendel.”

  My weight shifted back onto my heels as I took in his words. “That is amazing,” I admitted. A glance at Holm told me that he was just as impressed as I was. “Does he plan on returning to Miami any time soon? I’d love to meet him if the opportunity arises.”

  “It may be awhile,” Dr. Silver replied with a shrug. “He has another project he is working on up north. However, I will give you a call the next time he is down here. He is intrigued by this log and would love to take a look at it. I told him that, of course, it would have to be with your permission.”

  “Of course!” I spat out immediately. “If he can help me, I’d be happy to share my findings with him.”

  Dr. Silver nodded. “I shall give him a call, then. I’ll let you know when he is in town.”

  “That’d be great.” I shook his hand firmly and beamed at Holm, who looked almost as excited as I was.

  “Do one favor for me before you meet my friend,” Dr. Silver kindly requested. “Read the log. It’s an intriguing read. This way, when you meet him, you will have all of the information you need.”

  “I will definitely do that,” I agreed.

  “Yeah,” Holm added lightheartedly. “We have nothing but time right now.”

  That last statement stung a bit. It was hard to enjoy all of this while my job was being threatened in the background, but I wasn’t going to slow down, not now when I was so close.

  We said our goodbyes and headed back out into the South Florida heat.

  “What are you up to now?” I asked as I headed over to my car. Holm tossed his keys into the air and caught them with ease.