“I don’t know…” Holm said hesitantly. “I wouldn’t want to not be here when we get a hit on the Hollands.”
We hadn’t heard anything about the Hollands’ current whereabouts. Raids of many of their investment properties had turned up empty, and the warnings we’d sent to every airport in, well, everywhere, hadn’t led to anything noteworthy. They were bound to show up at some point, though, and I shared Holm’s reticence about not being here when that did happen.
“I’ll call you the second I hear anything, I promise,” Diane said dryly. “I know you just might quit in protest if I didn’t, and either way, I’ll need you on that case when it does come up.”
“I’m still not sure…” Holm said, frowning slightly. “Maybe we should at least wait until Birn and Muñoz come back, just to make sure they’re up for it, or they don’t change their minds. And to give them a day or two to re-acclimate after everything.”
“I agree,” I said with a nod. “Besides, I still haven’t heard back from Tessa, and I promised her that I’d take her with me when I went to Virginia.”
“Suit yourselves,” Diane said with a sigh and a shrug as she made her way back to her office. “I swear to God. It’s like pulling teeth to get someone to take an actual vacation around here. Nowhere else on Earth…”
She continued grumbling as she shut her office door behind her, and Holm and I both burst out laughing. We all knew that Diane loved our work ethic and wouldn’t have things any other way. She just enjoyed ribbing us, almost as much as we enjoyed shooting it right back at her.
“Still nothing from our photographer friend, huh?” Holm asked, referring to Tessa Bleu, an old friend of mine who had been there when I found the original remains that started my journey toward discovering the Dragon’s Rogue in my adult life.
I’d been toying with finding the ship for much longer than that, of course, as looking for the old pirate ship had been a pastime of my grandfather, who had raised me after my parents died. It wasn’t until Tessa and I discovered that the Dragon’s Rogue’s original owner, Lord Jonathan Finch-Hatton, was an ancestor of mine that I realized just how connected my family was to the ship after all.
“Yeah, nothing,” I confirmed, unable to keep the disappointment off of my face as I stared down at the open file that was still in my hands, a picture of Ashley Holland’s painfully make-upped face spread across the page in black and white. “But that’s to be expected, I guess. It’s not every day you get an assignment to go into the Yukon, of all places.”
“Takes going off the grid to a new level, for sure,” Holm chuckled.
Tessa was a photojournalist and spent her days going on exciting and sometimes dangerous missions of her own, though hers were in search of fascinating stories and wildlife instead of drug lords. Even so, we had more than a few things in common and had hit it off right away after meeting for the first time.
Tessa had been there when I found Finch-Hatton’s remains, when I found another pirate ship, the Searcher’s Chance, and when I’d helped take down that New York mafia and restored MBLIS’s funding. We hadn’t seen each other since that New York trip, however, as she was based there and I was based in Miami, and we both made a habit of traveling all over the place for work.
We hadn’t been out of touch for so long before, however, and it was making me nervous. Not only did I want to get up to Virginia and get to the bottom of this whole mess with Grendel’s journal, but I also wanted to talk to Tessa again, tell her about everything that had happened since we last spoke before I left for my New Orleans mission, and hear all about her trip across the remote parts of Canada. She’d been in Nova Scotia before heading to the Yukon, after all.
I’d been checking my phone and email almost feverishly as I tried to get back in touch with Tessa. She’d warned me that she’d be out of cell and Wi-Fi range for an indeterminate amount of time, but this was stretching on longer than I’d anticipated.
“Maybe you should just head up to Virginia while you can and see what you can find out,” Hold suggested, clearly seeing how lost in thought I was. “I’m sure Tessa would understand.”
I was sure she would, too. But I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “I promised her that she would be there, and I won’t go back on that. Besides, you’re not wrong about Birn and Muñoz. They’ve been through the wringer, and if they come back too soon, I don’t want to leave Diane hanging out to dry without the agents she needs, especially if a hit on the Hollands turns up.”
Holm checked his watch.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “And it doesn’t look like anything else is going to happen around here today. You want to grab a drink at Mike’s before heading home for the day?”
“No, I’m good,” I said, shaking my head and grabbing up the file’s contents and stuffing them into the accompanying fat manila folder. “I think I’m just going to go home early. Look through the files some more and maybe try Tessa again.”
“Suit yourself,” Holm said with a shrug, waving goodbye to me as he headed out the door.
2
Ethan
I called Tessa again as I made my dinner, a frozen, pre-prepared steak that I just threw
