I was a little skeptical of this, by the skin and bones look of him, but I didn’t voice this.
“Anyway, the kids didn’t come in when I called them,” Alice said, looking like she might cry again. “So I went looking, and when I found them, I saw two of those guys from the Hawthorne house disappearing into the trees. And they had guns, too, just like they did when I went over there myself!”
“Did you talk to them?” I asked, a little sharper than I intended, and I had to remind myself that the Carltons’ kids were safe upstairs watching a movie and clearly hadn’t been hurt when this happened.
“I called after them, but they didn’t answer,” Alice said. “Then I tried to chase them, but I couldn’t find them, and I didn’t want to leave the kids alone.”
I gave the small woman an appraising look, unable to picture her running after a couple of goons with firearms. Maternal instinct was indeed a powerful thing, apparently.
“Why didn’t these men set off your security system?” I asked Tyson.
“I guess they were beyond the bounds of our property,” Tyson sighed. “We told the kids not to go that far, but I guess they got curious. I blame Miles, our boy. He’s an adventurous one. He is always getting in trouble at school for breaking the rules, too.”
I caught the shadow of a proud smile hiding on the corner of the man’s lips and had to suppress a laugh. Tyson, no doubt couldn’t betray his pride in his kid’s curiosity in front of his wife, but I couldn’t blame him for having it in the first place. A sense of adventure was a good quality in a kid, within reason, of course.
“Yes, they had gone out past our property,” Alice confirmed. “There’s a big rock that we use as a landmark, and they blew right past it, climbing trees.”
“What did they tell you happened with the men?” Tessa asked, worry papered across her face.
“They said that the men came up to them and started asking them questions about the area,” Alice said, shaking her head as if she didn’t understand any of this. “Asked them if they’d ever been out on the water and if they’d ever heard any legends about some kind of buried treasure at school. Miles, he was going on and on about some old pirate ship. I still think he made it all up himself. He’s always been fascinated by that old Hawthorne house and its ghost stories. He was never as afraid of the men as we were. He thought they were interesting.”
I stared over at Tessa, and I saw the flash of recognition that was no doubt crossing my own face mirrored on my own. A pirate ship. Buried treasure. This all sounded more and more promising.
“Has he ever heard anything about those things?” I asked, not bothering to try to keep the excitement out of my voice. “Have you ever heard anything about an old pirate ship?”
“What?” Alice asked, blinking at me in confusion. “No.” Tyson also shook his head.
“Did they say anything else?” I asked.
“No, nothing,” Alice said, shaking her head. “But we never let them go outside alone again.”
23
Holm
It had been a long twenty-four hours. I hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and the world was starting to swim around me as I sat in a small room in the Miami police station closest to the MBLIS office.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Birn asked from where he sat beside me, clapping me on the shoulder. “You look like you’re about to keel over, and you’re no good to us exhausted.”
I looked at him hesitantly. I hadn’t been comfortable taking a break since what happened to Diane and me the night before at the office when the goon in the ski mask had attacked us. What with Birn and Muñoz still not fully recovered from their ordeal down in the Keys and Marston running off to find buried treasure in Virginia, I knew that Diane needed me awake and alert.
But Birn was right. I was awake, but I wasn’t alert anymore. I needed to get some shut-eye.
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted, suppressing what felt like my hundredth yawn in as many minutes. “You think you two can hold down the fort for a couple of hours?”
I glanced between Birn and Muñoz, who had both been camped out with me in the back of the police station since mid-morning, guzzling coffee and energy drinks and going through the endless files that the police had sent over. Diane didn’t help us. Instead, she spent her time talking to the big wigs and the other agents out on patrol with the police officers who were hunting down our would-be attackers.
“Sure thing,” Muñoz said kindly, shooting me a smile. “You deserve a break.”
I felt bad because we all needed a break. But at least Birn and Muñoz had gotten some sleep the night before, while Diane and I had been up all night talking to the police. I wasn’t sure if Diane had gotten any rest herself, but I doubted it. We hadn’t seen her since the afternoon when she’d popped her head in to tell us that the FBI had arrived, and they’d be in to talk to me soon and take a witness statement.
That had been nearly five hours ago, and no one had been in since, except for the lackeys who brought us more of the files to look through, and they hadn’t been able to tell us anything despite our ruthless questioning.
The files were interesting, in a way. Well, that was a lie that I told myself to keep myself awake as I went through them, if I was honest, but each time I opened a new one, I hoped that it would be interesting, giving us some kind of tidbit about the Hollands’
