“You’re selling drugs here?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “Doesn’t seem like a big hot spot for that if you ask me.”
“Come on, Agent Marston, you know better than that,” the guy sneered. “We’re not here for any of that business. That’s peanuts compared to what we’re up to.”
“And what’s that?” I asked dryly.
“The same thing you are, I ‘spect,” the guy drawled, his muscles taut under his plain white tee shirt. By the look of him, I didn’t exactly love my chances in hand-to-hand combat with this one. The other two would be a breeze, but not him. He could’ve been a professional wrestler, as far as I could tell.
“Why don’t you tell me about this?” I asked, jerking my chin in the direction of the outline of the fake ship standing next to me.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this whole thing. The journal was one thing. It made sense to try to throw me off the trail that way, making me think that the real journal was mangled beyond repair, with any useful information redacted.
But an entire ship? Did they really think that I wouldn’t notice when the whole entire ship turned up, and it wasn’t the real deal?
Even as I thought this, I wasn’t so sure. I’d been fooled by the journal, after all. I liked to think that I wouldn’t be fooled by a whole ship, but if they did a good enough job, who knew? Paired with the elation and all the excitement that would come along with thinking I had found the Dragon’s Rogue at long last, it wasn’t actually unfathomable that I would be fooled.
“That?” the guy in the muscle tee repeated, an almost pained expression crossing his face for a brief moment. “That’s none of your concern.”
“None of my concern?” I asked, taking another step toward him with my gun held out, causing the two goons in the back to bristle and raise their own weapons a little higher. “How can you say that? It’s for me, isn’t it?
“Then you do know more than you let on,” the goon said, narrowing his eyes at me. “So what are you asking me for if you’ve already worked the whole thing out for yourself, smart guy?”
“I just want to confirm the theory I already have,” I shot back, a little snider than I’d intended, and he scowled at me.
I realized that despite his bravado, I’d ruined this guy’s whole plan. He had to be important for a couple of nautical enthusiasts like the Hollands to send him to run their whole operation in Newport News while they tried to fend me off in our parallel searches for the Dragon’s Rogue. And here I was, squashing all his grand schemes and walking in on him trying to trick me. I wondered what else I might find stashed in this old house if I had a good look through it.
Something occurred to me, then. These noises had been going on for at least six months, or even the better part of a year, based on what the police, Paulina, and the Carltons had told me. The house had been bought even before that, clearly by the Hollands under one of their many aliases since this property hadn’t shown up on our map of their properties held under their own names.
That was long before I ever knew about the nautical museum—long, long before, which could only mean one thing. If the Hollands bought this house for the sole purpose of helping them find the Dragon’s Rogue, they were at least one or two steps ahead of me in my own search. Or they had been a year or so ago, at least.
Unless this was all just a coincidence, and they’d bought the property as one of their many mundane real estate ventures, and then just happened to have it when I found out that the museum had the journal. That struck me as more than unlikely, given recent events. There would be no more writing anything off as a coincidence where the Hollands were concerned for me.
“Wait, how long have you been here?” I asked the guy, and man, did he not like that question.
“Enough talk. You’re done, Marston,” he whined, waving his gun in the air and pressing down on the trigger before I knew what was happening.
I dove and pulled Tessa and Miles along with me, tucked close to the ground as I heard the bullet crash into the wall behind where my head had been mere seconds before.
“Stay down,” I murmured into Tessa’s ear before crawling back into a standing position. “Keep on top of him.”
She nodded weakly, and I moved on to the two goons standing over us in the doorway, quickly shooting at them each in turn before they had the time to react. They each fell to the ground in short order, blood pooling around them.
That left the main guy and me, with his muscles and all. And if he had been pissed before, he was practically fuming out of his ears now.
He clenched his jaw and began to stomp in my direction with his gun held high. I realized that he wanted to shoot me at the closest range he could, to make it hurt. Or he wanted to strangle me with his bare hands. Or both. Either way, I had to get away from him, fast.
But Tessa was right behind me, and I didn’t want to endanger her, either. As quickly as I could, I ran across the room into the darkness, moving his attention away from her and Miles’s general vicinity and after me.
I ran into another room, the dim light shining from the doorway and the way that my eyes had already adjusted to the dark atmosphere allowing me to maneuver around the scant furniture and doors.
I ended
