30
Ethan
Tessa and I were at the house with the police and the forensics team for most of the night. There was a lot of combing through the old house to do, but we didn’t find much else of interest. The rest of the place was just full of sleeping bags and old food from the goons, for the most part—nothing else about the Dragon’s Rogue or where the Hollands might be.
By the time we made our way back to our rental car, which was still where we’d left it in the restaurant parking lot by the beach nearly a mile away, the sun was coming up.
I checked my watch. It was almost six-thirty in the morning.
Tessa let out a long yawn and stretched out her arms as I unlocked the car.
“I know it’s morning already, but I really need some sleep,” she told me as she climbed inside the passenger’s side, and I got into the driver’s seat.
“I know, me too,” I said, yawning myself as hers was infectious. “We’ll just sleep for a few hours. Otherwise, we won’t be able to tonight.”
“Hmm’kay,” Tessa murmured, leaning her head back against the seat cushion and already starting to drift off as I pulled out of the parking lot.
I could barely keep my eyes open as I drove back to the bed-and-breakfast, and more than once, I thought that I’d forgotten how to get there. But at long last, I pulled into the driveway of the cozy little house with all the windows.
Paulina was more than just excited to see us, so much so that she came running down the driveway before I’d even opened my car door.
“Come on,” I said, nudging Tessa gently as she came to, and I jumped out of the car and opened her door for her.
“Oh, Agent Marston, we got so worried when you didn’t come home,” Paulina gushed, following Tessa and me all the way to the front door. “Martha barely slept a wink, the poor thing.”
“I’m sure,” I sighed. “Have the police updated you?”
“Oh no, not yet,” Paulina said, shaking her head as her eyes widened at this. “Officer Collins only told us that most of his colleagues had to go out to the Hawthorne house last night, so when you didn’t come home, we were sure that something must’ve happened. We’re so keen to know what it was.”
I sighed and pulled out my phone, realizing that I’d neglected to check it before because I was so tired. My own eyes widened as I realized that I had about fifty missed calls from Holm and a fair number from Diane as well.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” Tessa said, touching my elbow as she noticed that clearly, something was wrong. “Sleep can wait. I’ll update Martha.”
“Thanks,” I said absent-mindedly, noticing what she said enough to be grateful to her, but not much else. My heart was pounding as my mind ran through all the terrible possibilities about what could’ve happened to my colleagues in Miami.
While Tessa and Paulina headed into the house to talk to Martha, I feverishly paced up and down the driveway as I returned one of Holm’s near-countless calls.
“Marston, where the hell have you been?!” my partner asked almost accusingly as he picked up before the first ring could even finish. “We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for nearly twelve hours!”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, I was out of cell phone range,” I said quickly, relieved to hear him alive and well, at the very least.
“Did you get my messages?” he asked. “I left dozens of them. And texts. Same with Diane. I think even Birn and Muñoz left you some.”
I hadn’t noticed this in my concern to get back to him.
“No, I literally just looked at my phone for the first time since yesterday afternoon,” I explained, running a hand across my face wearily. “What’s going on, Holm?”
“The Hollands, they’re behind everything you’ve been dealing with there in Virginia!” he cried, to my surprise. “Or at least we think they are. They bought some old property there under an alias we didn’t know about before. It’s hard to think it’s not related to all this weird stuff and those guys who attacked you yesterday. Are you okay, by the way? Diane was just about to send me up to check on you since you’d been out of touch for so long.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I breathed. “And I already know about the Hollands, but how do you know?”
“Wait, how do you know?” Holm asked, suddenly just as perplexed as I was.
“I asked you first,” I chuckled.
“Fair enough,” he relented. “Diane and the FBI found another few aliases that the couple’s been using, and they had Birn, Muñoz, and I comb through all the files on it. That’s how I came across this property, it’s called the Hawthorne house, and there are all these old ghost stories about it.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve been there all night,” I told him.
“Huh?” he asked, and I had to launch into a whole explanation about what had been going on since I talked to him last.
“Well, damn,” he said when I was finished. “You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you? When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” I sighed, shaking my head.
“Hold on, let me get Diane,” Holm said. “I think she just walked in.”
There was a lot of shuffling on the other line, and then muffled voices, and then Diane’s voice rang out, tense and worried.
“Marston, is that you?” she asked. “Please tell me you’re not dead yet.”
“Not yet,” I chuckled. “I’ve got quite a bit to go yet, I think.”
“You’d better,” she said grumpily. “Robbie says you already knew about the Hollands?”
And so I launched into yet another explanation of everything that had happened to Tessa and me since the scuffle at the museum
