“We need to speak to both Dingo’s parents and Fiona’s mother.” Shay had her computer out and open as she attempted to figure out some kind of plan. “Also, let’s check to see if any of them—Dingo, Fiona, or Daryl—had police records, see if we can find a connection to anyone in San Diego’s underworld.”
Pete glanced at her, and she nodded. “I know,” she continued, “that sounds so Batman, but I’m not sure what else to call it.”
“Make a note that we should ask to talk to Fiona directly,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I also already sent a text to Tevin and Frank, to put out feelers among their friends. I’m making a list of anyone who was seen talking to either Fiona or Maddie. I’ve also asked Tevin to see what he can find out about where, locally, kids buy drugs. And I’ve asked Lindsey to check with her contact at the San Diego Police, see if she can get us a list of usual suspects when it comes to drug deals, see if we can find Maddie that way.” She squinted at her list. “Oh, and I was also thinking that, when we get to Van Nuys? Maybe I could pull Dingo’s mother aside while you’re talking to the father?”
The latest plan was to meet Izzy and his “tadpoles” in Van Nuys. A neighbor had had the Dinglers’ cellphone number, and while they hadn’t been willing to share it, they had called about the break-in, and Dingo’s parents were heading back home.
Peter glanced at her again. “Yeah, I think I’d rather just get you safely home.”
“What? Wait, we’re not going to Van Nuys?”
“No, we’re going there. But you’re going directly home. I’ll let Izzy and Seagull take you. Hans and Timebomb’ll stay with me, wait for the parents.”
“Peter. I’m certain I’ll be safe enough in Van Nuys for the duration of a conversation with Dingo’s—”
“No,” Peter said.
“Excuse me?” she countered.
He looked at her and said it again. “No. And no, I’m not going to pretty it up with a please, baby.”
He’s completely, totally freaked out that Daryl died.
Shayla took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. She didn’t need Harry’s voice in her head to know that.
“Okay,” she said.
Peter glanced at her again—clearly she’d surprised him.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll pretend you said please, and I’ll go with Izzy. But if you want me to be honest, I’d feel safer waiting for you. I mean, isn’t it likely that you’ll be heading down to San Diego after you talk to the Dinglers? And I have faith in Izzy’s abilities—he is a Navy SEAL—but…I’m not sure he’d, for example, take a bucket of shit for me.”
He smiled—but briefly—at that. “Yeah, he would. Because he’d take one for me, and he knows how important you are to me.”
“He thinks he knows,” Shayla corrected him.
“Nope, he knows.” He kept his eyes on the road. “As long as I’m laying down orders and ultimatums, I might as well tell you that I’m coming for you. And as long as you’re pretending things, you can keep on pretending it’s only about the sex in the garage, or in the tent, or in the cheap motel room, or wherever it happens next. Because it’s gonna happen again. And again. And again. And it’s just gonna keep on being fucking great.”
I’m not sure what the right response to that is, Harry said. Maybe “Thank you”?
But Peter kept going before she could speak. “But it’s not just the sex that’s great. It’s all of it. All of you. We fit—not just when we’re making love. We’re fitting right now. This fits. So I’m gonna just keep showing up. I got Lisa to admit that I was an important—and real—part of her life by not having sex with her. I’m gonna do the opposite with you. Partly because I think it’ll work—if I just keep showing up—but mostly because I can’t keep my hands off you. And eventually the pretend-dating thing will turn real, and we’ll go places together and sometimes even have sex in our beds. Jesus, that’s gonna be good. And I recognize that it might sound crazy for me to say that I’m going to marry you, four days after we met, but I am gonna marry you.”
Fuuuuuuck, Harry said.
But Peter wasn’t done. “Maybe not right away, because our kids might not want to get all Brady Bunched. But I’m okay with long-term plans, and I’m thinking in three years, after we get Frank and Maddie safely off to college, we’ll do it, and then go on a honeymoon. So yes, I want you safe while I find Maddie. I’d love for you to help—you’ve already helped so much with this latest goatfuck, helping me figure out what to do next, and I know you’ll continue to be brilliant—but I want you to do that from the safety of your well-guarded home. Your skill sets and mine are very different, so…I think that’s everything I wanted to say—oh, except, I always thought I was broken. I believed Lisa when she said it was all my fault and…having you help me write the story, you know, of what happened with her…It makes me see it differently, and that’s why I think, you know, that I actually might deserve someone as great as you in my life.” He nodded. “That’s what I wanted to say.”
As Shay was sitting there, trying to figure out what to say—Okay. Please keep showing up? Or Yeah, it’s definitely batshit crazy to talk about getting married mere days after you meet someone, or Are you sure there’s not like, three more little words that you might want to add to that whole long speech?—her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
It was from an unidentified number, sent to both her and Peter’s phones, and it was…She clicked on the message and looked more closely. “Peter, we just got what looks like a screenshot from an LA area code. It’s some kind of GPS tracking app—something called MapMyRun. Oh, my God! I think this is from Dingo.” She looked up at Peter. “It starts at the Dingler address in Van Nuys, and it ends at what looks like some kind of industrial complex, in a town called Clarence, just south of Pearblossom, on this side of the mountains. We passed the exit for it, about four miles back!”
Maddie was terrified.
She was going to die here, in this run-down garage in the middle of nowhere.
She knew that her captors—Dead-Eyes and the skinhead clones—were going to kill her because no one had bothered to cover her head or her eyes during the drive.
At first, she’d thought they were stupid. She was just sitting in the truck’s backseat, between the clones, where anyone traveling past them on the freeway could see that her arms were awkwardly positioned behind her back, and that her mouth was covered by a piece of duct tape.
But then she realized the windows were so darkly tinted, and she was so far back from them, that no one could see in.
Instead of heading south to San Diego, they’d gone north, along the same route that she and Dingo had taken from Manzanar. But they didn’t go that far—only about an hour, although it seemed like forever.