CHAPTER TEN

Peter handled John Schlossman’s emotional apology with as much grace as he could manage.

Shay alone knew just how badly the encounter had rattled him—from the way he’d reached for her hand and held it so tightly….

She wasn’t sure if Peter’s sudden need for connection was the result of confirmation that they’d been right all along and Dingo was Maddie’s inappropriate older boyfriend, or if it came from his relief that SEAL Candidate Schlossman wasn’t the evil, revenge-seeking asshole that they’d feared he was.

Either way, she was glad to offer support, but every reason on earth for her to keep her distance from Peter echoed in her head. He could’ve really hurt John Schlossman. The violence with which he’d grabbed and thrown the younger man had been startling. And really, how well did she know him…?

As introductions were being made and information about the search for Maddie was being shared, Harry popped back in to offer his commentary.

What was that supposed to be? That full-body embrace? Was that really your idea of “good cop”?

Yes, it was. She’d been holding Peter back, like the good partner she was pretending to be. Problem was, there was just so…much of him. In order to get her arms all the way around the SEAL, she’d had to press her entire front against his entire back. It was only after she’d done it that she’d realized how awkward it was to be, essentially, spooning him.

Spooning? You were dry-humping his ass.

She hadn’t moved—she’d merely hung on while he’d tried to shake himself free and…God, yes, she’d had a bit of an intimate encounter with the man’s impossibly lovely, ridiculously firm derrière.

And girrrl, when you licked his ear?

She had not licked Peter’s ear. She’d merely murmured a few supportive Don’t accidentally kill hims.

Yeah, your lips touched flesh more than once, and admit it—you wanted to lick his ear and bury your nose in his neck because he smells so damn good.

“Shh!” Whoops, she’d shushed Harry aloud, and Peter heard and glanced at her.

Her friend, Peter. Her neighbor, Peter. Still a stranger to her in so many ways…

He stood out in this group of rather remarkably strong-and-handsome men, and not just because he was wearing that bright white uniform in contrast to the others’ shorts and jeans and T-shirts.

Right after the confrontation with Schlossman, Peter had received a text from Lindsey with an address in Van Nuys—an LA suburb, about a two-hour drive away—of a James and Mary Dingler, to whom “Dingo’s” maroon car was registered. His parents’ home address? Probably.

Lindsey’s police department contact had also pulled up a more local San Diego address with an apartment number for Dingo’s long-haired buddy, Daryl Middleton.

So now, along with the San Diego work address of Maddie’s friend Fiona’s aunt Susan, they had three potential leads to check out.

Four, including Maddie’s great-aunt Hiroko, Harry reminded Shay.

Peter, Izzy, and the two SEAL candidates who’d volunteered to go with him to Palm Springs were organizing and prioritizing who should be visited first. And since Shay was unfamiliar with locations and drive times, she had little to add, aside from “Might make sense to hold off on the trip to Palm Springs,” since that was just to pick up a bunch of packed boxes.

“Yeah, but the rental van has to go back by nine tonight,” Izzy pointed out.

“I’ve got the day free,” the handsome young man nicknamed Timebomb offered. “I can help. And maybe Q and Doe can—”

“I already called ’em,” wiry Seagull announced. “They’re in Tucson today—something with Q’s sister or cousin. How about Timebomb and I go to Palm Springs—” he turned to Izzy “—if you’re okay with handing off the van to us.”

“I am,” Izzy said.

Seagull continued, “That way you and Schlossman can head out to the Dinglers’ in Van Nuys, while the LT and Ms. Whitman stay local.”

“If it helps to split up even more,” Shayla volunteered, even as Harry sputtered No, no, no, no, no! What are you doing? “I could get my car from Tevin—”

Before she could finish, Peter’s cellphone rang. He glanced at it—his intention was clearly to let it go to voicemail, but then he did a double-take, and brought it to his ear with an authoritative “Peter Greene.”

His eyes narrowed slightly as he listened for several long moments to whoever was on the other end, but then he covered the phone’s mic with his other hand as he said, “It’s Maddie’s aunt Hiroko. Maddie and Dingo were just at her house, asking to borrow money. If we hurry…”

“Go,” Izzy said. “Fly. We’ll figure this out and be in touch.”

Peter looked directly at Shayla and gestured for her to follow as he headed quickly for his truck.

Jesus, those blue eyes in that face with that uniform! “Shh!”

Peter spoke over her, thank God, again into the phone, “I thought the number looked familiar. Thank you so much for tracking me down, because yeah, Maddie’s gone AWOL. We’re on our way.” He hung up as he started his truck with a roar as Shayla, too, fastened her seat belt, and he pulled out of the parking lot.

“You gave Maddie three hundred dollars,” Pete heard himself echo Hiroko’s words. “In a personal check…?”

In his mind, he time-traveled and was using those moments when Hiroko had first called to organize a hard-and-fast search pattern of the banks immediately surrounding this still sleepy little beach community. With three vehicles—his, Izzy’s, and Timebomb’s—and with six sets of sharp eyes, they might’ve actually spotted Maddie in a bank parking lot in Dingo’s distinctive maroon car.

But Hiroko hadn’t thought to tell him that there was a check to be cashed, and he hadn’t thought to interrogate her when she’d reported she’d given Maddie and Dingo some money. But Jesus, he wished that he had.

Shayla now reached between them as they sat on the sofa in Hiroko’s tidy little living room and she put her hand on top of his, clearly knowing exactly where his thoughts had gone. But she also knew as well as he did that wallowing in should’ves wasn’t going to help them find Maddie, so even as she gently squeezed and released his hand, she pushed the conversation forward.

“Did she say why she needed it—that much money?” she asked Hiroko as she pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. It was cooler here, near the water, and she’d pulled it out of her bag and put it on, but Hiroko had always kept her house warm.

In truth, the elderly woman had gone above and beyond. She’d managed to get Maddie and Dingo to pose for a photo before they left. She took it with her phone, and even managed to get them to stand directly behind Dingo’s car, so the plate number was included. And then she’d tracked down Pete’s cellphone number, to get in touch with him.

She had no idea that Pete had already ID’ed “Dingo” Dingler, formerly of Van Nuys, California, via his car’s license plate number. Instead, via her photo, he got confirmation of what they already knew—yup, Maddie was definitely still in the company of the idiot who owned the maroon car.

Now Hiroko sat across from them on the edge of a leather-covered easy chair, her posture impeccable. She’d had coffee ready when they arrived, and had gotten out a plate of cookies—store-bought and stale. She’d never been much of the grandmotherly type, even twenty years ago, and age had not mellowed her.

The art on her walls, however, was still brilliant—vibrant and chaotic. Pete recognized one piece that he’d seen, incomplete, in her studio—which was really the little cottage’s tiny second bedroom—back even before he’d met Lisa. The swirl of different shades and hues of blue and green somehow captured the very essence of life itself—but then again, he’d always preferred modern art, wild and unfettered, to the Norman Rockwell school of realism.

“She and the boy gave me some story about a school project and a road trip up to Manzanar,” Hiroko told them with the same matter-of-fact grimness that she’d had when he’d met her, years ago, “but it was clear they were lying. I gave her the check because I thought she needed it to break the cycle.”

Shayla nodded, but Pete was lost. “What cycle?” he asked.

Hiroko put it plainly. “Babies having babies.”

Babies having…oh, shit. Oh, Jesus. “You honestly think…?”

Hiroko shrugged.

“Did Maddie say anything, specifically,” Shayla asked, with another squeeze of his hand, “that made you believe…?”

“No, but while she was here, it didn’t take much to make her weepy. Hormones.”

“It hasn’t been that long since her mother passed,” Shay pointed out. “Plus she’s a teenager, and on top of that, she’s probably feeling uncertain about her decision to leave home. I certainly don’t think we should jump to conclusions based on her being a little weepy.” She leaned forward a bit. “Where’s this Manzanar?”

“Head toward Reno on 395, but then stop in the middle of nowhere,” Pete told her.

She was perplexed. “Is it…like Coachella? Is there some kind of music festival or—”

“Manzanar is one of the prison camps where they kept us—Americans of Japanese descent—during the Second World War,” Hiroko told her.

Shayla sat up straight. “Oh dear God,” she said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t know that. I mean, of course I know that it happened and it was awful. I mean, it must’ve been…I can’t imagine…” Now it was Pete’s turn to reach over and squeeze her hand as she turned to look at him with eyes that were enormous and filled with horror at her gaffe.

“It’s okay,” he murmured.

“It was awful at Manzanar,” Hiroko said. “And it’s not a big surprise that you didn’t know it by name—it was one of many. We don’t talk about it enough. We should. And of course, now the last of us are finally dying off.”

Shay pointed over her shoulder at the collection of black-and-white photos on the wall by the front door. “Is that what…? Are those pictures of…?”

“Yes, that’s the camp. I was ten years old when I arrived. We were there for three years. Until the war ended, in ’45.”

Shayla gracefully rose and went to look more closely at the photos that Pete had seen many times when he was a teenager. Rows of long, barracks-style cabins lined the flat valley surrounded by the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the west and the Inyo Mountains in the east. Families had been in Manzanar long enough to plant gardens and flowers bloomed—and in the photos, Hiroko and her brothers got older. At one point, the U.S. Army even “allowed” the boys who were old enough to enlist, and many—including Hiroko’s brother Kaito, resolute and impossibly young in his uniform in a posed portrait—went off to fight and die for a country that considered their families a threat.

Meanwhile, Hiroko corrected herself. “The prison at Manzanar. If I call it a camp, it sounds fun. Festive. Macramé. S’mores. Sitting around a fire and singing ‘If I Had a Hammer.’ ” She shook her head. “It wasn’t fun. It was an ordeal with the dust and the dirt and the freezing winters and deadly hot summers. But all of that was secondary to the humiliation.”

“I’m so sorry,” Shayla said.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Hiroko said. When Shayla turned and focused on the photos, the old woman silently mouthed to Pete, I like her.

Maybe she had mellowed a bit with age and time. Back when he was in high school, she’d spoken openly about how miserable Lisa would make him—even as Pete had blushed and insisted that he and Lisa were just friends.

It was funny how people saw a boy hanging out with a girl—or a man with a woman—and assumed that romance and lust were involved.

Pete knew that like Hiroko, Izzy also thought there was something-something going on between him and Shayla. And Shay’s playing good cop back at the Grill had only added fuel to that imaginary fire.

She’d surprised Pete when she’d grabbed him like that—that full bear hug from behind—although in hindsight, he couldn’t come up with another way for her to have “stopped” him from pummeling Schlossman. At least not that would’ve looked believable.

And despite his anger at Schlossman and his focused need to get to the bottom of those damning photos, part of his brain had been acutely aware of a variety of things. First, that Shayla was stronger—sturdier—than he’d imagined. There was a solidness to her, and at the same time, a softness. It was a good combination, which made him aware of the second thing, which was that it had been too damn long since someone who cared about him—truly, honestly cared—had put their arms around him.

It had shocked him—just how much he’d missed something that he hadn’t even really known that he’d been denied.

It was different from sex. He was well aware of just how much he’d missed that, but oddly, this hurt worse.

“Maddie told you that she and Dingo were going here—to Manzanar?” Shayla asked as she continued to study the photos.

“For a school project.” Hiroko was heavy with her ironic emphasis. “The girl’s got her mother’s ability to lie like a professional card shark, but the boy was one giant, twitchy tell.”

“Please forgive me for not knowing, but is the prison still there?” Shay asked as she finally came back and sat down beside Pete.

“It is and it isn’t,” Hiroko said.

Shay leaned in again. “Didn’t anyone, I don’t know, preserve it as an historic site?”

“Who would’ve done that?” Hiroko asked. “The families who’d been imprisoned there? We’d lost everything when we were rounded up—farms, businesses, jobs—all gone. My parents spent the war unemployed—like everyone in the camp—and when it was over, we were tossed back into a society who’d been taught to hate an enemy who looked exactly like us. Creating an historic site was the last thing we were thinking about. As for the government, they wanted Manzanar to disappear since yes, it had been unconstitutional and illegal—our imprisonment. So they tore down the cabins and sold off the wood and the metal from the fencing. But there’s really nothing out there—no town needing the site for a shopping mall or a suburban development, so in that sense, it’s still there—that great, big, dusty, empty space. And yes, it is a national site now, all these decades later—with a small monument to mark our national shame—but that happened only after we kicked and screamed to make it so. Now there’s an organization trying to preserve it, to rebuild more of the cabins according to the photos, but until they do that, there’s not much there to preserve. The high school auditorium that we built. I think that still stands, but other than that, there’s just some eroding foundations in a big dusty field, marked with a few little signs—apparently. That’s what I’ve heard. I have not been back.”

“So it’s unlikely Maddie would go there, expecting—I don’t know—a place to hide out?” Shayla asked.

“It’s unlikely she’d find much of anything to hide in or behind,” Hiroko replied, “if she and the boy with the ridiculous name did go there.”

Pete spoke up. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to put a stop payment on the check.”

“If I wanted to stop the payment, Peter, I wouldn’t have given the check to the girl in the first place” was the curt reply. “And actually, I didn’t write it to Maddie. She said she didn’t have a bank account and wouldn’t be able to cash it. So I wrote it for the boy. Ricky—Richard—Dingler. She calls him Dingo. I don’t know why, when Ricky is a perfectly fine name. I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”

And that was their cue to go. As Pete stood up, he took out his phone and texted Izzy: FYI, Dingo’s name is Ricky, short for Richard, Dingler. That info could be useful if Izzy encountered Dingo’s parents up in Van Nuys. “Please call me if they come back,” he told Hiroko.

“They won’t.” She seemed certain.

“Thank you so much for the coffee,” Shayla said, giving Hiroko a hug, which was actually amazing. Pete had never seen the old woman reach out to make any kind of contact with anyone—not even a handshake. In fact, she shrank from it. Because of that, people tended to keep their distance—himself and Lisa included. And even now, as Shayla hugged the old woman, it looked a lot like she was hugging a marble statue. Still, she pulled back to look into Hiroko’s eyes and say, “It was so nice to meet you—Peter’s told me a lot about you. I hope we’ll see you again, soon.”

Hiroko’s response was a prickly “Well, I don’t know about that.” But then, after Shay had gone out the door, as Pete was heading out himself and pulling it closed behind him, the old woman said, “I hope you’re finally happy, Peter.”

He almost stopped and went back inside to confront her, because that was just cruel. She hoped he was finally happy? With Lisa dead, and Maddie run away and possibly pregnant at age fifteen…?

Instead, he closed the door behind him.

Thanks, Hiroko. Jesus. Just…thanks.

“Is Maddie a morning person?” Shayla asked as they headed toward the next item on their search list: the San Diego address they’d gotten for Daryl Middleton, Dingo’s long-haired friend.

Peter had been silently grim since they left Hiroko’s lovely little beach house, lost in thoughts and memories, no doubt, from being back in the very place he’d first met Maddie’s mother. Now, as he navigated his way through the morning traffic, he glanced at Shay and the expression on his face was intentionally comical—an over-exaggerated Seriously? “She’s a teenager,” he reminded her. “She’d sleep until noon every day if she could.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.” She smiled at him. “I’ve got two of my own, and Tevin’s currently doing a workout regimen before school. I think his desire to put on some muscle, you know, to stop being the tall, skinny kid currently trumps his need for sleep—but it’s a daily battle and sleep sometimes wins. Frank’s solidly in the sleep-all-day-if-he-could phase.” She paused, then asked, “So what’s she doing up this early on a day she has no intention of going to school? Why not sleep in? Instead, she and Dingo must’ve gotten to Hiroko’s before seven. That had to take some serious effort.” She could tell he didn’t quite understand why this mattered, so she added, “I keep thinking there’s a clue in there. Like, whoever they’re staying with has to get up and go to work. Or…what?”

He nodded. “You’re right. Although it’s possible their motivation was the money. We told Maddie, in the story we sent, that Hiroko often got up early. Maybe she wanted to get there before we did.”

“Or, maybe they’re sleeping on the beach or in a park somewhere,” Shay said, “or even in that car, and got told to move it along, so they were just out, doing what I think of as the early-morning zombie shuffle, except they’re in the car. Drove past Hiroko’s as recon, stumbled on her up and in her garden.”

He nodded again as he threw her another glance. “That writer brain of yours,” he said. “It’s a good one.”

“Well, thanks, but if I were writing this scene, I’d have ’em staying with Dingo’s buddy Daryl at—” she checked the address she’d input into her phone’s GPS “—the Riverside Arms, unit three-fifty. Does San Diego even have a river?”

“We’ve got a few. Most of ’em are more like riverbeds—arroyos. So being riverside isn’t necessarily high-priced real estate with scenic views. And since it looks like we’re heading toward the airport, I think we’re doubling down on the potential ugly.”

As Shay looked out of the truck’s windows, she had to agree. This was the part of town where she and the boys had camped out when they’d first moved to San Diego. The truck carrying their furniture had been delayed by two whole weeks, so they’d gotten a suite at one of those extended-stay hotels. It had been relatively nice, but just a few blocks away were pawnshops, strip clubs, massage parlors—and, apparently, a worn-down, three-story brick box of an apartment complex loftily called “Riverside Arms.”

Peter found a parking spot on the street and as they got out of his truck, the roar of an airplane taking off made it impossible to hear. He pointed toward the building’s front door, and Shay nodded, and together they went up the pitted concrete path. The door was locked, but there was a panel of a dozen buttons for buzzers near a dented, ancient speaker.

Peter hit the buzzer for 350. There was no name next to it—there was nothing written next to any of the buttons, except for one marked Manager in childishly careful block print.

Nothing happened. He hit it again, holding it longer this time.

Shayla pointed to the speaker. “That might not even work,” she said—the jet engines now a rumble in the distance.

“Or no one’s home,” Peter said. He hit the button for the manager, as he glanced at her. “You up for playing private eye? A few white lies for the sake of information gathering?”

She nodded. “Of course. What are you thinking?”

But instead of the speaker squawking on, the manager came out of an apartment that was at the very front of the lobby—they could see a man peering at them through the glass as he came to push the door open.

“You here about the rental?” he asked. It was clear he was wary of Pete’s naval uniform, but his semi-unwelcoming demeanor went even farther south when he looked at Shayla. “Sorry to say it, but management just upped the security deposit to three full months.”

There was no way that was true for anyone but a family of color—or maybe a white sailor from the Naval Base, who was in an interracial relationship.

As if this man had the right to judge anyone, with his beer belly gaping between the bottom of his stained white sleeveless undershirt and jean cutoffs that were much too short, considering this was not the 1980s. And that wasn’t even taking into account his beady little blue eyes, orange-tanner skin tone, and lack of chin. His fleshy face just went straight from his head down to his shoulders, and God, he smelled like a bad combo of locker room and distillery. But he was white and male and presumably hetero, which in his mind gave him the right to assess and find them lacking.

Shayla smiled sweetly at the man, even while inwardly she was performing a Game of Thrones–style massacre—and maybe even writing warning messages on the lobby walls with his entrails. White lies? Nope. They were gonna hit this man with a full fictional fucking.

And before Peter could respond—it was clear he was both astonished and outraged—she said brightly, crisply, “Oh, that’s well within the studio’s budget—I’ve been authorized to offer in the neighborhood of seventy-five thousand for the month, with the possibility that we’ll need to stay for two. Maybe three—four at the most. At the same monthly rental amount, of course.”

The manager’s jaw had dropped. “I’m sorry, I’m—” he started, but Shayla cut him off.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry, I’m so rude! I’m Harriet Parker from Heartbeat Productions, and this is Lieutenant Thomas McGee—the film’s official military consultant. We’re scouting locations here in San Diego for Mr. Howard’s latest film, SEAL Team Sixteen—working title, of course. Lieutenant McGee is with me today, since the movie’s based on a true story, and he was there. And while apartment three-fifty isn’t exactly right, it’s very close to what Mr. Howard needs. We’ve all seen pictures, and we were supposed to meet the leaseholder here this morning—” she took her phone from her handbag and scrolled through her latest texts from Tevin, pretending they contained vital info from Mr. Howard’s studio “—a Daryl Middleton…?”

The manager was shaking his head, but his eyes had turned into cartoon dollar signs and he pushed the door open wide enough for them to come in. “I’m not sure where you got that info—three-fifty’s one of our currently-vacants. But I’m happy to show it to you, and talk to the owner about working out some kind of short-term deal.”

Yeah, Shayla bet he would. But as she and Peter stepped into the lobby—which smelled like locker room, distillery, urinal, and sauerkraut or maybe that was rotting cabbage, hard to tell—she said, “Three-fifty’s vacant? That’s strange. Unless…Oh, in his last email, Daryl said something about his father’s failing health, so maybe he had to leave town unexpectedly. And then we got delayed because of the thing with Ryan Gosling….You know, but shhh, can’t talk about it.”

The manager was trying to lead them toward the back of the lobby, to an elevator door that didn’t quite close all the way—as if someone had taken a crowbar to it in order to allow someone else to escape. No way was she getting into that, so she planted her feet and took Peter’s arm to stop him, too.

He complied and even covered her hand with his and squeezed—it was clear he was trying not to laugh as the manager realized they weren’t following and came back.

Shay asked, “Has three-fifty been empty for long?”

“Oh,” he said, “um, yeah, actually. I think the tenants moved out in December. Yeah, it was right before Christmas, when the semester ended. They were students.”

“Wow,” Shay said. “So…months ago. That’s strange. Are you sure we’re talking about the same tenant—Daryl Middleton? Maybe I got the apartment number wrong.”

The manager shook his head, absolute. “I’ve been here ten years. I know everyone. No one named Daryl Middleton in three-fifty or any other apartment. At least not as a leaseholder.”

“I’m certain it was three-fifty, Harriet,” Peter told Shay before turning to the manager to say, “Daryl’s tall, white, long straight hair, beard, early twenties…?”

The manager laughed. “Tenants were co-eds. From Ohio—nice girls, pretty. Blondes and maybe not the sharpest tools in the shed, if you know what I mean. This Daryl sounds like one of their boyfriends. They had shitty taste in men.”

In other words, he’d hit on them and gotten turned down.

“I’m happy to show you the apartment though,” the manager continued.

Both Shayla and Peter reached for their phones at the exact same time, feigning an incoming call—because there was no need to go upstairs.

Shay pretended to look at her phone and covered by saying, “Oh my God, Lieutenant McGee, are you getting a call from Ron’s office, too? Hang on, I’ve got to take this.”

“I do, too,” Peter said, and they both turned away, pretending to listen to someone on their other end.

“We’re there right now, sir,” Shay said as she heard Peter murmur, “ASAP? Yes, of course. We’ll reschedule. Not a problem. I’m sure.”

She fought her laughter and instead said, “Certainly, Mr. Howard, I can arrange that.” She paused and then said, “Yes, sir, I’ll let him know.”

She and Peter both “hung up” their phones at the same time and turned back to each other and the manager, who’d been trying to look as if he weren’t listening in.

“You get a call about the meeting, too?” she asked Peter.

He nodded, and turned to the manager. “We’re going to have to reschedule.”

“I’m so sorry,” Shay said. “We’ve got to rush back to LA. But Mr. Howard was hoping to get a look at the place himself, maybe early tomorrow? If it’s still available, of course. And please, please, don’t hold it for him if someone wants to rent. As much as he likes working on location, having a set built on a soundstage has its benefits, and it’s a constant give-and-take with the movie’s producers.”

“If he can get a real Mark Five he might give in to the pressure to build the apartment on the soundstage,” Peter said.

She had no idea what a Mark Five was, and she almost laughed. Instead, she just blinked at Peter and said something ridiculous like, “Yes, of course, he does want a real…Mark Five.”

Peter opened the door and held it for her. “Shall we?”

The manager was doing at least some of the math, and realized he hadn’t given them his name or number. “It’s Bob Watkins. Eight-one-eight…” As he recited his phone number, Shay called out “Thank you!” She pretended to put it into her phone even as she went out the door. Peter was right behind her, and somehow they managed to make it down and across the street to his truck before they started to laugh.

“You’re a little too good at that,” he told her, his eyes giving off a huge amount of sparkle. “I think I might be scared.”

“It’s really just writing a scene on the fly,” she told him. “And believe me, once he pissed me off…”

Peter sobered as they stood on the sidewalk next to his truck. “That was…unbelievable. What he did was illegal. And it’s pretty damn easy to prove that he was lying. Three months’ security?”

“But who wants to push to live in a building where that guy has a master key to your apartment?” Shayla shook her head. “In a way, it’s better to find it out up front. You know, before you move in and he ties a rope with a lynching noose on the stair rail for your kid to stumble across?”

“Fuck,” he said. And the way he was standing there, legs slightly spread in a stance that was more than a little combative, as if he were ready to slay the dragons of injustice, made her smile.

“Come on,” she said. “Susan Smith’s law office is surely open by now. Let’s visit her, see what she knows about Fiona and Maddie’s friendship, then check in at home, see if Maddie’s been there, maybe take a break to have lunch and write that Peter and Lisa, Chapter Two. The sooner we have something to send to Maddie, the sooner we’ll get another still safe text message—or even an invitation to talk. I was thinking, regardless, that it might make sense for Hans to text her, see if she’ll talk to him—”

Peter lunged at her. He moved so quickly, she honestly didn’t see it coming. One second, he was standing there, nodding in agreement, and the next he’d grabbed her, pulling her in hard against his chest as he dragged her with him behind his truck.

There was another truck—big and black—on the street, pulling away with a squeal of tires, a roar of an engine, and the harsh sound of voices shouting—something about Navy motherfucker—the other words indiscernible but the rage unmistakable.

Shayla shrieked her surprise as she tripped—over her own feet or maybe Peter’s—and this time instead of keeping her from going down, he went to the sidewalk with her, somehow managing to turn with a weird-sounding clang, so that she landed on his chest and front instead of on the hard concrete.

And yeah, her knee was lined up pretty perfectly with his crotch, and he made that unmistakable noise, deep in his throat, that she’d heard Carter and her various other exes make when she’d accidentally whacked them in the balls. She had given him, without a doubt, a direct hit.

Carter would tightly shut his eyes and curl into a bit of a ball himself, moaning for ice. But then, when she got it, he’d mutter Don’t touch me as she apologized.

Peter’s eyes, however, were wide open and mere inches from her own as he focused on her. “Are you okay? Did you get hit? Are you hurt?”

Hurt? Hit? “No,” she said, still dazed by suddenly being tackled. This current body-to-body contact wasn’t helping to clear her head. He was warm and solid, with those giant arms still wrapped tightly around her. “What…?”

As she pulled back slightly—his face was too close to have any kind of a conversation that didn’t include the phrase Kiss me, fool, an utterance that would be a mistake—she realized that he was covered—covered—in some kind of hideously disgusting brown slop.

Had they fallen into horse manure, or God, the place in the neighborhood where the homeless population emptied their bowels, because, yeah, it smelled like that kind of nasty, too. Except she would’ve made note of it earlier, upon getting out of Peter’s truck—they were lying there right beside the very door she’d emerged from.

As she pushed herself even further up and off of him, she saw a metal bucket—that was what she’d heard make that clang as it hit the sidewalk. It was lying on its side, and was clearly the source of the nastiness.

“Oh, my God,” she said as Peter started to hold out a hand to help her up, but stopped when he realized that doing so would transfer that whatever-it-was onto her. She was miraculously clean, probably because he’d made himself into a rather large shield to protect her. “Did those men in that truck throw that at us? Who was that? Oh, my God! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I don’t know who they were, I didn’t really see much,” Peter told her. “It was a black truck, large, relatively new, maybe a Ford, but I can’t say for sure. At least two occupants in the cab, but whoever threw this was riding in the back.”

“Navy motherfucker,” Shayla echoed the few words she’d heard.

He nodded as he glanced down the street. “Yeah, I heard that, too. Whoever they are, they’re long gone.”

The bucket was not a little one—it was floor-mopping size—and as they both got back onto their feet, Shayla could tell from the way he’d been splattered that it had hit him squarely in the back. God, the shit—literal shit—was in his beautiful hair, and had gone down his collar. But despite that, he was looking at her carefully, as if double-checking that she truly was unharmed.

There was only one Navy motherfucker between the two of them, but while they may have been aiming at Peter, they’d missed. Shay realized that if he hadn’t gallantly thrown himself between her and the bucket, it would’ve hit her, right in the head. Even empty, that would’ve hurt. But full…?

Instead, she was almost completely unscathed. Her knee was a little sore—the one that had hit the street instead of Peter’s male anatomy. Although, she discovered that she did have quite a bit of dookey on the back of her sweater, which she quickly slipped out of, turned inside out, and then used to wipe off a few stray patches of ick that smudged her pants. “Are you sure you’re all right? That must’ve hit you hard.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. But the smell is kinda…I might throw up. I’m gonna apologize for that in advance.”

“I kicked you in the gentleman’s accessories,” she reminded him. “That can’t be helping.”

“I’ll live,” he said as he started to undress, right there on the sidewalk. “Reach into my pocket and get my keys—and my phone and wallet while you’re at it—I don’t want to touch them. I’m riding in the back—you’re driving us home.”