CHAPTER SIXTEEN

$12K NOW

The large block letters were written on the wall of Maddie’s bedroom in red spray paint. The police had taken away the paint canister, but since the intruders had been wearing gloves, no one expected them to find any fingerprints.

“This can’t be good,” Shayla said, taking Peter’s hand because if this message had shown up on Tevin’s or Frank’s wall, she would’ve wanted someone holding her hand.

He was silent, just looking at it.

It’s very, very not good.

For the first time in a while, Harry was back.

Peter’s SEAL friend Izzy was standing silently beside them. He’d shown up as the fire truck was pulling away, as Peter, Shay, and Mrs. Quinn were all giving their statements to the police.

It takes a lot to silence that one, Harry commented as he glanced at Izzy, and Shay nodded. Yeah.

Of course Izzy’s current silence might’ve been due to the awkward fact that he’d walked right into Shayla earnestly telling both the police and Peter that she wanted to be completely honest about why they hadn’t heard the two men approaching the house while they were in the garage “sorting through boxes,” as Peter had reported. She appreciated his attempt to be discreet, but she was a grown woman, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with what they’d done. They weren’t in public, they were in the back of the garage in essentially a separate room created by the stack of boxes and, yes, they’d been having an “intimate relationship moment.”

At the time, Izzy had coughed, probably to cover a laugh, but Shay hadn’t needed to look at the man to know he’d been thinking, I knew it!

He thought you guys were gettin’ it on before you were getting it on, Harry pointed out now. Kind of like life imitating art.

“Not even close.” And yup, she’d just said that aloud. Thanks, Hare.

“What does it mean?” Peter asked. “I mean, what could it mean, besides the obvious?”

“I’m not sure I know what the obvious is.” Izzy finally spoke. “Aside from prank, which nah, I’m not buying.”

The police had suggested that the entire incident was little more than a high school prank run amok. Maddie was obviously dealing with some personal issues, and had “no doubt” run into trouble at her new school.

“Those weren’t kids breaking in to prank her,” Peter said again. He’d said it a lot while the police were still there. “Those were men.”

“Big men.” Shay glanced at him. “I, um, didn’t tell the police this, because it didn’t seem all that relevant, but after my personal creepy assailant threatened me, I told him I was, um, an FBI agent, and that he was under arrest. Sadly, he did not comply.”

Peter managed a wry smile as he looked down at her. “Still. Nice try.” He looped his arm around her shoulder to pull her in even closer.

You didn’t tell the po-po because you thought maybe impersonating a federal agent might be a crime, Harry pointed out. For the record, if you’re flinging handfuls of bullshit around in order to defend yourself from physical harm, as you were in this case, it’s not an issue. But say you go around telling old Mrs. What’s-Her-Name that you work for the FBI, that’s when your problems get real.

Izzy was laughing, too. “Grunge, my man, your woman is a keeper.”

Awkward.

“That one man,” Shay said, bringing the conversation back on topic. “The first man. We saw him without his ski mask. He was not a teenager. In fact, I would bet my life on the fact that he had gray in his stubble.”

But she’d made the mistake of reporting, with perhaps too much detail, that the man who’d assaulted her had lowered his body mass to hit her where it would be most effective—very much like a football linebacker. Whoever he was, he’d played football, probably in his high school glory days. But the police had taken that and gone with the theory that he played high school football now.

It was easy, while under stress, they’d said, to get a lot of details wrong. A flash of a face before a mask got pulled down could be deceptive. Most of the time, witness reporting was inaccurate.

“I’m a Navy SEAL,” Peter had said flatly. “I’m trained to get the details right.”

At that point the two police officers had exchanged a knowing glance, and Shay knew they were thinking, But dude, you’d just had sex in your garage with the cougar-next-door. It was likely your brains were still scrambled.

Damn it. She should’ve kept her mouth shut.

“The obvious is that it’s an invoice,” Shay said now, pointing back to the writing on the wall. “Or more accurately, a payment due notice. And whatever it was before, it’s twelve thousand dollars now.”

“What costs twelve thousand dollars in high school?” Izzy asked. “When I was a kid, those fancy Trapper Keeper notebooks—even the Star Wars ones—were only twelve ninety-nine.”

“Drugs,” Peter said tightly.

“I don’t know, man,” Izzy said. “That’s a lot of weed. Twelve K is more the price tag of a mafia-style hit.”

Peter turned to him. “Z. Please.”

“Sorry.”

Unless it’s not just weed, and Maddie’s actually dealing, Harry said. Cocaine, meth, ecstasy…These days, biggest money’s in oxy.

“The drugs thing would be easier to believe if Maddie was twenty instead of fifteen,” Shayla pointed out.

“Her boyfriend is twenty,” Peter said.

Oh. Yeah. Yikes.

But then Shay brightened. “And there’s a possibility,” she said. “What if this message isn’t for Maddie? What if it’s for Dingo? If whoever he owes this money to is having as much trouble tracking him down as we are…? It makes sense that they’d reach out to him however they could—like, via his girlfriend…? That fits with my black truck theory, too.”

Peter hadn’t thought there was any kind of a connection between the black truck that Mrs. Quinn had seen in front of his house and the black truck from whence yesterday’s shit bucket had been thrown.

He still didn’t buy it. “I don’t know, Shay, there’s a lotta black trucks in San Diego,” he said. “I mean, were they following us all day yesterday? I would’ve seen them. No way those guys could suddenly be that stealthy.”

Unless the shit bucket hadn’t been intended—created, shall we say?—for you, Harry said. Think about where you were.

“We were trying to track down Dingo’s friend,” Shay said. “What’s his name. Daryl Middleton. Hoping Daryl would lead us to Dingo. What if they were doing the exact same thing? What if that bucket was really for Daryl? Like, Tell us where Dingo is, or next time you’ll get far worse than a bucket of shit in your face!”

“Oh,” Izzy exclaimed. “Fuck!”

Shay was warming to the idea. “Because what if Dingo and Daryl are in business together? Selling weed, selling meth, selling whatever the market demands. It helps to have a girlfriend who’s in high school, right? There’s a big potential client base there.”

“Whoa,” Peter said, but she could tell from his eyes that he both liked and hated the idea.

“You guys, you guys, you guys!” Izzy was practically jumping up and down. “I came over, specifically to tell you—but it blew right out of my head with all the drama in the garage—”

“The drama was in the house,” Peter corrected him in his naval officer voice.

Yeah, but the house drama’s not what blew Izzy’s mind, Harry noted dryly.

“Sir,” Izzy responded. “Yes. Right. Sorry. But Lindsey Jenkins called. She must’ve called you right when, ahem.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, she called me and asked me to tell you, specifically, about Dingo’s friend, Daryl Middleton. He was brought into the hospital ER last night—severely beaten. He’s still in ICU—unconscious, with a head injury.”

“Jesus,” Peter breathed.

“Lindsey said she’d call if he wakes up,” Izzy added.

“When,” Shayla corrected him. “When he wakes up.”

“Right,” Izzy said. “That’s what I meant. I’m sure he’ll be fine…?”

Peter’s not an idiot, Harry said. His daughter’s in serious danger. She’s no longer just some troubled kid who ran away because she maybe got knocked up by her inappropriately older boyfriend. This is a whole new level of pain. It’s not just a bucket of shit; it’s a raging river.

Shayla dug for her phone. “I’m texting Maddie. This has gone too far.”

“Block,” Maddie said as she did just that. She’d started to get a string of obnoxious texts from “Dad’s” girlfriend. The woman had started with a photo—clearly some of Nelson’s boys had broken in and tossed Maddie’s room, and when they hadn’t found the money, they’d written “$12K NOW” on her wall.

Her father must’ve been freaking out, but she so didn’t want to hear about it, so—expecting a flood of texts from his friends—she shut her entire phone off as Dingo drove them both south and east.

Not toward Virginia, although they might as well go there as anywhere. She’d counted the money they’d taken from Fiona’s room. It was just shy of four thousand, which was not enough.

“Maybe I should call him,” Dingo said now, glancing over at her. “Bob Nelson. Maybe if I explained—”

“What, he’s suddenly going to listen to you now?” Maddie scoffed. “Seriously, Ding, what’s he gonna say? He’s gonna say, Yes, absolutely, I’ll take the four thousand dollars and we’ll call it even. Come on over to the garage, I’ll order you a pizza and we’ll all have a good laugh. Except when we show, he’ll kill us both. Bullets to the head, buried in the desert. No, thanks. Let’s just get to Manzanar, so we can get some sleep before we figure out what to do next.”

“She must’ve turned off her phone.” Pete was filled with frustration as Maddie failed to respond to any of their texts. “God damn it.”

“She’ll turn it back on eventually,” Shay told him. “She’s a teenaged girl. And when she does, the first thing we want her to see is a photo of Daryl in that hospital bed. Any ideas how we can—”

Izzy stood up. “I’ll go.”

“Oh.” Shayla looked over at Lindsey Jenkins, who was sitting on Pete’s sofa rubbing her beachball of a belly, her feet up. Concerned, as always, with the details, Shay asked the former police detective, “Except…doesn’t the hospital have rules about visitors to the ICU? Don’t they have to be family members?”

“Trust in the Zanella,” Lindsey said with a smile and a shrug, even as Izzy said, “I’m pretty sure he’s my nephew. My sister-in-law just called, she’s so distraught….”

“Good,” Pete said. “See if you can manage to still be there when he wakes up. We have a lot of questions for him.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Lindsey wasn’t the only one who’d come running when Izzy had sent out a distress signal. Adam, too, was back, ready to help however he could, as were Seagull, Timebomb, and Hans from Boat Squad John. Normally, Pete would’ve been unhappy at the idea of welcoming SEAL candidates into the privacy of his home, but right now he was just grateful for the extra bodies and sets of eyes.

“How about I go with?” Adam said to Izzy. “Because isn’t it likely that Daryl’s real parents are already at the hospital? And you’re good, but I don’t think even you can sell being a surprise uncle, but—” he pointed to himself, then did jazz hands “—a surprise boyfriend? At least until Daryl wakes up.”

“Oh, man,” Izzy said, “if this was one of Eden’s romance novels, Daryl would be gay and Tony would be in serious trouble.”

“Tony’s my fiancé,” Adam told Shayla. “My Navy SEAL fiancé. Trust me, Tony’s in no trouble at all.”

But Shay had turned to Pete, a quizzical look on her face. “Does…Eden write romance, too?”

Izzy answered. “Write? No. Read.”

“Too?” Lindsey asked Shay.

“Shayla writes romance novels,” Pete told his friends.

“What?” Izzy said. “Really?”

Lindsey sat up. “Wait…you’re that Shayla Whitman? No fucking way! I love your shit!” She winced. “Sorry, I’ve been hanging with SEALs for too long—that’s the SpecOps version of fangrrling.”

“That’s okay,” Shay said, laughing. “And thanks.”

“When’s your next book out?” Lindsey asked. “I can’t wait—I’m so ready. It’s been, like, more than a year!”

“Um…” Shayla’s smile changed—very subtly. Anyone who didn’t know her the way Pete did wouldn’t have seen it. But she was suddenly enormously uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than she’d been when she’d realized that Izzy had overheard her telling the police that she and Pete had been in the garage, having sex, when the men broke in to his house.

“Can we please get back on track?” he said, partly to save her, but mostly because Maddie was still out there. Somewhere. With her phone turned off.

“Yes, please, let’s focus.” Shay jumped all over his request, tossing a quick “I don’t have a release date yet, sorry” to Lindsey. “We still need to contact Fiona’s aunt—and her parents, too.” But then she jumped literally—her phone had buzzed. She pulled it out to look at the screen, but then shook her head no at Pete, letting him know that it wasn’t Maddie, even as she moved into the kitchen to take the call.

“How about if I reach out to Fiona’s parents,” Lindsey volunteered as Izzy and Adam left for the hospital. She pulled her laptop out of her bag and rested it on the arm of the sofa. “I have that list you emailed, with their phone numbers and addresses in Sacramento.” He’d sent the info to her, on the off chance she’d uncover something—anything—useful. But nothing had pinged for either of Fiona’s parents, or their new spouses. “I’ll take the Your daughter is probably in danger, too approach.”

“Do it,” Pete said. If Fiona’s parents didn’t talk to Lindsey, he was flying up there and pounding on their front doors.

“Me and the guys could drive back to Van Nuys, sir,” Hans Schlossman volunteered. “See if anyone’s shown up at Dingler’s parents’ house—and stake it out, if not. I mean, you got hold of the address, isn’t it likely that whoever’s searching for them will find it, too? And they’ll go there, looking for Dingler? It’s an obvious place to start.”

“That’s a good idea,” Pete said. But. “When are you guys due back on base?”

All three of them answered in unison. “Oh-four-hundred.”

Seagull added, “Tomorrow.”

“So, no. Driving through LA traffic and back isn’t the best use of your limited time,” Pete told them. “Also, I’m gonna need some help back here. Until this is over, I want someone with Shayla twenty-four/seven.”

Lindsey looked up from her computer. “Shouldn’t that be your job?” She grinned at him and lowered her voice to add, “I can’t believe you’re dating Shayla Whitman! Her books are hot. Also? She’s so funny and smart! Go, Grunge!”

He ignored her. “Maddie’s got an elderly aunt. Hiroko. I want to bring her back here, create a safe space. Guards inside and out.” He looked around. “Maybe we don’t do that here—two of ’em’ve already been inside—whoever the fuck they are.” Should the intruders return, he didn’t want to give them any kind of advantage, like knowing the floor plan. “We’ll set this up over at Shay’s,” he decided.

“Set what up?” Shay came back into the room.

“A safe space,” Pete told her. “For you and Hiroko. And fuck. I’m sorry, but we should contact your ex, about Tevin and Frank. I want to make sure they’re safe, too—until we find out what’s going on, and who put Daryl Middleton in the hospital, and just how crazy they are.”

She held up her phone. “Welp, Carter just called. He just got a gig, subbing for a player out in Phoenix, or maybe it’s Tucson? Arizona, anyway. His flight leaves, like, now. Friday’s a half-day, so I’ve got to go and pick up the boys at his place.”

“Not by yourself, you’re not.” Pete heard the words come out of his mouth, and just as he expected, Shay gave him her WTF face. “Sorry,” he added. “I meant, please let me come with you. Please.”

She smiled at that extra please as he knew she would, but then she said, “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“Very,” he said. “Also, if you’re all right with it, we can swing past Hiroko’s and pick her up, too.”

“Hiroko,” Shay said, with a laugh. “You really think you can convince her to just…pack a bag and come hang out with a bunch of strangers?”

“I dunno,” Pete said, “maybe not, but I don’t want her to get hurt, so I intend to try.”