CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Saturday

“Can you imagine it?” Shayla murmured.

“No,” Peter said. “I can’t.”

They’d woken up before dawn, showered, had breakfast, and then climbed into Peter’s truck—but there was still no word from Maddie.

A brief text to the girl—We’re awake—also got no reply.

So, as the sun rose, they’d driven the last few miles north to Manzanar, and just as it was promised on the former internment camp’s website, the gates were wide open. Admission was free—as it rightfully should be for a National Historic place of shame.

They’d driven through—the visitor center and barracks wouldn’t open until later—to the cemetery where they’d been told that Maddie had been, just a day earlier.

The mountains in the distance were beautiful but starkly forbidding. Shay and Peter stood there, in the middle of that flat desert plain, with the mostly barren earth stretching as far as the eye could see.

Shayla looked around them, doing a full 360. She was going to come back here, with the boys. Rent a van, bring as many of their friends as they could fit and…

Her phone buzzed. Yes!

“It’s Maddie!” she told Peter. “She texted, We won’t go to San Diego. In LA. Oh, my God, they’re in Los Angeles? That’s hours from here!” They both started to run toward his truck, as she finished reading, “Will text soon with place to meet.”

As they climbed in and Peter started the engine with a roar, he said, “Text her back and tell her not to go to Dingo’s parents’ house in Van Nuys!”

“Oh, I’m on it,” Shay said, doing just that.

“Why would they go all the way back to LA?” he muttered as he tried to call Maddie’s cellphone directly, even as he broke the speed limit leaving the compound.

But the girl didn’t pick up. There was no response to Shay’s text, either, so Peter punched in Izzy Zanella’s phone number.

“Good morning, Away Team,” the big SEAL’s cheerful voice filled the truck cab. “Did you have a pleasant stay at the lovely sounding Desert Flower Mo—”

Peter cut him off. “Where are you?”

“In Shay’s kitchen, with Hiroko. Uh-oh. With the frying pan. That sounds disturbingly Clue-like. I hope I’m not the murder vic—”

“Who else is over there?” Peter demanded.

“Lopez and Jenkins. All three of us are here for the day. Assuming Lindsey’s baby behaves. If she pops, Jenk’s going with her, of course, but that’s okay because Boat Squad John just called in. Their dive was canceled, so they’re on their way. I plied them with the promise of pancakes.”

“I need you to go to Van Nuys, to the Dinglers’, ASAP. Take Seagull, Hans, and Timebomb, if they get there in time, if not, just get up there.”

“Lieutenant, it’s your lucky day. They just pulled up.”

“Go,” Peter ordered. “Now. Call me when you’re on the road. Oh, and Z? Cowboy up.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Peter punched off the connection.

“We should call Dingo’s parents,” Shayla said. “I’ve got the number. It’s early, but…” She input it into the dashboard’s Bluetooth screen.

Peter nodded, so she pushed the button that would dial the call, and as it rang, she said, “Maddie said LA, not Van Nuys. It’s possible that Dingo has friends in the city. His parents’ house, in the suburbs, is probably his last choice in terms of places to go.”

“Unless she said LA because she didn’t know how to spell Van Nuys,” Peter countered as the line continued to ring.

“And then there’s that,” Shay had to agree.

The landline was ringing and ringing and ringing. Who even had a landline anymore? And wasn’t it overkill to put an extension—fully corded—in the bathroom?

Maddie stood naked in front of the mirror in the shitty bathroom of Dingo’s parents’ shitty little house, using a hair dryer to attempt to dry the underwear she’d rinsed out in the sink while she was in the shower.

She’d made the mistake of hooking her cellphone into Dingo’s parents’ wi-fi shortly after they’d arrived, and it had instantly begun to install an update to her operating system, which had rendered it useless. To make things worse, the wi-fi was sketchy so the upload was taking forever. For the past twenty minutes, it had been promising her it would be done in eight.

Maybe she’d been sucked into a different dimension.

It had certainly felt that way during the endless drive to Los Angeles.

Well, they weren’t in LA, they were in the Valley—the burbs, north of the city. Dingo wasn’t even close to Australian. He was a Valley boy. Although boys and men probably didn’t get labeled like that. It was probably just the women and girls who were given that meant-to-be-insulting name.

But Dingo hadn’t uttered the classic Valley girl Oh my God as they’d approached his parents’ house. In fact, over the entire course of the drive, mired in this new, awful dimension that Maddie was currently trapped in, neither of them had said much of anything.

I’m going to get you your fucking shower…and then I’m going to bring you to your father and be done with you. For once and for all.

They’d driven past the house, and everything was still and dark even though the sun was starting to rise.

“We’re good, they’re gone.” Dingo had finally spoken.

At Maddie’s questioning look, he’d grudgingly explained. “My mother sends me emails, so I know where they are, partly in case they die in a fiery ten-car pile-up. They have an RV and they travel a lot. They just got home from a long trip east—my sister had a baby—but then my dad wanted to go to some asshole festival in Arizona, so…She said she wasn’t sure if they were leaving last night or this morning, but the RV’s gone. She hides bags of food for me in the spare room, and sometimes money, too. We’ll have to be careful not to move anything or leave anything out of place, because I’m sure my dad checks. So we’ll want to wash and fold the towels after we shower.”

He’d gone around the block, and parked on the next street over. “Just in case Dad forgot something—like his official I’m an Asshole hat—and they come back. That’s happened before. If they do, we’ll have to hide. And maybe pray.”

Once inside, Dingo had raided some boxes that were neatly stacked in the corner of that spare room he’d mentioned. They were all marked Throw Away, but they held what had to be his belongings. “This used to be my room before my father attempted to erase me,” he’d told her as he handed her a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “You can wear this until your clothes dry.”

With the exception of her underwear, Maddie had put her dirty clothes outside of the bathroom door, and Dingo had immediately started a load in the washing machine—she heard it thumping and swishing from what must’ve been a laundry room on the other side of the shower wall. It was clear that he’d come here often when his parents were away, and he’d learned to be efficient with his time.

The phone finally stopped ringing, but only a few seconds passed before it started up again.

“Don’t answer that!” Dingo shouted through the door. “It’s probably my father. I think he suspects that Mom helps me out, because whenever I’m here, the phone rings off the hook, like he’s trying to catch me or something. So just…don’t.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Maddie shouted back.

Dingo was in the living room when the black truck pulled up in front of the house. It was Nelson’s man Cody—with the pale eyes and total lack of soul. He didn’t even try to approach with stealth. He just parked and started up the front path.

The hair dryer was still buzzing in the bathroom—Maddie wasn’t even close to being able to run. Still, Dingo went into the kitchen where—fuck!—the skinhead twins, Stank and Eddie, had just dropped over the back fence, into the dust bowl that was his parents’ backyard.

He ducked down behind the counter, so that they couldn’t see him through the windows.

Running was not an option. That left hiding, or fighting….He quickly opened the junk drawer, rummaging for something, anything….A jackknife…But all he found was a fold-up corkscrew that had a little knife on the end. Better than nothing, except, really? It was sharp as shit, but only three quarters of an inch long. Fighting wasn’t much of an option either.

Still, he pocketed it, but then pulled out his phone. With shaking hands he went to his list of texts and found…Yes. Nelson had texted him just last night. Where you at?

Fist time in days that M hasn’t been watching me, Dingo typed. Recovered some $$$, but now at end of rode. Will bring her to you ASAP.

He hit send, pocketed his phone, and took a deep, steadying breath as he heard the glass break in the back door.

The hair dryer went off, and Maddie called from the bathroom, “Dingo? What was that?”

Dingo didn’t answer her.

Maddie hurriedly put her still-damp underwear back on, along with the much-too-big shorts and T-shirt, then went to the door and opened it a crack. “Ding?”

Had he dropped a glass in the kitchen? God, that would be a mess. She only hoped it wasn’t his father’s favorite, or even just something that would be easily missed.

But then she heard voices. Dingo saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Mate! Mate! Take a breath! Take a breath!” He was using his fake accent, so he probably wasn’t talking to his father. “I just sent him a text—this is the first time in days that she hasn’t been completely on top of me—lookit, lookit, just check my phone. See? Right?”

“First has an r in it, you fucking idiot.”

Maddie stood there, frozen in disbelief as Dingo said, “But, see? I sent that text to Mr. Nelson. I was playing her, mate, ’cuz I thought, you know, if I was her boyfriend, she’d tell me where the money was, but she honestly didn’t have it. We found this, in Fiona’s ma’s house in Sacramento—they’ve shipped Fee off to some kind of juvie looney bin….”

He’d sent a text to Nelson.

Dingo kept talking, but Maddie closed the door. Locked it. Looked around. There was no window in there—she hadn’t noticed until now. No window, but a phone. She picked it up. Dialed 9-1-1.

Her heart was pounding, which was weird, because it shouldn’t even be able to beat let alone pound since it had just broken into a million pieces.

Dingo had been playing her. All this time.

“Nelson’s garage was our next stop,” she heard him saying from the other side of the door as the emergency number rang once and then twice, “but I had to shower. She’s in the bathroom—I put her in the one without the window. I even screwed with the wi-fi, to take out her cell. But—fuck! There’s a phone in there!”

The doorknob rattled and the entire door shook as Maddie took the phone’s handset with her into the shower. “Pick up pick up pick up pick up.” But it just kept ringing.

She shrieked as the door splintered—as a giant booted foot came through, and then was pulled free before a hand—also big—reached in and turned the knob.

The door opened with a crash, and two large men—Nelson’s skinheads—grabbed Maddie. As she dropped the phone into the tub, the call was finally connected, and a little voice echoed against the porcelain. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

Maddie kicked and screamed, but her arms were pinned, and her legs flailed as they contacted nothing. One of the men clamped a gloved hand over her mouth.

A third man grabbed the phone and pulled the cord right out of the wall. “Motherfucker! Move! Go, we gotta go. The bitch called nine-one-one!”

One of the skinheads laughed as they carried her out of the bathroom. “Dude, we’re in Van Nuys. We could have her make us lunch and give us all blow jobs and we’d still be outta here before the police showed.”

“Oh, no, no, I wouldn’t…do that.” Dingo was in the kitchen. He’d changed into a pair of black cargo pants and a Superman T-shirt, his hair slicked back—still wet from his own shower. He was holding on to his cellphone, as if the door-kicking-in had bored him so much that he’d spent the time scrolling through his Twitter feed. If Maddie could’ve, she would’ve incinerated him with her eyes. “Keep your distance, mates. I’m peeing knives. I’m pretty sure she gave me gonorrhea.”

Maddie bit the man through the glove.

“Fuck!” He yanked his hand away, but then smacked her in the face.

Her ears rang, but her mouth was free. “I hate you, Dingo! You’re a liar! He’s lying!”

He was lying.

He was lying.

Oh, my God, Dingo was lying!

Time froze and the world seemed to move in slow-mo as she looked directly into Dingo’s eyes, and he widened them slightly—just a little—just enough, even as “I did not give him gonorrhea” came shrieking out of her mouth. And she instantly realized why he’d said that—so that they’d think twice about touching her—so she screamed, “He gave gonorrhea to me,” before the third man—the guy with the dead eyes who drove the black truck—slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth.

“Punch her lights out if she keeps fighting,” he said, and she forced herself to calm down and stop resisting, although God, that was hard to do. Still, she knew that if they hit her hard enough to knock her out, she’d have an even smaller chance of surviving this.

“Tie her up,” Dead-Eyes ordered, and one of the men who was holding her must’ve been carrying a rope, because her arms were forced behind her, and she felt it going around her hands and cutting into her wrists.

Dingo cleared his throat. “We should go,” he said. “I’m sure Mr. Nelson’s waiting.”

Dead-Eyes peeled a few bills off of the wad of cash that Dingo had obviously given him—from Fiona’s room. He held it out to Dingo. “Dude, your job is done. You’ve gone way above and beyond.”

Dingo looked affronted. “You’re kidding, right? That won’t even cover the costs of the walk-in clinic. I spent money on gas and food and…No, dude, I’m going with you. I’m pretty sure there’s a real reward coming, and I’mma make sure Mr. Nelson gives it to me.”

And with that, Maddie was sure. Or at least mostly sure. There was no way Dingo would willingly do a face-to-face with Nelson, was there? He was coming along so that he could try to save her, wasn’t he?

But when the skinhead pushed her to get her to move faster and she tripped and fell onto her knees, they all laughed, and Dingo laughed, too.