CHAPTER FIVE

Maddie stared as Dingo said, “Holy shite.”

The condo where Fiona had lived with her aunt Susan had burned.

Badly.

It hadn’t burned literally to the ground because it was on the second floor, but the place was clearly uninhabitable. It was hard for Maddie to see the full extent of the damage in the darkness, but it looked as if most of the kitchen roof was gone. And the beige stucco walls surrounding the shattered and now-empty windows were charred and streaked with soot.

“Holy. Shite.” Dingo whispered the words again. But he laughed a little, too. “I guess Fiona finally lost it. Big time.”

Maddie turned to look at him in disbelief. “You think Fee did this…?”

“You think she didn’t?” He was already on his phone, accessing the internet. “Looks like it burned…Yep, the fire happened on Friday morning. Neighbor saw the smoke and called nine-one-one around nine. No one was injured. That’s good, at least.”

If Fiona had started the fire, that certainly explained why she’d been pulled out of class on Friday, never to return.

“She’s psycho,” Dingo reminded Maddie as they walked down the street, back to where he’d parked his car. “It’s psycho what she’s done—framing you like that. Nelson is fuckin’ dangerous, and Fee knows it. She wants him to hurt you. Or worse.”

“So where’s her aunt Susan living now?” Maddie asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “Although where does someone horrible who probably doesn’t have many friends go when their house burns down? A hotel, probably.”

After stopping for donuts and talking Maddie into sending that text to “Dad’s” friend Eden, Dingo had finally stopped stalling and driven them out here. Maddie had hoped to find out from Susan if Fee had gone home to her mother’s or her father’s house in Sacramento—and to get a phone number so they could call her. Although now it was entirely possible, despite what Fiona had said in her message to Nelson, that instead of Susan sending Fee home, the girl had gotten herself locked up.

“Did the article you read say anything about arson?” Maddie asked. “Was anyone arrested?”

“As in Fee?” Dingo countered. “No. It didn’t say. But if Fee is in jail, that’s a win for us. It’ll be a quick and easy way to show Nelson that she’s lying.” He paused as they got back into his car. “On the other hand, she was always talking about how loaded her da was, and how much he was paying Susan each month so that Fee could live here in San Diego. Kinda hard to imagine a scenario in which he lets his only child rot in the slammer.”

She shot him a disbelieving look. “Rot in the slammer? Really?”

“Sorry, love, have I got it wrong? It’s hard to keep up with your American slang.”

“It’s perfect—if you’re a doofus.”

Dingo laughed. “Well, I’ve never denied that, have I?” He started his car. “Lookit, it’s getting late. Shall we call it a night—find a campsite, perhaps get slightly baked before bedtime? Is baked acceptable slang for you?”

“It’s great,” she said, “but it’s not late—it’s only eight-thirty, Grandpa. Fee told me Susan didn’t usually get home from work until after eleven. If we have any shot at all of finding out where she’s staying, we need to find her law office. I wonder if she’s got a website…Will you Google her?”

“Google what?” Dingo asked. “Auntie Susan’s Law Practice?” He was grinning at his cleverness—and getting back at her for that doofus comment.

“Attorney Susan Fiera, San Diego, California,” Maddie said.

“Nope, her last name’s different from Fee’s,” Dingo said. “She and Fee’s da had different das. Hers was named Smith.”

Susan Smith. Great. There were probably dozens of lawyers in SoCal with that impossibly common name.

“But guess what,” Dingo said cheerfully as he drove down the street and signaled a left turn that would take them to the Five. “Dread Auntie Sue left a file at home once, and Fee and I brought it over to her office, so I already know where she works. No Googling required.”

“So why didn’t you just say that already?” Maddie complained.

“I do believe the correct comment from you should be, Oh, Dingo, you’re amazing—” he overdid the flat American vowels “—Thank you so much. I don’t know where I’d be without you, and I promise never to call you Grandpa again.”

Maddie laughed. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, but…thank you. Really.”

Dingo smiled back at her, but then sobered as he said in his real voice, “Even if Fee didn’t burn her condo down, Susan won’t be happy to see me.”

“You can stay in the car,” Maddie said.

“And let you face her alone?” Dingo said. “Not a chance in hell, love.”

Pete ran his hands down his face as Shayla scrolled through countless pictures of the many friends of friends on Maddie’s Facebook profile. Maddie herself didn’t have that many contacts, but most of her contacts had hundreds and some had thousands. And nearly everyone had thousands of photos in their “albums.” Photos of teenagers at parties, at the mall, in cars, at school, in their yards, in their bedrooms, in their rec rooms. It was all starting to blur.

“I think maybe I have Dingo-madness,” Pete said.

His house had cleared out about a half hour ago. Zanella had been all but waving semaphore flags and tap-dancing Morse code to remind Pete that Eden was leaving in the morning on a trip that would keep her out of town for more than a week. His desperation to spend the rest of the evening alone with his wife was palpable. And it wasn’t long after the Zanellas departed that Adam and Lindsey had packed it in, too.

Lindsey was clearly exhausted. She hadn’t yet reached her SDPD buddy who could potentially provide an address for Dingo’s license plate number, but she’d left the woman a message. As Adam had gently pulled her out the door, she’d promised to call Pete the moment she had any information at all.

Shayla’d glanced at him then—they were only about halfway through, and they’d yet to find either Dingo or Dumber in the myriad of photos. He couldn’t tell if she was looking for permission to leave, too, so he said, “I’m sorry, yeah, it’s getting late,” right as she said, “So do you always hang out with movie stars?”

It took him a second to realize what she was talking about, and he said, “Oh, you mean Adam?” as she said, “It’s not late—it’s barely nine. And it’s not like I have a long drive home.”

“He’s a member of the Community,” Pete told her, and at her blank look, he added, “The SpecOps Community. Adam’s fiancé is a SEAL. And nine is late when you get up at oh-three-thirty for training exercises.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” She quickly backpedaled and started to stand up. “I’m a night owl and…I’m actually an oblivious night owl, so please, in the future don’t hesitate to simply tell me when it’s time for me to go.”

“No,” he said. “Wait. Please. I’m mostly a night owl, too. I’m usually BUD/S OIC—officer in charge of SEAL candidate training. Phase One. Hell Week’s 24/5, and I like to work at night, so I’m there. All night. But we’re between classes, plus I took emergency leave when Maddie didn’t come home last night, so…” He took a deep breath and went with full honesty. “Frankly, I’d love it if you could stay. If you don’t mind. Your help has been…Well, I’ve gone from hopeless to hope…ful’s not the right word, because I’m not exactly full of hope, but I’ve got at least a little now. Hope. That maybe I’ll be able to figure out what Maddie needs, and how I can make this dad thing work.”

Shayla’s face and eyes had shifted fully into that warm, soft, caring expression that he already loved the shit out of. “Heartened,” she said. “Is that the word you’re looking for?”

“Heartened,” Pete echoed. “Yeah. I’m heartened. Thank you for heartening me.”

She smiled at that, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked at her mouth and he even shifted slightly toward her, like his body, on autopilot, was getting ready to kiss her.

Whoa.

That would not be okay. Not after she’d friend-bombed him the way she had, back in the car.

Except now that he’d thought about kissing her, it was hard to think about anything besides where a kiss might go. And now he couldn’t stop thinking about the best way to undress her so that she could wrap her long legs around him and—missing daughter, missing daughter, missing daughter.

That worked to regain his focus.

Meanwhile Shayla didn’t seem to notice—she’d had no problem bringing her full attention back to the computer.

And despite this one little autopilot accident—which would not happen again—the fact that she stayed to help didn’t feel weird or awkward or inappropriate as the night ticked on.

It felt…

Nice. Like he wasn’t going through this alone.

“Dingo-madness,” Shayla repeated now as she continued scrolling through the zillions of photos.

Pete sighed and sat back. “At this point, every twentysomething idiot I see on Facebook looks like Dingo to me, so…”

“Ah,” she said. “It sounds like it’s kind of a cross between face blindness and whatever it was that the starving guy had in that Charlie Chaplin movie, you know, where he looks at Charlie and sees, what was it? A giant chicken drumstick?”

Pete laughed his appreciation. “Yeah, that’s definitely what I’ve got.”

“Aided by sleep deprivation, I bet.” Shayla glanced at him. “Why don’t you let me handle this for a bit,” she suggested, “while you close your eyes. Just for a few minutes. I mean, you might as well, since everyone looks like Dingo to you, right? You actually might be a liability if you start shrieking, There he is! every time I flip to a new photo.”

She had him there.

“I promise I’ll wake you if I find anything—or even if I need a second opinion,” she added.

So Pete put his feet up on the coffee table. With his head back against the couch cushions, he gave in and closed his eyes and the world hummed and buzzed and faded slightly. He could feel Shayla’s presence beside him and hear the sound of her quiet breathing as she used the touchpad to scroll. It was sleep but not-sleep, but then, to his surprise, darkness descended and he went with it—and checked fully out.

He woke himself up—his internal clock telling him it had been fifteen glorious minutes—suddenly aware that he’d shifted slightly toward Shayla in sleep, and that his leg was now pressed against the warmth of her thigh. Shit. He pulled back. Opened his eyes to check his dive watch. Fifteen minutes on the nose. Not bad. He cleared his throat. “Find anything?”

Shayla was hunched over the computer and she didn’t look up. “Nope, and I swear to every god out there that I’ll wake you if I do.”

“I’m good for now.” Fifteen minutes was more than enough to clear his head. Pete pulled himself up off the couch and beelined it to the kitchen’s coffeemaker. “You want coffee?” he asked. “Water? Tea? Scotch?”

She laughed. “Coffee,” she called back. “Please. I’m getting a little bleary from all the pouty-lipped selfies.”

“Yeah, what is up with that face everyone makes?” he called back to her as he filled the coffeemaker and turned it on.

“It’s a come do me face,” she said. “Which is disconcerting when thirteen-year-olds make it.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Sorry,” she called back. “If it’s any consolation, Maddie hasn’t taken any selfies with that expression. She tends to go for the grim glare.”

“Thank God,” he said as he opened the fridge. He tried to keep it stocked with fresh veggies and fruit—none of which Maddie had touched. “Hey, can you bring that thing and sit in here? I’m suddenly starving. I’m gonna scramble some eggs.”

As he put the egg carton on the counter near the stove, Shayla appeared in the doorway with Maddie’s laptop in her hands. He was struck again by how effortlessly pretty she was—like a rock garden filled with wildflowers—and Jesus, wildflowers in a rock garden? He obviously wasn’t suffering from mere Dingo-madness. Maybe he was more fatigued than he’d thought. It was one thing to want to get naked and lose himself in an attractive woman—another entirely to start waxing poetic about wildflowers.

Pete grabbed a pan and turned on the heat for the stove’s front burner. Protein would help.

“Want some?” he asked, efficiently cracking eggs and tossing the shells into the sink as his neighbor carried the computer toward the center island.

“No, thanks,” she said. “Coffee’ll do.”

He purposely turned to watch her walk—to prove to himself that he could do that without looking at her ass.

Shit. He’d dropped an egg.

He wiped it up with the sponge as she perched that ass that he was not looking at on one of the stools he’d bought specifically for this counter in this little house. In which he’d hoped to live happily ever after with his daughter. Hah.

It was then that she gasped. “Found him!”

“Dingo?” Pete came to look, grabbing the towel to wipe egg from his fingers.

“Nope. But a close second. It’s Dumber.”

Pete looked over her shoulder, and yes. That was definitely Dingo’s long-haired, large-bearded friend from the mall garage. Shayla had those photos she’d taken displayed in a second window on the computer screen, for comparison. It was a solid match.

“His name is Daryl Middleton,” she said. “His profile is pretty sparse, not a lot of photos posted—certainly none of Dingo, at least not that I’ve found yet, but—whoa! Says here he works at the Irish Pub.” She smiled up at Pete, excitement dancing in her dark brown eyes. “That’s not far from here. It’s over near Burgers Plus.”

“Oh, I know where it is,” Pete said, going back to the stove to turn off the heat under his eggs. His food could wait.

“Except, oh no!” Shayla said. “There’s a post from last week where he says he got fired. Apparently, he wasn’t there long—and God, it’s like he’s proud he lasted less than a day. I’m gonna Google him…”

“Even if he worked for just one hour, someone at the Irish knows him. I’m still going over.”

“Eat first,” she said. “And think twice. Even if the owner is there at this time of night, he or she isn’t just going to hand over a former employee’s personal information to someone who’s not a cop. Let’s give this to Lindsey, because the only Daryl Middletons I’m finding off-Facebook are in their sixties—and none of them live in San Diego.”

Pete wasn’t convinced, and somehow she knew that. “What if you go over there,” Shayla continued. “And not only do you not get any info, but whoever you talk to calls Daryl and warns him that you’re looking for him, so if Maddie and Dingo actually are at his place, they immediately adios. Plus, if they have any brains at all, they’ll figure out you tracked Daryl to the Irish Pub through Maddie’s Facebook, so they change her password and lock us out of her account. And while it’s not exactly a gold mine of info, it’s better than nothing.”

Shit. “Yeah, you’re right. That would not be good.” Pete turned the burner back on. “So tell me this: Which one of Maddie’s friends is Middleton connected to?”

“A girl named Fiona Effable, and oh. Yeah. As I said her last name, well, that’s clearly not real, is it?”

Effable. F-able. Right. Pete tried not to twitch too perceptively as he absorbed the fact that Maddie had a friend who publicly referred to herself as fuckable.

“Fiona’s profile says she lives in Sacramento,” Shayla reported, “which is weird, because she and Maddie seem to post to each other a lot. Not lately, but right up until this past Friday. Then, over the weekend and past few days, there’s a lot of Maddie solo-posting to Fiona’s page—messaging her, too, but no response. It’s weird, Maddie keeps asking Can you Macarena? Maybe it’s some kind of inside joke. But she posted it, let’s see, one, two, three…five different times. Last time in all caps.”

“Macarena, like the dance?” Pete asked.

Shayla shrugged. “I guess. Do people actually still Macarena?”

“I prefer the Mashed Potato,” he said, and did a few steps, right there in front of the stove.

Shayla’s laughter was musical as it rang through the room. “Oh, my God, that was really good. Where did you learn to dance like that?”

“Lisa,” he admitted. He could feel his face heating. Jesus, when was the last time he’d blushed? “She was really into musical theater so I know a lot of basic steps. Including the Macarena.” He did a bit of the arms, making her laugh with delight again. “Which, yeah, could be an inside joke. Or maybe it’s code.”

“Could be either,” Shayla said. “Or both. They’re teenaged girls.”

“How long have they been friends?” Pete wondered. “Can you tell?”

“Hmm.” She focused again on the computer. “I can’t tell for sure, but…Okay. Yeah. It looks like Fiona and Maddie only started posting to each other about…two months ago.” She looked up at him.

Pete said the obvious. “When Maddie moved to San Diego.”

“Maybe Fiona saying she lives in Sacramento’s an intentional misdirect,” Shayla suggested as the coffeemaker burbled its last and went silent. “Kind of like Effable’s not her real name…?”

“Fiona might not be her real name either,” Pete said, grabbing a pair of mugs from the cabinet and pouring them each a hefty serving. “So what do we do?” Oops, now he was using the word we.

Shayla didn’t seem to notice—or care—as she shook off his offer of milk and sugar. She, too, drank her coffee black.

“Take a screenshot of Fiona’s picture and bring it over to the school tomorrow?” Pete continued.

“Oh, absolutely. Good plan. If she’s local, someone in the front office knows her,” she agreed. “I’ll go over with you in the morning—they know me there. Really well. Mrs. Sullivan—she essentially runs the school—she probably won’t be able to give us Fiona’s info, but I know she’ll be willing to contact her parents for us. In the meantime…I’m texting Fiona’s picture to Tevin and Frank.” She glanced up at him again. “My sons. I’m sending the pix of Dingo and Daryl Middleton, too. And a photo of Maddie, while I’m at it. Might as well see if they know anything.”

Pete scraped his perfectly crisp scrambled eggs into a bowl, grabbed a fork, and joined her at the counter. “Thank you. So much. Can I ask you to text the photos to Ben Gillman while you’re at it? That’s Eden Zanella’s little brother. He’s a junior at the high school. He might know something, too. He should be in Maddie’s contacts.”

“Yup, got him,” she said. “No problem. I’m gonna include you and Eden in a group text, though, so Ben’s not just suddenly getting pictures from some weird stranger-lady.”

She was always thinking. “You’d make a great SEAL,” he told her.

Shayla snorted. “Yeah, except for the part where I can’t run very fast, my swimming is limited to the dog paddle, I hate the cold, and oh, yeah, I’m afraid of literally everything.”

“Everything,” he repeated.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Tornados—although I’ve never been in one—spiders, earthquakes…I was in the San Francisco quake, in 1989. I had nightmares for years.”

“And yet you moved to California, home of the earthquake,” Pete pointed out. “Relatively recently, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “Carter, my ex, got a steady gig in San Diego. It was either move out here and continue to share custody of the boys, or force them to choose which parent they wanted to live with for the school year. I didn’t want them to have that pressure. And since I can write—or not-write—anywhere…” She shrugged. “Everywhere I go, I make note of the sturdiest-looking door frames and furniture. So if a big truck rumbles past and I suddenly dive under the table, it’s not merely because I want to admire your flip-flops.”

Pete laughed. “You know, it’s not about not being afraid—it’s about taking action despite the fear,” he pointed out. “That’s called courage.”

She made that little shh sound before smiling and saying, “Yes, well, lucky for you my fear of being mocked trumps my fear of earthquakes, otherwise I’d be sitting here, courageously wearing my earthquake helmet, and you’d be sitting here trying hard not to laugh at me.”

He laughed again as he carried his empty bowl to the sink. “Hey, I danced for you. If anyone deserves to be laughed at—”

She made a giant raspberry sound. “Oh, please, if you expect me to believe that a man as smart as you—an officer and a gentleman—doesn’t know that the majority of women rate straight-men-who-dare-to-dance as an automatic eleven on the hotness scale…” Her voice trailed off and it was her turn to blush—although her gorgeous complexion helped to hide it—because, yes, she’d just called him hot.

Of course it was then that Pete’s cellphone rang. He’d left it on the counter and he could see the screen. He answered it. “Lindsey, thanks for calling. Shayla’s still here—I’m putting you on speaker. What’d you find?”

“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing yet,” Lindsey said apologetically. “I wanted to let you know that I heard back from my contact, and she’s not gonna be near a computer until tomorrow morning. She guesses it’ll be around oh-eight-hundred at the earliest.”

Pete reined in his frustration, concentrating on breathing as Shayla let Lindsey know that they’d come up with Daryl Middleton’s name. Lindsey in turn volunteered to ask her friend to run him through the system, too.

“Regardless, we won’t get any info until tomorrow,” Lindsey repeated. “Try to get some sleep, Grunge,” she added and cut the connection.

And then, there they were. Sitting and standing in Pete’s kitchen as the realization that he wasn’t going to find Maddie tonight sank down around him. It was night two of her little escapade—night two in which he’d get little to no sleep.

Shayla must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she said, “There’s really not a whole lot more we can do tonight. I mean, yes, tomorrow morning, first thing, we can go to the school. And I’ll check in with Tevin, see if he knows anyone in the pictures I sent him. Frank’s already texted me. He’s clueless, but I expected that. Ben texted back, too—he’s gonna check with some friends, but he sounded dubious.”

“What time does the school open?” Pete asked. “I mean the office. I know what time school starts, but how early—”

“Mrs. S usually unlocks the door around six-thirty,” she told him. “We could leave here as early as six—be there waiting when she arrives—if you could drive me there and back. That way I can leave my car for the boys—I’m pretty sure Carter took his back tonight and…Talking them into going to school at six A.M. will be a hard sell.”

He nodded. “Yeah, thanks, I’ll take you up on that. That would be great.”

“And after that, depending on whether we find out where Fiona really lives and if we can go and talk to her or her parents, we could take Lindsey’s suggestion and drop in on Maddie’s great-aunt Hiroko since she lives here in San Diego—see if Maddie’s been in touch. Give her a heads-up, in case Maddie reaches out to her.”

Hiroko. Right. That was going to be awkward. But Pete kept nodding. “I also want to rent a truck and move everything that’s in the storage space in Palm Springs back here. There’s room in the garage for it—all of the boxes from Lisa and Maddie’s apartment. Having it close’ll make it easier to sift through. I’d like to find their old computer. Maddie said they had a desktop that had tons of photos on it. Maybe Daryl and Dingo are friends from Palm Springs.”

“I can help you do that,” Shayla said. “And remember, after eight, when Lindsey’s police contact gets access to the computer…Well, it might be as easy as finding out Dingo’s address. We drive over there, we find them…”

Pete nodded. “To be honest, that’s…terrifying, too.”

Shayla did the warm-eyes-and-face thing. “I’ll lend you my earthquake helmet.”

He laughed at that—it was impossible not to.

She smiled, but then she cleared her throat. “Seriously, though, since I suspect you’re going to have trouble sleeping, may I suggest you do something that might sound…” She was doing her careful-word-choice thing again, and she paused before finishing with “…a little unusual?”

Pete leaned back against the counter, completely unable to guess where she was going with this. If she’d been anyone else, he might’ve let his imagination run wild, trying to figure out what she was going to suggest from a variety of options including downing a whole bottle of Scotch, to doing yoga or coloring in a meditation coloring book, to having a rousing round of exhaustive and athletic sex—all to help him sleep.

But she hadn’t disappointed him yet—well, the friend-bombing had disappointed, but in a completely unexpected manner.

“Suggest away,” he said. “As my parent-of-a-teenager sherpa, my mentor, if you will, I am open to whatever wisdom you’re willing to share.”

Shayla winced—which was weird, because his words were meant to be complimentary—but she covered it quickly with a smile. “I was thinking about how you said Lisa taught you to dance, and I was wondering if you’d told Maddie anything about that.”

He shook his head.

“I think that you should,” Shayla said. “In fact, I said this before, but it’s worth repeating. I really do think it would help if you told Maddie where she came from. I mean, I can tell—just from the little you’ve told me—that you truly loved her mother. Maddie needs to know that. She’d probably appreciate hearing the whole story—how you and Lisa met—the good stuff, when the relationship was shiny and new. Not to throw shade at a woman who can no longer defend herself, but Maddie’s probably heard plenty about the shitty stuff—the breakup.”

Pete nodded. “That’s a good idea, but…”

Shayla waited, watching him with those eyes.

“Assuming I ever find her, I can talk but I can’t make her listen,” he said. “Short of tying her up and going all Clockwork Orange with her eyelids…”

She smiled. “I wasn’t thinking so much about talking as writing it down and sending it to her. In an email, maybe. That way we don’t have to find her first—which we will—but she can also read it when she’s ready. And? It’ll be something proactive for you to do tonight, if you can’t sleep.”

Now it was Pete’s turn to wince. “I’m not much of a writer.”

Shayla smiled again and said the words he’d hoped she’d say: “I’m happy to help.”