CHAPTER SEVEN

Thursday

Tevin was in the kitchen, doing his preworkout morning zombie shuffle, when Shayla was ready to leave.

It wasn’t quite six A.M., but she’d glanced out the window to see Peter already waiting for her, standing in his driveway beside his truck, checking his phone.

He was wearing…“Oh, dear God.”

“Everything all right?” Tevin asked. He looked out the window, too, and saw the SEAL, who was wearing his Naval Officer uniform—the short-sleeved sleek white version, rows upon rows of colorful ribbons on his broad chest. “That’s the neighbor you’re helping? Go, Moms.”

“It’s not like that,” Shay said. “Not even remotely.”

“Well, why not?” Tevin looked so much like his father, it was sometimes startling. That quicksilver smile, those adorable dimples and laughing brown eyes, that same warm umber tone to his perfect skin…But when he walked and talked, Tevin was absolutely his own sweet self. Dynamic, creative, original, sensitive, caring…Her baby boy, in a nearly grown man’s body.

“Well, he’s younger than I am, for one thing,” Shay said.

T looked out the window again. “Not by that much,” he countered. “Tiffany’s, like, fifteen years younger than Dad. Nobody’s got problems with that.”

He had a point. Even Shayla liked Carter’s latest live-in girlfriend. Tiffany might have been young, but she was smart, funny, open, and she genuinely cared about the boys.

Tevin grinned. “What’s that old movie you like to watch whenever you get the flu?”

Shayla knew exactly the movie to which her cinema-loving son was referring, but she pretended not to. “The Bodyguard? Whitney Houston? I-eee-I! Will always love—”

“Yeah, nah-no, come on, you know what I mean—the other one, with what’s-his-name from Pretty Woman.”

“Richard Gere,” she said. “Oh, you mean An Officer and a Gentleman.”

“That’s the one. Where Richard Gere literally carries Debra Winger away from her humdrum factory-worker life and she wears his hat at a jaunty and triumphant angle.” Only Tevin would know Debra Winger by name. He aimed his broad grin at Shayla and wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis. “Maybe, if you play it right, he’ll let you try on his hat.”

“It’s called a cover,” Shay told him as she dug her car keys out of her purse and put them on the kitchen counter. “And really, we’re just friends.”

“Well, you have my permission to—”

She interrupted him. “Wake your brother up soon. Don’t be late for school.”

“And your subtext, there, is ignoring you,” Tevin sang the last words.

“I gotta go,” Shayla said. “And really, Tev. I’m just trying to help the nice man find his daughter. So ask around at school. See what you can find out about this Fiona girl, too, okay? And don’t forget to wake up Frank. He’s been sleeping through his alarm lately—”

“I’m awake, I’m awake.” Frank emerged from his bedroom, still sleepy-eyed, his hair bed-headed into an impressive faux-hawk. Her second baby, still in a skinny child’s body—but probably not for long. “Whoa, you’re dressed! I mean, in real clothes.”

He hugged her and his head still fit beneath her chin, so Shay took a moment to enjoy that. “As opposed to those fake clothes I wear the rest of the time?” she asked in mock indignation as he slipped back out of her arms.

But Frank was right. She, too, had dressed for this meeting in something other than her usual sweats or jeans. She’d even put on a little makeup. Still, she’d be invisible walking in with the gleaming lieutenant. And that was fine. Her job here was to help him get the info he needed to find Maddie—not to be noticed.

“Mom’s going over to the school this morning with the neighborhood Navy SEAL,” Tevin told his little brother, whose eyes widened, too, as he caught sight of Peter in his uniform. “The one whose daughter ran away.”

“Maggie?” Frank asked as he stood on his toes to get a box of cornflakes out of the cabinet in the kitchen.

“Maddie. Brah, you said she’s in your English class. How do you not know her name?”

“She never says anything,” Frank protested. “And that’s when she bothers to show up. Why should I learn her name when she doesn’t—”

“You learn her name, because she’s a human being who lives across the street, and is in your English class,” Tevin lectured his brother for Shayla.

“She hangs out with that nasty girl,” Frank argued as he poured himself a large bowl. “I keep my head down and don’t go near that.”

“The nasty girl—Fiona—is a person, too,” Shay pointed out. “Not a that.”

Frank was quick on his already-size-thirteen feet. “The that I was referring to was the cosmic disturbance, not the crazy person creating it.”

“Still, it sounds disrespectful, so spell it all the way out,” Shayla said. “I keep my head down and don’t go near that cosmic disturbance.”

“Yes, Mother,” Frank droned. He glanced at his brother. “Morning’s complete when Moms gives me a line-reading of my own dialogue.”

“Good communication is the key to everything,” Shayla pointed out.

“And scene,” Tevin teased before turning back to Frank. “You wouldn’t happen to know Fiona McNasty’s last name? Something Italian American…? I keep thinking Fiona Fiona, but that couldn’t be it.”

“Nope,” Frank said. “Sorry.”

Last night, Tevin had told Shayla that Maddie definitely hung out at school with a girl named Fiona. He didn’t know her last name, but he called her “a psycho freak-show,” which was alarming since Tev tended to get along with everyone. Frank’s nasty was expected from a child who’d been badly bullied in middle school. He was far more discerning when it came to choosing friends.

Shay’s phone vibrated and chirped its text alert. She pulled it out of her pocket, expecting it to be a nudge from Peter. But it wasn’t. It was…

Maddie!

still safe

Before Shayla had left last night, she’d emailed Maddie a copy of what she called “The Peter/Lisa Meet-Cute.” Then she’d texted the girl, letting her know about the sent email while backpedaling furiously with a Please don’t block me, I’m a friend of your father’s, I won’t text you unless it’s important, please just let me know that you’re currently safe so he can try to sleep tonight message. And sure enough, Maddie had texted back a terse still safe then, too.

Somehow the girl managed to sound surly in her text—maybe it was her lack of capital letters or punctuation. Still, this morning’s message had come unprompted, which was huge.

TY, Shayla texted back—a short and simple thank you. And as tempted as she might be to remind Maddie that she was here if the girl needed help of any kind, she knew not to push, so she ended it there.

“Ask your friends about Maddie,” she reminded the boys as she headed for the door. “And about Fiona, too.” And then she said what she always said, whenever they went their separate ways. “Be safe out there in that crazy world. Don’t be a hashtag. I love you.”

“Love you, love you, love you, too!” They sang their response to her in perfect harmony—one of the many little melodies their father had taught them back when they were hardly more than babies—which left her smiling as she went out into the cool morning air.

“Maddie just texted me!” Shayla called to Pete as she came out of her house and down the path to the street. “Only two words: still safe. But still, that’s great.”

As she crossed the street, Pete realized this was the first time he’d seen her in the daylight—which was strange, because it felt as if he’d known her for far longer than a mere half a day.

Shayla looked…really good in the morning light.

And okay, just as he’d done, she’d clearly dressed up a bit for this meeting with the high school’s office staff—neatly crisp khaki pants with a blue-and-green-patterned sleeveless blouse that followed and flattered her curves as it buttoned down the front. The bright colors were a striking contrast to the warm, rich tones of her skin.

She was wearing makeup, too—not a lot, but more than the close-to-none that she’d had on last night. It sharpened her features, accenting the fullness of her smiling lips, and drawing his attention both to the elegance of her cheekbones and the beauty of her midnight-brown eyes.

Eyes that sparkled as she told him, “I’m certain this means Maddie read your story. I mean, she reached out. This was not in response to any kind of nudging. I think it’s safe to say that it’s working—a connection is being made.”

Shayla held up her hand for a high five, so Pete gave her one. She was right—this was great. Still, he was feeling…weirdly disappointed that she hadn’t seemed to notice he was wearing his uniform, with its many rows of ribbons.

Female eyes tended to widen at the sight—just a little bit. But she was completely blasé.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

“Not much,” he admitted. “I tried, but…” Pete shrugged as he opened the passenger-side door for her. “I actually drove past Hiroko’s—looks like she still lives there—you know, near the beach.”

“Alone?” Shayla asked as she climbed in. “She must be close to eighty now.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I haven’t seen her since, well, I guess the last time was right after Maddie was born. She didn’t approve of our failure to get married before having a child. Anyway, it occurred to me that she might be awake, but she wasn’t—not at oh-three-hundred, anyway. The place was dark, so I didn’t stop.”

Instead he’d come back home, and downloaded one of Shayla’s books. She’d written well over a dozen. Novels. It had blown his mind. He couldn’t imagine writing one book, but she’d written what looked like an ongoing series. Most seemed to center on an FBI team led by an agent named Harry Parker, so he’d randomly picked a book called Harry’s War, based solely on the title.

It opened with an action-packed scene of a bank robbery escalating into a hostage situation, and he found himself drawn in. The characters sprang instantly to life, and he could see Shayla’s ability to think outside of the box not just in the gritty realism of the scenario, but also in Harry’s attempt to control the situation. But she also clearly understood Murphy’s Law—whatever can go wrong, will go wrong—and she used it to go, believably, from bad to worse.

Pete liked it—enough to go back online to figure out which was the very first book in the series, so that he could start reading at the beginning. He found a list easily enough on Shayla’s website, but then got caught up surfing through a series of blog interviews in which she talked about her writing process. From the way she described it, writing a book was not unlike going through BUD/S. Yeah, the challenges were vastly different, but the single-minded drive and willpower needed to succeed—to finish a seemingly endlessly and insurmountable long-term task—was something he well understood.

It had been nearly dawn by the time he’d IDed and downloaded the first book—Outside of the Lines—but he’d already been hooked and many chapters in when his alarm had gone off.

As Pete held the car door, Shayla smiled her thanks at him and she set her handbag—leather and briefcase-sized—at her feet. Nice toes. She’d traded her sneakers for a pair of leather sandals.

“Ooh, here’s my other news,” she told him. “My boys both recognized her—Maddie’s friend Fiona. That’s definitely her first name, although they didn’t know her last. But they’ve both seen her at school with Maddie, so yay? The bad news is, Fiona’s apparently not the nicest person on the planet. Still, with a little help from Mrs. Sullivan, we’ll be talking to her parents—and to Fiona herself—within the next few hours. It’s a good bet that she knows exactly where Maddie is.”

“God, I really hope it’s that easy.”

“If it’s not, we’ll get Dingo’s address from his license plate number, or from tracking down his friend Daryl. It’s really just a matter of time, Lieutenant,” she said as he closed the door behind her.

Jesus, was he really back to being Lieutenant? He’d been hoping…Well, obviously, first he was hoping that with Shayla’s help he’d find Maddie quickly and easily. It was nice to hear her conviction that it was going to happen soon.

Pete crossed around the front of his truck, and as he glanced in through the windshield, he saw that she was smiling and maybe even laughing…? Yeah, she was definitely chuckling as he climbed behind the wheel. “What’s funny?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said as he pulled out of the driveway and headed for the high school. “It’s nothing, really. Well, I’m…See, your uniform is so…well, very shiny—even more so up close, and…you look very nice.”

“Thanks.” It was what he’d been looking for, except weirdly now it wasn’t. “You do, too.”

As the words left his lips, he sensed Shayla taking a step back—which was strange since she was sitting down and she didn’t move an inch. But she withdrew even further into—yeah, it was her mommy-mode—as she gave him a smile that could only be described as patient and kind, and said, “Thanks.”

Okay, that had been stupid of him—an auto-response from years of bar hookups. You look nice—You do, too. You’re looking hot—You are, too. Wanna have sex—Why the hell not? I guess you’ll do….

“Those colors look great on you,” he tried. “And…I mean, you have…really…nice arms.” What? Had he really just said that? Out loud? Nice arms…? Fuuuhhhck.

Of course now she was looking at him as if he were one of those serial killers she often wrote about. But, “Thanks?” she said again as she reached in her handbag, pulled out a file folder, and opened it.

“I printed several copies of those photos,” she continued, briskly getting down to business, “of Fiona. And of Dingo and Daryl Middleton—I figured they might’ve been high school students in the not-too-distant past. This way we can leave the photos behind—not just flash them on our phones. If we’re lucky, Mrs. Sullivan will show them around in the teachers’ lounge.”

That got him focused—fast. “Wow, that’s good thinking, thanks,” he said.

“I’m not sure you’re going to want me with you in the school office, though,” Shayla said. “I think I’ll just lurk in the hall.”

“What?” Pete said, alarmed as he passed the In-N-Out Burger. “Why? No! Please, I need you in there with me. I need your brilliant writer’s brain to come up with all the questions that I know I’ll miss.”

Now the smile she gave him was full power and beautiful. “Okay, but how about if you go in first. That way you get to wow Mrs. S with—” she made a circular motion in his direction “—that magic, without me there to confuse the issue.”

“This magic?” he repeated with a laugh, although in truth, he relaxed a little. This was more like it. She was not immune.

Still, she gave him her now-familiar chiding look. “Lieutenant. The Navy definitely designed these uniforms for a very obvious reason.”

“Yeah, to keep us from being too hot.” As he approached the turnoff to the high school parking lot, he heard the words he’d said and winced.

Shayla was laughing again, her pretty eyes dancing. “Well, that’s a giant fail on the part of the Navy if the goal of these uniforms is to keep sailors from being too hot.”

“Yeah, that came out wrong. I meant, to keep us from getting too hot. In the, you know, heat from the summer sun…? On the deck of a ship, in the middle of the ocean…? Not a lot of shade when you’re crossing the equator.”

“That must be amazing,” she said, doing that soft-eyed thing that he loved. “To look around and not see land in any direction…”

“Yeah, it’s amazing for about an hour,” he said as he waited for a break in the traffic to make his turn. “But when you’re out there, away from home for six months, it gets way less amazing, really fast.”

“But isn’t it kind of common, for a sailor, to be out there, on a ship, for months at a time?” she asked. “You could’ve joined the Army.”

“Nah, I wanted to be a SEAL,” he told her. “But that’s how they get you. You can’t be a SEAL until you’ve been in for a set amount of time, and you can’t be in the Navy for more than a nanosecond without going out on a WestPac—that’s six months in the Western Pacific. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because you almost always start from Hawaii, which has its perks. But you definitely don’t just join the Navy and show up at BUD/S—that’s what we call SEAL training. It stands for Basic Underwater Demolition slash SEAL.”

“And that’s where you work?” she asked. “As a teacher.”

“Instructor,” he said, as he pulled into an empty space right by the school’s front door. The lights were already on in the front office. “Yeah, that’s what I do.”

She nodded as she opened the door and picked up her handbag.

As they met on the sidewalk in front of his truck, she handed him the file with the photos and said, “I’ll linger in the lobby for just a few minutes, looking at the school art display.”

They went inside, and it smelled exactly the same as his old high school, a few miles down the coast.

“Don’t linger too long,” he said.

Maddie saw that Great-Aunt Hiroko was awake and already working in her garden as Dingo slowly drove past in the early-morning light.

“Is that her?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Maddie said.

Dingo was amused. “How on earth can you tell?”

The old woman was wearing long sleeves, gloves, and a giant sun hat—and with her head down, her face was obscured. Still it was Hiroko, without a doubt.

“Japanese women—at least in my family—can be kinda insane about staying out of the sun,” Maddie told him as he used an empty driveway to turn around, so they could troll slowly back and see the yard from a different perspective. “It used to really piss off Lisa, back in Palm Springs, when someone new at the nursing home took my great-grandmother out into the garden without an umbrella, or even a hat. They’d be all Doesn’t the warm sun feel nice against your skin? and not understand why Gram’d get so upset.”

Gram didn’t remember much, but her insistence on staying in the shade had been one of the very last things to go—even long after she’d lost her ability to form words. Maddie still remembered the look on her mother’s face when they’d come to visit and found Gram sitting peacefully in the sun.

“She’s just an empty shell now,” Lisa had said at the time, but Gram’s shell lived on, while both her own daughter and now Lisa, her granddaughter, were dead and gone.

It was no fucking fair.

“There, lookit, love, that’s the shower thingy where your parents first met,” Dingo said.

And God, yes, there it was—a brightly painted white stall made of wooden fencing, attached to the back of the little house. Maddie could see the showerhead and part of the piping—both ancient gray metal—over the top of the scalloped wood.

Last night, she’d read aloud that stupid story that “Dad” had sent via his girlfriend, Shayla. God, she’d felt stupid—two months in, and she hadn’t realized he had a girlfriend, although why he’d thought he had to hide that fact from her, she couldn’t even begin to guess.

At first Maddie had mocked it—this stupid story of how he’d met Great-Aunt Hiroko and Lisa in San Diego, after living on some dumbass island in the middle of nowhere—even though she’d been secretly moved. Not only had her mother sprung vividly to life again on those pages and pages and pages that he’d written, but this was a story that Maddie had never heard. Still, after the first few paragraphs, she’d turned her head to ask Dingo, “Can you imagine my stupid father with dreadlocks?”

They’d been lying together in the back of the car, parked at one of Dingo’s favorite boondocking sites as she’d read the story on the glowing screen of her phone. He had built a little wall between them with some of his camping gear—her being fifteen really freaked him out.

But he wasn’t scornful in the least. “I’d look like a dolt in dreadlocks,” he said wistfully. “Takes a certain kind of cool to do it right, and yeah, actually, I can imagine him. He could pull it off. Keep going—this is good.”

So Maddie’d read him the entire long thing. And later, after Dingo had fallen asleep, she’d lain awake, staring up at the car’s stained and drooping cloth ceiling, thinking about Lisa and her father as teenagers, and hungering—which was stupid—to know more.

She’d finally fallen asleep, but had woken up way too soon.

One of the worst parts of boondocking, at least in Maddie’s opinion, was the lack of shades to cover the car windows. Not only was that weird when it came to privacy, but when the sun came up, the sun came up. Combine that with having to drive to find a bathroom, and the end result was to be wide awake—even if bleary-eyed—at oh-my-god-it’s-too-early o’clock.

Every morning.

But Dingo was as congenial as ever, even if he was starting to take on a definite too-many-days-without-a-shower funk, and he’d immediately agreed to drive by the beach, to see if GAH—Great-Aunt Hiroko—was awake.

“It’s a little weird that we were planning to come out here today,” he said now, as instead of passing the house again, he stopped at the side of the road, “and then, boom, your da sends that story. We should be ready to bounce—I mean, since he knows her, he might’ve told her you’ve gone walkabout….That is, if you still even want to stop.”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah, I do. But we’ll take precautions.”

Before reading the story, she hadn’t realized that “Dad” knew GAH. It was entirely possible he’d called the old lady and asked her to keep an eye out for Maddie. Now, she took out her phone and scrolled through her contacts to Dingo’s cell number.

“You can do a pretty good American accent,” she said as she backspaced over everything but the D, and then added an A and a D. “If she says anything about you sounding different, tell her you have a cold. And if she asks you anything that you can’t answer, sign off fast. Pretend that you’ve got another call coming in from your whatchamacallit. CO or XO or whatever.”

Dingo wasn’t happy. “Aaah, love, you’re asking for trouble. What if they talk regularly?”

“If they’re still that close, then why haven’t we visited her since I’ve moved out here?” Maddie argued as she hit the button that would call Dingo’s phone. The old woman in the garden had noticed the stopped car and had pulled herself up to her feet, holding up a hand to further shade her eyes as she looked out at them. “I’m going in, pretending that I’m already on the phone with ‘Dad.’ I’ll put you on speaker so you can say hi—and that’ll distort your voice even more. Remember, he’s a Navy SEAL. He talks in short sentences, with lots of stupid Navy code: SpecGrooFifty-Eight. XO, CO, SEAL Team Four Hundred. NavPacOpIntel, DefConFifteen. Channel Tom Clancy.”

Dingo looked both worried and skeptical as his pants pocket started to ring, but Maddie got out of the car, closing the door with a slam, her own phone to her ear.

“Hello, this is your father,” Dingo said into her ear, his vowels ridiculously flat as she waved gaily to GAH.

“Yes, Dad,” she said loud enough to be overheard as she walked up the path. “Yup, we’re here, the address you had was right—and she’s home.” She raised her voice even more. “Aunt Hiroko? I’m Maddie. Your great-niece. Lisa’s daughter?”

“I know who you are.” The elderly woman had already taken off her work gloves and now she unlatched the gate. “I was sorry to hear about your mother. I wish someone had called me.”

For once, Maddie didn’t try to hide the rush of tears that sprang to her eyes. Still, she forced what she hoped was a brave smile. “I’m sorry—it was…It’s been hard,” she admitted. “And Dad and I are still feeling our way—working on figuring things out. Right, Dad?” She spoke into the phone, directly over Dingo, who was muttering, “Self-help book much?”

“Ten-four roger that!” he said, again with the flat vowels.

“I’m going to put you on speaker in a minute, Dad,” she told him, “after I explain why we’re here.” Shit, she’d said we and Hiroko’s gaze flickered over to Dingo’s car, where his shadowy shape was sitting behind the steering wheel. But he was watching, and he hunkered down a bit so the old lady wouldn’t be able to see that he, too, was talking on his phone.

Hiroko, meanwhile, had returned her impatient gaze to Maddie. In books and movies, old people’s eyes were always filled with patience and wisdom and warmth, but Hiroko’s were both cool and broadcasting a very clear tick tock.

“We’re doing a project in school,” Maddie lied, “in history class, on the way Japanese people were put in camps here in California during World War Two.” Lisa had told her that Hiroko had been obsessed with that historical era.

And sure enough, the old woman took the bait. Her chin came up. “They weren’t camps, they were prisons,” she said. “It was mass internment of an entire group of people—and many of us weren’t Japanese, we were Americans. Japanese Americans, yes, but Americans. I was born here. I should have been a citizen—but until 1952 there were laws that restricted Americans like me from doing things like owning property.”

“Seriously?” Maddie couldn’t help herself. “I mean, yeah, wow, that’s great information. Thanks. Dad thought you’d be a good source, since you know so much about it.” She spoke into the phone. “Good call, Dad.”

“I don’t just know it—I lived it, in Manzanar, a prison camp about four hundred miles north of here,” Hiroko said with a fierceness that would’ve been fascinating to explore—if Maddie had had the time to hang out without worrying that the idiot-asshole drug dealer who was actively hunting her down wasn’t about to find and end her.

“You were right,” Maddie said into her phone. “I think Aunt Hiroko can help me with this project.” She smiled at GAH. “We’re supposed to find primary source material, particularly artifacts. I don’t have a lot of time right now—school starts soon—but I’d love for my group to interview you and—” She cut herself off as if she’d been interrupted on the phone, then added, “Yeah, yeah, Dad, I know, I know.” Back to GAH as she punched the speaker button and held out the phone. The screen clearly read Dad. “He has to get going to work—you know, over at the Navy base—but he wanted to say hello. Dad, you’re on speaker! Say hello!”

“Hello!” Dingo’s voice came out of the phone distorted but definitely male. “Thank you so much for helping my little Maddie-kins!”

Oh, ugh, Dingo, really?

“I haven’t yet said that I would,” Hiroko pointed out, and everyone froze. Well, everyone being Maddie and Dingo. Hiroko calmly bent down and picked up a glove that she’d dropped.

“Oh, well,” Dingo started to say, and Maddie quickly turned off the speaker before he could start stammering and blow this worse than she’d already apparently blown it.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, “I know you need to go. I’ll talk to you later. Love you, mwah.” She cut the connection and slipped her phone into her back pocket, and then met GAH’s unwavering cool gaze. Clearly, she’d done this wrong, coming in all happy and shit. Now, she tried to match the old woman’s quiet dignity. “I apologize for assuming—”

Hiroko cut her off. “Who’s your friend in the car?”

“Oh,” Maddie said. “He’s just, um…a friend. Who sometimes gives me a ride when I need one.”

“I’m making breakfast. Scrambled eggs. Call him—use your phone—and invite him in,” the old woman said.

If she did that, he’d come up as a very visible Dad on her screen. “Oh,” Maddie said. “No, I’ll just…” She shouted. “Dingo! Hey, Ding! Want breakfast?”

Hiroko shook her head in disapproval, then started for the kitchen door as Dingo came galloping eagerly up the path from the car. “Hurry up,” the old woman said dourly, “or you’ll be late for school.”

That emphasis on school was not accidental. It was obvious that Hiroko wasn’t even remotely fooled by any of this. Maddie knew she shouldn’t go inside. She should grab Dingo and pull him back into the car and make him drive away.

Still, scrambled eggs! She and Dingo had just a few dollars left between them, and the idea of free scrambled eggs was too mouthwatering to turn down.

Besides, if GAH called “Dad”—even if she excused herself and went into the bathroom to secretly use the phone—Maddie would know it, and there’d be plenty of time to get away.

When Shayla opened the door, Mrs. Sullivan was using the phone back in the high school vice principal’s inner office. Peter stood waiting, his hat tucked up under his arm, file folder open on the long, room-dividing counter in front of him.

Nice arms.

Trust Harry to pop into her head and mention that.

Yeah, because it was weird, Harry pointed out. Nice arms?

She had no idea why Peter had said that, but he was talking to her, so shh.

“She knew Fiona immediately, from the photo,” the SEAL reported as Shay closed the door behind her.

They were alone in the room—aside from Mrs. S, who’d left that inner office door open a crack, and Harry, who was invisible to all of the uncrazy nonwriters in the room.

“Apparently there’s been some drama this past week,” Peter continued. “Fiona was living here in San Diego with her aunt, but there was a fire at her condo, and…apparently, she was shipped back home to her parents.”

“To Sacramento?” Shayla asked. That was where the girl had said she was from on her Facebook profile.

“I don’t know.” He couldn’t hide the worry in his eyes. “Mrs. Sullivan didn’t say it in so many words, but I could tell from her attitude that Fiona had been a problem for the school.”

“I’m pretty sure every child in this school is a problem for Mrs. S,” Shayla whispered reassuringly, reaching out to pat his arm—nice arms—which made him smile even as she shushed Harry and snatched her hand back, fast.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “But still, a fire…?”

“Fires happen,” Shay told him.

“After which Fiona was shipped home.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s a budding arsonist,” she argued. “If her aunt’s condo burned, where’s she going to live? She may have gone home simply because she no longer has a place to stay.”

“Okay. You’re right.” Peter nodded. “But bottom line, Fiona’s gone. I find it hard to believe it’s a coincidence that Maddie’s gone missing at the same time that her only friend left town.”

“That’s probably not a coincidence,” Shayla agreed. “Even if it was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. Because remember, Fiona’s not Maddie’s only friend. There’s also Dingo. It’s possible that the emotional distress of Fiona leaving combined with Maddie knowing that if you found out about Dingo, you’d forbid her from dating him—as any parent would…”

“Well, that’s a first!” Mrs. Sullivan interrupted them as she came huffing out toward the front desk, looking irritated. Of course, the default expression on her Scandinavian-featured, long-suffering, ruddy-cheeked pioneer-woman face was supreme annoyance—she accessorized it with her relentless Margaret Thatcher–inspired wardrobe and the fading blond hair that she wore twisted up into a bun. “The father refused to speak to you,” she told Peter indignantly.

And okay. That was worth getting irritated about. Unless Shay’d misunderstood. “Fiona’s father,” she clarified, and Mrs. S looked hard at her.

“Can I help you, Mrs. DeSoto?”

“It’s Shayla Whitman,” Shay corrected her for the seven millionth time, reminding her, “The boys have their father’s name, which I don’t share.”

“Shayla’s helping me find Maddie,” Peter said, whereupon Mrs. S gave Shay a different kind of look. A knowing look—like the help she was providing was the naked, orgasmic kind.

Shayla swiftly brought the woman’s attention back to the problem at hand. “Fiona’s father actually refused…?”

“Flatly,” Mrs. S said. “He barely let me speak. No, he would not talk to anyone. As far as he was concerned, Fiona was done here, and that was that. So I told him you knew Fiona’s last name, of course. Fiona Fiera, and that I couldn’t stop you from calling him—Charles Fiera of Sacramento—if you looked him up.” She exhaled her disdain. “Some people! I think he thought you were Susan what’s-her-name’s—the aunt’s—downstairs neighbor. Calling about additional damages from the fire.”

“What exactly happened?” Shayla asked. “This fire. Was anyone hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. S said. “A cat. Who lived downstairs. But not badly. She needed oxygen from one of the firefighters. The photo of that’s gone viral.” She smiled and her face transformed so completely that her pale blue eyes even sparkled. “So adorable.”

“Oh, my God, I think I saw that on Instagram,” Shay said. “But I can’t remember exactly when, was it…?”

“Friday,” Mrs. Sullivan reported as the cat lover retreated and the warrior woman’s battle mask slipped back into place. “Fiona was pulled out of class by the police.”

“Because they thought she’d set it…?” Shay glanced at Peter, who was quite possibly grinding his teeth into nubs at that news, no doubt from imagining that his daughter’s best friend was, indeed, an arsonist.

“The aunt seemed to think so on Friday,” Mrs. S reported. “There was quite a bit of screaming and accusations. Right in this office.”

“That must’ve been awful,” Shay said. “Was Maddie there?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Maybe lurking out in the hall?”

“Well, I don’t know that for sure,” the woman admitted, moving to the computer and accessing its keyboard. “But I’ll check her schedule. It was in the middle of third period and…No, she was in English with Ms. Reinberg. That’s on the other end of the building, so it’s very unlikely, even if she left to go to the bathroom, that she would’ve come all the way down here.”

“But it’s not impossible,” Peter pointed out.

“Frank’s in Maddie’s English class,” Shayla told him. “I can check to see if he remembers if she left the room on Friday.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Actually,” Shay said, “it may have been more traumatic for Maddie if she didn’t know what happened—if her friend just vanished. If Fiona just stopped answering her phone, and didn’t respond to Facebook messages.”

Shayla didn’t know the details of Lisa’s accident, but it didn’t take much to imagine the news of her death reaching Maddie in a similar way, with initial silence, and a growing sense of dread.

Peter met her gaze, his blue eyes sharp. She knew that he was thinking, too, about all of those seemingly coded Facebook messages from Maddie to Fiona, the final one in all caps.

Where are you? Are you dead, too? Harry said, hitting the subtext on the head.

“Fiona’s aunt,” Peter said, turning back to Mrs. Sullivan. “She’s local—or at least she was, before the fire. Do you still have—”

Mrs. S was already tapping on the computer keyboard, and she interrupted before he could ask. “She was cut from the same unpleasant cloth as the father. I mean, yes. I have her work and various home phone numbers right here—” she pointed at the screen “—but I wouldn’t be shocked if, when I called her, she also refused to talk to you.” She looked from Peter to Shayla, widening her eyes substantially. “Oh! But if you’ll excuse me for just a few minutes, I realize I forgot to start the pot of coffee in the back room. I must do that immediately.” And with that, she turned abruptly on her sensible heels and disappeared through the door to the back, this time closing it firmly behind her.

Shay looked at Peter. “Was that the invitation to break the rules that I thought it was?”

“Yeah.” Peter nodded.

She smiled. “Go, Mrs. S!”

But the little half-door built into the room-long counter was securely locked—and it was designed so that students couldn’t simply reach over from this side and unlock it.

Peter put his hat down and was about to push himself up and over the barrier so he could look at the contact info Mrs. S had left up on the computer monitor for them to see, but Shay stopped him.

“Let me,” she said. “I’m a civilian. Let’s not get you into trouble.”

“I don’t mind trouble,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him off, kicking off her sandals. “Navy SEAL. Middle name’s trouble, I got it. Still. Let’s not tempt fate. Give me a boost.” She made a classic foothold by interlocking her fingers as example, and when he did the same, she stepped into his hands and he lifted her effortlessly up so that her butt was on the counter. She swung her legs over and slipped down, and…There was the info they needed, right on the screen. “Susan Smith—oh, God, yes, with that name, she’d’ve been hard to track—Mrs. S, you are an angel.” She rattled off the phone numbers—home, work plus extension, and cell—as Peter put them right into his phone. “Ooh, as long as we’re here…” A simple downward scroll revealed info—separate no doubt because of divorce—for both Fiona’s father and mother, and Shayla read that to Peter, too. Phone numbers and addresses in—bingo!—Sacramento.

It was easier to get back over the counter from this end, since there was a desk-level surface that she could climb onto with her knees before squatting and getting her bottom up onto the counter. She swung her legs back over.

And then Peter was there to catch her—not that she needed or expected him to do that. In fact, he made her dismount awkward, because she ended up doing a full-length slide down the entire front of his body. His extremely solid uniform-clad body.

Like that wasn’t distracting.

She landed with her toes on the ground, with her hands braced on his shoulders. His hands were on her hips as he still held her tightly, his face mere centimeters from hers.

Up close, those eyes were crazy beautiful—the blue was streaked with white and black and even gold.

Up close, the lines on his golden-tanned face—from wisdom and laughter and spending too much time unprotected in the sun—were even more attractive.

He’s not as young as you pretend that he is.

Yeah, she could see that from this proximity.

Shayla knew that this was a moment. They were having a moment, or maybe she was having a moment, and he was having something else entirely—something weird and embarrassing and awkward. Whatever it was, time suspended and hung as he didn’t let her go and she, likewise, didn’t pull away. But he also didn’t lower his head to do something like, oh, say, kiss her. In fact, he didn’t freaking move.

So kiss him!

Peter’s pretty eyes flickered down to her mouth and then back, because, God, she’d obviously just looked hard at his mouth. And now she was the one who was flashing hot and cold with weirdness and awkward embarrassment, but she still couldn’t pull away.

It’s up to you. He’s too much of an officer and a gentleman.

Or maybe not. Maybe Peter just didn’t want to kiss her. She was, after all, the neighbor—they were friends. Help-him-write-deeply-personal-stories-about-his-teenaged-love-affair-with-his-daughter’s-mother kind of friends. Not touch-the-roof-of-his-mouth-with-her-tongue friends.

KISS HIM!

“No,” Shayla said forcefully in response to Harry’s head-filling demand—except, whoops, she’d just shouted in Peter’s startled face.

He, of course, immediately let her go with a quick “Jesus, sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“No, no! I didn’t mean you! I wasn’t talking to—shit!” she countered quickly, but in scrambling away from him, she stepped on her sandal exactly the wrong way. “Oh, God!” It was reminiscent of a Lego to the bare arch in the dark of night—a full ten on the parental agony WTF scale. This was compounded by the fact that she’d just released the crazy krakens in a verbal geyser that couldn’t be easily explained. That no I just shouted in your face was in response to my invisible friend. Yeah, that was going to go over well.

She completed her current circus act by tripping on her other sandal, and would’ve gone down to the floor if Peter hadn’t lunged to catch her again. She grabbed for him, too, her hands now on the warmth of his skin—deliciously smooth over the hard steel of those insane muscles—as she tightly held on to him just above his elbows and below his shirtsleeves.

And then, because she was an idiot, she opened her mouth and blurted out the words he’d said to her in the truck: “Nice arms.”

It was supposed to be funny or clever or maybe both funny and clever, but nope. And yes, now they were definitely both sharing the exact same type of moment—the weird, embarrassed, awkward kind.

“Yeah, wow, um,” Peter said as he made sure she was steady before he let her go.

Shay’s mind was blank—solidly, stupidly blank—save for the sounds of Harry’s deep sigh and eye roll.

Say something, Harry then urged.

“Did you know that some people can actually taste words?” Shay asked Peter.

Not that. Harry started to laugh his despair.

“No, seriously,” she said, straightening her clothes—her shirt had pulled up a bit, kind of the way Captain Kirk’s did in his classic Trek uniform. The actor, William Shatner, had learned to compensate for the low-budget design by grabbing the bottom hem and giving an authoritative tug downward, and it had become an iconic gesture of decisiveness and command. She now did the same. See? Totally in control. Except for the sound of Harry’s laughter echoing madly inside of her head.

Peter, meanwhile, was looking a tad confused.

“One of my characters had really bad migraines,” she told him, “but I don’t get ’em, I’m lucky, right? Anyway, I went onto one of those medical symptom–checker websites to do a little research and while I was surfing around, I saw that one of the things on their general symptoms list was Can you taste words? And ever since then, I’ve used that as a personal benchmark. How’m I doing? Great, because you know what? Things might be bad, but I’m still not tasting words.”

Peter laughed as Harry finally stopped.

But before Shayla could segue into an explanation of how she wasn’t crazy, she was just a writer, and sometimes writers talked to the fictional character who resided in their heads, Mrs. Sullivan chose that moment to re-emerge from the back room.

“Sorry about that,” the woman announced. She eyed Peter’s cover, which he’d set on the counter next to the folder, and Shay knew that she, too—like all women of a certain age—itched to embrace her inner Debra Winger and try it on. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

Peter moved the picture of Fiona to reveal the photo of the two young men from the parking garage. “Do you know either of these men?” He pointed. “This one’s Daryl Middleton; the other we only know by his nickname. Dingo.”

Shay cleared her throat to ask, “Is it possible they were former students?”

Mrs. S took the photo and looked closely. “Daryl Middleton, no. That’s a family name I would’ve remembered.” She glanced up. “I’m a bit of an Anglophile.”

“I know that that probably wasn’t a non sequitur,” Peter said. “But…”

“Prince William’s wife’s name is Kate Middleton,” Shay murmured.

“Ah. What about Dingo?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. S said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “I’m sorry, it’s hard to tell. Add a few years, plus the facial hair…That boy-to-man change can be extreme. But if you can leave the photo, I’ll ask around the teachers’ lounge.”