The maroon car had backed in, and didn’t have a plate on the front. If it had, she simply would’ve taken a photo with her phone.
As Shay quickly typed the letters and numbers she’d memorized into her phone’s notepad app, she watched Peter approach the sedan.
He motioned for the passenger in the front seat to open the door as he said, “I’m looking for my daughter, Maddie Nakamura…?” He leaned down a bit to see into the back of the car. “Long black hair, brown eyes, petite, about five-two…?”
The SEAL stepped back as both the passenger and the driver climbed out. They weren’t high school boys as Shay had first thought. They were young men, really—both in their late teens or early twenties.
Both were white. They were dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and unzipped hoodies, and both had facial hair. The driver had a chin-strengthening goatee, while the passenger had a full, bushy hipster beard. He also had long, limp, straight hair that he wore down around his face. Maybe Peter had seen him getting into the maroon sedan and somehow thought he was Maddie…? That seemed so unlikely.
Twilight plus wishful thinking might’ve created the illusion, Harry murmured. Damn it, the girl’s not in the car.
Shay could tell from Peter’s body language that the backseat was empty as the long-haired, bearded man shook his head. “I don’t know any Maggies, do you, Ding?” He looked over at the driver, who had a deer-in-the-headlights blankness on his slack face.
Ding, Harry said as the driver managed to shake his head, no. Wimpy McGee’s nickname is Ding. Sweet baby Jesus, save us all.
“It’s Maddie,” Peter repeated with better enunciation. “With a D.” He’d expanded to full, menacing Navy SEAL alpha-male size as he held out his cellphone, where presumably he showed them a photo of his daughter. Ding shuffled a little closer so he could peer at it, too. “Have you seen her? Maddie Nakamura.”
He was looking directly at Ding, who needed to clear his throat extensively before he managed to speak. “Don’t know any Maddies, either. Sorry, mate. Can’t help you.” He had a weird Australian-ish accent.
Ding attempted to shuffle away, but Big Beard asked Peter, “Is your last name really Nakamura, man?”
“Maddie took her mother’s name. Mine’s Greene.” The SEAL somehow got even bigger. More dangerous. “Lieutenant Peter Greene.”
Oh, that was so James Bond, Harry murmured. How are you not melting into a puddle?
“Shh.”
“If you see her,” Peter continued, “or hear from her, you can reach me at the naval base on Coronado. I’m a BUD/S instructor. A Navy SEAL.” He looked hard at Ding. “Mate.”
Ding quaked, even as Big Beard said, “Wow. Thanks for your service, bro. Seriously, that Navy SEAL shit is intense. Sorry we can’t help. But good luck finding her. C’mon, Dingo. The mall is calling.”
Dingo! Harry was elated. Of course. Because he’s an “Aussie.” He made air quotes.
Shayla agreed. That accent was faux.
Mofo-faux, Harry said. Your SEAL knows it, too.
He was not. Her. SEAL.
Dingo and his buddy headed toward the elevator, and even though Peter made like he was heading back to Shay’s car, he stopped suddenly and called after them, “Oh, one more thing. I’m pretty sure Maddie tells people she’s older, but she’s only fifteen.”
Dingo tripped—no doubt over his giant, hulking guilt.
And, scene! Harry said. He began to slow-clap. Well done, Greene, Lieutenant Greene! That was a perfectly executed Columbo. Take their picture, Shay. We’re going to want to ID ’em as we follow up their tremendously stanky box o’ bullshit.
Shay used her phone and snapped photos of the pair as Dingo’s friend covered for him deftly. “Dude, your shoe’s untied. I swear to God, I can’t take you anywhere.” He pushed Dingo down to fumble with his shoelace as he raised his voice. “Sorry, man, I get that you’re pissed, but we still don’t know her.”
“I’m not mad,” Peter tried. “Not at her, not at you. She’s not in trouble.”
Ooh, a man who listens and learns, Harry noted. That’s a new one for you, Shay.
“Shh.”
“I just want to talk,” Peter implored the two young men. “Please. Ask Maddie to call me. I just want to know that she’s okay.”
“Still haven’t managed to meet her in the past three seconds,” Big Beard said as he now hustled Dingo toward the other end of the garage.
Meanwhile, Peter went back to the maroon sedan for one more long look into the backseat. He tried the door, but it was locked. He tried the front door—also locked—then looked around, up at the ceiling where…
Yup, Harry said. Security cameras. A full array. Will he or won’t he B&E…? My money says no.
The SEAL chose not to break and enter. Instead, he climbed back into Shay’s car. He still smelled great, despite the disappointment that practically dripped from him.
Shay focused on putting her window back up as she briskly told him, “I made a note of the license plate number. I also got photos of Dingo and Dumber. I figured we might need that to help us ID ’em.” She showed him her phone.
“Wow, thanks. Good thinking,” Peter said. “Will you text them to me?”
“Of course,” she said as he used a finger to flip through her collection, all the way back to, whoops, a selfie she’d taken before her latest ultra-short haircut—of what she’d called her crazy writer hair for the readers on her Facebook page. Although, seriously, if she was willing to post that on her public page, she really shouldn’t care if her Navy SEAL neighbor saw it. “Just go ahead and send them to your phone.”
Peter did just that as she found the signs leading upward to the parking garage’s exit. She could move much faster now that she wasn’t following the barge-sized maroon car, so she pushed it, wanting to get out of the garage’s certain-death-in-an-earthquake zone ASAP.
She’d almost reached aboveground level when he finally spoke. “So…I’m not alone in thinking that they know Maddie?”
“Dingo definitely does,” Shay said. “He’s a terrible liar.”
He nodded. “Yeah, Dingo. Jesus. He’s probably from exotic, faraway Burbank.” At her blank look, he added, “The Valley, the burbs north of LA…?”
“I’m still learning California geography,” Shay admitted. “I’m from New York, with a long post-college stop in Boston.” She pulled out of the garage and onto the open street. Thank God. She poked at her GPS, but it was still confused, and Harry had, for once, gracefully vanished when the SEAL climbed back into the car. Not that he was particularly good with directions, either, considering he was a figment of her imagination. “Right now, for example, I have no idea where I am.”
“Bang a right up here,” Peter ordered with authority. “And then left at the light. If you don’t mind, I want to backtrack all the way to where you picked me up, because…” He exhaled hard. “Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I saw Maddie get into that car.”
“It’s okay,” Shay said. “I’m happy to help.” Tevin had borrowed his father’s car and was on schedule to pick up his little brother when the debate club practice ended at nine. And because these days her “writing” time consisted mainly of gnashing her teeth as she deleted the paltry few paragraphs she’d written over the past day, it was nice to have something constructive and purposeful to do that had an actual chance of successful completion.
So she banged the right, enjoying the colorful verb even without Harry around to provide comment. While it certainly wasn’t the first time she’d heard that expression, it took a certain something-something for someone who wasn’t a fictional action-slash-romance hero to use it authentically. But whatever that je ne sais quoi was, this Navy SEAL had it in spades.
“At the risk of annoying you,” Shay added, “I’d like to suggest that maybe you only thought you saw Maddie get into that car.”
Peter laughed as she pulled into the designated left-turn lane and waited behind a long line of hop
efully signaling cars. “What? You think I saw Long-Hair get in and I mistook him for Maddie? With that beard? No.” He shook his head. “He’s nearly a foot taller than she is.”
“It was twilight,” Shayla pointed out.
“No,” he said again.
“All those shadows, plus the glare from the car’s headlights…”
“Sorry. I saw her.”
“Wishful thinking can do some crazy things to—”
“I know that, but no.” He was definite.
“Okay,” Shay surrendered. “You saw your daughter get into that car. I think it’s safe to assume then, that somewhere between where you saw her get in and the parking garage, she got out. But we had eyes on that car for nearly the entire last eighty percent of the trip.”
And even though the maroon car had been out of sight while Shay had done her little sidewalk excursion, when they’d finally caught back up, the car had been in the left lane.
The SEAL knew what she was thinking, and agreed. “Yeah, there’s no way they dropped Maddie off after they took the right turn to head to the mall. They were moving too fast. No, it had to’ve happened closer to the school, before we first caught up to them.”
“Maybe…” She said it at the same time he did, only she asked it as a question. “The In-N-Out Burger?”
Thank God Harry wasn’t here to laugh like a sixth-grader at the weirdly suggestive name of the West Coast burger chain. No, instead she was the one who had to clench her teeth to keep from snickering.
“The one by the school,” Peter said absolutely. “Yes.”
Shay risked a glance at him, but he was clearly more mature and wasn’t even thinking about giggling. “Okay, then. Answer this for me. Why would they pick her up only to drop her off a few hundred yards away?” As a writer, these were the kinds of questions she needed to resolve to make her stories believable.
The SEAL didn’t have to think long or hard for his response. “Because she knew I saw her get into that car.”
“Okay. But…you were on foot at the time,” Shayla argued. “Wouldn’t she assume that Dingo, with his obvious brilliance as a driver and a human being, would be able to get away from a man on foot?”
This one took him slightly longer. “Maybe she saw me get into your car, too.”
Shay shook her head. “That’s pretty weak,” she told him. “The timing, you know? And the distance. She gets into Dingo’s car. Go, go! So he goes, probably pretty fast, and yeah, she’s looking out the back window at you, but…it took you a while to flag me down. How good is her eyesight? It was already pretty dark, and she must’ve lost visual contact just a few seconds after Dingo hit the gas. Unless she was like, Wait, pull over so we can see if someone stops for him, and sorry, I just don’t buy that.”
The expression of surprise on the SEAL’s face made her wish she’d kept her phone handy so she could take a picture. Instead, she’d have to trust her rather accurate memory.
“I really don’t,” she repeated. “Sorry.”
“No,” he said, “I’m impressed. That was a logical breakdown of…Are you law enforcement? You said you write about serial killers, but you drive like you’ve had training.” He was aiming those romance-hero-blue eyes at her again as he added, “Please tell me you work for the San Diego police. Because up to now, all I’ve gotten from them is Kids who run away nearly always come back of their own accord.”
Shayla winced. “That’s not very helpful.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Welp, sorry to disappoint, I’m just a writer.”
“What do you write?” the SEAL asked.
It was a horribly loaded question, but of course he had no way of knowing that. So she kept her answer on the surface, instead of diving into the murky depths of Nothing, because I’ve been seriously blocked for close to two years now, to the point that even my most popular characters are on strike.
Harry, of course, popped back in. I’m not on strike, he said. But you gave me my HEA, and frankly, I’m not going to let you fuck things up between me and Thom. I’m in love and I’m happy. Leave me alone.
Leave him alone…? Harry vanished as Shay started to laugh, but the SEAL was looking at her oddly again, so she told him, “Romantic suspense.” It was clear he didn’t know quite what that meant, so she clarified. “Fiction. Thrillers with a steamy love story…? I write about a team of FBI agents.”
“Are you…published?” he asked.
“Yup,” she said briskly. “Not easy to do, but I managed—mostly because my characters act with believable intention. If I were writing Maddie, she would not have gotten out of Dingo’s car at the In-N-Out Burger without a damn good reason. And since there’s literally no way she saw you getting into my car…”
“Maybe she didn’t have to see that. Maybe she just knew it would happen,” Peter countered. “If she’s learned anything about me at all over the past few months, it’s that I don’t quit.”
Shay made a face. “Yeah, that’s still not the strongest motivation. But…maybe she didn’t see you when she got into Dingo’s car,” she posited. “And maybe she was like, Where you going? And they’re like, The mall, and she’s like, Aagh, nah, I’m sick of the mall. I’m hungry. Just drop me at the burger place.”
“With what money is she buying herself a burger?” Peter asked. “At most, she had five bucks I gave her for lunch, the morning before she disappeared. And, okay, even if she borrowed some cash from Dingo, where’s she gonna go after that? Unless she’s got other friends to call and say Come pick me up.”
“See, now you’re thinking like a writer,” Shayla told him.
“I still think she saw me,” he said, “so I’m going with She knew I would follow even if she didn’t see it happen.”
“Fair enough.” Shay nodded, although she couldn’t help but think they were missing something here. Still, she not only had two teenagers of her own, but she could also remember being one. Maddie had to know that getting caught by her father after going AWOL for two days would only be worse if he caught her while in the company of two twenty-year-old men, one of whom was probably her boyfriend, God help his fake-Australian soul.
“Let’s assume, for now, that Dingo and Big Beard lent her a few dollars and dropped her at the burger place.” She embraced Peter’s theory. “Next question: What are the odds she’d stick around, waiting for you to figure that out and show up?”
“Slim to none,” Peter told her grimly. “I don’t expect that she did. But with any luck, someone who works the counter saw her while she was in there. With any luck, she did call another friend, who came to pick her up, and someone saw that, too. I have a teammate whose wife has connections with the SDPD. That’s been useless so far, but…if I can confirm that someone picked up Maddie from the In-N-Out-Burger, maybe the police’ll finally be able to help me track her down by accessing their security cam footage.”
“Well, that would be a very lucky break,” Shay said.
“I could use a little luck right about now,” the Navy SEAL said.
She reached over and patted his knee, again channeling Harry’s confidence as she said, “You said it yourself, Lieutenant. You don’t quit. We’ll find her. With or without luck.”
CHAPTER THREE
Maddie Nakamura held both her phone and her nose as she lay on her side, curled up in the dark trunk of Dingo’s car. It smelled like a mix of oil and old feet in there so she breathed through her mouth, which really didn’t help, because God.
It was uncomfortably warm, too, but since she could see glimpses of the parking garage’s grimy concrete floor through several rusting holes in the chassis, at least she knew she wasn’t going to suffocate.
And seriously, even if death was a possibility, she still wasn’t going to move until she got Dingo’s all-clear text.
No way was she going to risk her father finding her. Not now. Not yet. Not until she figured a way out of this shit-storm she was in. And frankly, if she never did manage to find Fiona
and return Nelson’s cash, well, Maddie would just have to vanish off the face of the planet, never to be heard from again.
Not like anyone would miss her.
But seriously, how stupid was it that her father had spotted her over at the school, right at the moment she’d been climbing into Dingo’s car? The spring weather was erratic and the past few days had gotten cold at night, and her coat had been in her locker. It seemed safer to sneak into the school to grab it than to attempt to get something from her closet at home. She’d purposely waited until the evening, figuring she’d have less of a chance of getting caught than if she walked in during the school day.
But “Dad”—she only called him that with air quotes and irony—had seen her and there’d been a lot of shouting in Dingo’s car until they’d figured out what to do. And thank God Dingo’s friend Daryl had been riding shotgun, because if it was up to Dingo, he might’ve just pulled over, gotten out of the car, and laid down on the sidewalk in total surrender.
Dingo was funny, and kind, and stupidly sweet, but he didn’t seem to have that much of a backbone. But with Daryl’s help, Maddie managed to convince him that if he let her father follow them into the garage at the mall, they could bluff their way out of this.
And their bluffing was really only possible because Dingo had rigged his ancient, giant car for boondocking, which was another word for urban camping, which was another way of saying he lived in his car like the pathetic homeless loser that he was. But the worn-out cushions of the backseat were easily removed, which opened up the entire back of the car, trunk included, into one large space. Dingo had a foam mattress, and he slept back there, albeit at a creative angle.
And because those seat backs easily pulled out, Maddie could—and did—crawl into the trunk from the backseat while the car was in motion. Daryl then replaced the seat backs. Which meant when they parked here in the mall garage, when “Dad” had looked in Dingo’s car windows, Maddie had been in the trunk, safely hidden from view.
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