No one was picking up, and he was about to go hands-on himself when his wife, Eden, showed up with two of her besties, Adam Wyndham and Lindsey Jenkins, in tow.
Izzy was pretty sure Eden’s intention had been to make a hostage trade—Adam and Lindsey for him—since she was on the verge of leaving town on a long-planned family trip and this was their last night together for a full week. She’d wanted him to come home with her. But once here, she got caught up in helping.
“Eden figured out the laptop’s password,” Adam now announced with his usual dramatic flamboyance—dude was an actor—as he danced into the living room from the little hallway that led to the bedrooms in the back of the house. “It’s FuckYou123, in something she calls camel-case. I don’t know how she knew that.” He spun to look at Eden. “How did you know to even guess that?”
She was right behind him, moving more staidly as she carried Maddie’s still-new laptop. Grunge had taken his daughter shopping because the desktop computer she’d shared with her mom back in Palm Springs had been packed up and put into storage with the rest of Lisa’s things, and they still hadn’t found the right box.
“Because she’s brilliant,” Izzy said, grinning at his wife.
“It wasn’t that hard.” Eden shrugged it off even as she smiled back at him. “It’s one of the most used passwords, right behind Password123. But the best part is that Maddie left Facebook open, so now we’ve got access to her account.”
“Way to go, Eed!” Lindsey Jenkins spoke up from her place on the sofa, which she’d reclined so she could sit with her feet up. She looked like a beach ball with a head.
An adorable beach ball. She’d recently gotten her thick dark hair cut in a shorter style that she called “baby ready,” which added to the whole cute-little-pregnant-girl illusion.
Married to Izzy’s SEAL buddy Jenk, Lindsey was, in fact, a strong, kickass woman. She was a former police detective and a current top operative at Troubleshooters Incorporated, Southern California’s most elite personal security firm.
Eden worked there, too, but since she didn’t come from a law enforcement or military background, her role was less about ass-kicking and more about administrative support. She assisted the office manager and ran the group’s in-house daycare.
“This is great. Now we can use Facebook to make a list of Maddie’s local friends, and start calling their parents,” Lindsey said. “If we strike out there, we’ll make a list of her friends’ friends, and start calling their—”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Eden interrupted her. “Maddie doesn’t have any local friends, at least not on Facebook. There’re only fortysomething people on her friends list, and most are from her school back in Palm Springs. There’re a few other Nakamuras—probably family members, but only one’s here in San Diego. Hiroko. She’s in her late eighties and seems pretty Zen.”
“Literally Zen,” Adam interjected. “Her profile’s all about meditation and painting and her garden. I seriously doubt she’s helping Maddie hide from her father.”
“Maybe not knowingly,” Lindsey pointed out as she made gimme-hands at the computer. “But someone should call her tomorrow.”
Izzy already had his phone out. “Why not now?” he asked as, instead of handing Lindsey the laptop, Eden sat down next to her. Which made sense, because Eden had a lap and Lindsey currently didn’t.
“It’s after eight and elderly people sometimes go to bed super-early,” Lindsey said, scrolling down Maddie’s Facebook profile as Eden held the computer for her.
“Oh, man, is it really after eight? I have to be on set and coherent at five. I should go.” But despite that announcement, Adam plopped himself down on Eden’s other side, so he could look at the laptop’s screen, too. But then he looked at the sofa they were sitting on. “Is all of this furniture brand-new?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Eden said. “Everything in the house is pristine—even the stuff in Grunge’s bedroom.”
“I noticed that, too,” Adam said. “That, plus he sleeps in a twin bed. And yeah, it’s one of those extra long ones, but…Is it just me, or is that weird?”
“It’s weird,” Lindsey said, her attention on Maddie’s photo albums.
“What were you doing in Grunge’s bedroom?” Izzy asked, and all three of them looked up at him in surprise.
Eden answered. “You said he asked you to look for clues.”
“Yeah. In Maddie’s room,” Izzy said.
“Well, we had to figure out which room was hers,” Eden told him, then turned to Adam. “And it’s not that weird. There’s no way he could fit anything bigger than a twin in there. The room’s tiny.”
“But the bed in Maddie’s room is new, too,” Adam said.
“The bed in Maddie’s giant room,” Lindsey pointed out. “Which I now covet…”
“Yeah, I know, right? You’ve got to love a man who gives the master bedroom to his daughter,” Eden said. “That attached bath is amazing.”
Adam leaned across Eden to ask Lindsey. “Did you see that shower?”
“Mmm-hmm. And tonight I’m gonna dream about that bathtub.”
“I feel you, sister,” Adam said, “but the burning question remains. Did Grunge really just throw away all of his old furniture when he moved in here?”
Again, they all looked up at Izzy, as if he knew the answer. And, actually, this time, he did.
“He didn’t have any furniture,” Izzy said. “He lived on base. In the officers’ barracks.”
“But…he didn’t even have anything in storage?” Lindsey asked.
“Apparently not,” Izzy said. “I mean, he asked me and Danny to help him move in, and we went with him to rent a truck, but then we drove over to that furniture store—that big one, you know, off the Five? When we got there, everything was ready for us to pick up.”
“And you didn’t think that was odd?” Eden asked.
“Sweetheart,” Izzy told his wife. “Think about the furniture I had back before we got married.”
Relentlessly frugal, Eden had repurposed some of it, but most of it had been Dumpster-bound. “Good point,” she said.
Izzy said, “So, no, it’s not that weird that he didn’t have anything in storage. Not for a guy who’s career Navy.”
“But what did Grunge do before this, when his daughter came to visit him?” Adam was puzzled. “If he was living in the officers’ barracks on base, did they…stay in a hotel?”
Eden turned to ask Lindsey, “You didn’t tell him?”
“Tell me what?” Adam looked from Lindsey to Eden and back.
The baby must’ve been kicking again, because Lindsey rubbed her belly as she said, “Nobody knows what he did, or even if she visited, because no one knew Grunge even had a daughter.”
“Really?” Adam asked. “Not even Izzy?”
And yup, they again all looked up at him, expectantly.
“I thought you knew Grunge from way back,” Adam continued. “Like, before you were SEALs.”