“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?”