“Well, love, it’s not like we’re both not exhausted,” he pointed out.
“We can’t stay here,” Maddie said. “What if my father calls, Hello have you seen a really stupid half-Japanese girl and her douchebag fake Australian boyfriend?” She answered her own question, “Why yes, as a matter of fact, they completely caught our attention when the really stupid girl burst into tears.”
“A) I’m not your boyfriend,” Dingo said as he pulled into the nearly empty lot, and parked over by a set of very sad-looking picnic tables. “And B) even if he calls, he’s in San Diego, which is like, a million hours away from here. So I think we have time to stop for a bit and figure out what the fuck.”
She looked at him. “But that’s just it. I keep thinking, What are we gonna do now? and I come up completely blank. Because we die, Ding. That’s what we do. Nelson catches up to us, and we die.”
Dingo broke his stupid rule and pulled her in for a hug.
Maddie closed her eyes, because even this—his arms around her—didn’t make it better.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
“Well, good,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “That’s an excellent place to start when figuring out our Plan B.”
Shayla’s ex lived in a neighborhood similar to hers and Pete’s, but on the other side of town. This street was slightly busier, though, with a heavier flow of regularly passing traffic.
Still, the first thing Pete saw when Shayla pulled up in front of her ex-husband’s house was a little car in the driveway with $12K spray-painted in red on the back window.
“Oh, my God! That’s Tiffany’s Honda!” Shay said.
Pete was out of the car and running toward the house before she’d finished parking.
She was right behind him, though, running up the lawn as he hammered on the front door.
A tall, skinny, teenaged kid—had to be Tevin, he looked a lot like Shay—opened it, his brown eyes wide behind a pair of yellow plastic-framed glasses. He was dressed like he’d stepped from the pages of a magazine. Everything about him from his closely cropped haircut to his sneakers to those glasses screamed high fashion.
“Tevin, thank God!” Shay called as she saw him.
“Is everyone all right in there?” Pete asked.
“Yes…? Hi…?”
The kid might’ve just been reacting in surprise to their urgency, but Pete needed to be sure his questioning tone was meant to be irony instead of some kind of code. “Are you alone in the house—you and Frank?”
“Tevin, where’s Frankie?” Shay breathlessly asked as she joined Pete on the stoop.
The kid pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “He’s doing his homework in the dining room.” He looked back at Pete. “Are we alone? No, Tiff’s still home. She was going to some meeting in San Jose, but it got canceled, whoa, hey!” He laughed as Shayla hugged him, but then released him to go into the house.
“Tiff!” she called. “Tiffany?”
“Hey, Shay! I’m in the kitchen!” a female voice sang out as Tevin stepped back to let Pete in, too.
“I’m Tevin,” the boy said, holding out his hand in greeting as Shay disappeared into the back of the house. “You’re the SEAL from across the street. I mean, not this street, but…”
“Yeah. I’m Pete. Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands—Tevin had long, strong fingers and a very solid grip. He also met Pete’s gaze unabashedly, which was something that many SEAL candidates had trouble doing, and most of them were in their twenties.
“So, that was kinda weird,” Tevin remarked with a smile.
“Yeah,” Pete said as Shay and a young woman came toward them from the kitchen, with Frank—smaller and far less fashion-conscious, with those same big brown eyes—trailing behind them. “Brace yourself. It’s about to get a whole lot weirder.”
Tiffany had been home all day.
The boys had taken the bus from school. Fridays were half-days this session, and classes ended around noon. But they’d stopped for ice cream on their way back to Carter’s. Neither one of them had noticed the vandalized car when they’d arrived around 1:00 P.M.
And while it was entirely possibly for Frank to walk right past something shocking without noticing it, Shay knew there was no way Tevin would’ve not seen this.
So whoever had spray-painted that message onto Tiffany’s back windshield—Two men dressed in black with ski masks and gloves for $500, Alex—had done it some time between 1:00 and 2:30, when Shayla and Pete arrived.
They all stood out on Carter’s front lawn, just gazing at the car. Tiff was pissed. As always, her weave was perfect and her makeup was meticulously done. She was dressed in her trademark skintight pants, heels, and mega-cleavage. It really didn’t matter what color or style her top was—Tiff’s outfits always featured the copious square feet of satiny smooth brown skin from her graceful neck and throat to the tops of her perfect doubleD breasts. If Shayla tried to wear a shirt that low cut, she’d live in constant fear of costume malfunction, yet she’d been with Tiffany while the woman danced and jumped and even lugged groceries in from the car, and not once had she witnessed a nip slip.
“This car is six months old,” Tiffany said. “Six! Months!”
“I’m so sorry,” Peter said, not for the first time.
Tiff turned her annoyance toward him. “Did you do it, Lieutenant? No, you did not. So stop apologizing!”
Shayla turned to Pete, too, and found him watching her, which was nice because most men tended to be unable to look away from Tiffany. “We might’ve just missed them. Do you want to take my car and drive around the neighborhood, see if they’re still in the area—maybe in a big black truck?”
Peter shook his head. “I’m not leaving you here without protection.” He reached out to pull something from her hair—yup, it was a piece of mulch from his front flower bed.
Point taken. She turned back to Tiffany. “Come with us. It scares me that they knew this address. That they knew you and Carter are connected to me, and that I’m connected to Peter and…We’re going to have round-the-clock guards back at my house—Navy SEALs. So please, stay with us, at least until Carter gets home.”
Tiffany looked at her car, and then back at Shayla, her brown eyes narrowing. “Navy SEALs?”
Shay nodded. And Tiff went inside to pack a bag.
Tevin was friendly despite their weird introduction, but Shay’s youngest son, Frank, was not happy at the news that, over the course of just a few days, his mother had started dating Pete.
“So, Pete, your daughter’s a hot mess,” the kid said as Pete unlocked the trunk of Shay’s car, so the two boys could load in their backpacks.