A cheer went up from inside, along with whooping and scattered applause. And yes, that was definitely Mrs. Quinn saying, “More turmeric, dear! I can barely taste it.”
And then he thought, how abso-fucking-lutely different would it feel to Maddie to come home to this every day, instead of a cold, empty house with a still-angry, too-lonely man sitting grimly in the silent kitchen?
“Jesus,” he said.
“You okay there, sir?”
Pete looked up to see Hans Schlossman up on the roof, standing guard near the fireplace chimney, where he could see both the front yard and the back.
“Yeah,” he told the kid, forcing a smile. “It’s just been a long coupla days. I appreciate your willingness to spend your downtime here, Schlossman. Especially since I know that you know it’s not going to get you any kind of preferential treatment. In fact, I’m gonna have to tell Lieutenant MacInnough to challenge Boat Squad John extra aggressively in the next phase, to make sure there’s no appearance of impropriety.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Schlossman said dryly. “Can’t wait, sir.” But then he realized what Pete had said. “Lieutenant MacInnough? Wait, where are you gonna be?” He quickly added, “Sir?”
But Pete’s cellphone was buzzing in the pocket of his uniform pants, and he held up a finger to Schlossman as he pulled it out. It was Shayla. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey!” she said.
And for a second, with his eyes closed, he was buried deep inside of her as she shattered around him, and Jesus, in just a few short days he’d become completely addicted.
“Where are you?” she asked, excitement in her voice, bringing him back to here and now. “Are you still at the Navy Base? Are you in your truck? Are you—”
“I’m back. I’m actually standing in your front yard.” Shay’s needs took priority over breaking the news to Schlossman that Pete would probably not be further involved in the rest of Boat Squad John’s BUD/S training, so he headed for the front door.
But she beat him to it, bursting her way outside, the screen door slapping closed behind her, before she even hung up her phone.
“She texted!” Shayla told him as she danced down the front steps. “Peter, Maddie texted me! She wants to meet; she wants to talk!”
“Oh, thank God!”
“But not until tomorrow,” Shay said, “except Lindsey made contact with Fiona’s mother, and well, I’m pretty sure I know where they are. Maddie and Dingo. And I think we should go there. I don’t think we should wait until morning.”
Pete looked over at the house—the windows were filled with watching faces. Tevin. Frank. Hiroko. Tiffany. Seagull and Timebomb. And yeah, even Mrs. Quinn. The only one missing was Lindsey, who probably hadn’t been able to push herself up and off of the couch.
“Where are they?” he asked Shay, but it was the crowd in the house who answered in unison.
“Manzanar!”
Shay brought Peter into her bedroom.
Oh, honey, if only…
“Shh.”
“Hey, good, you’re back!” Lindsey was sitting up, supported by pillows, on Shay’s bed. Shay had moved her in here after it got too noisy in the living room. She’d needed a door that closed as she’d talked on the phone, and a seat more comfortable than the desk chair in Shay’s home office. So the bedroom it was.
He likes it in here.
And yeah, Shay was hyper-aware that Peter was in her room for the first time, and as she looked around she saw it as he did—with its bright white-painted furniture and soothing blue walls. Mexican tile floor. King-sized bed. Private bath. Super comfy reading chair that was big enough for two. Provided the two liked each other significantly.
“Fiona’s mother finally called you?” Peter asked.
“I called her,” Lindsey said. “After I saw the police report.” At Peter’s obvious confusion, she looked at Shay.
“He just got here,” Shayla told the woman. “All he knows is that I think Maddie’s at Manzanar.”
“Okay, Lieutenant,” Lindsey said as she looked up at Peter. “Full sit-rep. Right after you left for your meeting in Coronado, I ran another search through the system and discovered that the police in Sacramento just posted a B&E report for Fiona’s mother’s address. It happened this morning. The two perps: one male and one female. The homeowner—Maisy Clark, aka Fiona’s mom—described the intruders as a scruffy man, thin, average height, white, in his early twenties and a teenage girl, petite, of Asian descent. So definitely Maddie and Dingo. They also knocked on the mother’s door this morning, looking for Fiona, who apparently has been—and I quote—sent away to boarding school. Later, the mom went out, but came home to find the same two had gained entry via a house key and were fleeing the premises.”
“Was anything stolen?” Peter asked.
“Not that the mother knows of, no,” Lindsey said. “But several books had been moved in Fiona’s room, and one of them had the inside pages cut out. You know, a stash-hole.”
“Fuck,” Peter said.
“So, I called the mom again, and left a message telling her I was a private investigator working on a runaway teen case, which is not untrue, and that her description of the girl who broke and entered was similar to the girl I was looking for, and could we please talk?” Lindsey nodded at Pete. “She finally called me back. She’s actually really nice, but definitely exhausted both by her bullshit ex-husband and her drug-addicted—her words—daughter. I sent her a photo of both Maddie and Ricky Dingler—aka Dingo—and she gave me a positive ID. Maddie and Dingo were in Sacramento this morning.”
“They must’ve driven all night,” Shay murmured to Peter. “After the earthquake.”
Lindsey nodded. “Shay told me that you guys got a text from Maddie right after last night’s quake—which means they had to be close enough to San Diego to have felt it. But they were definitely in Sacramento at ten A.M.” She smiled at Peter. “Ten hundred hours for the SEALs in the room.”
Peter was already processing the information he’d received. “So Fiona’s already off at some boarding school. Do we know where? And isn’t it likely Maddie and Dingo would go there, to get whatever it is that they think she has?”
“Longfield Academy in Roanoke, Virginia,” Shayla told him. “It’s a lockdown facility—really more of a rehab center than a school.”
“It’s for rich kids with addictions.” Lindsey put it more bluntly. “I called their head of security and asked them to watch for Maddie and Dingo. She promised to give me a call if they show.”
“But we don’t think they’re going to Virginia,” Shay said. “We think they know that they’ve gotten everything they’re going to from Fiona.”
“Her mom told me that she and her husband found drugs in their house. She believes Fiona brought them with her, from San Diego,” Lindsey reported. “The mom wasn’t helpful when it came to what kind of drugs, or quantity. She was really freaked out when she found them, and she just flushed them all. So it’s hard to say if there were twelve thousand dollars’ worth. Or eleven or ten or whatever the value was before the interest rate went up.”