“God, you’re a douchebag!”
“I’m the douchebag?” The man suddenly seemed to expand and get taller and broader. “I’m the douchebag? Said the pathetic little man-boy who messes with children?” He reached for the phone. “Deal’s off, I’m calling the police.”
Fuck! Dingo ran for the door.
“Yeah, run, run, as fast as you can, pathetic little man-boy!” his future self called mockingly after him. “But you can’t run fast enough, because wherever you go, there you are! Give my love to your sister!”
Dingo jumped into the car, turned it on with a roar.
Maddie was startled. “What happened?” she asked as he pulled out of the parking lot with a spray of gravel.
“They don’t take cash,” he said flatly.
“What? Who doesn’t take cash? Wait, we should try someplace else—maybe one of the smaller motels…Where are you going?” she asked as he blew past both the Desert Flower and the Ride On Inn, heading south on 395. “Dingo!”
“It’s you, all right?” he said. “The guy took one look at you, and said he was calling the police. He looked at you, and then he looked at me, and just like the entire rest of the motherfucking world, he thinks I’m a loser and a creep. So, no, I’m not going to try someplace else, thanks.”
“I want a shower!” Maddie said.
“I fucking know that you fucking want a fucking shower!” he shouted back at her. “I’m gonna get you your fucking shower at a place where I won’t be arrested, and then I’m going to bring you to your father and be done with you! For once and for all!”
“You said you love me,” she whispered, and when he glanced over, her eyes were filled with tears, her face aghast in the dim glow from the dashboard’s light.
Dingo hardened his heart as he blasted toward his parents’ house in Van Nuys—the one place he knew he could get her cleaned up without having to run a gauntlet of shame, derision, or scorn. His folks were out of town—his mother had emailed to let him know.
“There are limits, love,” he told Maddie quietly. “To everything. And I think I’ve finally hit mine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Saturday
“Can you imagine it?” Shayla murmured.
“No,” Peter said. “I can’t.”
They’d woken up before dawn, showered, had breakfast, and then climbed into Peter’s truck—but there was still no word from Maddie.
A brief text to the girl—We’re awake—also got no reply.
So, as the sun rose, they’d driven the last few miles north to Manzanar, and just as it was promised on the former internment camp’s website, the gates were wide open. Admission was free—as it rightfully should be for a National Historic place of shame.
They’d driven through—the visitor center and barracks wouldn’t open until later—to the cemetery where they’d been told that Maddie had been, just a day earlier.
The mountains in the distance were beautiful but starkly forbidding. Shay and Peter stood there, in the middle of that flat desert plain, with the mostly barren earth stretching as far as the eye could see.
Shayla looked around them, doing a full 360. She was going to come back here, with the boys. Rent a van, bring as many of their friends as they could fit and…
Her phone buzzed. Yes!
“It’s Maddie!” she told Peter. “She texted, We won’t go to San Diego. In LA. Oh, my God, they’re in Los Angeles? That’s hours from here!” They both started to run toward his truck, as she finished reading, “Will text soon with place to meet.”
As they climbed in and Peter started the engine with a roar, he said, “Text her back and tell her not to go to Dingo’s parents’ house in Van Nuys!”
“Oh, I’m on it,” Shay said, doing just that.
“Why would they go all the way back to LA?” he muttered as he tried to call Maddie’s cellphone directly, even as he broke the speed limit leaving the compound.
But the girl didn’t pick up. There was no response to Shay’s text, either, so Peter punched in Izzy Zanella’s phone number.
“Good morning, Away Team,” the big SEAL’s cheerful voice filled the truck cab. “Did you have a pleasant stay at the lovely sounding Desert Flower Mo—”
Peter cut him off. “Where are you?”
“In Shay’s kitchen, with Hiroko. Uh-oh. With the frying pan. That sounds disturbingly Clue-like. I hope I’m not the murder vic—”
“Who else is over there?” Peter demanded.
“Lopez and Jenkins. All three of us are here for the day. Assuming Lindsey’s baby behaves. If she pops, Jenk’s going with her, of course, but that’s okay because Boat Squad John just called in. Their dive was canceled, so they’re on their way. I plied them with the promise of pancakes.”
“I need you to go to Van Nuys, to the Dinglers’, ASAP. Take Seagull, Hans, and Timebomb, if they get there in time, if not, just get up there.”
“Lieutenant, it’s your lucky day. They just pulled up.”
“Go,” Peter ordered. “Now. Call me when you’re on the road. Oh, and Z? Cowboy up.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Peter punched off the connection.
“We should call Dingo’s parents,” Shayla said. “I’ve got the number. It’s early, but…” She input it into the dashboard’s Bluetooth screen.
Peter nodded, so she pushed the button that would dial the call, and as it rang, she said, “Maddie said LA, not Van Nuys. It’s possible that Dingo has friends in the city. His parents’ house, in the suburbs, is probably his last choice in terms of places to go.”
“Unless she said LA because she didn’t know how to spell Van Nuys,” Peter countered as the line continued to ring.
“And then there’s that,” Shay had to agree.
The landline was ringing and ringing and ringing. Who even had a landline anymore? And wasn’t it overkill to put an extension—fully corded—in the bathroom?
Maddie stood naked in front of the mirror in the shitty bathroom of Dingo’s parents’ shitty little house, using a hair dryer to attempt to dry the underwear she’d rinsed out in the sink while she was in the shower.
She’d made the mistake of hooking her cellphone into Dingo’s parents’ wi-fi shortly after they’d arrived, and it had instantly begun to install an update to her operating system, which had rendered it useless. To make things worse, the wi-fi was sketchy so the upload was taking forever. For the past twenty minutes, it had been promising her it would be done in eight.
Maybe she’d been sucked into a different dimension.
It had certainly felt that way during the endless drive to Los Angeles.
Well, they weren’t in LA, they were in the Valley—the burbs, north of the city. Dingo wasn’t even close to Australian. He was a Valley boy. Although boys and men probably didn’t get labeled like that. It was probably just the women and girls who were given that meant-to-be-insulting name.