One of the skinheads laughed as they carried her out of the bathroom. “Dude, we’re in Van Nuys. We could have her make us lunch and give us all blow jobs and we’d still be outta here before the police showed.”
“Oh, no, no, I wouldn’t…do that.” Dingo was in the kitchen. He’d changed into a pair of black cargo pants and a Superman T-shirt, his hair slicked back—still wet from his own shower. He was holding on to his cellphone, as if the door-kicking-in had bored him so much that he’d spent the time scrolling through his Twitter feed. If Maddie could’ve, she would’ve incinerated him with her eyes. “Keep your distance, mates. I’m peeing knives. I’m pretty sure she gave me gonorrhea.”
Maddie bit the man through the glove.
“Fuck!” He yanked his hand away, but then smacked her in the face.
Her ears rang, but her mouth was free. “I hate you, Dingo! You’re a liar! He’s lying!”
He was lying.
He was lying.
Oh, my God, Dingo was lying!
Time froze and the world seemed to move in slow-mo as she looked directly into Dingo’s eyes, and he widened them slightly—just a little—just enough, even as “I did not give him gonorrhea” came shrieking out of her mouth. And she instantly realized why he’d said that—so that they’d think twice about touching her—so she screamed, “He gave gonorrhea to me,” before the third man—the guy with the dead eyes who drove the black truck—slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth.
“Punch her lights out if she keeps fighting,” he said, and she forced herself to calm down and stop resisting, although God, that was hard to do. Still, she knew that if they hit her hard enough to knock her out, she’d have an even smaller chance of surviving this.
“Tie her up,” Dead-Eyes ordered, and one of the men who was holding her must’ve been carrying a rope, because her arms were forced behind her, and she felt it going around her hands and cutting into her wrists.
Dingo cleared his throat. “We should go,” he said. “I’m sure Mr. Nelson’s waiting.”
Dead-Eyes peeled a few bills off of the wad of cash that Dingo had obviously given him—from Fiona’s room. He held it out to Dingo. “Dude, your job is done. You’ve gone way above and beyond.”
Dingo looked affronted. “You’re kidding, right? That won’t even cover the costs of the walk-in clinic. I spent money on gas and food and…No, dude, I’m going with you. I’m pretty sure there’s a real reward coming, and I’mma make sure Mr. Nelson gives it to me.”
And with that, Maddie was sure. Or at least mostly sure. There was no way Dingo would willingly do a face-to-face with Nelson, was there? He was coming along so that he could try to save her, wasn’t he?
But when the skinhead pushed her to get her to move faster and she tripped and fell onto her knees, they all laughed, and Dingo laughed, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Sir, it’s not good,” Izzy’s voice came over the truck’s Bluetooth. He, Seagull, Timebomb, and Hans had arrived at the house in Van Nuys.
Pete didn’t expect it to be good.
In fact, the news just kept getting worse.
He and Shay had been driving for an hour when Lindsey first phoned to tell them that a 9-1-1 call had come in from the Dingler residence, and that the Van Nuys police had arrived to find the place deserted. There were, however, both signs of a break-in and of some kind of struggle inside of the house.
No one had been able to give them more details—like, was there blood? Had someone been killed, and the body removed? Or had Dingo and Maddie merely broken in themselves, and then had a food fight?
Lindsey tried to make a human connection, but the Van Nuys Police Department was still recovering from a very busy night, and she kept getting put on hold.
Another hour had passed as Pete pushed further west. He was still a good hour away from Van Nuys, but Izzy’d apparently made the trip up from San Diego in record time.
“Izzy, be specific,” Shayla said now. “Is there blood or any other evidence that Maddie’s been badly hurt?”
“No blood at all,” Izzy reported, and Pete breathed for the first time in an hour. “But the bathroom door was kicked in. It’s splintered. There was a phone—a landline—in there. I’d bet my retirement fund that’s where the nine-one-one call originated. Other than the bathroom door, only thing broken’s a pane of glass in the back door—it opens into this little mudroom-slash-laundry-room.”
“Is that how Dingo and Maddie got into the house, or…?”
“I’m betting that was our bad guys. I think Team Dingo had a key. We found two big boxes of food in one of the bedrooms with a note—just a simple I love you. Looks like a care package for our man Dingo, from his mommy. I’d bet your retirement fund that he uses the house at his mom’s invitation, when she and Mean Daddy are away.”
“Wait, they’re away?” Pete asked. “I thought they were home.”
“RV’s gone,” Izzy said. “So unless the bad guys took it along with both parents, too…? Yeah, I’m not feeling that.”
Shayla spoke up again. “Did you find any proof that Maddie was actually there?” she asked. “I mean, we don’t know for sure—we’re assuming it.”
Pete knew she was still hoping that this was a bad coincidence, that LA was a big place, and that they were going to get a text from Maddie asking them to meet at a Starbucks in Hollywood.
“Yeah,” Izzy said. “That’s the really not-good part of what we found here. There were clothes in the washing machine. And Schlossman is dead certain that the girl-sized jeans and shirt that we found in there are what Maddie was wearing when he talked to her outside of the Seven-Eleven on Tuesday afternoon. And…”
“There’s an and?” Pete asked.
“Seagull and Timebomb searched the immediate area and found this car, next street over. Texting the photo to you, Shay.”
Her phone whooshed, and she opened the photo, expanding it to reveal…
Pete glanced over.
“That’s definitely Dingo’s car,” Shay told Izzy. “Well, okay, then.”
“There’s one more thing, sir,” Izzy told them, and his voice was unusually somber, “and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Lindsey called me and I said I’d pass the bad news along.”
“Oh, no,” Shay murmured. Somehow she knew—or guessed—what was coming, but Pete had no clue.
“What?” he said. “Jesus, just tell me.”
“Daryl Middleton didn’t make it,” Izzy said. “His head trauma was too severe and, well, he died about a half hour ago.”
Peter’s response to the enormous pile of bad news was to drive even faster.
Shayla wasn’t sure exactly what he was rushing toward, since they had no idea where Maddie and Dingo had been taken. Their hope of getting information from Daryl had also tragically died with the young man.
And then there was the fact that Maddie had been grabbed by killers. It was bad enough when the bad guys had only been drug dealers and thieves.