During the trip, the skinheads and Dead-Eyes had told Dingo that Nelson had another garage out here—and that he was on his way up from San Diego to “deal with the girl.” It was only slightly more remote than his garage in San Diego, but there were far fewer problems with noises that might be overheard by neighbors—because there currently weren’t any neighbors. The recession had left this garage surrounded by empty buildings, on a dead end that didn’t get much traffic.
Dingo had then changed the subject, prattling on about handguns. He was thinking about using his reward money to get himself one. What kind did they have? Did they like it? Could he see?
He sounded like a fanboy, trying to suck up to his personal heroes, and they brushed him off and even mocked him, just like the mean kids in high school.
Maddie had gone back and forth, several thousand times. If he was Good Dingo, he was attempting to get one of them to hand him their gun. At which point he’d use it to free Maddie, steal the truck, and drive to safety.
Or he was Bad Dingo and just another ass-kissing idiot….
They’d pulled up to the garage, and it was as deserted as they’d described.
It was also a piece of shit—it looked as if it was on the verge of falling down. Although the giant garage bay door was working just fine. It went up so Dead-Eyes could pull his truck inside. And it went back down, too.
But as the skinheads pulled her roughly from the truck, she could see bits of blue sky through holes in the roof.
“Over there.” Dead-Eyes pointed to a support pillar, and Nelson’s minions forced Maddie to sit on the cold floor as they tied her to it.
“Please,” she tried to say through the duct tape, “I’m thirsty.” But it came out just a series of weird-sounding whimpers, and it made them laugh.
Dingo laughed with them, but he was looking around, scoping out the place with its dirty and cracked concrete floor, and windows that were up along the roofline. There was some kind of partitioned-off area up in the front corner—maybe an office or a waiting room—with a door that hung ajar.
The walls looked like concrete block and they were far more solid-looking up close.
“Where’s the loo at?” Dingo asked. “I gotta go piss out more fahking knives, before Mr. Nelson arrives. It takes me a good ten minutes to stop weeping after the pain.”
He was still pushing the gonorrhea story. Only Good Dingo had a reason for doing that….
One of the skinheads pointed toward the back, and Dingo swaggered off in that direction, taking a detour that brought him closer to Maddie. He suddenly lunged at her, feinting a punch to her head.
She recoiled and squeaked in surprise and fear as he laughed and stomped his feet in amusement—but then she realized that he’d dropped something next to her. He now kicked her in the butt—or at least it looked that way. But in reality he was pushing it behind her, so that her hands could close around it—
It was a…corkscrew…? Ow! Yes, it was one of the cheap folding kinds. They’d had one in their kitchen, back in Palm Springs. Lisa had loved a glass of red wine after work each night, and nearly always had an open bottle on the counter. The screw itself was pointy, but it was—yes!—the sharp little serrated knife that opened up to help remove the seal and expose the cork that made this a valuable tool for rope removal.
Dingo—Good, good Dingo—must’ve grabbed it from his parents’ kitchen on his way out the door.
As he meandered toward the bathroom—still laughing about “frightening” and then “kicking” her, Maddie pretended to cry as she opened up the little blade and got to work, sawing at her bindings.
According to their GPS, Izzy and his three tadpoles were an hour away.
“More like forty-five minutes,” Izzy’s voice rumbled through Pete’s speakers. “My GPS doesn’t drive like a Navy SEAL.”
“Just get here as fast as you can,” Pete told him, and cut the call. He looked at Shayla. “I hate that you’re here. I need to put you someplace safe.”
“Hot tip,” she told him. “Authoritarian language is not a turn-on. I will go somewhere safe, you will not put me there.”
Fuck. “Sorry,” he said. “The Navy isn’t a democracy, and I’m an officer—”
“And I’m not in the Navy,” she said. “I will never be in the Navy, so you will never be in command of me.” She paused. “Even after I marry you.”
Pete’s world shifted as he met Shay’s eyes, and he exhaled, hard. He’d been starting to wonder if she’d heard any of what he’d said. And yeah, the timing had been dead wrong. They’d been navigating and surveilling furiously, as well as arranging for backup, ever since Dingo’s—had to be Dingo’s—text came in.
“Although, hot tip number two, I do like to pretend,” she added, “so we could—at times—pretend that I’m in the Navy. That could really work for me—particularly if I get to be, oh, I don’t know, maybe an admiral…? You know, after the garage-sex gets boring.”
Pete laughed. “Trust me, the garage-sex will not get boring.” Wasn’t the inherent nature of garage-sex extremely not boring?
“Turn right, here,” Shayla ordered, and he took the right. They were attempting to circumnavigate the building where Dingo’s “run” had ended, and they’d yet to see what was directly behind it. The cell service was weak out here, and neither one of them was able to access a map with a satellite view of the area, so they were surveilling the old-fashioned way.
According to the info that Dingo had sent, he and Maddie were being held in an old mechanic’s garage—a stand-alone concrete block structure with three giant bay doors and a rotting roof. The doors were metal—no windows to look through. In fact, the only windows—at least on the front of the building—were just below the line of the roof. The garage had an ancient gutter system that didn’t look very sturdy. If Pete was going to climb up to get a look inside, he’d have to use a different route—clamber up to the roof, and then lean over to look through the windows.
Unless the back of the structure was more accommodating.
But this turn didn’t help as they bumped into another dead end. “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” Shay said. “The map on the GPS makes it look like the road goes through. Try the next street north.”
Pete swiftly turned around—the road, with its odd mix of warehouses and boarded-up shops, wasn’t wide enough for a U-ie. He headed back the way they’d come, banged a right, and then another right. And yes, this road went through.
But the back of the garage didn’t extend all the way out to this street.
Shayla’s phone whooshed and she grabbed for it. “Another text from Dingo,” she told Pete. “Whoa, it’s a long one.”
She read it aloud: “In danger need help.
“3 men, at least 3 guns, with their boss, Bob Nelson, on his way w his posse. No idea how many men will be arriving.
“NOW IS TIME.
“If something goes wrong, please tell Maddie I loved her.