“It’s okay, Mads,” Dingo said in his lilting accent as he took her heavy backpack off her shoulder. She tried to hold on to it, but he gently pried her fingers free. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The skinhead with the intricate neck tattoo said, “Mr. Nelson would like the pleasure of your company.”
Maddie wasn’t an idiot. She knew that the dead last thing she should do was get into that big black truck—talking to Nelson while standing outside of it was one thing—but somehow before she could open her mouth to scream, the man with the neck tattoo and his buddy with the nose ring had hustled her over there, with Dingo trailing behind, still holding her pack.
Nelson had gotten out so that when they pushed her up into the cab she was sandwiched between him and the XXL driver, a man she recognized because his younger clone was some big deal football-playing asshole at the high school.
As soon as Nelson slammed the door shut, the big driver jammed his truck into gear, and they were zooming away from the school.
The skinhead twins and Dingo were riding in the bed of the truck, so at least they were going wherever she was, but that didn’t make it any better. Especially when she turned to look through the back window, and realized Neck-Tattoo was rifling through her backpack.
“Hey!” she said, but then Nelson got her full attention when he put his fat-fingered hand on her knee and let it slip down to the inside of her thigh. She was wearing jeans, but still it was disgusting.
She jerked her leg away. “Don’t touch me, Grandpa! Stupid, back there, who apparently isn’t above stealing my lunch money, said you wanted to talk? So talk already.”
Fiona had told Maddie that Nelson imagined himself to be San Diego’s version of Walter White, like from Breaking Bad, but he wasn’t even close. He had graying hair and a mustache that didn’t do much for his too-fleshy face. He had a beer belly and bad breath, and he wheezed when he laughed. And he laughed now at her words.
“Feisty,” he said. He leaned across her to tell the football player’s older clone, “I like her.”
“I’d like her better naked, with my dick in her mouth,” the clone said as he looked down at her with his weirdly dead-seeming pale gray eyes. “I bet she’s good at that.”
That coldly appraising look he gave her actually scared her, but she covered her fear with an enormous disgusted eye roll. “I hope you also like vomit,” she said before turning to address Nelson directly. “I have a math test to study for. Is this bullshit going to take long?”
“Won’t take long at all,” Nelson assured her, “if you’ve got Fee’s money, honey.” He wheezed at his stupid rhyme, as if it was some kind of world-class joke.
“Fee’s money? What money?” Maddie asked, and Nelson made tsking sounds as again he spoke over her to tell Dead-Eyes, “I told you she was going to say that, that she was going to be all what-the-fuck.” He fluttered his hands in the air, as if imitating her, except she hadn’t moved her hands at all.
“You did, boss,” Dead-Eyes said.
“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maddie said. “I don’t even know you. All I know is you’re some kind of friend of Fiona’s—”
“Fiona’s business associate,” Nelson corrected her. “Fee had to leave town unexpectedly. She said she gave you the money she owes me.”
“What? No!” Maddie shook her head. “I mean, maybe she meant to leave it with me if she told you she was gonna—” she didn’t want to get Fee into trouble “—but something must’ve happened, and…she didn’t. I haven’t seen her since Friday. Seriously.”
“She’s serious,” Nelson told Dead-Eyes. He turned to Maddie. “You are Maddie Nakamura.”
“Yeah,” Maddie said. “But I don’t—”
“Fiona said she gave it to you on Friday,” Nelson said. “In cash.”
Dingo was now holding on to Maddie’s backpack in the bed of the truck, and she glanced back at it and him as she tried to remember how much money she’d brought to school. She was pretty sure she only had four dollars left in her wallet after the tragedy that was today’s lunch—assuming the skinheads hadn’t stolen it—but she had another forty-seven hidden in the pages of The Wind in the Willows on the bookshelf in the bedroom of the bungalow. The last thing she wanted to spend it on was paying off stupid Fiona’s stupid debts to her stupid drug dealer, but if she had to…“How much does she owe you?” she asked on a heavy sigh.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Maddie nearly choked. “Ten thousand…?”
“She said her aunt kicked her out and was sending her home to her mother. She said she stopped at your house and dropped off the cash on her way to the airport,” Nelson told her.
“But she didn’t,” Maddie insisted. “Or, if she did, she dropped it when I wasn’t there—”
“She said you were.”
“You must’ve misunderstood or…or…somehow gotten the message wrong or—”
“I’ll play it for you—her message—so you can tell me exactly how I got it wrong.” Nelson had his phone hooked into the Bluetooth in the truck, and as he thumbed through his voicemails and hit play, the speakers clicked on.
And yes, that was Fiona’s voice coming through with crystal clarity. “So my fucking bitch aunt kicked me out for good. She’s shipping me home tonight, and there’s not enough time to come over to say goodbye. In fact, I’m on my way to the airport right now. I managed to stop at Maddie’s house. Maddie Nakamura? Remember, I told you about her, you met her, and you said she was cute? Well, I left what I owe you with her—I had to, I didn’t have another option. But I put it into her cute little hand and she promised me she’d give it to you on Monday morning, but heads up, she’s wily and a pathological liar and you might have to chase her. Tell Dingo sorry. Oh, wait—” she laughed “—I’m not sorry. Tell him I hope he eats shit and dies. Have a nice life!”
“She was lying,” Maddie said, her head spinning. Wily and a pathological liar…? She no longer felt the need to protect Fiona. “She’s the liar—”
“She’s never lied to me before,” Nelson said.
“Well, she’s lying now,” Maddie insisted. She turned in her seat to look again into the truck bed where Dingo was sitting. “Dingo knows her even better than I do. Why would she leave that much money with me instead of her own boyfriend?”
“Because Dingler was otherwise occupied all day on Friday,” Nelson told her. “She tried, but she couldn’t reach him. And since you’ve been working with her for a while now—”