“Whoa,” the SEAL said, quickly fastening his seat belt. “Wow. Thank you.”
“Thisiswhat you wanted, right?Follow that car?” she asked as she jockeyed her way into the faster-moving left lane. Funny how that horrible word,missing,had magically turned him from too-hot-to-talk-to Navy SEAL to far more accessible worried dad.Hotworried dad, sure, but he needed both her help and immediate action, and accordingly her brain had unlocked. “Don’t worry, I’m a good driver.”
She really is.Great. Harry, too, had gotten his voice back.
Of course, the SEAL couldn’t hear him, thank God. “Glad to hear it,” he said as he grabbed for the oh-shit bar, which, yes, made his muscular arm do some very interesting and attractive things to his barbed-wire tattoo. Maybe it would help if she imagined those strong arms holding a baby, except…
Noooo, that doesn’t help at all,Harry said.
Harry was married.Verymarried, to the man of his dreams, she thought pointedly.
He laughed.True, but I’m alsoverynot dead, so…
Shayla hip-checked him out of her head and focused on the task at hand. “Which car are we following?” she asked the SEAL crisply, eyes on the road ahead of her. “Make, model, color…?”
“Maroon sedan. Buick, maybe?” said the real, nonfictional man sitting beside her. His voice had the vowel sounds and musical phrasing of a California surfer. In fact, he sounded a little bit like Luke or Owen Wilson, as if maybe they’d all attended the same SoCal high school. “Older model. Extra large. POS with a peeling soft-top. Don’t stop don’t stopdon’t stop!”
As she watched, the very stale yellow traffic light in front of her turned red, but she jammed down the gas pedal and blasted through it.Missing.If they got pulled over, hopefully the cop would be the parent of a teenager, too.
“How long has your daughter been, you know?” She couldn’t say that awful word, as if it were a snake that might bite her if she acknowledged it.
“Missing?” The SEAL said it in unison with Harry.
“Last time I saw Maddie was yesterday morning,” the SEAL added, “when I dropped her at school. She didn’t come home last night, and when I called the school to check today, apparently she didn’t make it to homeroom yesterday either, so…Yeah. It’s been about thirty-six hours. Jesus.”
“They didn’t call you yesterday when she didn’t show?” Shayla was surprised. She glanced over to find him looking back at her just as the headlights from a passing car lit his face. Eyes, neon blue. Check. But not so much with the twinkle, considering his current case of teenaged-daughter-induced grim.
“They said they did, but no,” the SEAL reported as they both continued to search the traffic for the car in question. “There wasn’t a message on the home lineormy cell.”
Yikes. That was pretty extreme incompetence for the high school administration—a dedicated team that Shayla knew and trusted.
Or,Harry said,Maddie hacked the system and changed her parental contact number.
“She good with computers?” Shayla asked the SEAL.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
If she had hacking skills, he’d definitely know,Harry stated.But really all she’d need is a hacker for a friend. Or boyfriend.
“How old is she?” Shayla asked. The petite, ghostlike, dark-haired, baggy-clothes-wearing girl she’d seen drifting mournfully from the house to her father’s truck early each school day could’ve been anywhere from twelve to eighteen.
“Fifteen,” he reported.
“Mine are seventeen and fourteen,” she told him. “Both boys.”
“Boys,” the SEAL said almost wistfully. “I could probably handle a boy. I understand boys.”
“Girls really aren’t that much different,” Shayla pointed out as Harry said,Nope, nope, nope, too early in this relationship for a feminist diatribe!
What relationship? She was helping out a neighbor. And how wasthata diatribe? Still, all Shayla wanted was to help this man find his missing child, so as she continued to push ahead in the still-thick traffic, she asked the SEAL, “Have you tried tracking her phone? Does shehavea smartphone?”
“Yes to both but she turned off her GPS.”
“Or her battery’s run out,” she suggested.
“Nah, she took her charger.” The SEAL seemed certain of that. But then he acquiesced. “At least it wasn’t where she normally keeps it in her room. As far as her phone goes, I texted and called her nonstop last night when she didn’t come home—right up until she blocked me. I thought about shutting her down, you know, canceling her number, killing her service completely, but…I’m afraid without her phone she’ll be even less safe, so…”
Ooh, he’s a deep thinker. No angry knee-jerking. I like that in a man who can probably kill you with just his pinkie finger,Harry said.
