It’s very, very not good.
For the first time in a while, Harry was back.
Peter’s SEAL friend Izzy was standing silently beside them. He’d shown up as the fire truck was pulling away, as Peter, Shay, and Mrs. Quinn were all giving their statements to the police.
It takes a lot to silence that one,Harry commented as he glanced at Izzy, and Shay nodded. Yeah.
Of course Izzy’s current silence might’ve been due to the awkward fact that he’d walked right into Shayla earnestly telling both the police and Peter that she wanted to be completely honest about why they hadn’t heard the two men approaching the house while they were in the garage “sorting through boxes,” as Peter had reported. She appreciated his attempt to be discreet, but she was a grown woman, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with what they’d done. They weren’t in public, they were in the back of the garage in essentially a separate room created by the stack of boxes and, yes, they’d been having an “intimate relationship moment.”
At the time, Izzy had coughed, probably to cover a laugh, but Shay hadn’t needed to look at the man to know he’d been thinking,I knew it!
He thought you guys were gettin’ it on before you were getting it on,Harry pointed out now.Kind of like life imitating art.
“Not even close.” And yup, she’d just said that aloud. Thanks, Hare.
“What does it mean?” Peter asked. “I mean, whatcouldit mean, besides the obvious?”
“I’m not sure I know what the obvious is.” Izzy finally spoke. “Aside fromprank, which nah, I’m not buying.”
The police had suggested that the entire incident was little more than a high school prank run amok. Maddie was obviously dealing with some personal issues, and had “no doubt” run into trouble at her new school.
“Those weren’t kids breaking in to prank her,” Peter said again. He’d said it a lot while the police were still there. “Those were men.”
“Big men.” Shay glanced at him. “I, um, didn’t tell the police this, because it didn’t seem all that relevant, but after my personal creepy assailant threatened me, I told him I was, um, an FBI agent, and that he was under arrest. Sadly, he did not comply.”
Peter managed a wry smile as he looked down at her. “Still. Nice try.” He looped his arm around her shoulder to pull her in even closer.
You didn’t tell the po-po because you thought maybe impersonating a federal agent might be a crime,Harry pointed out.For the record, if you’re flinging handfuls of bullshit around in order to defend yourself from physical harm, as you were in this case, it’s not an issue. But say you go around telling old Mrs. What’s-Her-Name that you work for the FBI,that’swhen your problems get real.
Izzy was laughing, too. “Grunge, my man, your woman is a keeper.”
Awkward.
“That one man,” Shay said, bringing the conversation back on topic. “The first man. We saw him without his ski mask. He was not a teenager. In fact, I would bet my life on the fact that he had gray in his stubble.”
But she’d made the mistake of reporting, with perhaps too much detail, that the man who’d assaulted her had lowered his body mass to hit her where it would be most effective—very much like a football linebacker. Whoever he was, he’d played football, probably in his high school glory days. But the police had taken that and gone with the theory that he played high school footballnow.
It was easy, while under stress, they’d said, to get a lot of details wrong. A flash of a face before a mask got pulled down could be deceptive. Most of the time, witness reporting was inaccurate.
“I’m a Navy SEAL,” Peter had said flatly. “I’m trained to get the details right.”
At that point the two police officers had exchanged a knowing glance, and Shay knew they were thinking,But dude, you’d just had sexin your garagewith the cougar-next-door. It was likely your brains were still scrambled.
Damn it. She should’ve kept her mouth shut.
“Theobviousis that it’s an invoice,” Shay said now, pointing back to the writing on the wall. “Or more accurately, a payment due notice. And whatever it was before, it’stwelvethousand dollars now.”
“What costs twelve thousand dollars in high school?” Izzy asked. “When I was a kid, those fancy Trapper Keeper notebooks—even theStar Warsones—were only twelve ninety-nine.”
“Drugs,” Peter said tightly.
“I don’t know, man,” Izzy said. “That’s a lot of weed. Twelve K is more the price tag of a mafia-style hit.”
Peter turned to him. “Z. Please.”
“Sorry.”
Unless it’s not just weed, and Maddie’s actually dealing,Harry said.Cocaine, meth, ecstasy…These days, biggest money’s in oxy.
