Peter sighed. “Sorry. Still nothing from Maddie?”
“Not yet. She’ll contact us. I know it. Just give her time.”
He nodded.
“You know, your friends are amazing,” Shayla told him.
“Teammates,” he corrected her.
Did he honestly think…? “Lindsey’s not a teammate.”
“She’s a teammate by marriage,” Peter said. “And yeah, everyone’s really stepping up. Theyaregreat. And speaking of the Team, I’m sorry, but I have to go over to the base. I won’t be long, but I really need to do a face-to-face with my CO. Are you gonna be okay here?”
“You know it,” she said. “If trouble shows up, Hiroko will kick everyone’s ass.”
He laughed and kissed her again. “With her sidekick, Tiffany.”
Shayla laughed, too. “We’re good here. We’re safe. We’re in extra-safety mode. You know how I know?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded, his eyes doing that sparkling thing she’d loved right from the start. “Because no one’s getting any.”
“That’s right. Safety over sex. Hoo-yah! Isn’t that also what you SEALs say?”
“Hoo-yah,” he agreed as he followed Shay back inside. “Yeah. But generally not about…that.”
Dingo had put his foam mattress under the picnic table so that Maddie could curl up there, in the improvised shade, in the otherwise relentlessly barren Manzanar National Historic Site parking lot—and she’d fallen fast asleep.
He sat in the passenger seat of his car with all the doors opened wide, and he watched her for a while. People generally looked younger while they slept, and she was not an exception to that rule.
She looked maybe twelve.
Which wasn’t that much younger than the fifteen that she really was. And yeah, yeah, Juliet was fourteen or whatever, but back in Shakespeare’s day, thirty was considered old age. Also, Romeo wasn’t twenty.
Or a loser whose parents had kicked him out.
He reached for her phone—she’d shut it off and stashed it in the cupholder—and as he watched her gently breathing, he turned it on.
He knew her screen lock code—4242—not that she’d shared it, but she certainly hadn’t tried to hide it from him, either. And as the phone powered up, he both silenced it and covered it. He had no intention of looking through her personal messages—she’d gotten about a billion texts since she’d shut the thing off. He had one goal here: open up a line of communication to Maddie’s dad.
He sent a text. Not to her father, but to her father’s girlfriend. Shayla.Can we set up a time and place to meet and talk? Not just dad, but you, too?
He didn’t know Maddie’s dad aside from that one encounter in the mall garage, but his own father was way less of a douche when his mother was around. Having Shayla present could well make it easier for Maddie. At least he hoped so. He pushedsend,and the text whooshed away.
The response came back almost immediately.
Yes! Say when and where, and we’ll be there!
Dingo looked at Maddie, still sound asleep beneath that table, and he almost typedNow, in Manzanar, but he wasn’t quite ready to betray her that absolutely. And shewouldsee this as a betrayal.
So instead he input both the number forShaylaand the number for“Dad”into his own phone. Just in case, after getting some rest, Maddie failed to recognize that the time had come for a full surrender.
And then he typed,Too tired to talk right now. Will text tomorrow w location. Still safe.
After he hitsend,he turned Maddie’s phone off and put it back into the cupholder. Then he, too, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Pete’s meeting at the base went about as well as could be expected, considering he’d been informing his CO that he was considering resigning his commission. Maddie needed her father, and this temporary leave he’d arranged was almost up.
Commander Koehl had immediately offered to extend it. The Navy didn’t want to lose Pete.
