Some Kind of Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Yeah, what is up with that face everyone makes?” he called back to her as he filled the coffeemaker and turned it on.

  “It’s a come do me face,” she said. “Which is disconcerting when thirteen-year-olds make it.”

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she called back. “If it’s any consolation, Maddie hasn’t taken any selfies with that expression. She tends to go for the grim glare.”

  “Thank God,” he said as he opened the fridge. He tried to keep it stocked with fresh veggies and fruit—none of which Maddie had touched. “Hey, can you bring that thing and sit in here? I’m suddenly starving. I’m gonna scramble some eggs.”

  As he put the egg carton on the counter near the stove, Shayla appeared in the doorway with Maddie’s laptop in her hands. He was struck again by how effortlessly pretty she was—like a rock garden filled with wildflowers—and Jesus, wildflowers in a rock garden? He obviously wasn’t suffering from mere Dingo-madness. Maybe he was more fatigued than he’d thought. It was one thing to want to get naked and lose himself in an attractive woman—another entirely to start waxing poetic about wildflowers.

  Pete grabbed a pan and turned on the heat for the stove’s front burner. Protein would help.

  “Want some?” he asked, efficiently cracking eggs and tossing the shells into the sink as his neighbor carried the computer toward the center island.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “Coffee’ll do.”

  He purposely turned to watch her walk—to prove to himself that he could do that without looking at her ass.

  Shit. He’d dropped an egg.

  He wiped it up with the sponge as she perched that ass that he was not looking at on one of the stools he’d bought specifically for this counter in this little house. In which he’d hoped to live happily ever after with his daughter. Hah.

  It was then that she gasped. “Found him!”

  “Dingo?” Pete came to look, grabbing the towel to wipe egg from his fingers.

  “Nope. But a close second. It’s Dumber.”

  Pete looked over her shoulder, and yes. That was definitely Dingo’s long-haired, large-bearded friend from the mall garage. Shayla had those photos she’d taken displayed in a second window on the computer screen, for comparison. It was a solid match.

  “His name is Daryl Middleton,” she said. “His profile is pretty sparse, not a lot of photos posted—certainly none of Dingo, at least not that I’ve found yet, but—whoa! Says here he works at the Irish Pub.” She smiled up at Pete, excitement dancing in her dark brown eyes. “That’s not far from here. It’s over near Burgers Plus.”

  “Oh, I know where it is,” Pete said, going back to the stove to turn off the heat under his eggs. His food could wait.

  “Except, oh no!” Shayla said. “There’s a post from last week where he says he got fired. Apparently, he wasn’t there long—and God, it’s like he’s proud he lasted less than a day. I’m gonna Google him…”

  “Even if he worked for just one hour, someone at the Irish knows him. I’m still going over.”

  “Eat first,” she said. “And think twice. Even if the owner is there at this time of night, he or she isn’t just going to hand over a former employee’s personal information to someone who’s not a cop. Let’s give this to Lindsey, because the only Daryl Middletons I’m finding off-Facebook are in their sixties—and none of them live in San Diego.”

  Pete wasn’t convinced, and somehow she knew that. “What if you go over there,” Shayla continued. “And not only do you not get any info, but whoever you talk to calls Daryl and warns him that you’re looking for him, so if Maddie and Dingo actually are at his place, they immediately adios. Plus, if they have any brains at all, they’ll figure out you tracked Daryl to the Irish Pub through Maddie’s Facebook, so they change her password and lock us out of her account. And while it’s not exactly a gold mine of info, it’s better than nothing.”

  Shit. “Yeah, you’re right. That would not be good.” Pete turned the burner back on. “So tell me this: Which one of Maddie’s friends is Middleton connected to?”

  “A girl named Fiona Effable, and oh. Yeah. As I said her last name, well, that’s clearly not real, is it?”

  Effable. F-able. Right. Pete tried not to twitch too perceptively as he absorbed the fact that Maddie had a friend who publicly referred to herself as fuckable.

  “Fiona’s profile says she lives in Sacramento,” Shayla reported, “which is weird, because she and Maddie seem to post to each other a lot. Not lately, but right up until this past Friday. Then, over the weekend and past few days, there’s a lot of Maddie solo-posting to Fiona’s page—messaging her, too, but no response. It’s weird, Maddie keeps asking Can you Macarena? Maybe it’s some kind of inside joke. But she posted it, let’s see, one, two, three…five different times. Last time in all caps.”

  “Macarena, like the dance?” Pete asked.

  Shayla shrugged. “I guess. Do people actually still Macarena?”

  “I prefer the Mashed Potato,” he said, and did a few steps, right there in front of the stove.

  Shayla’s laughter was musical as it rang through the room. “Oh, my God, that was really good. Where did you learn to dance like that?”

  “Lisa,” he admitted. He could feel his face heating. Jesus, when was the last time he’d blushed? “She was really into musical theater so I know a lot of basic steps. Including the Macarena.” He did a bit of the arms, making her laugh with delight again. “Which, yeah, could be an inside joke. Or maybe it’s code.”

  “Could be either,” Shayla said. “Or both. They’re teenaged girls.”

  “How long have they been friends?” Pete wondered. “Can you tell?”

  “Hmm.” She focused again on the computer. “I can’t tell for sure, but…Okay. Yeah. It looks like Fiona and Maddie only started posting to each other about…two months ago.” She looked up at him.

  Pete said the obvious. “When Maddie moved to San Diego.”

  “Maybe Fiona saying she lives in Sacramento’s an intentional misdirect,” Shayla suggested as the coffeemaker burbled its last and went silent. “Kind of like Effable’s not her real name…?”

  “Fiona might not be her real name either,” Pete said, grabbing a pair of mugs from the cabinet and pouring them each a hefty serving. “So what do we do?” Oops, now he was using the word we.

  Shayla didn’t seem to notice—or care—as she shook off his offer of milk and sugar. She, too, drank her coffee black.

  “Take a screenshot of Fiona’s picture and bring it over to the school tomorrow?” Pete continued.

  “Oh, absolutely. Good plan. If she’s local, someone in the front office knows her,” she agreed. “I’ll go over with you in the morning—they know me there. Really well. Mrs. Sullivan—she essentially runs the school—she probably won’t be able to give us Fiona’s info, but I know she’ll be willing to contact her parents for us. In the meantime…I’m texting Fiona’s picture to Tevin and Frank.” She glanced up at him again. “My sons. I’m sending the pix of Dingo and Daryl Middleton, too. And a photo of Maddie, while I’m at it. Might as well see if they know anything.”

  Pete scraped his perfectly crisp scrambled eggs into a bowl, grabbed a fork, and joined her at the counter. “Thank you. So much. Can I ask you to text the photos to Ben Gillman while you’re at it? That’s Eden Zanella’s little brother. He’s a junior at the high school. He might know something, too. He should be in Maddie’s contacts.”

  “Yup, got him,” she said. “No problem. I’m gonna include you and Eden in a group text, though, so Ben’s not just suddenly getting pictures from some weird stranger-lady.”

  She was always thinking. “You’d make a great SEAL,” he told her.

  Shayla snorted. “Yeah, except for the part where I can’t run very fast, my swimming is limited to the dog paddle, I hate the cold, and oh, yeah, I’m afraid of literally everything.”

  “Everything,” he repeated.

  �
�Oh, yeah,” she said. “Tornados—although I’ve never been in one—spiders, earthquakes…I was in the San Francisco quake, in 1989. I had nightmares for years.”

  “And yet you moved to California, home of the earthquake,” Pete pointed out. “Relatively recently, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Carter, my ex, got a steady gig in San Diego. It was either move out here and continue to share custody of the boys, or force them to choose which parent they wanted to live with for the school year. I didn’t want them to have that pressure. And since I can write—or not-write—anywhere…” She shrugged. “Everywhere I go, I make note of the sturdiest-looking door frames and furniture. So if a big truck rumbles past and I suddenly dive under the table, it’s not merely because I want to admire your flip-flops.”

  Pete laughed. “You know, it’s not about not being afraid—it’s about taking action despite the fear,” he pointed out. “That’s called courage.”

  She made that little shh sound before smiling and saying, “Yes, well, lucky for you my fear of being mocked trumps my fear of earthquakes, otherwise I’d be sitting here, courageously wearing my earthquake helmet, and you’d be sitting here trying hard not to laugh at me.”

  He laughed again as he carried his empty bowl to the sink. “Hey, I danced for you. If anyone deserves to be laughed at—”

  She made a giant raspberry sound. “Oh, please, if you expect me to believe that a man as smart as you—an officer and a gentleman—doesn’t know that the majority of women rate straight-men-who-dare-to-dance as an automatic eleven on the hotness scale…” Her voice trailed off and it was her turn to blush—although her gorgeous complexion helped to hide it—because, yes, she’d just called him hot.

  Of course it was then that Pete’s cellphone rang. He’d left it on the counter and he could see the screen. He answered it. “Lindsey, thanks for calling. Shayla’s still here—I’m putting you on speaker. What’d you find?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got nothing yet,” Lindsey said apologetically. “I wanted to let you know that I heard back from my contact, and she’s not gonna be near a computer until tomorrow morning. She guesses it’ll be around oh-eight-hundred at the earliest.”

  Pete reined in his frustration, concentrating on breathing as Shayla let Lindsey know that they’d come up with Daryl Middleton’s name. Lindsey in turn volunteered to ask her friend to run him through the system, too.

  “Regardless, we won’t get any info until tomorrow,” Lindsey repeated. “Try to get some sleep, Grunge,” she added and cut the connection.

  And then, there they were. Sitting and standing in Pete’s kitchen as the realization that he wasn’t going to find Maddie tonight sank down around him. It was night two of her little escapade—night two in which he’d get little to no sleep.

  Shayla must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she said, “There’s really not a whole lot more we can do tonight. I mean, yes, tomorrow morning, first thing, we can go to the school. And I’ll check in with Tevin, see if he knows anyone in the pictures I sent him. Frank’s already texted me. He’s clueless, but I expected that. Ben texted back, too—he’s gonna check with some friends, but he sounded dubious.”

  “What time does the school open?” Pete asked. “I mean the office. I know what time school starts, but how early—”

  “Mrs. S usually unlocks the door around six-thirty,” she told him. “We could leave here as early as six—be there waiting when she arrives—if you could drive me there and back. That way I can leave my car for the boys—I’m pretty sure Carter took his back tonight and…Talking them into going to school at six A.M. will be a hard sell.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, thanks, I’ll take you up on that. That would be great.”

  “And after that, depending on whether we find out where Fiona really lives and if we can go and talk to her or her parents, we could take Lindsey’s suggestion and drop in on Maddie’s great-aunt Hiroko since she lives here in San Diego—see if Maddie’s been in touch. Give her a heads-up, in case Maddie reaches out to her.”

  Hiroko. Right. That was going to be awkward. But Pete kept nodding. “I also want to rent a truck and move everything that’s in the storage space in Palm Springs back here. There’s room in the garage for it—all of the boxes from Lisa and Maddie’s apartment. Having it close’ll make it easier to sift through. I’d like to find their old computer. Maddie said they had a desktop that had tons of photos on it. Maybe Daryl and Dingo are friends from Palm Springs.”

  “I can help you do that,” Shayla said. “And remember, after eight, when Lindsey’s police contact gets access to the computer…Well, it might be as easy as finding out Dingo’s address. We drive over there, we find them…”

  Pete nodded. “To be honest, that’s…terrifying, too.”

  Shayla did the warm-eyes-and-face thing. “I’ll lend you my earthquake helmet.”

  He laughed at that—it was impossible not to.

  She smiled, but then she cleared her throat. “Seriously, though, since I suspect you’re going to have trouble sleeping, may I suggest you do something that might sound…” She was doing her careful-word-choice thing again, and she paused before finishing with “…a little unusual?”

  Pete leaned back against the counter, completely unable to guess where she was going with this. If she’d been anyone else, he might’ve let his imagination run wild, trying to figure out what she was going to suggest from a variety of options including downing a whole bottle of Scotch, to doing yoga or coloring in a meditation coloring book, to having a rousing round of exhaustive and athletic sex—all to help him sleep.

  But she hadn’t disappointed him yet—well, the friend-bombing had disappointed, but in a completely unexpected manner.

  “Suggest away,” he said. “As my parent-of-a-teenager sherpa, my mentor, if you will, I am open to whatever wisdom you’re willing to share.”

  Shayla winced—which was weird, because his words were meant to be complimentary—but she covered it quickly with a smile. “I was thinking about how you said Lisa taught you to dance, and I was wondering if you’d told Maddie anything about that.”

  He shook his head.

  “I think that you should,” Shayla said. “In fact, I said this before, but it’s worth repeating. I really do think it would help if you told Maddie where she came from. I mean, I can tell—just from the little you’ve told me—that you truly loved her mother. Maddie needs to know that. She’d probably appreciate hearing the whole story—how you and Lisa met—the good stuff, when the relationship was shiny and new. Not to throw shade at a woman who can no longer defend herself, but Maddie’s probably heard plenty about the shitty stuff—the breakup.”

  Pete nodded. “That’s a good idea, but…”

  Shayla waited, watching him with those eyes.

  “Assuming I ever find her, I can talk but I can’t make her listen,” he said. “Short of tying her up and going all Clockwork Orange with her eyelids…”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t thinking so much about talking as writing it down and sending it to her. In an email, maybe. That way we don’t have to find her first—which we will—but she can also read it when she’s ready. And? It’ll be something proactive for you to do tonight, if you can’t sleep.”

  Now it was Pete’s turn to wince. “I’m not much of a writer.”

  Shayla smiled again and said the words he’d hoped she’d say: “I’m happy to help.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “There she is! There she is! Get ready to follow her!” Maddie hissed, scrunching down in the front seat of Dingo’s car as they sat parked at the edge of the strip mall where Fiona’s aunt Susan rented a small office. She peeked out over the top of the dashboard, adding with far less certainty, “That is her, isn’t it?”

  Dingo nodded. Yes, the woman tapping her way across the nearly empty parking lot on her ridiculously high heels was indeed Fiona’s aunt Susan. Whose condo Fiona had apparently set fire to Friday last.

  Fee’d
been living with her father’s stepsister since last summer—which was when Dingo’d first met the girl at a rave in Santa Monica. They’d hooked up that same night, and then suddenly she was his girlfriend—which had freaked him out a bit. Fiona was gorgeous, true—if you liked blond girls with big breasts and crazy eyes.

  The breasts had been nice. The crazy eyes, not so much.

  But back when they’d met, she was only visiting for a two-week vacay. So that worked for him, majorly. Except then, suddenly, it was permanent, with Fee moving in with Auntie Susan and enrolling in the local high school for her senior year.

  To be fair, even then, Dingo had been pretty much okay with it. The sex was relatively regular and decent enough despite all the weeping and teeth-gnashing that Fee carried around with her 24/7. But then, a few months ago, she’d introduced him to her new friend Maddie, and…

  For Dingo, it had been love at first conversation. Maddie was not only significantly better read than Fee, but her favorite movies and music didn’t give him a headache from suppressed eye-rolling. Bottom line, though, was her sense of humor. Fee’s idea of funny had a heavy mean streak. Maddie’s, while sometimes dormant due to her mom’s recent tragic death, was delightfully deep and even dark, but never cruel.

  “You don’t need to hide, love,” he told her now as he opened his door. “Susan’s already seen my car and she’s coming over here to—” What? Spit at him? Dingo chose “—chat.” Assuming one could chat at a screamingly high volume. He also suspected Susan was charging over here to grind his face in the fact that Fiona was gone for good. She’d never liked him, but after last month’s incident with the hidden camera, her hatred had gone nuclear and she forbade him from seeing Fee.

  A rule that Fiona had broken repeatedly, since Susan was never home.

  Still, this was gonna suck. Dingo would’ve preferred Maddie stay in the car, but she got out, too—the better to see his impending humiliation.

  Susan opened with a snarling, “What part of Stay the fuck away from me do you not understand, you pervert?”