Ready to Roll

by Suzanne Brockmann

  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 was that a 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 she have a smart phone?”

  “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.

  “Also,” the SEAL continued as he glanced at Shayla again with those ocean-colored eyes, “this way I can still use someone else’s phone to text her. Although she’s already blocked Zanella—a teammate of mine, and Eden, his wife. But I figure Maddie can’t block everyone I know, right? There!”

  He’d spotted the maroon car. “Where?” Shayla searched the traffic but she couldn’t see it.

  “Five cars ahead, right lane,” the SEAL told her. “Damn it, they’re turning!”

  And she was still in the left lane. “Hold on!” Luckily there was no one directly behind her so she hit the brakes hard and waited for the line of traffic in the right lane to open up before stomping on the gas and taking that same right turn with squealing tires.

  “Nice,” he said. “Thanks. You are good.”

  “If your daughter’s in that car, then we are going to find her.” It was the kind of dramatic but heartfelt line that Shayla usually let Harry say in one of her books. It felt a little weird coming out of her mouth since, unlike Harry, she was neither courageous nor daring nor a highly skilled FBI agent. But she meant it. Sincerely.

  She could now see the car in question. It was a piece-of-shit, indeed—a barge-like relic from the 1970s. There were two cars and a van between them, but this was a smaller road now, with a single lane in each direction. And there was a lot of oncoming traffic. Although maybe if she timed it right…

  “Don’t even think about it,” the SEAL murmured. “No one’s that good of a driver. Also, I don’t want to get too close in case she sees me and tries to bolt. All I need is some inexperienced kid wrapping that car—and Maddie—around a tree.”

  Smart, Harry murmured as Shay nodded. Have I mentioned I like him?

  “Have you tried calling the parents of her friends?” she asked as they continued their now under-the-speed-limit car chase through this rather charming little neighborhood of tiny homes that had been converted into doctors’ and dentists’ offices, nearly all dark and shuttered at this evening hour. They were relatively close to the hospital and… the mall? She touched the screen of her GPS to see that… Yes, there was a mall not far from here—open until nine at this time of year. If she were a fifteen-year-old rebel, mad at the world, where would she go at 7:10 on a Wednesday night…?

  She glanced up at the SEAL, because he hadn’t answered and her question hadn’t been a hard one.

  He was looking at her again with those blue, blue eyes, and he finally shook his head. “I’m embarrassed because… Well, I don’t even know the first names of any of her friends, let alone their last names.”

  Shayla couldn’t keep her massively heavy judgment out of the disbelieving look she shot him.

  “I know, right?” he said with a heavy sigh. “It’s shameful. But, she just moved in with me so she’s the new kid at school, and she’s in classes with kids way younger than she is because her mom half-home-schooled her—Maddie’s words. I think that means her mother let her cut as the mood struck. Anyway, whenever I push, all Maddie tells me is Everyone hates me, I’ll be in my room. And every time I picked her up at school, she was alone, so… When she said she didn’t have any friends yet, I believed her.”

  “Except, if she’s really in that car up there, she knows someone,” Shay stated the obvious.

  “Yeah, that’s currently pretty damn clear. Jesus, I’m overmatched.” And now his pretty eyes were twinkly, but with bemused disgust and disbelief as he glanced at Shay before turning his attention back to the maroon POS, and a yellow traffic light that was glowing in the distance.

  Congestion at that upcoming intersection was what was keeping their current speed down.

  The yellow turned to red and Shay braked to a stop behind the long line of cars as she again checked her GPS. There was a gas station on the closest corner of the intersection and some kind of fast food place across the street. That could be the car’s destination. Although, if they were going to the mall instead, they would have to take a right at the light. But they were still well back from it.

  The SEAL, meanwhile, was eyeing their distance to the maroon sedan, and she knew he was calculating the time it would take for him to approach it on foot, and deciding whether he could get there before traffic started moving again.

  “Have you checked her social media?” Shay asked as up ahead the light turned green. But seconds ticked by and the traffic still didn’t move and the SEAL swore softly, no doubt thinking he could’ve reached the other car by now. “As a potential source of her friends’ names? Maybe Facebook…?”

  He shook his head. “Maddie hates Facebook. She says she doesn’t even have a page…” He laughed his disgust. “And yeah, that was probably an intentional misdirect so that I wouldn’t keep tabs on her,” he realized. “Wow, I’m really going for Father of the Year here, aren’t I?”

  Shayla glanced at him again as they finally rolled forward, but slowly since the light ahead was already red again. She chose her words carefully. “I’m guessing your stints of solo custody are still new, Lieutenant.” Subtext: the divorce was recent.

  He laughed again at that and said, “Oh, yeah.” And now the maroon sedan was in range of a side street to the left that it could use to escape, so again he stayed in the car. But his frustration was palpable. “Very new. And it’s Peter.”

  She realized she hadn’t introduced herself yet. “I’m Shayla Whitman. We’re neighbors.” She kept both hands tightly on the steering wheel because a handshake at this point would’ve been awkward and weird. “My boys and I live right across the street from you and Maddie.”

  The SEAL was embarrassed again. “You do? Ah, Jesus, I’m so sorry—”

  “Please, it’s more than okay. You’ve obviously been a little preoccupied since you’ve moved in.” She cleared her throat. “At the risk of overstepping my neighborly role, have you…called her mother yet?”

  Just like that, he shut down, hard and fast. “No.”

  Oh, dear. “If it were me,” Shayla said carefully. “I’d want to know. I’d want to help, I’d want to—”

&nb
sp; “Maddie’s mother can’t help,” he said tersely.

  “I know it might feel that way,” Shayla started as the cars up ahead began moving again. But again the light cycled back to red while the maroon sedan was still on their side of the intersection. It was now signaling to make a right—towards the mall, for the win! But it was blocked from doing so by one car in front of it.

  The SEAL—Peter—was sitting forward slightly, watching.

  “We’re okay,” Shayla told him.

  “No, we’re not,” he said as that first car in line started signaling and then made a right on red. “God damn it.”

  And just like that, the maroon sedan turned, too.

  The two cars and the van directly in front of Shay’s car pulled forward but then sat there, essentially locking them in place just a few short yards from the driveway to that corner gas station.

  “Shit!” She hit her horn, but of course no one moved.

  Do it. Harry’s voice was back in her head, absolute in his conviction. Come on, Shay. Go! Trust me, you don’t want to have to watch while a Navy SEAL weeps. They’re known both for acting rashly and for crying like babies, you know, at the least little thing—

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Oops, she’d said that aloud, and now said Navy SEAL was looking at her questioningly. “Don’t,” she repeated, saving her crazy, talking-to-invisible-friends ass by returning to their previous conversation. “You really need to let Maddie’s mother know what’s going on.”

  Meanwhile, Harry was talking over her. Do it, he said again. There’re no pedestrians. Do it, Shay, or you’ll lose them!

  “All right, all right, I’m doing this!” There were no pedestrians in sight, so Shay wrenched her steering wheel toward the sidewalk and hit the gas. Her little car was unhappy about the curb but it was rounded and worn so she finally humped up it and then carefully squeezed between a telephone pole and a row of hedges as the SEAL exhaled his appreciation and surprise.

  But how well would it go, she wondered, when she informed the police officer who pulled her over that she only drove on the sidewalk because a fictional FBI agent had insisted that she should?

  Not well, Harry agreed, even as the SEAL said, “You’ve got it! Go! Go!”

  Her unorthodox move had brought them to the gas station’s entrance, and she now quickly zipped past the pumps to cut the corner and make the right turn to once again Follow that car.

  It was in the left lane, and she quickly caught up with its ancient taillights. And then, sure enough, they both slowed as the maroon sedan signaled to turn left into the shopping mall’s main parking garage.

  Don’t lose them now, Harry said, again in near unison with the SEAL’s “You got this!”

  And Shayla did have it. She practically piggybacked the sedan as she also took that left with a squeal of tires. Again, the SEAL chuckled at the blaring horn from the oncoming car that she’d deftly cut off. His hands were up over his face, pressing his forehead as if he had a bad headache. But Shay knew he was hiding in case her noisy turn had caught the attention of the maroon car’s occupants.

  Stay with them, Harry ordered—a far easier task now, since the speed bumps in the garage kept the ancient sedan well under the posted limit. She followed it past the first Level Full sign and down a ramp.

  The parking places in this garage were tight, as was the case in most city malls in coastal California. Tight and hard to come by. If this were the Natick Mall back in her beloved Massachusetts, the maroon sedan would’ve already found a spot. But the next level was also full, so they just kept slowly going downward.

  Which was exactly where she didn’t want to be in earthquake-prone California. In the sub-sub-sub-basement of a six story building. Yay! Still, a missing teenaged daughter trumped her earthquake fears, hands down.

  Courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid—it’s acting in spite of your fear.

  Thanks, Hare. “So, how are we doing this, Lieutenant?” Shayla asked briskly. “They park, I block them in? You get out and knock on the window? Hello, is my daughter in there?”

  “Peter,” the SEAL said as they went down yet another freaking level. Finally there was no Full sign, but there were still no nearby spots. “Wow, I don’t know. And, yeah, that’s smart, but… This could get ugly. You know. Loud? Maybe you should just drop me and go.”

  Shay’s heart sank as she looked at him, trying to figure out if he really was merely attempting to spare her the drama—or if there was something going on that he didn’t want her to see.

  Everyone was hiding something, but some secrets were darker than others. Shay had learned that lesson a little too well.

  Still, she kept her voice light. “And later find out that you’re really a serial killer whom I’ve helped stalk his latest victims?” She followed the maroon sedan slowly past the bank of elevators, where there were still no empty spaces. “I don’t think so.”

  The SEAL gave her a look that screamed Are you freaking kidding me? It was pretty clear that this was an officer-to-enlisted look—and no doubt one that had served him well in the past. She, however, was not, nor had she ever been, in the U.S. Navy.

  So it bounced off her as she gazed back at him. “I’m a writer, and I’ve written a lot of serial killer books.” It was a good excuse. Easier to use than the truth, which was that she’d seen just how shitty some people could be—even to those they professed to love. Yeah, he seemed like a nice guy. But monsters often hid beneath nice. And she’d known him what, now? All of twenty minutes?

  “I’m not just going to drop you,” she continued. “I’ve come this far, I might as well drive you and Maddie home. Especially since we’re all going in the same direction.”

  “I’m not going to hit her or hurt her or do whatever other kind of violence you might be imagining,” the SEAL said, seeing through her words to the reality of why she wasn’t going to just leave him there.

  I like him even more now, Harry declared. He could’ve played along, but he didn’t. That’s impressive. You have my permission to have sex with him.

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Shay told the SEAL as the maroon sedan kept searching for a parking spot. “But I’m going through a severely mistrustful phase, and it would be irresponsible of me to not verify that you are, in fact, as great of a guy as you appear to be. I have to admit, I’m still struggling with Why on earth haven’t you called her mother?”

  “Maddie’s mom is dead,” the SEAL told her. “She was killed in a car accident, three months ago.”

  * * *

  Peter knew that he’d screwed up, the moment the too-blunt words left his mouth.

  “Oh, no,” Shayla-his-neighbor’s soft brown eyes widened with shock as she gazed at him from behind the wheel of her progressive-mom-mobile. “Oh my God, Peter, I’m so sorry!”

  At least she’d finally called him Peter instead of Lieutenant, but she’d definitely gotten the wrong idea.

  He sat there in the front seat of her functional, fuel-efficient little car and realized that he was going to have to explain. And Jesus, he’d already told her so much—things he would never have discussed with a stranger under any other circumstances. He hadn’t even told his closest teammates more than a small fraction of the shit that was going down these days with Maddie.

  Most of them were still agog at the fact that he had a daughter in the first place.

  But this woman—Shayla Whitman, his across-the-street neighbor—had taken a risk not just by stopping for him but by chasing the car he was certain he’d seen Maddie climb into. She deserved honest answers, regardless of how hard it was to talk about this.

  “No, I’m sorry, I really should’ve said that earlier,” Pete started, “but—”

  “Oh my God,” Shayla cut him off. “No, Lieutenant, please, I’m the one… I didn’t even consider… I didn’t mean to be so freaking insensitive.” She was really upset, and he was back to Lieutenant. Damn it.

  “It’s okay, really, you didn’t know. I should�
��ve said something when you first asked if I’d called her but…” He tried to explain. “It just… it defines us, you know. Maddie and me. It’s exhausting, and I was trying not to let that into the car—if that makes any sense at all.”

  She reached for his hand, nodding as if she actually understood what he meant. It was weird, because as a general rule, people didn’t dare touch him. Well, women sometimes did, but only when he was hanging out in a bar, clearly welcoming an intimate connection.

  But Shayla didn’t squeeze his hand for very long—there was definitely no sexual subtext in her comfort-from-mommy contact. She even patted him a little as she let him go, saying, “I’m so, so sorry for your loss.” Her sincerity was off the charts and he found himself not just needing to explain, but actually wanting to.

  What was up with that?

  It was probably because he found her mindblowingly refreshing. When was the last time he’d met a woman who was so honest and real—and not already engaged or married to one of his teammates?

  Shayla didn’t just drive a mom-mobile, she actually was a mom, with her curly black hair worn naturally and super-short in—what was it called?—a pixie cut, and a sweet face that was almost completely devoid of makeup. Probably because she was too busy with her crazy mom-life to take the time to put it on.

  Not that she wasn’t pretty enough without it. She was—in a very clean, G-rated, Disney-movie way. She was wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt that were neither meant to feature nor conceal her curves. But she hadn’t simply dressed for comfort. With her gorgeously rich brown skin, bold colors looked good on her and she obviously knew it—no one wore something in that bright of a hue by accident.

  She had lively dark brown eyes and a quick, warm smile in an expressive heart-shaped face. It was the kind of face that gave away everything she was feeling, even when she tried to hide it.

  In fact, earlier, she’d shot him one powerful look of vaguely comical disapproval that had amused the crap out of him, mostly due to the fact that in his job not just as a SEAL officer but as a BUD/S instructor, he rarely received that kind of judgment and attitude from anyone.