27

Up the Creek without a Doggy Paddle

“Shit!” Felix threw down an oar, spraying Addison in the process. “We lost them. Goddammit.”

He grabbed the other oar and flung it, sending it flying into the bay. It landed with an unsatisfyingly quiet splash.

It looked like he wanted to rage, to punch something, but they were stuck on the little lifeboat, so he pressed his face into his hands and yelled into them until he turned red.

Addison spun on her bench to face him, her heart breaking to see his pain. This time she couldn’t help but reach out to him and hold his hand. He grabbed it readily and squeezed.

“We might still catch up to them,” she said. “They still have to unload the kennels. That will take time. We’re not too far from shore.” The glow had in fact brightened, the angular outlines of the skyscrapers poking out of the fog above them.

“They wouldn’t be headed back to the Embarcadero,” he said bitterly. “Too many witnesses. They could be headed anywhere.” He kicked the hull of the boat, causing it to rock.

“Maybe Zoe’s contacted the Coast Guard by now. Maybe they’re already searching.” Addison opened her clutch and dug through it to find her phone. “I’ll just call her.”

“Why bother? It’s not like the police have been able to find any of them since they first started to disappear.” Felix’s voice hitched and Addison’s heart lurched at the sound of it.

“But we can just call and see if—”

“What good are they going to do, Addison!?”

Addison flinched, startled by his anger. “Don’t yell at me!” she yelled back. “I’m trying to help!”

“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry. I’m a little on edge. I’ve just lost my daughter, if you haven’t noticed.”

“I know, but yelling at me isn’t going to help get her back. I lost my baby too, you know.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Princess isn’t your baby.”

Addison scowled. “She is to me.”

“It’s a dog, for God’s sake. Not a child,” he said, sounding tired. “If you want a baby then go have a real one.” He stopped and his hands clenched, like he was fighting himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just—”

“Scared,” she said, reining in her anger. “I know. I can’t imagine how awful this is for you right now, but don’t pretend like I haven’t lost anything.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She knew he was only lashing out because he was worried about Naia, but he’d accidentally hit a sore spot. She swallowed her indignation, but hated it when her next words wavered. “And I can’t.”

He lifted his gaze from his feet to look at her in question, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I can’t have kids,” she told him. “I had a hysterectomy when I was twenty-two. Princess is as close as I’m ever going to get to having one.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “So just don’t pretend like I haven’t lost anything today, okay? Because Princess is all I’ve got.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly.

But now she was looking at her own feet, wishing she’d worn closed-toed shoes because the cold bay water was making them ache.

When she didn’t respond, she felt the boat shift as Felix came to sit next to her. He shoved her plentiful skirts aside in order to get close.

“I mean it,” he said. “I’m sorry. Both for what I said, and for what happened to you. I guess there are a lot of things that I don’t know about you either.”

Addison felt the sincerity behind those words and she sank against him. Now that they’d stopped moving, she started to shiver even with Felix’s jacket on. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close to keep her warm.

It was a nice place to be, in his arms, so warm and comforting. Again she felt the loss of something potentially amazing, that she’d missed the boat. Literally and figuratively.

They fell into an anxious silence. Felix fidgeted next to her, ready for action, but there was nothing they could do without knowing where the kidnappers went.

Waves lapped against the side of the boat, rocking them as they listened to the distant sounds of the city. As cold as it was getting in their damp formal wear, neither of them moved or suggested they head for shore, as though that would mean they gave up. If they continued to float for eternity, then maybe they wouldn’t have to admit they were up the river without a paddle, so to speak. If they never went to shore, they wouldn’t have to face the truth or what came next.

They’d been so desperate to not only save the dogs, but also their jobs, their reputations. Those things seemed so menial now that a human life was on the line. And not just any human. The most precious little angel Addison had ever met.

She began to wonder if the thieves even knew she was in Oliver’s kennel. What would they do when they discovered her?

Addison stopped that line of thinking, closing her mind off to any possibility that meant they didn’t succeed, that they didn’t find Naia. Because Addison Turner didn’t give up. She didn’t give up when her business faced total ruin. And it was a hundred times more important that she not give up now.

“There has to be something we can do.” Addison sat straight up in her seat. “Maybe we can call Channel Five and have them fire up the chopper.”

Felix snorted, despite the situation, or maybe because he looked like if he didn’t laugh he might throw himself overboard. “Except that you forget, Holly Hart isn’t exactly on your team right now.”

“For the promise of a good story she might help,” she said doubtfully.

“I shouldn’t have brought Naia,” Felix said. “I should have stayed home. I should have just given up on the reward money and the bar. It’s all meaningless without her.”

“This isn’t your fault,” she told him. “This party was supposed to be safe. Who knew they would go to such lengths to get to the dogs?”

“But I suspected they were going to try something, or else I wouldn’t have come. Charlotte was going to identify who’s been stealing all the dogs.”

Addison shifted on her seat as much as her dress would allow in order to look at him. “Hold on. What? How does Charlotte know who’s behind it?”

He hesitated, his eyes flickering with a wince. “Well, she might have had something to do with it.” He spoke slowly, as though gauging her expression with each word.

“Charlotte stole the dogs?” she asked, but it was barely a whisper.

“She didn’t steal them,” he said. “She just helped. Sort of.” He frowned and pulled a face like even he couldn’t talk his way out of this one.

Addison’s teeth clenched. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

“Well, she didn’t have anything to do with the cocktail mixer. But she might have, kind of, helped hide the dogs in the back of the van at Phillip’s fundraiser.”

She gripped the oar next to her, ready to smash it over his head. “Then you sent her on her merry way out the front gates with them.”

“It’s not like I knew they were in there, did I?”

Addison could no longer feel the cold. All she could feel was hot anger flowing through her. “But you vouched for her. You promised that she had nothing to do with this. And the whole time she knew who it was. She lied straight to our faces when we asked her about it.”

She got to her feet, unable to stand being near him any longer. The boat began to rock beneath her, and she nearly lost her balance. Felix pulled her back down.

“How long have you known?” she demanded.

He held up his hands. “I swear I had no idea until she told me Wednesday night.”

“You mean when you went to her place?”

He did a double take. “How do you know about that?”

Addison’s eyebrow rose stubbornly. “You have your secrets. I have mine. And you kept this from me.” She didn’t know if she was more angry or hurt.

He seemed to tuck that piece of information away for later. “Look, you don’t know the whole story. Charlotte had no choice.”

“Of course you’re still defending her.” Addison moved across the boat to the other bench because that was as far as she could get from him at the moment. When really, she wanted nothing more than to storm away, or rather swim away, from Felix and never see him again.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand to stop him. “You know what? I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right. What matters is finding Naia.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, removing the last of the hair product until his hair flopped around his face as usual.

Addison found she preferred this Felix to the fashionable one. It was more natural, more him. It annoyed her all the more that she even noticed.

“Maybe I should have put a leash on her,” he said. “Strapped her to my back and not let her out of my sight. Or at least surgically implanted a homing beacon on her like any reasonable parent would have done.”

The words nudged something in the back of Addison’s brain. Her heart skipped a beat or maybe it had stopped altogether. “What did you just say?”

Felix saw the shock on her face. “I was just kidding. Well”—he shrugged—“sort of.”

“A homing beacon,” she murmured quietly, lost in thought. “A tracking device.”

“Well, they don’t work very well after the fact. You kind of have to attach it before they disappear.”

But Addison wasn’t listening, her mind was racing. “I dressed Princess in her morganite necklace tonight.”

Felix sighed. “Look, I know you’re worried about Princess. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the Coast Guard has already intercepted them.” Felix reached across the gap to place a hand over hers comfortingly.

But she wasn’t upset. She was smiling.

His face filled with concern. He was staring at her like she’d lost her mind. “Are you feeling okay?” He held a hand to her forehead and let it linger there as though he was really afraid she was coming down with something.

“Why didn’t I think about it before now? I’ve wasted so much time.” She dug through her clutch again, looking for her phone.

Felix reached down and picked up her oars. “We should get into shore. You’ll catch a cold.”

“Yes. Back to shore.” She was practically vibrating in her seat. “We might be able to catch up to them before they get away.”

He began to row, much slower and stiffer than before. “I think you’ve had too much excitement for one night.”

“No. Listen to me. The necklace that Princess is wearing is my own design. In every high-end outfit of the Fido Fashion line, I’ve inserted a GPS tracking device to help find runaway pets.”

His expression turned blank as his arms froze, oars sticking out to the sides. “Princess is wearing one of them?”

“Yes.”

“Does it work?”

Addison pulled out her phone. “The software designers developed an experimental app that I can track her with. It’s still in the trial phase, but so far it’s been pretty reliable.”

Felix didn’t wait for her to say any more. He dipped both oars back into the water and headed for the glowing skyscrapers lighting up the night.

Addison’s hands shook with cold and excitement as she tried to unlock her screen. She used both hands to hold it steady while Felix raced them to shore. It only took a moment for the app to open and a flashing pink dot to appear on a map of San Francisco.

“That’s her.” She pointed at the screen. “It’s tracking Princess.”

“Where are they?” he asked between strokes.

Addison zoomed in on the pink dot. She frowned. “They’ve already left the docks. But it’s okay. The signal will remain strong in the city. As long as they don’t remove the necklace, we can track them.”

“Then we’ll get to her before that.” His expression was hard with grim determination. “And if we find Princess—”

“We find Naia.”