Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) by Julia Kent

spin art canvases, my inner world twirling and splattering into patterns that would later be beautiful and enchanting but right now were just smears and chaos.
    Her dog...what was its name?...jumped right on Tyler’s leg and sank its fangs into his calf.
    Who knew Tyler could hit notes that high?
    “Help! God, ow, help!” he shouted, hitting three octaves at once, rolling on the ground.
    Mrs. Wilmer turned purple with rage. “You can’t hurt Margaret! How dare you!”
    Tyler answered by shaking the leg the dog was biting.
    “And now you want to hurt my little Attila! Sic ‘em, Attila! That’s right. Protect Mommy and Margaret!”
    Tyler rolled on the ground like he was on fire, then shifted one leg under his hips, starting to stand.
    Mrs. Wilmer shot him in the face with the hose sprayer.
    And he went down. Boom.
    “Ah, fuck, Maggie, help me,” he moaned. 
    “He said the ‘f’ word! How obscene !” Mrs. Wilmer said to me, enraged. Her eyes bulged and her browned teeth were bared at Tyler in an odd symmetry with her little dog. “Margaret, go get one of those portable telephones and call the fuzz!”
    “The...what?”
    “We need to get the fuzz out here to arrest this mugger!”
    “No police!” Tyler groaned.
    “See! He’s going to stand up and kidnap us and do unspeakable things!”
    I looked down at the ground. Mrs. Wilmer still had the hose focused on Tyler, and Attila wasn’t letting go of his leg. My crotch kick left the guy folded in half. With the colorful arm tattoos he looked like something out of a Garden Club display.
    “Call Darla! Call Charlotte,” he groaned. “They’ll tell you why I’m here.”
    “Who are Darla and Charlotte, young man?” Mrs. Wilmer bent down and sprayed him in the eyes. “You can’t pull one over on us!”
    Attila released Tyler and shimmied up his body, licking his face.
    Pure adrenaline raced through me, but I took a few steps backward. Phone. Where was the phone?
    Mrs. Wilmer mistook my uncertainty for fear. “I’ve got him, Margaret. Don’t worry. Between me and my little honey bunny Attila, we’ll keep you safe.”
    Tyler let out a sound of outraged pain.
    It wasn’t my safety I was worried about any more.
    I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed my phone and turned it back on. It had run out of power, and I’d been charging it all morning, and—
    Seventeen messages?
    Oh, shit.
    I ran back to the front yard before Mrs. Wilmer went and got her six cats and made them try to eat Tyler, too.
    “You’re calling 911?” she asked, eyebrows raised. I could only imagine how many replays this story would get for the next year at her bridge club. And at the local church she attended. And everywhere in town but social media.
    “No, Mrs. Wilmer. Just checking to see if Tyler’s telling the truth.”
    “You know this criminal?”
    All I could do was nod.
    “Quit waterboarding me, you old bat!” Tyler sputtered, the water choking him.
    “You apologize for that remark, young man! I am not an old bat. What a nasty thing to say!”
    “And making your dog bite me while you torture me with a hose isn’t nasty?”
    “I’m a good Christian woman!” she protested. “I am never nasty!” 
    “Jesus fucking Christ,” Tyler said.
    “You cannot take the name of the Lord in vain like that!” She pointed the hose at him. “Apologize to God or I’ll...”
    “What?” he shrieked. I had one eye on my row of messages and one on him. It was a treat to see him so...emotional. So fired up. So—anything other than droll and dry and contained.
    Tyler was one big bundle of muscled schadenfreude right now.
    Messages. A ton of them. Most from Darla. Something about Tyler needing help getting to L.A. by Monday night. Then a stream of them from Charlotte. 
    “Does he have a partner hiding in your house? Are you being kidnapped, Margaret?” hollered Mrs. Wilmer. “Please shout if you are!” followed by growling sounds, then Tyler whimpering.
    Oh, boy.
    By the time