She rubs his back as if in encouragement, resuming their pace.
“Nothing.”
But as the SUV comes toward them, she firmly adjusts their direction away from it and toward the boulevard. Her hand tightens on his arm again.
The Yukon’s headlights go off and it comes forward and stops, pointed right at them, fifty feet away. No front plate.
Bette stops.
Casey watches all four doors open and four people get out. In the meek interior light he recognizes two of the shark-finning women from his first brush with Empress II—one white, the other Mexican. The other two are Asian women, one big and husky, the other smaller and slender.
“Not in the script,” says Bette. “I have to go.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Back to your room, Casey. I’ll call.”
“These are pirates.”
“I know who they are. This shouldn’t take long.”
“What shouldn’t? What are you going to do? What are they going to do?”
Bette walks briskly to the big woman and gives her a brief look before climbing into the middle row of seats.
Casey watches the doors slam, hears the pirates arguing inside. He’s thumbing on his video when the Yukon lights blast on, and the vehicle charges right at him. He dives, hits, and rolls.
“Fudge!”
Up on one knee he tries to vid the rear plates but they’re blacked out with something, tape, maybe; he can’t tell.
So he runs with all his strength for the Yukon, which bumps from the marina onto the empty boulevard, speeding for downtown and the exits from Half Moon Bay.
Casey races down the middle of the empty boulevard after Bette, but in shearling boots and a goose-down tube jacket and the slim-fit Dream Coast jeans he’s contracted to wear to all World Surf Federation–sanctioned events, racing isn’t easy.
He catches a toe on an orange reflector, goes down, rolls, and is back up again as the Yukon bends south along the beach and out of sight.
He sits in his room, eating the snack basket crackers, the sliding-door curtain open so he can see the Oceano entrance. He’s got the little fireplace pegged against the chill.
He thinks about waking up Brock, because Brock’s down with the dark side. Like aboard Empress II that day, when he handled Jimmy Wu and his pirates like they were kooks. Because Brock is an eighth-dan hapkido black belt. And a volunteer fighter in Ukraine. And a former Riverside County pot grower with violent competitors. And a big-wave surfer, drowned in a three-wave hold-down at Nazaré until Mahina blew the breath of life back into him. Or God did, thinks Casey: there’s different ways to look at that.
A loud lowrider rumbles along Capistrano, then a couple of Harleys. No silver Yukon.
Casey takes the elevator up to Bette’s room, knocks on her door, and gets the welcome he’s expecting: none.
He goes into the ice and vending alcove, where he can see her door, scans the offerings in the machines, gets a two-dollar bag of spicy shelled peanuts. He’s always hungry because that’s what the ocean does to you, but the day after a big-wave contest he’s always fully starved.
The dinner tonight was good but fairly skimpy and you didn’t get seconds, so Casey buys more nuts and some Funyuns and a raspberry smoothie.
Watches Bette’s door, checks his phone every few minutes, then heads back.
Three minutes after three, and a knock on his door. Pulls it open without checking the peephole.
Bette steps in, holding the beanie to her face.
Bloody everything: hands, seafoam duster, jacket. Splatters on her boots.
She lowers the beanie and looks up at him, eyes roaming his face. Lips puffed up, the upper split. Chin and neck streaked red. Cheeks scraped from blows, eye sockets purpling. Her left eyebrow is cross-cut and meaty at the edges.
Bette hangs her head. Casey holds her gently so as not to hurt her, like when Mae got hit by the car and he set her in his bed. He feels Bette’s sobs. Feels love.
And anger. The angriest he’s ever been.
“No police,” she blubbers through the swollen lips.
“Did you steal the money for Mom’s check from Jimmy?”
“No. The check is a forgery. I knew she wouldn’t take it. It was just to show her—show everyone—how good a friend I am. To you. This, Jimmy did for joining up with you. For being here with you. For disrespecting family. Me against the other girls.”
“I can’t believe he would let them do this to you.”
She gives Casey a broken look.
“He destroys what he can’t own and control,” she says. “Always been that way. My mother. My sister. His friends. Anyone he touches.”
“Now you.”
“This isn’t destruction. It’s a warning.”
