“You thought wrong.”

“You still didn’t tell me what happened to your face,” he said, squinting at me through the cigarette smoke. “You in some kind of trouble?”

Seagulls flew over our heads, squawking and crying. I watched them pass over the house toward the bay.

“I’m fine, Zip,” I said.

“You don’t look like it.”

“I’m fine.”

He nodded slowly, then sucked hard on the cigarette, the end glowing red. He pulled it from his mouth, studied me and exhaled. “You talk to Carter lately?”

I wanted to grab him by the neck and throw him in the bay, but I’d already had too many confrontations in Florida. I was taking my chances every time I made myself noticeable. I needed to stop.

“No, not lately,” I said.

“He doing okay?”

“Like I said. Haven’t talked to him lately.”

“Heard you two might’ve gotten in a little trouble in Cali,” he said.

I let that hang in the air for a moment.

“We were always in trouble,” I said.

“This sounded different.”

“Oh, yeah?  What did you hear?”

He finished the cigarette, dropped it to the ground and stepped on it.

“Probably just bullshit,” he said, smiling as the smoke streamed out of his nostrils. “You know how it goes.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Just stories and shit, probably.”

“Probably.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay, cool. I’ll get out of your hair.”  He lifted his chin in my direction. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else. About you, Carter, whatever.”

“You do that.”

“Peace,” he said, walking past me.

I watched him head out of the cul-de-sac on the scooter, his phone in one hand. He stared at the screen, typing as he steered. He turned around when he got to the corner, gave me a half-hearted wave.

I didn’t wave back.

TWENTY-NINE

I tried to sleep, but failed.

Air that felt like it had been cooked in an oven smothered the garage and sweat coated my body. Thoughts of Liz and Carter and Keene and Zip and San Diego ran through my mind like a freight train. Nothing I did could slow it down and I spent the entire night flat on my back, staring at the ceiling.

It was early when the birds roused, chirping their good morning. I pushed myself off of the cot, rinsed my face, threw on some clothes and headed to the beach.

Waves crashed in choppy, uneven segments, the wind turning them into unpredictable mush. Two guys were trying to navigate the mess, flailing around on what looked to me like rented long-boards. It had been so long since I’d been in the water, I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to tell them how to get up on their boards, even if I’d been inclined to do so. Instead, I watched them fail, time after time, before they finally gave up, trudging up the beach and to the parking lot, exhausted and frustrated.

There was a time when I would’ve offered to help, to show them what they were doing wrong or at least told them why the waves were impossible to ride. I was never one of those territorial surfers who reveled in watching people struggle, like I owned the ocean and the right to surf. If people were polite and looked like they just wanted to have fun, I’d go talk to them, help if I could.

But I just didn’t have a lot of that in me anymore.

I was unlocking the shed when Ike wandered down to the sand, holding up a hand in greeting.

“What the hell happened to you?” he said, squinting at my face.

“Nothing.”

“Looks like some kind of nothing.”

“I’m fine. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday. Won’t happen again.”

He frowned and waved off the apology. “Please, kid. You’re fine. The weather sucked anyway and you’re the most reliable employee I’ve ever had. One day ain’t gonna kill us.”

“Still. Sorry.”

“Whatever,” he said, still frowning. “But, hey. I did wanna talk to you about yesterday.”  Concern shimmered in his eyes. “Dude came looking for you.”

I nodded. “Skinny little dude?  Looks like a crackhead who hasn’t showered in weeks?  Don’t worry about it. I got him covered.”

Ike shook his head. “No. That ain’t who I talked to.”

My stomach dropped.

“This guy was well put together,” Ike said. “I’d put him around your age. Good lookin’, not that I go that way, but you know what I’m sayin’. Dark hair, tan, almost as big as you. Asked for you by name.”

The muscles in my gut clenched.

“I played dumb at first, but he knew I was full of shit,” he said. “So then I just said I hadn’t seen you in awhile. Tried to get a name or number out of him, but he just said he’d come back.”

I shuffled my feet in the sand. “Okay.”

“He didn’t seem pissed or nothin’,” Ike said, pulling the sunglasses on the cord around his neck up onto his face. “But he was definitely looking for you. And I don’t think he’s going away.”

I ran Ike’s physical description through my memory banks, but came up empty. I was drawing a blank.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the heads up.”

“You need help,” Ike said, nodding at me. “You holler at me. Any kind at all. You holler at me. Got it?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“And you need a different place to stay, I’ll work it out,” he said. “Just let me know.”

“I’m good,” I said. “But thanks. I’ll let you know if it changes.”

As Ike disappeared over the sand dunes, I was anything but good.

THIRTY

I spent the entire morning looking over my shoulder.

Anytime someone came up the shoreline or I heard footsteps in the sand behind me, I scanned their faces, trying to see if anyone looked familiar. I’m not sure who I thought I might see or who might show up, but after my conversations with Zip and Ike, I was anxious and on alert.

Bella and Jackson showed up after lunch, towels and a bag of beach toys in hand. Jackson ran straight to the water and Bella stripped out of her white sundress, revealing a matching white bikini. She sank down on her towel, reached into her bag and handed me a small cell phone. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Certainly, you haven’t been out of the loop for, like, twenty years, have you?”

“Funny. Why are you giving me a phone?”

“Because you need one,” she said.

A soaking wet Jackson had returned and started his castle building operation.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s one of those pre-paid deals.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“Why do I need a phone?”

“So I can call you,” she said, adjusting the big white sunglasses on her face. “Or you can call me. Or anyone else you need to. It’s pre-paid so your name won’t show up anywhere. If someone, somehow, wanted to trace it, it would come back to me anyway.”

I squeezed the flip phone in my hand then slid it into my backpack. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Just didn’t think it was practical for you to be phoneless.”

“I haven’t had anyone to call.”

“Well, you do now,” she said, smiling into the sun. “If you need me. Or if you wanna talk to Jackson.”

I laughed and nodded. “Yeah, he seems like the phone type.”

“Totally.”

We watched him for a few minutes as the castle he was building began to take shape. He’d opted against a moat this time and was concentrating instead on building towers nearly as tall as him. The hard-packed sand cracked under the weight of brick after brick being piled on top of each other, but it didn’t topple.

“You were fine last night?” I asked.

She hesitated, then nodded. “I brought Jax in with me. Slept off and on. But we were fine. Nothing happened.”

“When do you need to get the money to David?”

“Today,” she said. “He always wants it twenty-four hours later, not right after. He thinks that’s smart. It’s not. I could totally rip him off and take off with the money, but he’s trying to avoid connections.”