14. Chase
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chase
Derek had the handshake you would expect from a middle-aged white man who inserted himself into everything.
Firm, two pumps, eye contact held a beat too long, every time, like we hadn’t met a hundred times before.
He was my agent, but had appointed himself my de facto manager, showing up and inserting himself into all of my events these last few years.
I shook his hand, and he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “There he is,” like he always did, like I’d wandered off somewhere and he’d personally found me.
“Looking good, Chase. Looking good.” He steered me into the tent by the shoulder. “Big week. Big, big week.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, my mind still back in Tanner’s van.
The tent was enormous, which I’d expected, and air-conditioned, which I hadn’t. Outside, the beach was already loud with equipment—scaffolding, speaker rigs, a generator the size of a small car humming away. The gasoline smell covered up the scent of the beach and put me in a foul—fouler—mood.
I thought about how she’d levitated the wax without blinking, looked at it like it had surprised her, then glanced back at me like I was an afterthought.
Then she’d run from me.
Like I was a footnote in my own van.
Chase Perez was no one’s footnote. I was their billboard, their walking advertisement, but like hell would I be written off like I didn’t hold two world titles. The shark was roiling in my chest, the most I had felt it in months. She ran, she got away.
“—want you to meet someone.” Derek was still talking. I tuned back in. “This is Marina. She’s basically the reason we’re here.”
The woman standing at the center of the tent was not what I’d expected, which was nothing, because I hadn’t been listening.
She was significant. That was the word my brain landed on.
Tall, dark hair silver at the temples, and absolutely stunning. Lean, with golden skin that barely showed her age. Definitely a MILF—well, maybe she would have been if something about her wasn’t sitting wrong in my gut.
She wore white linen wide-legged pants and a wrap top that left little to the imagination. She was smiling, but it was cut by the expression of someone who had never once been kept waiting. She appraised me, and I saw her decide who I was before I’d opened my mouth.
“Chase Perez.” She extended her hand, and I took it, a charge lighting up my sensors—her magic.
Now, I didn’t know many witches, but this felt significantly different from the one I now knew intimately—whose magic had been bright and erratic.
Marina’s felt cold and immense, like it was watching me from the depths.
That was highly unsettling for someone who was supposed to be at the top of the food chain. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Likewise.” El Tiburón grinned. I was technically present.
“Mrs. Torres owns a substantial portion of the coastal property here,” Derek explained. “Very influential in the community. Getting her buy-in was—”
Torres.
It could have been a coincidence.
But the longer I studied her, the more I saw it. The resemblance to the woman who was taking up a lot of extra space in my mind right now. But despite their similar beauty, they could not have been more opposite, and just the small spark of her magic made me sure of that.
I was glad I’d jumped in the ocean before coming in here.
“Derek.” Marina batted her eyelashes at him. “I’m sure Chase doesn’t need the details.”
Derek laughed like she’d said something charming. She hadn’t, particularly.
She turned back to me. “How are you finding our water?”
“Honestly? Swells aren’t much. I’ve seen better.”
Derek’s hand found my arm. “What Chase means is—”
“He means the swells are flat.” Marina smiled. “He’s right. Give it a few days. The ocean works up slowly here.” She tilted her head slightly. “She needs a reason, but she might have just found one.”
Wasn’t a huge fan of how she looked at me while she said that.
“You surf?” I asked.
“I have a relationship with the water,” she replied.
Ah. Our local consultant.
Fuck me.
Derek laughed again, stepping between us with absolutely no subtly.
“Marina, can I steal him for just—”
“Of course.” Her eyes lingered on me a half second longer than necessary, and she knew I saw. “We’ll have more time to talk, I’m sure.”
Derek steered me toward the merch table and immediately started in.
“Bottle in hand. Always. We’re doing the full setup shoot in an hour and I want it to be natural, okay? Not staged—natural.”
He picked one up off the table and held it out.
I took it and turned it over. The green, holographic label caught the light:
NEW BIODEGRADABLE BOTTLES
BECAUSE WE LOVE OUR OCEAN
“Sure.”
“You say that, but last time you put it down the second the cameras—”
“I said sure, Derek.”
He pointed at me. “Natural.”
I glanced at the bottle.
You’re here with RipTide, Selena had said.
I was used to being the problem; it had never been my sponsor before. What could she have against them?
I looked around the massive tent again, taking up a huge amount of space on what she had called her beach—generators churning, air-conditioning blasting. RipTide loved our oceans, as long as it didn’t have to experience any of the inconvenience of dealing with nature.
I guess I could see her issue.
The screen over the merch booth displayed a video of these new bottles dissolving in just a week when exposed to salt water, BIODEGRADABLE flashing across the screen the whole time.
Well, that was an improvement, at least.
I’d seen too many beaches completely trashed after big events like this. Hopefully, this would reduce that.
“Tibby.”
Tanner materialized from somewhere with Diego behind him, both of them carrying huge plates from craft services.
“How’s it looking?” Tanner asked, surveying the tent with genuine enthusiasm.
“Big,” I answered.
“So big.” He was already eyeing the merch table. “Can I have one of these?” He pointed at a RipTide-branded trucker hat.
“No,” Derek said.
Tanner took one anyway.
An assistant appeared at Derek’s elbow, looking apologetic.
“Sorry to interrupt. We have a situation with the north setup.”
“What kind of situation?”
“There’s a—” He checked his clipboard. “A local named Elliot Fitzgerald claiming we can’t build in that section because of turtle nesting sites. He’s got documentation.”
Derek didn’t even blink.
“Move him.”
“He says the nests are protected under—”
“Move. Him.”
Derek was already turning away.
“Get legal on the phone. No matter what he has, they’ll walk him around until this is all over anyway.”
The assistant turned away, already pulling out his phone. I grabbed his shoulder.
“This local have any more complaints?”
The assistant hesitated, glancing at Derk, but he had already moved on, trying to get Tanner and Diego out from behind the merch booth, where they had found more things to acquire.
“Um, yeah. So there were the turtle nests, and apparently there is some sort of volleyball tournament that had booked the north end of the beach near the pier, but we took that over too.”
A volleyball tournament.
I thought about long legs and strong thighs.
“Got it, thanks.”
I let him go. El Tiburón didn’t have opinions about these things.
But as I remembered the taste of one particularly fierce witch, Chase Perez just might.
I strolled back over to Derek when a seagull landed on the merch table, looked directly at Derek, and knocked a stack of bottles onto the ground.
Then another one landed on the scaffolding.
Then approximately thirty of them arrived at once.
The attack was coordinated, especially considering we were talking about a flock of seagulls.
One went straight for Derek’s coffee, flying into him and causing him to spill it all over his white button-up shirt. Several were tugging on the ties holding up the lighting, and I barely dodged before a huge fixture came crashing down.
A RipTide rep’s phone was in another’s beak, in a maneuver I remembered distinctly.
“What the—” Derek was spinning. “GET THEM OFF—”
Tanner was already laughing, his inner dolphin showing as he squeaked.
I stood in the middle of the chaos as a bird walked over an unattended laptop, blasting “I Ran (So Far Away)” over the staff’s screams.
Oh, you absolute menace.
She’d used me to power up. She’d run from me because she had gotten what she needed.
Another seagull dive-bombed the biodegradable bottle display and sent the whole thing flying. Derek made a sound I’d never heard a grown man make before.
I thought about her hands in my hair, how she’d looked at me when she’d figured out who I was. Not a celebrity, not an idol or even persona non grata like so many recently. She looked at me like I was a complication, a variable in a plan she hadn’t accounted for.
She’d left and I’d let her go.
Because all the best hunters knew: you let the prey tire itself out, then you strike.
She wanted a fight.
I hadn’t wanted much of anything lately, if I was being honest. But now, the shark had found its target, and she would not be getting away.
I took a long sip of the RipTide I was supposed to be holding naturally and watched as her seagull army wreaked a ridiculous amount of havoc in just a few minutes.
Oh, little witch, if you want a fight, I’ll give you one. But I play dirty.
And I knew exactly the bait I was going to use.