2. September 9, 2022
Demon
Demon, his shoulder-length brown hair blowing across his face in the morning wind, pitched his board into the water and began paddling out into the ocean.
While he paddled against the surge of the waves, he tasted the surf on his lips—the salty tang of the ocean in the beading water droplets, the sand grains that his feet had kicked up on his jog down to the water—and took in the scent of the sea.
Once he reached his destination, he straddled his board and watched the waves, contemplating nothing other than catching the peak.
His hand reached to his lower back, pushing against the vertebrae, and he winced.
The drugs were wearing off. His tolerance to them had been building up for some time now, and he knew he was going to face a decision soon.
He’d been putting it off and putting it off, worried about how it would affect his work, especially with the team being a man down .
He knew what a certain redhead’s opinion would be.
It was that thought and not the mini-swell that hit his board that left him cold.
Why did she always have to intrude into his private thoughts?
As if she were a part of any discussion over choices in his life.
Nope. Not her business. His life. His choice.
She could “mind her own knitting,” as his grandmother used to say when he was a young boy and lived in Ireland.
He focused back on the waves. To allow his mind to wander to other things was disrespectful to the power of the water, which meant danger.
Other surfers had arrived, but he was an expert paddler and the first to reach the farthest out point, giving him priority.
It was usually the same surfers each dawn patrol.
He knew none of them by name and encouraged no friendships because of his deadman status, but he was always polite and followed the rules. No drop-ins, no snaking.
A glance over his shoulder showed him that his wave was coming in. As the swell approached, he popped up on the board and rode the shoulder from left to right. Toward the end of the ride, the tunnel caught up to him, and he turned his board to move out of the whitewater as much as he could.
When he arrived on the shore, he pulled up and tucked his board under his arm.
A short, ripped Latino male with cold silver eyes stood in a wetsuit, waiting for him, and there was a longboard stuck in the sand.
Demon knew from experience that the man was often underestimated because of his size, but while Steel was the smallest of the deadmen, he was one man you did not want to cross.
His trade as an assassin would easily allow him to turn his surfboard into a weapon of mass destruction in the blink of an eye, and he would show no emotion as he removed his targets from the earth with it.
Anything was a weapon in this man’s hands.
“D.” Steel greeted him with a head nod. “You up to catch another wave?”
Demon looked out into the water, where several other surfers were waiting.
There was a meeting scheduled this morning, and a glance at his watch said it might cut it close to head back out, but…
feck it. He was late all the time. How mad could anyone get if Steel was on his heels when he finally arrived at the office?
The messages he’d received from Waters the last two days had been check-ins, not orders to come in, so Steel probably had something to say.
Out in the water, sound traveled, but if they went out farther than the line and kept the volume low, they’d be fine.
Without a word, Demon turned and jogged back out into the water, his pace a beat slower from the tug on his sciatic nerve.
He worked hard not to let it show as Steel pulled his board from the sand and followed him.
In silence, they paddled together out past the waiting surfers.
Demon signaled to the priority surfer that they were going to wait out past the line with no intention of dropping in.
Once in place, they sat astride the boards in the silence, facing frontside to watch the last of the sunrise.
“You haven’t been to the office in three days.”
“Not required to be until today.”
“You’re not answering calls or texts. People are worried.”
“Nothing to say to anybody.” Then he added a derisive snort.
It wasn’t “people” who were worried. This was his typical MO, and everyone knew that.
One person was worried. One person kept trying to insert her nose into his life.
Kept trying to fix things that didn’t need fixing.
“And as far as ‘people,’ you mean Cherry is pissed. My guess is she envisioned me passed out in a narcotic haze, possibly even dead and food for the coyotes. Rather than have Midas turn on my damn tracker, she sent you out here to either dispose of my remains to the sharks or drag my ass back to the office. Well, fine. I’m alive, I’m not high, and I’ll come into the office when I’m damn well ready.
Or I get a text from Waters that says I have to report early.
” The last sentence sounded more than petulant.
The next surfer in line took off. There were two more in front of them.
“She worries.”
“No, she smothers. I’m a grown-ass man who knows how to take care of himself. I don’t need a babysitter, mommy, or anyone else looking over my shoulder.”
“Looking over our shoulders is kind of her job.”
The next surfer took off, leaving one in front of them.
Rather than blow up in anger, he switched topics. “You want me to take priority, or do you want me to follow?” Demon asked.
“Party wave? I’ll take your six in case I wipe out,” Steel replied.
He snorted. “You’re even less likely to wipe out than I am.”
“Yeah, but I don’t do this every day like you do.”
“Nope. You only come by when you have something to say, or we’re dumping pieces of a body as shark chum.”
His teammate let a tiny smile tilt the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t disagree.
He lifted his face to the sky, then bound his hair into a short ponytail at the top of his head, exposing the fade cut. “Get ready for it,” he warned. “Last surfer taking off. With the wind, this next one is going to be bigger. Watch for the break, low tide or not.”
“Copy that.”
As the swell approached, they popped up and rode in, Demon avoiding the collapsing tunnel and Steel riding through it.
He shook his head. His teammate always did like to play with fire, or in this case, water.
Shaking the salt water out of his eyes, Steel rode into the beach directly behind him and to the right.
Up on the sand proper, they grabbed their boards and jogged up to Demon’s crash pad, a stilted hut on the Pacific Ocean that he rented for cash and no questions asked.
Careful not to touch the rails of the stairs, they moved onto the deck and washed off the sand in the outside shower.
When finished, he wiped down the shower fixture while Steel wiped down their boards since they’d be unsupervised briefly. You could never be too careful.
Water dripped from their bodies as they crossed the one-room hut, but Demon didn’t care.
It would dry by the time he returned, and it wasn’t as if the place was fancy.
Just a futon that doubled as a place to sit and sleep and a small kitchenette.
When things became too tight at Tribe, he came here and rode the waves to chill out.
He spent more time here than there because things were almost always too tight.
He wasn’t too proud to admit, to himself at least, that a certain fireball redhead was more than half the problem.
He stripped off his wetsuit, uncaring that Steel was still in the room, and redressed in the board shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops he’d come here in. “Do I need to change when I get to the office?” he asked. If he did, it meant they were leaving L.A.
“I don’t know. My role this morning was more in the line of a welfare check.”
Taking a dry cloth, Demon wiped down everything inside that he’d touched. “I take it you’re required to take me in, dead or alive?”
“Dramatic much?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be ready in five. Touch nothing.”
Steel merely raised an eyebrow.
He rolled up the sleeping bag lying atop the futon mattress and tied it tight.
Then he double-checked the garbage, bagging up what little was there to incinerate at Tribe.
Other than potential fingerprints, none of them would hold DNA.
He also grabbed his wetsuit as they readied to leave.
When the two men left the hut, he didn’t bother to lock up, as there was nothing there except the futon.
But he wiped the towel over the handles to obliterate fingerprints, threw it over his shoulder to put in the laundry back at his apartment, then they grabbed their boards and headed to Steel’s truck, throwing the boards in the bed.
“Your jeep wiped down?” Steel asked.
Over his sunglasses, now it was Demon’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
Once on the road, Steel engaged the soundproofing and frequency scrambler through buttons on the dashboard that looked like they controlled the satellite radio and other amenities. When the red frame appeared over the navigation screen, they were free to talk.
“So what’s got Cherry in such a twist that she’s looking for me specifically?” Demon asked .
“Don’t know. She texted me late last night to come find you and bring you in today. Wasn’t there this morning when I came downstairs, so I couldn’t dig further. She’s been… off… the last few days.”
“‘Off’ how?”
“Closed off. Can’t get more than a few words out of her, and she offers nothing unless you ask her a direct question. Even then, I’m guessing some of what she’s saying is bullshit.”
“You mean lying?” That would definitely be out of character. Like any of the Tribe team, she could hold information tight to the vest if need be, but she would never lie. At least not to the team.