Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

“Good thing for you I showed up,” Dan says to him, “before this barbarian beat the shit out of you. I feel like the cavalry riding in. Nick of time and all that happy bullshit. You're coming with me voluntarily, aren't you, Dr. Cole?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Help him up.”

Dan's boys take Teddy by the arms and walk him out the door.

“This isn't over, Teddy,” says Boone.

Dan gestures at Petra. “You banging this, Daniels?”

Boone doesn't answer.

“No, you ain't,” Dan says. “She's much too juicy for you.”

He turns to Petra. “You get tired of slummin', you want a real man, you come see me, honey. I'll take good care of you.”

She hears herself say, “I'd rather fuck a pig.”

Dan smiles, but his face turns red. “Maybe we can work that out for you, bitch.”

“Enough,” Boone says.

“You're in no position to-”

“I said, ‘Enough,’” Boone repeats. Something in his voice tells Dan to back off before he has to shoot this guy. And this guy is Eddie's asshole buddy, something about him pulling Eddie's brat out of the drink or something. And the last thing in the world Dan needs right now is more problems with Red Eddie.

“Stay in here for a few minutes,” Dan says. “You come out, ‘Friend Of Eddie’ or not, I'll smoke you. Her, too.”

He takes a moment to leer at Petra and then walks out.

“You okay?” Boone asks Petra.

She sits down heavily on the bed and puts her head in her hands. Boone understands it. You get a gun pointed at your head, it changes you. It makes you realize how quickly you could not exist anymore. In that second, all you want is your life-desperately, fervently-and you'd give almost anything for it. And that moment of realization changes you as a person. You're never quite the same after you realize you'd do almost anything to live.

But talk about guts. “I'd rather fuck a pig”? To a guy who has a gun pointed at your head! That's a crazy, sick kind of courage. He walks over and puts his hand on her head, strokes her hair a little, and says, “It's all right. You're okay.”

“I was so afraid,” she says.

Then Boone realizes that she's crying. “You were amazing,” he says. “Really brave.”

A second later, they hear two shots.

Pop.

Pop.

What they call “execution-style.”

The girl runs back into the reeds, because she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Her name is Luce.

She doesn't find anyone in the reeds. They're all gone now, so she crawls into one of the little caves, huddles there, and says the Rosary as she rubs the little crucifix. It will be a cold night, she knows, but the other girls will be back at dawn.

She wraps her arms around her knees and waits for the sun to rise again.

Dan Silver sits beside Teddy Cole in the backseat of the Explorer.

He grabs Teddy's right index finger and says, “Your hands are your life, aren't they, Doc?”

Teddy's chin-sculpted, Botoxed, nose-jobbed, skin-peeled, hair-transplanted, eye-tightened, face-lifted, tummy-tucked, dental-worked, lasered, and tanned face turns absolutely white with fear. He tries to speak, but the words get jammed in his throat. All he can manage is a weak, shaky nod.

“Hands of a surgeon, right?” Dan asks. “That's what you are, cosmetic surgeon to the stars? Nip/Tuck? So, what if I start breaking your fingers, one by one, starting with your thumbs? It's going to hurt like you wouldn't believe, Doc, and, afterward, no more strippers, starlets, and trophy wives for you.”

Teddy tries to hold out.

For Luce's sake, for Tammy's sake, for the sake of his own soul-if that isn't a hopeless, antiquated concept. He holds out until Dan starts counting down from ten.

He makes it to six.

“I'm only going to ask you once,” Dan says, “and I'm really hoping I don't have to ask you ten times. Where is Tammy Roddick?”

The Boonemobile rests on its front bumper, like a wounded bull on its front knees, exhausted in the ring.

Its front right tire is flat.

Boone looks at the van. “God damnit.”

“I thought they shot Teddy,” Petra says. She goes into the front seat and roots around in her purse. “They took my phone.”

“Mine, too,” Boone says. “It's a good thing I took Teddy's.”

He pulls Teddy's RAZR out of his pants pocket and scrolls through Teddy's call history. Seventeen calls in the past two days made to the same number. He punches it in.

Tammy picks it up right away, like she's been waiting for the call.

“Teddy?” Tammy asks.

Her voice sounds anxious, worried, scared.

“Where are you, Tammy?”

“Who is this?”

“Wherever you are,” Boone says, “get out now.”

“What are you-”

“Teddy is on his way,” Boone says, “with Dan and some of his thugs. He gave you up, Tammy.”

“He wouldn't do that.”

“He wouldn't want to,” Boone says, “but I guarantee you, if he hasn't already, he will. Get out. Let me meet you somewhere. I can help you.”

“Who are you?”

“Petra Hall is here with me.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“You want to talk with her?”

“No,” Tammy says.

“Look,” Boone says, “you have no reason to trust me, but you have to get out. Now. ”

“I don't know.”

“Let me meet you somewhere,” Boone says. “I'll pick you up, take you somewhere safe.”

She clicks off.

“Damn it!” Boone says. He gets on the horn to Hang Twelve while he goes into the back of the van, pulls out a spare tire and a jack, then goes to work on the car.

“I could do that for you,” Petra says.

“I'll bet you could,” Boone says, fitting the tire on. “But I don't want you to wreck your clothes.”

Boone gets the tire on, tightens down the lugs, and releases the jack. He's putting it back into the van when Hang calls back.

He has the number traced.

The Institute of Self Awareness was founded back in the 1960s.

Of course.

If there was any single word that typified that decade, it was self.

Some shrink came down from Esalen with a head full of acid and a trust fund and bought the old Episcopalian retreat that had been founded on a bluff above one of the best right breaks on the entire West Coast.

The shrink didn't surf but didn't mind those who did using the stairs on the south side of his property to go out and hit that marvelous break. To honor that generous man, and because The Institute of Self Awareness was too cumbersome to pronounce all the time, the beach below the retreat simply became known as “Shrink's.”

The Institute of Self Awareness became first a hippie, and later a New Age retreat where people could check into a room, eat vegetarian meals, take meditation seminars, yoga classes, and otherwise become aware of themselves.

“What does that mean?” Dave the Love God asked Boone one day while they were sitting in the lineup at Shrink's waiting for the next set and looking up at the retreat's cottages.

“It has nothing to do with masturbation,” Sunny told Hang Twelve.

“I don't know,” Boone said. “I guess you just do it.”

“Yeah, but do what?” Dave asked.

“Whatever it is.”

Then the set came in and they forgot about the question.

Boone had only been vaguely aware that the place was even called The Institute of Self Awareness anyway. He had always known it as Shrink's, had carried his board down those wooden steps probably hundreds of times, and there was no way he was ever going to check into a room, eat vegetarian meals, take meditation seminars, yoga classes, and otherwise become self-aware.