Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

As a gremmie, Boone got his fair share of shit from the big guys, but he also got a little bit of a pass because he was Brett and Dee Daniels's kid, glossed “the Spawn of Mr. and Mrs. Satan” by a few of the crankier old guys.

Boone grew out of it. All gremmies do, or they're chased out of the lineup, and besides, it was pretty clear early on that Boone was something special. He was doing scary-good things for his age, then scary-good things for any age. It wasn't long before the better surf teams came around, inviting him onto their junior squads, and it was a dead lock that Boone would take home a few armloads of trophies and get himself a sweet sponsorship from one of the surf-gear companies.

Except Boone said no.

Fourteen years old, and he turned away from it.

“How come?” his dad asked.

Boone shrugged. “I just don't do it for that,” he said. “I do it for…”

He had no words for that, and Brett and Dee totally understood. They got on the horn to their old pals in the surf world and basically said, “Thanks but no thanks. The kid just wants to surf.”

The kid did.

Petra Hall steers her starter BMW west on Garnet Avenue.

She alternately watches the road and looks at a slip of paper in her hand, comparing the address to the building to her right.

The address-111 Garnet Avenue-is the correct listing for “Boone Daniels, Private Investigator,” but the building appears to be not an office but a surf shop. At least that's what the sign says, a rather unimaginative yet descriptive pacific surf inscribed over a rather unimaginative yet descriptive painting of a breaking wave. And, indeed, looking through the window she can see surfboards, body boards, bathing suits, and, being that the building is half a block from the beach, 111 Garnet Avenue would certainly appear to be a surf shop.

Except that it is supposed to be the office of Boone Daniels, private investigator.

Petra grew up in a climate where the sun is more rumor than reality, so her skin is so pale and delicate that it's almost transparent, in stark contrast to her indigo black hair. Her charcoal gray, very professional, I'm-a-serious-career-woman suit hides a figure that is at the same time slim and generous, but what you're really going to look at is her eyes.

Are they blue? Or are they gray?

Like the ocean, it depends on her mood.

She parks the car next door in front of The Sundowner Lounge and goes into Pacific Surf, where a pale young man behind the counter, who would appear to be some sort of white Rastafarian, is playing a video game.

“Sorry,” Petra says, “I'm looking for a Mr. Daniels?”

Hang Twelve looks up from his game to see this gorgeous woman standing in front of him. His stares for a second; then he gets it together enough to shout up the stairs, “Cheerful, brah, civilian here looking for Boone!”

A head peers down from the staircase. Ben Carruthers, glossed “Cheerful” by the PB crew, looks to be about sixty years old, has a steel gray crew cut and a scowl as he barks, “Call me ‘brah’ one more time and I'll rip your tongue out.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Hang Twelve says. “Like, the moana was epic tasty this sesh and I slid over the ax of this gnarler and just foffed, totally shredded it, and I'm still amped from the ocean hit, so my bad, brah.”

Cheerful looks at Petra and says, “Sometimes we have entire fascinating conversations in which I don't understand a word that is said.” He turns back to Hang Twelve. “You're what I have instead of a cat. Don't make me get a cat.”

He disappears back up the stairs with a single word, “Follow.”

Petra goes up the stairs, where Cheerful-a tall man, probably six-six, very thin, wearing a red plaid shirt tucked into khaki trousers-is already hunched over a desk. Well, she takes it on faith that it's a desk because she can't actually see the surface underneath the clutter of papers, coffee cups, ball hats, taco wrappers, newspapers, and magazines. But the saturnine man is punching buttons on an old-fashioned adding machine, so she decides that it is, indeed, a desk.

The “office,” if you can grace it with that name, is a mess, a hovel, a bedlam, except for the back wall, which is neat and ordered. Several black wet suits hang neatly from a steel coatrack, and a variety of surfboards lean against the wall, sorted and ordered by size and shape.

“Forty-some years ago,” Cheerful says, “a bra was something I tried with trembling fingers and little success to unsnap. Now I find that I am a brah. Such are the insults of aging. What can I do for you?”

“Would you be Mr. Daniels?” Petra asks.

“I would be Sean Connery,” Cheerful replies, “but he's already taken. So is Boone, but I wouldn't be him even if I could.”

“Do you know when Mr. Daniels will be in?”

“No. Do you?”

Petra shakes her head. “Which is why I asked.”

Cheerful looks up from his calculations. This girl doesn't take any crap. Cheerful likes that, so he says, “Let me explain something to you: Boone doesn't wear a watch; he wears a sundial.”

“I take it Mr. Daniels is somewhat laid-back?”

“If Boone was any more laid-back,” Cheerful says, “he'd be horizontal.”

Boone walks up Garnet Avenue from the beach in the company of Sunny.

Nothing unusual about that-they've been in and out of each other's company for coming on ten years.

Sunny originally flashed onto The Dawn Patrol like daytime lightning. Paddled out, took her place in the lineup like she'd been born there. Boone was about to launch into a six-foot right break when Sunny jumped in and took it from him. Boone was still poised on the lip when this blond image zipped past him as if he were a buoy.

Dave laughed. “Man, that babe just ripped your heart out and fed it to you.”

Boone wasn't so freaking amused. He caught the next wave in and found her coming back out through the white water.

“Yo, Blondie,” Boone said. “You jumped my wave.”

“My name isn't ‘Blondie,’” Sunny said. “And when did you buy the beach?”

“I was lined up.”

“You were late.”

“My ass I was.”

“Your ass was late,” Sunny said. “What's the matter, the big man can't take getting beat by a girl?”

“I can take it,” Boone said. Even to himself, it sounded lame.

“Apparently not,” Sunny said.

Boone took a closer look at her. “Do I know you?”

“I don't know,” Sunny said. “Do you?”

She lay out on her board and started to paddle back out. Boone had no choice but to follow. Catching up with her wasn't easy.

“You go to Pac High?” Boone asked when he got alongside.

“Used to,” Sunny said. “I'm at SDSU now.”

“I went to Pac High,” Boone said.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I remember you,” Sunny said.

“Uh, I guess I don't remember you.”

“I know.”

She kicked it up and paddled away from him. Then she spent the rest of the session kicking his ass. She took over the water like she owned it, which she did, that afternoon.

“She's a specimen,” Dave said as he and Boone watched her from the lineup.

“Eyes off,” Boone said. “She's mine.”

“If she'll have you.” Dave snorted.

Turned out she would. She outsurfed him until the sun went down, then waited for him on the beach until he dragged his ass in.

“I could get used to this,” Boone said to her.

“Get used to what?”

“Getting beat by a girl.”

“My name's Sunny Day,” she said ruefully.

“I'm not laughing,” he said. “Mine's Boone Daniels.”

They went to dinner and then they went to bed. It was natural, inevitable-they both knew that neither one of them could swim out of that current. As if either one of them wanted to.