Boone gets up to make another cup of coffee.
He's trashed, aching from the beating he got back by the strawberry fields, and the adrenaline surge from the beach is long gone. His body screams for sleep, but it's just going to have to wait until he delivers Tammy to the courtroom, so he goes for more caffeine.
Petra's out.
Sound asleep on the sofa, snoring softly.
Boone tries to work up some righteous indignation over Sunny's false, unspoken accusation, but he can't. The truth is that he does feel some attraction to Pete, and if Sunny hadn't come to the door when she did, he might have done something about it.
He looks over at Pete.
Angelic when she sleeps.
But he's pissed off at her for snooping in his room. Looking at his books, digging up the stuff about Rain. Women, he thinks-it's always a mistake letting them into your space, because they prowl it like cats, check it out to see if they can make it their own.
So he's pissed at her but attracted to her at the same time. What is that? he wonders. Is it that “opposites attract” thing? He always thought that was some cheesy Paula Abdul song attached to some cartoon, but here it is. If you had to pick a woman who's totally wrong for him, out of every woman in the entire world, you'd choose Pete: ambitious, elitist, snobbish, career-oriented, fashion-conscious, argumentative, belligerent, sarcastic, ball-busting, high-maintenance, nosy…
But there it is.
Fuck.
Too complicated for me, he thinks.
Just get this case over, deliver Tammy Roddick to court, get back in time to get into the big swell. The ocean is simple-not easy, but simple- and a wave is something you know how to handle.
Just stay in the water, never come out.
But it isn't that simple, is it?
A woman's been killed, a pedophile is out there, and somebody has to do something about both those things. Dan Silver has to go down for Angela Hart's murder-Johnny will be on that until he gets it done-and Teddy D-Cup has to get squared for his little trips to Mister Roger's Neighborhood.
First things first, though, Boone tells himself as the water starts to boil. He takes the kettle off the heat before it whistles and wakes Pete up. First get through the night, then get Tammy to testify, then clean your head out in the big waves.
Then see to Dan and Teddy.
Yeah, except…
He sees movement through the edge of the kitchen window.
Out on the pier.
He pulls the curtain back for a better view and sees them out there, moving like cats hunting in the night. One of them is edging along the pier railing on the near side; another one takes the opposite side. Boone thinks he can make out two more on the base of the pier, but he's not sure.
And now a Hummer rolls slowly past in the street.
It's hard to really see them in the dark and the mist, but just by the way they move, Boone can see they're Hawaiians.
He touches Petra's arm and wakes her up.
She looks around the room, not knowing where she is.
“Go into the bedroom,” Boone says. “Shut and lock the door behind you, lie down on the floor.”
“What-”
“Just listen,” Boone says, and to her surprise, she does. “If you hear shooting, take Tammy and go out the window. You can swim into shore easily.”
“All right,” she says. “Will you-”
“I'll be fine,” he says. “Go.”
He waits until she goes into the bedroom and he hears the lock click.
Then he walks over to the cottage door, checks that he has a round chambered, and waits.
Tide, he thinks, what did Eddie offer you?