by Mark Stone
“It’s right . . . oh, no,” Gina said, patting herself down as her eyes went wide. “I must have dropped it when you ran into me.” She swallowed hard. “You hit me pretty hard.”
“It wasn’t exactly a calm situation,” I reminded her, huffing loudly. Pulling at the door handle, I saw that the car was, in fact, locked. “We’re gonna have to make different arrangements,” I said, whipping my shirt off.
“I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but now isn’t really the right time for that kind of arrangement, is it?” Gina asked, her eyes even wider than before.
“Whatever you’re thinking is not exactly what I meant,” I said, pulling my right shoe off. Wrapping it in the shirt, I dug into my pocket for my lighter. While I didn’t smoke, the lighter was my grandfather’s and I never went anywhere without it. “I need you to push back a little,” I said, striking the lighter and watching the flame appear.
“What are you doing?” Gina asked, doing as I said and scooting in a straight line away from me.
“Ruining the most expensive shirt I have, destroying my best friend’s shoe, and hopefully buying us some time,” I said, bringing the light to the shirt-wrapped shoe and watching it blaze up. “Wish me luck.”
With bullets still flying, I got on my feet, crouching so low that I was still covered by the car. Then, taking both ends of the shirt, I spun it around in my hand like it was a mace ball, gathering momentum. I took a deep breath. Now came the ‘luck’ part.
In order to make sure I hit somewhere that would affect this man, I was going to have to look at him, and that meant putting myself in the line of fire. It would only be for a second, but a lot can happen in a second, including getting your brains blown out. Still, it was the only shot I had at the moment.
Steeling myself, I peered out from over the mangled hood. A bullet whizzed past my head, barely missing me as I took in the situation.
“Damn,” I repeated, still swinging the shoe around like Thor with his hammer. “Here goes nothing.”
Tossing it, I felt the cloth leave my hands and watched as the ball of fire flew through the night sky, hitting the man’s arm before it flopped off it and fell to the ground. The flame, however, spread across the man’s arm, racing up his shirt sleeve.
I heard a low, throaty scream come from inside the truck and watched as the insides lit up. The gun fell from his hand, hitting against the pavement. There was the time I needed. Striking out toward the truck, I ran as fast as I could toward the man. I could see that he was busily putting his sleeve out, though I still couldn’t see any of his face.
With the lights of the truck still blazing at me, I couldn’t help but think about another night, a night long since passed, a night when lights just like these bore down on me too, a night that changed everything forever. Shaking my head a little, I pushed the thought out of my mind. Nothing good would come from thinking about that right now. Besides, tonight wouldn’t end like that night. I wouldn’t run away from it. I would run toward these lights. I would end this before it got too out of hand.
Or at least, I thought I would.
As I ran toward the headlights, they started backing away. Suddenly, I realized what was going on. This man, shaken by being set on fire and losing his gun, was making a break for it . . . and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
“Don’t run, you coward!” I screamed as the truck turned on a dime and sped off toward the main road. “Come back here! If you can shoot at women and try to run them over, then you should be man enough to deal with me!”
But he wasn’t man enough and he didn’t turn around. Instead, I found myself watching tail lights as they grew smaller and smaller, vanishing into the distance.
9
Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I threw my shades on as my feet hit the sand of Hollywood Beach. The sun was just starting to come up, purging the sky of the darkness and replacing it with a bright, clear blue. People often tell me how much they envy me. They think my job is either lazy or glamourous. They think I slide onto the beach around noonish and spend the day in a drink-filled haze of a party.
Those people have no idea what the truth is. They don’t see how early we get here, beating even the sun to the water most days. They don’t know how much we train or how serious all of this is. They only see the surf, sand, and bikinis. And while those are definitely perks of the occupation, they don’t constitute every part of it. The men and women on this beach are warriors. We fight every day to keep people safe. We save as many as we can, all the while knowing that we’ll never be able to save them all.
“What took you so long, mate?” Riley asked from a couple hundred feet up the beach, taking a swig from his oversized water bottle, a standard for any lifeguard who has a full day in front of them, and smiling at me as he wiped his lips with the back of his arm.
“Mate?” I asked, arching my eyebrows at him.
“Yeah. I saw it in a movie. Thought it sounded cool,” he said.
“It probably did in the movie,” I answered, closing the distance between us as my soles slapped against the sand.
“Ouch,” my friend said, chuckling. “I know a guy who’s in a really bad mood this morning.”
“You also know a guy who got all of forty-five minutes of sleep last night,” I said, settling next to him and keeping pace as we walked toward the main tower.
“I’d ask you if it was a rough night or a fun night, but I know you spent most of it in a jail cell. So, I’ll cut you some slack,” Riley said.
“You know,” I started, laughing lightly, “I wasn’t even talking about that. To be honest with you, I’d kind of forgotten about the whole ‘getting thrown in jail’ thing.”
“Really?” Riley asked, reasonably shocked.
“Yeah. Jules posted my bail, and things got really weird from there,” I said.
“You dog!” Riley said, shoving me in a hard and playful manner. “I’ve seen a lot of movies of the adult persuasion that started like that.”
“Come on, Riley,” I said, shaking my head.
“Come on, what?” He asked. “This is big news. You and Jules?”
“No,” I said, pushing him back. “There’s no me and Jules. She’s my friend. I’ve known her since we were kids.”
“Doesn’t stop you from ogling her every time she runs past on the beach,” Riley said. Then, winking at me, he continued. “Didn’t think I noticed that, did you? Riley sees all, my friend.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “She posted my bail and offered me a ride home. That’s all.”
“Again, I’ve seen movies of the adult persuasion—”
“I’m gonna punch you. I mean it,” I said.
“Fine,” Riley said, shaking his head. “I’m just saying that I bet the ride would have been a lot more interesting if you’d have—”
“I didn’t take the ride,” I said, cutting him off. “Nate was with her.”
“Nate? Her older brother?” Riley asked. “The one you used to be friends with?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the sand.
“So, you left yourself stranded at the police station because you didn’t want to have an awkward conversation with someone who used to be your friend, and you did it in my best pair of shoes?” Riley asked.
“The shoes are pretty much destroyed. It was a long night. There’s no way around that, but I’m not having any conversation with that man. Period, end of discussion,” I said.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side like that,” he murmured. “What did he do, anyway?”
Anger flashed through me like a clap of lightning, bright and then gone.
“He lied about something really important,” I said. “He—”
“Chase!” The sound of my last name echoed like thunder across the still empty beach. Looking forward, I saw Miller standing in the doorway of the main tower. His arms were folded over his chest and his eyebrows were furrowed into a solid, impenetrable line over his dark eyes.
“You th
ink he’s excited to see you?” Riley asked.
“Get your useless ass in here!” Miller shouted and then turned, disappearing from the doorway.
“Doesn’t seem that way, does it?” I asked and continued toward the tower.
“Kinda early to be so pissed off. Don’t you think?” I asked, walking into Miller’s office and finding him standing at the window, looking out at the beach. I knew this pose pretty well. So did every lifeguard on Hollywood Beach who’d managed to stick around long enough to make Miller mad, for that matter. This was his ‘I’m so angry I can’t even look at you’ pose. It was his ‘if I don’t stare out this window at the beach I love, I might just rip your head off with my bare hands’ look. It was enough to strike fear into my heart when I was a rookie lifeguard, but I wasn’t a tadpole anymore, and it was going to take more than knowing my boss was unhappy with me to shake me up.
“I don’t know, Danny. Why don’t you ask the mayor if it’s too early to be pissed off. In fact, ask him if 4:45 was too early to be pissed off, because that’s when he rang my phone to scream at me because of the idiot who works for me. Would you like to guess who that idiot is, Danny?”
I stepped forward, Miller’s back still turned to me. “On this beach, and with your staff, the answer to that question could be a legion of things. Given the fact that I’m the one you brought in here, though, I’m gonna guess it has something to do with me.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Miller asked, finally turning to me. His face looked calm, but the crease in his forehead and the vein pulsating in his neck told me that ‘calm’ was the last thing my boss and mentor was.
“It was a weird night, and honestly, I’m not sure which part of it you’re talking about. Would it make you even madder if I asked you to be more specific?”
“I’m not sure I could get any madder at the moment, Danny,” Miller said matter-of-factly. “And I’m well aware of all the crap you stomped around in last night. Why don’t we go through it chronologically?”
“As good a way as any, I guess,” I muttered, leaning against his desk and bracing myself with my arms. There was a time when being that informal with Miller would have seemed out of the bounds of reason for me. That time had gone, though, and if this man wasn’t a friend, he was as close to one as a boss could get.
“You went to a party at the mayor’s house, where you proceeded to get into an argument with him and then punch out the guest of honor, leading to your being hauled off in handcuffs,” Miller said.
“That’s not exactly what—”
“After you were gracefully released from jail,” he said, shutting me up before I had a chance to finish the sentence, “you met with the mayor’s daughter, who you know is being actively hunted, and took her to a bar in the middle of the night.”
“Where I saved her life,” I interjected. “Can’t forget that part.”
“Where you took part in a gunfight that resulted in thousands of dollars’ worth of property damage,” Miller corrected me.
“Look, none of that happened the way it sounds,” I insisted.
“You didn’t punch an Olympic gold medalist, or you didn’t take a high-profile liability to a bar when you knew she had skipped out on police protection?” Miller asked.
“She took me to the bar. I didn’t have a choice,” I said.
Miller eyed me, shaking his head and grinning a little, but in the angry sort of way. “You’re 6’2, 190 pounds, and you’ve got biceps that could crack a walnut. You couldn’t stop some waif of a girl? I find that hard to believe.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” I scoffed. “She was going to go there anyway. She told me as much. I figured it was better if I kept an eye on her, seeing as the cops didn’t seem to be able to.” I nodded firmly. “It’s a good thing I did, too. Otherwise, she’d have been killed.”
“Or she’d have been in bed,” Miller said. “Her father told me that after you were arrested, she freaked out. She said you were her guest and that she was going to go get you. He seems to think that if you hadn’t been there in the first place, his daughter would have had a calm night at home.”
“Then he doesn’t know his daughter very well,” I replied. “I’ve had exactly two conversations with her, and I can already tell you that Gina is not the ‘calm night at home’ type.”
“That’s not really something I can say to the mayor, is it?” Miller asked, grabbing his coffee and drinking it with the sort of ferocity that made me think it might have been spiked with something. I knew better than that, though. Miller was a professional, and he took his job every bit as seriously as I did. No way in hell would he be drinking on the clock, even if today did seem like it was going to be a doozy.
“Maybe we need to reassess what we can and can’t say to the mayor,” I suggested, a bit of anger running through me.
“Absolutely,” Miller muttered bitterly, shaking his head. “You should bring that up to him at the next party.” He leveled a glare at me. “Right before you take a chainsaw to his piano. What the hell were you thinking, Danny?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” I admitted, looking down at the floor. “I just saw him and reacted.”
“Well, that reaction and the stunt with Gina almost cost both of us our jobs.” Miller huffed loudly.
“What?” I asked, my eyes wide as my head jerked upward with shock. “He can’t fire you,” I said quickly. The idea of my losing my job was one thing. Even though it had been my life’s work and I didn’t know who or where I would be without it, I wasn’t about to let Miller lose his position because of something I did.
“We’re government employees, Danny. He can put enough pressure on my superiors to convince them to let the both of us go and have us replaced by lunch,” Miller said. “But it’s all right. I took care of it. I pointed to your exemplary record and lack of any real problems in the past. I also let him know what you had overcome to be here, the sort of physical and mental strength it would take to do that.” He cleared his throat and shuffled. “I also let him know that you and Cameron James had a past and that it wasn’t a very happy one. I reminded him that should you go public with certain allegations of what you say happened to you the night of the accident, it wouldn’t be good for Cameron’s reputation, and that wouldn’t be good for his future here.”
A spark of a memory lit in my mind, and before I could stop it, the accident erupted like a brush fire in the center of my brain. All I could see was that night—the breaking glass, the twisting metal, the shattered bones.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said, swallowing hard. “I wouldn’t blackmail anyone, not even him.”
“I know that,” Miller said. “You didn’t. I did, and I’d do it again. I’m not saying you were right to punch him, especially in those circumstances, but I am saying that if that sonofabitch did to me what he did to you, then a fist to the face would be the least he could expect.”
I took a deep breath and walked closer to my boss. “I appreciate that, and I appreciate what you did for me,” I said.
“It’s not as much as I wish I could have done,” Miller said, running a hand through his hair.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“There are changes happening, Danny, and I don’t want you to think this is because of what happened last night. In fact, these changes were put into place months ago. It seems that the city needs funds. While the beach is doing well, some sort of art initiative downtown fell flat and cost the city big bucks. Since tourism is our biggest moneymaker and since the beach is what people come here for, the mayor is looking to us to bring in even more revenue. To do that, he wanted to make a big change.” Miller shook his head. “I knew about this weeks ago, ever since the ink dried. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t quite know how. It’s just—”
“Miller, I get it,” I said, raising my hand to stop him. “You’re going to tell me that Cameron James is going to be the face of the beach. They’re going
to plaster his face on posters and put him in commercials. I pieced that much together last night while the lanky bastard was writhing on the floor and grabbing his eye.” I took a deep breath. “I thought about it, and while I don’t like the idea of having to wade through a bunch of cardboard cutouts of a dude I hate, I can get past it. This is my home. Cameron James can’t take it from me, even if the mayor does want to put him in some ad campaign about it.”
“No, Danny. That’s not it,” Miller said, his hands balling into nervous fists. “He’s not going to be the face of the beach. He’s going to be on the beach.”
“What?” I asked as a jolt of something that felt like electricity moved through me, straightening my back and speeding up my heart.
“That’s right,” a voice said from behind me. Turning, I saw the man of the hour himself. Cameron James stood in the doorway, a black eye and a cocky smile adorning his face. “I’m going to be here all the time now, day in and day out,” he said. His smile grew as he continued. “Oh, yeah, and I’m going to be your boss.”
10
Seeing Cameron James standing in the doorway of my boss’s office, decked out in the same lifeguard uniform that I had come to see as a medal of honor, made me sick to my stomach. Whereas seeing him at the party last night filled me with a kind of hate I had only experienced a time or two in my life, this time filled me with something different. I was still angry, don’t get me wrong. You don’t live through what I’ve lived through and not hold onto at least a little bit of resentment for the man who did it to you. Still, the emotion that surged through me right now was more tribal than that. It was of a lion who wanted more than anything to keep his land safe from the predator looking to infiltrate it. That wasn’t hate. It was determination.
“I don’t think so,” I said, my jaw so tight that the words could barely squeak out. “No way in hell am I working for you.”