Read Dawn Patrol for Free Online Page B

her a golden smile. She already
hates
this woman.
    Sunny fires Boone a look.
    “Uh, Sunny,” says Boone, “this is Petra. Petra, Sunny.”
    “Pleasure to meet you,” Petra says.
    “You, too. What brings you to PB?” Sunny asks.
    “I’m attempting to engage Mr. Daniels’s services,” Petra says, thinking, As if it’s any of your business what brings me to Pacific Beach.
    “That’s not always easy to do,” Sunny says, glancing at Boone.
    “As I am discovering,” says Petra.
    “Well, discover away,” Sunny says. “I’ll get your drinks.”
    The bitch wants to sleep with him, Sunny thinks as she walks to the kitchen to place the order, if she hasn’t already. A “small oatmeal, raw brown sugar on the side,” as if the skinny Brit needs to watch her waistline. But why does it bother me? Sunny wonders.
    Back at the booth, Petra asks Boone if there’s a toilet in the place.
    “Go down the bar, take a left.”
    Boone watches Dave the Love God eyeing her as she walks past him.
    “No,” Boone says.
    “What?” Dave asks with a guilty smile.
    “Just no.”
    Dave smiles, shrugs, turns around, and goes back to reading the tide report in the
San Diego Union-Tribune
. It looks good, very good, for the big swell.
    Boone opens the Tammy Roddick file.
    “After I’ve finished eating,” he says when Petra gets back, “I’m going over to Tammy’s place.”
    “I was just there,” Petra says. “She wasn’t.”
    “But her car might be, and that would tell us—”
    “There is no vehicle registered in her name,” Petra says. “I checked.”
    “Look,” Boone says, “if you know better how to find your witness, why don’t you just go do it, save yourself the money and me the grief?”
    “You’re easily offended,” Petra says.
    “I’m not offended.”
    “I didn’t imagine that you’d be so sensitive.”
    “I’m not sensitive,” Boone replies.
    “He’s speaking the truth,” Sunny says as she sets the food on the table.
    “Could you make this to go?” Boone asks her.
15
    Except when he gets out to the street, a tow truck just about has its hook into the Boonemobile.
    The Boonemobile is Boone’s van, an ’89 Dodge that the sun, wind, and salt air have turned to an indiscriminate, motley splatter of colors and lack thereof.
    Despite its modest appearance, the Boonemobile is a San Diego icon that Boone has used to carry him to a few thousand epic surfing sessions. Ambitious young chargers have been known to cruise the Pacific Coast Highway, scanning the beach parking lots for the Boonemobile to learn what break its owner is hitting that day. And there is no doubt among the greater San Diego beach community that the van, when it goes to its inevitable and well-deserved rest, will find a home in the surf museum up in Carlsbad.
    Boone doesn’t care about any of that; he just loves his van. He has lived in it on long road trips and when he didn’t have the scratch to rent an apartment. What Fury was to Joey, what Silver was to the Lone Ranger, that’s what the Boonemobile is to Boone.
    And now a tow truck operator is trying to sink his hook into it.
    “Yo, whoa!” Boone yells. “What’s up?”
    “You missed two payments,” Tow Truck Guy says, bending down to fix the hook under the van’s front bumper. He wears a red ball cap with a SAN DIEGO WRECK AND TOWING logo, a dirty, grease-stained orange jumpsuit, and brown steel-toed work boots.
    “I haven’t missed any payments,” Boone says, placing himself between the hook and the van. “Okay, one.”
    “Two, dude.”
    “I’m good for it,” Boone says.
    Tow Truck Guy shrugs, like, Not so far you ain’t good for it. Boone looks like he’s going to cry as Tow Truck Guy starts to tighten the chain. You put the hook on the Boonemobile, he thinks, it might not be able to take the strain.
    “Stop!”
    Petra’s voice freezes Tow Truck Guy in his tracks. Then again, Petra’s voice could freeze a polar bear in its tracks.
    “If,” she