It was almost six o’clock when he pulled off the 101. A gated community occupied Rincon Point, but there was a public parking lot in behind. He drove out to the far end, and they got out and looked at the ocean. To their left, the beachfront houses hid the southern view, but to the north the coastline was visible for miles, the hills dull green and blading down to meet the sand, the air above the water hazed with a low reef of salt spray. A light on-shore wind was putting a chop on the water, but the swell was three-to-four feet—big enough to hold up in the westerly—and he could see the right-handers peeling away off the point.

Erin said, ‘Maybe this is bad taste.’

Vincent looked at her. ‘Why’s that?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. Guess there’s no rulebook for days like this, is there?’

He watched her quietly.

She said, ‘I was surfing in Bali when my mother died. I mean, I realised later, I was in the water.’

For a second, he thought he had something poetic to do with human symmetry—seeing off both her parents from the water—but he let that one go. He said, ‘I think today counts as a shitty day. And if you think a wave’s going to take the edge off it a little, I think you should go right ahead.’

That seemed to do it. She got her bag from the back of the Range Rover and went into the changing shed, came back out in shorts and a bikini top. Looking pretty good in them too. Maybe she surfed regularly. He figured she wouldn’t stay in that kind of shape just from writing books.

She said, ‘Thirty minutes. I only need a couple.’

‘No hurry.’

He drove the car out to the end of the lot and parked where he could watch her paddle out. It was quieter than he normally saw it. Only a handful of surfers sitting beyond the break, rising and falling with the swell. Erin knew what she was doing: he watched her duck-dive a heavier set—five waves in a row that were pushing four feet—and then she was paddling hard, out beyond the white water.

She’d left Freeman’s phone on the seat. Vincent picked it up. It looked like a burner. No frills, no PIN, not even a contact list. He navigated to the call log. The most recent call had come in at ten that morning. A 323 area code, which he was pretty sure was Beverly Hills. He used his own phone and searched the number. The first result linked to a law firm’s website: Page Swanson, Attorneys at Law.

Attorneys.

There’d been a lawyer looking for Lamar’s former security chief. And the name chimed with something. He didn’t quite have it yet.