Chapter 8
“You two can go in”, Carmen said. She held the door open for them. She was not smiling. Tobin and Abby walked in to Jill’s office. Both of them were dressed in beachwear instead of the standard suits. Tobin was carrying her surfboard. Jill was standing behind her desk waiting for them, hands on her hips, looking pissed off.
“Special Agent Heath”, Jill began. “This is not some job flipping burgers down the street at the corner diner. Yes, the surfboard bothers me. Yes, your clothes bother me. And yes, YOU bother me!” She glared at Tobin for a moment and then shifted her gaze to Abby. “And Wambach – for the love of Christ, how did I let you talk me into this asinine idea?”
“We’re working undercover, Jill”, Abby defended. “It takes time. We’ve inserted Tobin and produced a few-“
“No!” Jill yelled. “Let me tell you what you have produced. In the last week, you two have produced squat! In that time, the Queens have robbed two more banks! Thank God I have some real agents in Boxx and Cheney to head up those investigations and do some real work, while you two are off futzing about in the sun!” She glared at Tobin and Abby and then said, “Now, does either one of you have anything even remotely interesting to tell me?”
Abby shook her head. Tobin looked at Abby, then looked at Jill, then looked back at Abby. Then she looked back at Jill and said, “I caught my first tube yesterday, ma’am.”
Jill’s stared at her for a moment and then her face went red when she saw Abby trying to stifle a laugh. “Get out of my office!” she yelled, and Abby and Tobin scurried out.
“Why’d you have to say that to Jill?” Abby asked on their way to the lab. “You knew she’d blow a gasket.”
“Hey Abby, this is your lame-o idea in the first place”, Tobin fired back. “Since it’s stupid to begin with, the least I can do is have some fun with it. Plus, I'm surfing on my own time. Jill shouldn't have a problem.”
“Alright, fine, and I get your point, this idea is kind of silly, but you don’t have to rub Jill’s nose in it, alright? And, it could be worse. You could be undercover as a sewage drainpipe worker or something.”
Tobin rolled her eyes at Abby as they entered the lab. “Charles – what do you have for us?”
“We found a match”, Charles said and held up a small jar of sand. “Latigo Beach. Just west of Malibu.”
“Nice”, Tobin said. “I’ll hit the break first thing tomorrow.”
********
“That was really good”, Alex said as the server cleared their plates. Tobin had picked up Alex and taken her to a seafood restaurant near Malibu. They had just finished dinner and were through their second round of drinks.
“I’m glad you liked it”, Tobin said. “So, I realized I don’t really know much about you. Other than that your surf. And you work at the best lunch shack in town. And you’re not a bad soccer player. And you’re beautiful”, Tobin said and smiled.
Alex blushed a bit. “Thank you”, she said. “I grew up in Diamond Bar. It’s about an hour east of downtown L.A.”
“Do your parents still live there?” Tobin asked. She already knew the answer but she couldn’t let on that she knew.
“No”, Alex said. “My parents died in a car crash five years ago.” She looked down at the table, eyes dropping sadly.
“I’m so sorry”, Tobin said. And it was then that she felt it. A stab of guilt. She was playing on a heavy emotion for Alex, and she was using it just to get in undercover. And on top of that, she was finding herself increasingly drawn to Alex. She was beautiful, talented, sweet, and free-spirited. She stared at Alex, thoughts swirling in her head, when Alex’s voice brought her back to the present.
“That’s why I took you surfing, Tobin. We made a connection. Both of our parents have died in car crashes. I know, it’s kind of a morbid connection, but it’s a connection anyway. It’s important to make connections, you know what I mean?
“I do”, Tobin said, taking a sip of her beer.
“Anyway, I understand where you are emotionally, Tobin, with your parents dying in a car crash and all. I was there too. And I know what it’s like to have goals that were not your own. I played sports too, when I was younger, because my parents wanted me to, and then I went to college for a couple years to study political economics. My parents wanted to me to be in politics, if you can believe that. Can you imagine me as your state representative?” Alex said and laughed. Tobin thought about Alex’s rap sheet and then about Alex in politics and smiled at the irony. And, she has such an adorable laugh, Tobin thought, and then laughed out loud with her.
“What did you want to do?” Tobin asked. “Or, I mean, if you could do anything, what would it be?”
“Surf?” Alex said and laughed.
“Well, obviously”, Tobin said, smiling, but besides that.”
“I like art. Drawing and painting. I don’t know”, Alex shrugged. “Maybe open an art gallery, or an art studio or something? Ahhhh…to dream, right?” Alex smiled and then continued. “Anyway, after my parents died I stopped playing softball, basketball and track – all of the sports that my parents wanted me to play when I was younger, except for soccer, since I’ve always liked soccer – and I started surfing.”
“And is that how you met Ashlyn?”
“Yeah, well kind of. She and her friends came to the lunch shack one day, like a couple years ago. She hit on me, and somehow got me to go surfing with her. I had actually wanted to go surf at this break, Latigo Beach, but it’s heavy on locals, so it’s hard to get waves there. Ashlyn said she’d take me there, so I went.”
“Latigo Beach?” Tobin said at the mention of the beach that she would be scoping out tomorrow.
“Yeah. Do you know it?” Alex looked at her quizzically.
“Uh, no, well, maybe it sounds familiar, but I don’t know…” Tobin drifted off and then said, “Well that’s cool”. Inside she made a mental note to ask a bit more about that later.
“Yeah. Anyway…” Alex said, and then trialed off.
“What…?” Tobin prompted.
“I don’t know”, Alex said shyly. “I feel weird talking to you about this.”
“Abut what?”
“About Ashlyn.”
“Why?”
“Well, because, you know…Ashlyn and I were together for a bit, and, well… I mean, here we are, you and I, out on a date…” Alex said and let it hang.
“It’s okay”, Tobin said. Part of her just wanted information on Ashlyn so she could file it away in case it came in handy for her case, but part of her did feel a bit weird, having Alex talk about another woman on their date. When the night had started out, Tobin had asked Alex out to dinner primarily just to talk with her to get more information for her case, but this really did feel like a date. An actual, honest-to-goodness date, which, if Tobin was honest with herself, was the first date she’d had in a while. And, as she sat there, thoughts swirling in her head, a part of her wanted to just come out with it, to tell Alex who she was and what she was doing, and to let her know that she was falling for her, and that she could still work her case, but then not have to hide behind the walls of deception that come with undercover work.
“Tobin?” Alex said, bringing her out of her train of thought.
“Yeah?”
“What were you just thinking about?” Alex asked as she took a sip of her wine and gazed at Tobin across the candlelit table. She’s beautiful, Tobin thought. She gazed back at Alex for a moment and then said, “Nothing, sorry – I was just…thinking about my parents”, she lied.
“Hey”, Alex said. “I’m here for you if you need anything”, she said with a shy smile.
Tobin smiled back and reached across the table. She found Alex's free hand near the bread basket and squeezed it. “Thank you. And I’m here for you too”, she said to Alex.
********
After dinner Tobin took Alex’s hand and they walked on the boardwalk that ran along the beach. “So, do you guys surf Latigo Beach often?” Tobin asked, her mind wandering back to her case.
“No, not really. Ashlyn does on occasion, and Whit goes with her sometimes, but other than that not too much.” Alex paused for a moment and then said, “There are some…rough people who surf there.”
“Rough…how?” Tobin prompted.
“I don’t know, just…kind of crazy people there”, Alex said.
“Oh, okay”, Tobin said, and let it drop. They walked in silence for a moment and then she asked, “So, how come you stopped dating Ashlyn?” Alex looked sideways at her, and Tobin said, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay”, Alex said. “Ashlyn’s just…kind of…I don’t know...unpredictable. Like she just kind of comes and goes, goes with the flow. I mean, I kind of go with the flow too, but Ashlyn, it’s like…sometimes she just up and disappears for like months at a time. She, and Whit, and A-Rod and Moe. And Press, although I’ve never cared for her. She scares me, to be honest with you, but for some reason Ashlyn is friends with her”, Alex said, and Tobin thought about the tough-looking woman, who she had thought looked like someone who might have spent some time in prison, drinking at the beach while they had been playing soccer. “Anyway, sometimes they just, like, disappear. And then they come back, like half a year later.” She looked at Tobin and said, “It’s like, they live some kind of secret life or something. I don’t want to be with someone like that. I don’t want any secrets. And I don’t want that kind of unpredictability in my life. After what I’ve been through, I want to know the person that I’m with, and know that that person is going to always be around for me.”
“Huh…” Tobin said, thinking about what Alex had just said. Ashlyn and her crew…disappearing for months at a time. She wanted to ask if they were always around during the summer and then disappeared at other times, but she thought that might be pushing it, so she kept that to herself.
“What?” Alex said.
“What?” Tobin said back.
“You said, ‘huh’”, Alex said.
“Oh yeah. I was just thinking about what you were saying…about no secrets”, Tobin lied. Dammit, she thought, I shouldn’t have said that, but it just came off my tongue before I could stop it.
“I know, right?” Alex said, excited that Tobin agreed with her. Maybe this could be the start of something, she wondered to herself. “I mean, isn’t that the best for a relationship? No secrets?” She looked over and smiled at Tobin, and then she stopped them walking, lightly grabbed Tobin’s arm and faced Tobin towards her. “Don’t you agree? Isn’t that best?”
Tobin looked into Alex’s eyes. She was falling for this woman, and she felt horrible. Horrible because she was keeping a secret from her. A really big secret. She wanted so badly to just tell Alex right now, but looking into Alex’s big eyes made her clam up, and she delivered what Alex wanted to hear. “Yeah, I mean, totally. No secrets. That’s the best”, Tobin stammered out.
Alex stared at her for a moment and then smiled. Tobin smiled back, and then Alex leaned in and planted a soft kiss on Tobin’s lips, and Tobin thought, how long can I keep this up? And what am I getting myself into?