Promises I Made by Michelle Zink

alwaysdesigned to look and feel the same to the people who frequented them. I was willing to bet this one was almost identical to the one in Seattle. At one p.m., the place would be packed.
    Recon complete, I bought a breakfast burrito and a coffee from one of the hole-in-the-wall food places close to the beach. I’d planned to avoid the water, but I felt the pull of it like the tide to the moon, and I found myself heading for the pier and taking the stairs down to the still-cool sand almost without thinking.
    I sat down near the water. The beach was deserted except for a few surfers, rising and falling on the waves, and the joggers that populated every beach I’d ever been to in California. Gulls wheeled out over the sea, calling to one another as they swooped down, skimming fish and scraps of food off the surface. The water crawled toward my feet before withdrawing back into the well of the ocean. The sound of it was hypnotic, and my nerves smoothed out just a little. I closed my eyes, letting my breath match the rhythm of it, trying to commit the sound and smell to memory. Maybe I could call on it the next time I was heaving against a crumbling building, trying to catch my breath.
    By the time I finished my breakfast, I felt a little better. More in control. Like I might actually be able to pull it all off. I made my way back up to the promenade and bought a bottled water at the café across the street from the Reel Inn. Then I sat down at one of the window seats and waited.
    I wasn’t due to meet Detective Castillo for nearly two hours, but if the police were setting up a sting, they’d haveto do it in advance. I pulled out a magazine I’d pilfered from the lobby of the hotel and scanned the surrounding buildings through the lenses of my aviators. I looked for sudden movement around the restaurant, for a group of people—mostly men—moving toward it. I looked for activity on the roof, people talking on headsets, meaningful glances that would be out of place passed between strangers. But it was quiet.
    The crowd slowly increased as the lunch hour approached. People walked by with shopping bags and paper cups of coffee. There were even a few uniformed officers strolling the walkway. But no one was in a hurry. No one was being too careful, too casual.
    Thirty minutes before I was scheduled to meet Detective Castillo, little had changed. Someone had opened the door to the Reel Inn, propping it open with a sandwich board, and there were a few more people, some of them in business suits, hurrying over the walkway. But that was it. No police that I could see and nothing that could be an undercover operation. If Detective Castillo’s men were moving in, they were completely undetectable to my eyes.
    I’d found only a couple of photos online of Raul Castillo, both of them taken during press conferences. In one shot he was standing off to the side, hands clasped behind his back, eyes aimed at someone in a suit standing in front of a microphone. In the second picture he’d been half hidden behind a detective named Fletcher, whose steely gaze was aimed directly at the camera. Neither of the angles had provided me with a full view of Detective Castillo’s face. Instead Ihad gotten a glimpse of powerful shoulders, a strong jaw beneath unsmiling eyes, dark hair cut close to the head. I kept the images in mind as I watched the front door of the Reel Inn, afraid to even blink in case I missed him.
    Finally, just before one p.m., a solidly built man approached the restaurant. He moved so quickly and with such assurance that I almost dismissed him. I’d expected him to look around, to try to spot me before he went inside. But he moved toward the door with single-minded purpose. He was wearing a navy Windbreaker, his eyes hidden behind aviators that weren’t very different from the cheap ones I’d bought at Rite Aid. I wondered if he had been in the military; he had that kind of gait,