Payne drives a vintage Pontiac Firebird, gold as the setting sun. Just like Jim Rockford in the old TV series.
Growling at 60 on a straight stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, north of the Palisades. Gray, misty morning, onshore breeze ripping at the sand, two fun boards lashed to the roof rack.
Adam says something about the waves looking small and mushy, and if it's not a good day, maybe they can leave early and play catch at the park. Payne saying, fine with him, the water looking cold as steel.
Nearing Malibu, Payne's eyes flick toward the beach, appraising the waves, watching gray terns scavenging the shorebreak.
The blink of an eye, a flash of red to his right, the mere notion of a color, nothing more.
A pickup truck runs the red light at Topanga Canyon, slashes at them from the passenger side. Never braking, just plowing into the Firebird.
Payne instinctively reaches across Adam's chest to press him into his seat. Even belted, Adam is thrown sideways, his head whipping left and right, a rag doll, the crack and snap of vertebrae lost in the explosion of steel and glass. The Firebird catapults across the highway and smashes into a concrete barrier.
Adam doesn't cry out. Just a whoosh of air from his lungs, a gurgling from his throat.
Payne blinks to clear his eyes, hot rivulets of blood streaming from his scalp. He's pinned between his son and the driver's door, which itself is jammed against the concrete barrier. Then the pain. It hits Payne so hard he cannot isolate it, cannot tell torso from limb, but he is reasonably certain his right leg is twisted into an unnatural position. He cannot see his son, though he feels the dead weight of him.
"Adam. Adam, can you hear me?"
A man's voice from outside the driver's-side window. "Lo siento mucho."
"My son," Payne says. "Can you see him? Is he okay?"
The man leans through the open window. Leathery skin as creased as an old belt. The rank odor of tobacco and beer overladen with a fishy smell.
"El chico. El chico.?Dios me perdone!"
Suddenly, he is gone, his smell lingering. Footsteps, the man running along the pavement, the sound fading. Payne hears ocean swells, but when his eyes close, his mind pictures not the surf, but waves of blood pounding a black sand beach.