by Rick Riordan
The line went dead.
“Jem,” I called.
He came out of the bathroom. “You found a bag?”
“Champ, we don’t have time-”
Red lights flashed against my windowpanes. A police car had pulled into the driveway, blocking my truck and Barrera’s BMW. Ana DeLeon and her friend from the Fugitive Task Force, Major Cooper, got out of the back. Two uniforms got out of the front. They walked toward my porch looking like Death’s Prize Patrol.
“On second thought,” I told Jem, “how about you play with Robert Johnson in the backyard for a little while?”
My hand trembled as it hovered over the answering machine. I passed up erase, punched rewind.
A knock at the door. Ana DeLeon was two steps inside my living room before she asked, “May we come in?”
Behind her, the male cops stared at me. I could sense DeLeon was keeping them on a short tether. They would’ve liked nothing better than to tear me apart.
“Always glad to see friends,” I said.
DeLeon formally introduced Major Cooper, the Task Force guy. Up close, I saw I was right about the linebacker thing. He had the cross-eyed squint of a former player, as if he’d spent too many years staring through a face plate. He wore a brown blazer with jeans and a yellow and blue tie that looked like Van Gogh had thrown up on it.
DeLeon said, “We have a problem.”
I nodded. “You’re right. He’s a fashion disaster. But I don’t think my clothes will fit him.”
DeLeon managed to contain her mirth. “Twenty minutes ago, Will Stirman robbed a mom-and-pop on South Presa. The store owner stabbed him in the shoulder; Stirman shot the old guy dead. We blocked off the entire area, but Stirman still got away. Now we’ve got a wounded armed fugitive roaming the South Side.”
“Straight down Broadway,” I advised. “When you hit downtown, keep going.”
“This is bullshit,” Cooper said. “Cuff him.”
DeLeon held up her hand. The uniforms stayed where they were.
“Tres, no games,” she said. “The media is running with the story. Every cop in Bexar County who’s not already on flood duty has been called up. We need to know what you know.”
In the backyard, Jem was kicking his soccer ball at the patio table. He was trying to dislodge Robert Johnson, who was playing goalie. The score was zero-zero.
“You said it yourself,” DeLeon reminded me. “If Stirman is forced to run, he won’t bother keeping a hostage alive. We may have minutes rather than hours.”
I glanced at Cooper. His face betrayed no surprise. He’d been fully briefed on Erainya.
I tried not to be angry. I tried not to feel like DeLeon had betrayed me by showing up unannounced with a bunch of bruisers. It wasn’t her fault. She was doing her job, trying to help. Ralph had told me I should trust her, let her handle it. Maybe that’s what decided me.
“Stirman called last night,” I said. “He thinks Barrow and Barrera stole fourteen million dollars from him. He demanded we return it.”
No one looked surprised about the amount of cash.
DeLeon said, “When and where?”
“Tonight. He’s supposed to call after midnight and specify a drop.”
“You found the money?”
“No.”
DeLeon arched an eyebrow.
“Search the house,” I offered.
DeLeon must’ve never heard of a bluff. She glanced at the uniforms. “Gentlemen?”
They tore up my apartment with gusto.
“While they’re at it,” she said, “mind if I search you for a weapon?”
Motherhood hadn’t made her any gentler when it came to frisks.
Once she satisfied herself I wasn’t carrying, and the cops found nothing more incriminating than my tai chi sword above the toilet and a cup full of HEB Buddy Buck coupons, DeLeon and Cooper exchanged looks.
“We’ll tap the line,” Cooper said. “Wait for the call.”
“No,” DeLeon and I chorused.
I’m not sure who was more embarrassed by our agreement.
“Stirman’s wounded,” DeLeon said. “If he’s listening to the news, he knows we’re on to him. He’s not going to keep a schedule. He’ll cut his losses and run.”
“We’ve got every highway under surveillance,” Cooper said. “We’ll shut down the fucking city. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Right,” I said. “You’re just toying with him now.”
Cooper took a step toward me.
DeLeon interposed. “Major.”
“You vouched for this son-of-a-bitch,” Cooper reminded her. “He knew Stirman was in town, maybe for days. If he’d given us a few goddamned details-”
“Major,” DeLeon cut in, “as I explained at the hospital yesterday, Tres’ boss may be in danger-”
“Hell with that. I should throw his ass in jail for aiding and abetting.”
“You see that boy outside?” DeLeon asked. “His mother is the one Stirman took. Tres is trying to make sure she doesn’t die.”
“I don’t…” Cooper stopped himself. His temples turned purple with the effort.
“You don’t care,” I supplied, “about anything except catching Stirman.”
“Tres,” DeLeon said, “if we knew where to look right now, it would be the San Antonio SWAT team who deployed. They’re the only hostage force ready. I know them. They would do things right.”
“If you knew where to look.”
Her eyes held mine. “Stirman still wants his money. He might’ve called you after the robbery went bad, moved up the meeting time.”
I thought about Sam Barrera, who would be arriving at Jones and Avenue B about now. Minutes rather than hours.
Cooper grumbled, “This asshole is holding back.”
“I know that, goddamn it!” DeLeon snapped. She turned her attention back to me, tried to moderate her tone. “Well?”
I walked to the answering machine.
“I got home maybe two minutes before you walked in,” I said. “This was waiting for me.”
I pressed play.
As soon as Barrera’s voice mentioned an address, Cooper whipped out his cell phone, but DeLeon said, “Wait.”
She listened until I punched stop, then studied me uneasily. “Why did he call you Fred?”
“I’m the guy who works with Erainya. Sam’s got Fred Barrow on the brain. You’ve never called somebody the wrong name when you were under stress?”
She thought about that. “He told you to call the field office. You’ve been talking with the FBI?”
“He means I-Tech, his agency. Look, I gave you what you want. Now get moving, or let me do it.”
“Let’s go,” Cooper told the uniforms.
DeLeon hesitated. “You will stay here, Tres. You understand that?”
“I’m taking care of Jem. I have no weapon and no money to bargain with. Does it look like I’m charging into battle?”
DeLeon glanced toward the patio, where Jem was teaching Robert Johnson how to block corner shots.
“Sergeant,” Cooper growled. “Now, or I leave without you.”
Her expression was still troubled. She sensed something amiss. She said, “I’ll get her back alive, Tres. I swear.”
Their patrol car disappeared down Queen Anne Street.
I opened the patio door and told Jem to bring the cat inside.
“Time to go?” he asked, setting a relieved Robert Johnson down by his food dish.
“Time,” I agreed. “You’ve got to be brave, champ. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded. “We’ll get my mom back. He can’t take us both on.”
I tried to smile, despite the fact that I was betting everything-including our lives-on a guess.
I pressed play on the answering machine, let the tape continue from where I’d stopped it. I listened again to Sam Barrera’s second message-the one Ana DeLeon hadn’t heard.
21
Erainya dreamed of J.P.
&
nbsp; He stood over her, telling her not to worry-he’d have the ropes off in a moment. She could smell his cologne. She was grateful for the familiar silver stubble on his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw against the broadcloth collar. His hands worked deftly at the knots.
But J.P. had been murdered. She had seen him fall in the alley behind Paesano’s.
The man over her became Fred Barrow. He tugged at the ropes, clumsy and insistent, a gun in one hand, which made it impossible for him to get anywhere.
“Goddamn it, Irene.” He smelled of cigars and bourbon. His belly pressed against her ribs, crushing her as it had the night she’d killed him. “Wake up. Come on.”
Son-of-a-bitch.
She brought up her legs and kneecapped him in the face, sending him sprawling.
Erainya blinked, and came fully awake.
She was lying on a dirty pile of blankets, her arms bound behind her, her dress soaked with sweat. The man she’d just kneed in the head was the young fugitive-Pablo.
He got up, cursing, went to the table and exchanged his gun for a knife.
“Hold still,” he growled, “or I’ll cut your hands off.”
Erainya felt the cold metal blade slip between her wrists. Pablo tugged, and the ropes snapped. She sat up, tried to move her arms. She felt like someone had poured boiling water into her veins.
Pablo stepped back, retrieved his gun. “Do the rest yourself.”
Her fingers were numb. She managed to peel back the duct tape from her mouth.
“Get up.” Pablo stood by the plywood-barricaded window, peeking out a sliver of sunset at something below. “We don’t have much time.”
She fumbled with the knots that bound her ankles. She wanted to feel hopeful about being untied, but she didn’t like the urgency in Pablo’s voice. He had that wild, angry look in his eyes he got every time Will Stirman yelled at him.
She must have missed something. Had Stirman called? Erainya cursed herself for falling asleep.
“Stand up,” Pablo ordered.
“My legs are numb.”
He turned toward her, the light from the window making a luminous pink scar on his left cheek. “Get over here if you want to live. You need to see this.”
Erainya got unsteadily to her feet.
At the window, Pablo put the gun against her spine. “Quietly.”
The evening air felt good on her face-better than the stifling heat inside anyway.
At first, Erainya saw nothing special-train tracks, a half-flooded gravel parking lot freckled with rain, empty loading docks and gutted warehouses. The sun was going down through a break in the clouds.
Then she noticed the blue van with tinted windows, parked under a chinaberry tree at the end of the block. She caught a flicker of movement on a rooftop across the street. A glint of metal in an upper window that should’ve been empty.
“Cops,” Pablo told her. “Your friends broke faith.”
The muzzle of his gun dug between her vertebrae.
Erainya tried to steady her breathing. “I don’t see anything.”
“You won’t see them until they break down the door, huh? They’re setting up a perimeter. We’ve been screwed.”
His breath was sour from lack of sleep and canned food, his eyes red with shame, like a kid who’d just been beat up in the locker room.
Give him options, Erainya told herself.
Pablo had used the word we. He was desperate and alone. He was looking for help.
“Get away from the window,” she told him. “You’re giving the snipers a target.”
He pulled her back, shoving her toward the mattress. “Your friend thought I wouldn’t shoot you? Is that what he thought?”
“You’re not cold-blooded, honey. You just cut me loose.”
“I can’t shoot a woman sleeping and tied up.” His voice quivered. “I wanted you to see them out there. This ain’t my fault.”
A big rig rumbled by outside, drawing Pablo’s attention to the window.
Erainya could try to disarm him, but her limbs were sandbags. She’d grab for the gun only as a last resort. She was afraid that decision might be just a few seconds away.
“Shooting me won’t help,” she said. “Don’t listen to Stirman.”
Pablo’s face was beaded with sweat.
“I can still run,” he said. “The loading dock in back-”
“They’ll kill you as soon as you step outside.”
“I’m not going to mess with a hostage, miss. I’m sorry.”
“Let me go out there,” she said. “I’ll tell them Stirman forced you. That’s true, isn’t it? They’ll treat you fair. I’ll stay with you, honey.”
Pablo blinked.
It had probably been a long time since anyone had offered to stay with him in a crisis.
He raised the gun. “I’m not going back to jail.”
“You don’t have to kill me.”
“If I don’t, Stirman will find me-doesn’t matter if I’m in jail or out. I have to get home. My wife…”
Erainya imagined a SWAT team moving silently into position. A flash-bang grenade would roll in the door first. Maybe tear gas. It wouldn’t be soon enough. Pablo and she were both going to die.
“There’s another way,” she told him. She tried her best not to make it sound like a lie. “I have an idea.”
His finger was white on the trigger. “No time, miss.”
“Listen to me.”
Pablo shook his head, his eyes bright with anger as if he were still hearing Stirman’s voice giving him orders.
Erainya started explaining anyway, describing her last-resort idea as Pablo took aim at her heart.
22
The Art Museum was supposed to be closed for flood repairs, but when Jem and I got there the entranceway blazed with light. The glass front doors were propped open with a trash can.
Two cars sat at the curb-an old Ford station wagon and an ’83 Chevy Impala with naked-lady-silhouette mud flaps. Neither struck me as a typical art patron vehicle.
“I’ve been here on a field trip,” Jem informed me.
“That’s good,” I said. “So you know where the bathrooms are?”
He nodded. With his active bladder, Jem had men’s room radar.
“If I tell you to run,” I said, “go to the bathroom. Lock the door if you can, and call 911. Okay?”
“Okay.” He slipped his mother’s cell phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Next time we do a heist, can we go to Malibu Castle?”
“ Rendezvous, champ. Heists are what the bad guys do.”
I pulled my truck up to the Grand Avenue Bridge and parked behind a dark stand of cottonwoods next to the swollen river. I wasn’t sure why. I just didn’t feel right leaving the truck in plain sight.
We walked back to the museum entrance.
I used my Swiss army knife to puncture the tires on the Chevy and the Ford. I was tempted to cut off the Chevy’s naked-lady mud flaps, but we were in a hurry.
Jem took my hand. It was the first time he’d done so in almost a year. We looked up at the two towers rising into the night, the glass skywalk between them, crisscrossed with neon. I wished they still made beer here. I needed one.
Together we walked up the front steps.
The night watchman was slumped over the security desk. His gun holster was empty. He had a nasty lump on the side of his head. Spots of blood dribbled from his earlobe onto the security monitor.
“Is he okay?” Jem asked.
“Oh, sure.” I squeezed Jem’s hand and pulled him away. “Probably just tired.”
Dripping water echoed in the vastness of the Great Hall. Three stories above, damaged skylights sent a steady stream of runoff onto the cafe tables and the chocolate Saltillo tiles, completely missing the buckets. At the top of the staircase, two windows had been blasted out by the storms, replaced with plastic sheeting. The hanging catamaran sculpture that always reminded me of a da Vinci contraption was wrapped in a tarp.
&nb
sp; I glanced into the gift shop. No crazed killers.
The other direction, plastic-wrapped statues of Marcus Aurelius and Vishnu flanked the entrance to the Ancient Cultures wing.
A man’s voice crackled with static: “Upstairs.”
It came from the unconscious guard-or rather, from the two-way radio clipped to his belt.
“Hope you’re not as empty-handed as it looks,” Stirman’s voice said. “Mr. Barrera hopes so, too. West elevator. All the way up.”
I looked around for a security camera. I didn’t see one.
“Let’s go,” I told Jem.
“You sure this isn’t a heist?” he asked.
The West Tower elevator was one of those see-through glass and steel jobs, set in the center of the room amidst Anubis statues and Middle Kingdom hieroglyphics. Getting inside made me feel like I was becoming one of the displays.
We ascended past Chinese porcelain and samurai armor. The pulley system went by, its brass wheels and silver weights clicking. We stopped on the fourth floor. Tahitian masks and Aboriginal fertility statues stared at us from the shadows.
The gallery space was tiny at the top of the tower. There was no place to go but the skywalk.
Will Stirman stood at the far end, holding a two-way radio and a gun. Sam Barrera sat cross-legged in front of him, a black duffel bag at his side.
“Come across halfway,” Stirman told us.
We stepped out over the void between the towers.
To the north, past the rooftops of the smaller galleries, Highway 281 cut a glittering arc around the woods and the river. To the south glowed all of downtown-the Tower of the Americas, the enchilada-red library, the old Tower Life Building.
Stirman hadn’t needed a security camera to see us approaching. From this vantage point, you could see straight down to the front of the building, and inside the Great Hall through the skylights.
It was difficult to say whether he or Barrera looked worse.