Rick Riordan - Southtown

“You can retrieve Navarre’s messages?”

“How long have I known him, Ana? Shit, yes. I could use his ATM card, if I wanted to.”

She fought back the bite of jealousy. “That doesn’t matter. He played us the message.”

“The second message?”

Time slowed. Ana said, “What second message?”

Ralph laughed appreciatively. “Shit-Tres don’t change. The meet’s at the Art Museum. It’s closed for repairs but Barrera runs security. He’s got the keys. And Ana?”

She was already moving, waving frantically at the SWAT lieutenant. “Yeah?”

“Try not to shoot Tres, okay? He can’t help himself.”

Somehow, the gun found its way into my hand.

It may have been the one smashed out of Barrera’s grip, or the one taken from the security guard’s holster. Maybe Barrera had hidden it at the bottom of the black duffel bag.

I figured there was some inverse property to the old statistic-carry a gun, and you are the most likely one to be shot with it. Perhaps if you didn’t carry a gun, you were likely to find one you could use to shoot someone else.

At any rate, the old-fashioned. 45 service revolver was lying there on the carpet. I scooped it up and ran into the gloom of the East Tower.

My ears were ringing. I was pretty sure the left side of my face was bleeding. Two blurry sets of steps kaleidoscoped in front of me, then two bathroom doors, then I was inside the men’s room, staring at a bloody handprint on the stall door, but no Jem.

I ran back into the gallery. An alarm went off-bells in the distance; the floor lights dimming red.

I wondered what kind of stupid alarm system sounds only when you try to escape the bathroom. Then I noticed the open glass doors leading to the rooftop, the stenciled warning: EMERGENCY

EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND.

I stepped outside, sinking to a crouch. The rooftop space was L-shaped-a railed patio with a walkway that ran along the back side of the tower. Rain made the tar shingles soft under my feet.

I crept around the corner and could just make out Jem’s shape toward the end of the walkway.

His back was to me. He stood frozen, looking at something-perhaps Sam Barrera’s body below.

As quietly as I could, I called, “Jem.”

No reply.

Stirman must have missed him. Stirman had given up when he heard the alarms. The police cars would be heading this way. It couldn’t take them long.

“Jem,” I said. “Come on-I’ll get you out of here.”

I stepped closer and froze.

Jem wasn’t staring over the edge. He was staring at Will Stirman, who was crouching in front of him at the edge of the walkway.

He was telling Jem something, pointing his gun at the boy’s feet. I could’ve sworn he was giving Jem a lecture.

Stirman saw me. He rose, calmly. We leveled our guns at each other.

I could hear police cars now. Tires slashing through water, turning onto Jones. They were running without sirens, but I knew they were cops. There is something unmistakable about the sound of police engines.

“It’s over,” I told Stirman. “Let Jem go back to his mother.”

Stirman blinked slowly. He seemed to be losing his grip on consciousness.

A single police light flashed-circling once across the neon skywalk and the face of the West Tower. An officer must have hit the switch accidentally while getting out of his car.

The light snapped Stirman back to his senses. He looked around. He was backed into a corner, forty feet in the air.

“Tell me where the money is,” he said.

“It’s too late for that,” I said. “You’ll never get out of the building.”

“I owe Soledad. I can’t give up.”

“It isn’t giving up. It’s deciding to live. If you run, you’ll die.”

Down in front of the museum, car doors were opening.

I had to get Jem away from Stirman. I had to get him out of the line of fire.

Stirman held my eyes. He seemed to understand what I was thinking.

He put his hand on Jem’s shoulder, gently pushed him toward me. “Go on, boy.”

Jem dug in his heels. His hand was closed, as if he were holding something small. “But…”

“Go on,” Stirman ordered.

Jem shook his head stubbornly. “But you told me-”

“It’s all right.” Stirman’s voice cracked. “Just go on, now.”

When Jem was finally safe behind me, Stirman said, “Now tell me about the cash. Quick.”

I didn’t see what difference it would make. I told him where the money was.

Understanding dawned on Stirman’s face-the sense that what I said had to be true. “Goddamn Fred Barrow.”

I imagined the police inside the building, the slow pulse of the glass elevator as it rose through the galleries, filled with heavily armed men.

Stirman took one last look at Jem-hesitating long enough to erase any chance of escape.

“Bear witness, Jem,” he said. “Be good to your mother, hear?”

Then he jumped. The drop should have been enough to break his legs, but he hit the roof of the lower gallery on solid footing and cleared the other side, dropping into the darkness behind the museum. There was at least a square mile of woods and flooded riverbanks back there. The police would have to search it on foot. But they would find him. I was sure of that.

Jem stared at the spot where Stirman had disappeared-wet treetops hissing in the rain.

I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but I sensed the barrier he was putting up. He wanted no more hand-holding, no comforting.

“He won’t come back,” I said.

“I know.”

His tone wasn’t what I expected from an eight-year-old who’d just had a conversation with evil. He sounded wistful. He wore the same expression he’d worn the night we watched his mother’s van go floating away down Rosillio Creek.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, depositing whatever he was holding.

Before I could ask what it was, I heard a groan from the roof below us. A man’s voice said, “Hell.”

“Stay here,” I told Jem.

I lowered myself over the railing. Stirman had done it. How hard could it be?

I dropped.

Stupid, Navarre.

I lost my footing immediately and slid down the slick roof. I would have gone over the edge and into the skylights below had I not caught the wet bottom rung of a service ladder. Slowly, I managed to crawl back up to where Sam Barrera was lying on his back, his arm bent underneath him at an ugly angle.

“Damn bastard,” he muttered. “You get him, Fred?”

I sat next to him, too exhausted to correct his ragged memory. “Yeah. I got him.”

That seemed to comfort the old man. He put his head back and let the rain fall on his face. Police were popping up in all the windows of the museum now-SWAT team members on the skywalk, aiming assault rifles at me.

“Thanks,” I told Sam, “for trying to save us up there.”

“Did I do that?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I always was pretty damn brave,” Barrera said. “I don’t know about taking the money, though. It feels wrong.”

“Maybe it is,” I admitted.

“And the baby?”

I looked at him, and asked carefully, “What about him?”

“Did your wife get him out okay?”

I was silent for a long time as the police moved in, DeLeon now visible above us, not looking happy, or in any hurry to call off her firing squad.

“Yeah, Erainya got him out,” I told Barrera. “The baby is fine.”

I looked up at Ana DeLeon in the broken glass and neon. I raised my hands in surrender.

The plane was a twin-engine Cessna, so old no self-respecting drug-runner would use it anymore, but it could still make the flight to Mexico below radar in under an hour.