Rick Riordan: The Devil went down to Austin

The need for air overrode everything else. I let myself float up, felt cool on my face and gasped in a breath that tasted like gasoline. My eyes burned in the darkness.

There was tromping above me. Maia's voice. A man screamingArmand. I was under the deck.

I took a breath, submerged, felt my way beneath the aluminium pontoon, kicked up in open water, the railing of the deck above me.

I yelled for Maia, then grabbed the deck floor. It took a supreme effort to haul myself up out of the lake.

Maia was tying a strip of white table linen around Armand's shoulder. Something was wrong with her foot-it was wrapped in cloth, too, and blood had already soaked it.

She finished with Armand, then limped toward Pena, who was not moving.

"Hayes?" I yelled.

"I don't know." She examined Pena's gut wound. "Christ. I used Pena's cell phone, called 911. We've got to get Lopez out of the water. It could still be a tenminute response time."

I wheeled around, scanning the horizon-saw nothing but darkness, glittering water.

Then a faint reflection-moonlight on wet neoprene-and I saw Hayes. He was on the shoreline, running uphill.

"There," I said. "He's heading for the dam."

Maia had blood on the side of her face, and I wasn't sure if it was hers.

"Hayes will get away," she said. "And Lopez doesn't have ten minutes."

I looked at her foot, then at the scuba equipment. We both knew Maia would not be running up any hills.

"Go!" she said.

"Lopez will have to hold out," I said. "Don't try it, Maia."

Her face was utterly white, but she staggered over to the air tank, stared at it like it was a bomb. She picked up the. 380 Raven, tossed it to me. "Just go, Tres. Now."

I ran-out of the restaurant, stumbling over the gravel in the parking lot, following Dwight Hayes uphill. My shirt felt like fifty extra pounds of water so I stripped it off. It was a hard trail through agarita and whitebrush and cactus, over limestone rubble at a thirtyfivedegree angle. Dwight didn't seem to have any problem with it, even in a wet suit. He was far ahead, and he kept gaining.

When he got to the top, I shot at him. Instead of turning toward the parking lot, as I'd thought he would, he turned toward the dam, started running across. By the time I was at the top, on the dam access road, Dwight was fifty yards out and I could hear the first police sirens in the distance.

A Travis County patrol car was racing up the road on the far end of the dam, a mile away. His lights were flashing. He would be there, inadvertently cutting off Hayes' escape, before Hayes could ever reach the far side.

The wind that always buffeted the dam seemed to be blowing Dwight back in my direction, ripping at his short brown hair, making it dance in spikes.

He stopped at the halfway mark. I slowed. On the other side, the police car braked, its headlamps pointed straight at us. A deputy's flashlight cut a wavering beam in the night as he ran in our direction.

Dwight looked at me, then looked over the railing on the north side of the dam-at the lake two hundred feet below, visible only because of the nickel streaks on the surface.

I kept walking toward Dwight, slowly, my hand tracing the rivets on the metal railing.

When I was about twenty feet away, Dwight took hold of one of the metal cables and stepped up onto the railing. He looked down, seemed gratified by what he saw, then looked back at me.

"One favour," he said.

"Don't do this, Dwight."

The cop on the other side of the dam kept coming.

Dwight's eyes were ferocious and clear, but there was nothing insane in them. I realized that the Dwight Hayes I'd befriended had not been a facade-not simply a mask covering a monster. Dwight Hayes was right there, standing on the ledge, imploring me.

"One thing left undone," he confided. The wind tore at him. "The most important. Don't let her do it again. You understand?"

"Come down," I said. "You can explain it to me."

Dwight smiled. "You have to improvise. Remember that, Tres. Improvise."

Then Dwight turned and faced the water.

The silence of his fall was terrible, the smallness of the impact on the water.

I stood with the wind ripping at my wet clothes, my hands on the metal railing, still gritty from the soles of Dwight's dive boots.

The deputy ran up next to me, cursed, then called on his field unit for a helicopter, LCRA boats. He shone his light down into the darkness, but there was nothing except the glitter of the black water, a small, shimmering template of lake, that had swallowed Dwight Hayes whole.

MAIA LEE

Maia wasn't sure her napkin bandage would stay on in the water, but she didn't have time to redress the wound. She didn't want to think about the diagonal groove Dwight Hayes' bullet had carved across the sole of her foot, straight through her shoe, making it look as if she'd stepped awkwardly onto a redhot metal bar.

She fumbled with the air tank-dragged it onto a table, backed up to it, tried to wrestle on the BC vest. The damn thing was not meant to go over a silk blouse. It was a man's extra large, kept slipping around her shoulders.

Calm down, she thought. You've done worse. Remember Hawaii. You've done twenty feet.

The small voice responded-the voice that always scolded her, always spoke Mandarin, the language in which she could not lie to herself. Never in the dark. Never alone.

She tugged at straps, Velcro that wouldn't go through the rings. It was an eternity before she had her equipment in place, and still she heard no sirens-only the wounded cursing of Armand in the corner. Matthew Pena had stopped making noise a long time ago.

She stood, feeling as if she'd just offered a piggyback ride to a tengallon jug of Evian.

Lake water from the BC trickled out the purge valve, leaking into her clothes. She limped toward the railing, trying to keep the weight off the wad of napkins that passed for her left foot.

She heard a gunshot far up the hill toward the dam, and she thought, Tres. Was Dwight armed? Shit.

Momentarily she thought about trying to get to the truck, maybe finding a road up there, but she knew that was just her cowardice talking.

You never get away once you back down. The fear is always there, waiting for a rematch.

She managed to get her bad foot over the railing, then the other.

Only then did she remember to check the air gauge.

The tank registered just above the red-perhaps six minutes of air, perhaps less.

Thank you, Dwight Hayes.

She found the regulator, slipped it in her mouth. The mask was too tight, but she didn't take time to loosen it. She breathed in that cold oxygen mixture, like dry ice vapour, scooted as close as she could to the exact location Vic Lopez had jumped, and she went over the side.

The cold stopped her breath. She'd never thought she would miss wearing a wet suit.

Her wounded foot was the only part of her that felt warm, and that hurt like hell.

She kicked uselessly. Her head was still above water, and she realized she had no weights to compensate for the BC. She'd have to let all the air out of her vest, hope the steel of the tank was enough to sink her.

She groped for the inflator hose, pushed the button, let the air hiss out. The BC got looser, impossibly big on her. As she tugged at the straps, trying to correct the problem, she started to sink.

Underwater, there was a brief layer of dark brown light, like beef bouillon, and then complete black.

She felt herself starting to hyperventilate, her breathing turning to gasps. She tried to remember what to do. Exhale fully-get the air out, let the carbon dioxide kick in, make her body realize she needed a deeper inhale.

She counted, tried to do chi kung breathing. She told herself this was no different than abovewater meditation, an idea that had almost worked for her in Hawaii. Almost. It was like standing up on a galloping horse-telling yourself it was no different than on steady ground.