Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(12)

What?

Something had thrown him. Something on the television.

Sam made fists, wishing he could squeeze the confusion out of his mind.

Today was Monday. His doctor had only given him until Friday to make a decision.

It’s got to be next week, Sam. I have to insist. Think about it. Talk to your family.

But Sam had no family. No wife, no kids. His other relatives he’d had a fal ing-out with years ago, over something Sam couldn’t even remember now. He’d taken down al their pictures, stuffed them away in the back of his closet.

He had only his work—his talent for weaving facts into patterns, making the perfect investigation. And now, at the unreasonable age of fifty-eight, that talent was betraying him.

Twenty years since he quit the Bureau . . . Hel , of course it had been.

He’d gone into the PI business, built I-Tech from scratch, made himself a reputation.

He reviewed those facts in his head, tried to hold on to them, but it was like those tests at the neurologist’s office—name the presidents in reverse chronological order, count backward by sevens from one hundred.

The last month, work had gotten progressively harder. Case files were now almost impossible for him to understand.

Mornings were better. He tried to finish work early, get home before afternoon when his mind got cloudy.

But he relied on Alicia more and more. She knew something was wrong. She’d stopped teasing him about getting absentminded in his old age. Now, she just watched him uneasily.

Five days to decide.

He stared at his desk—a disgraceful clutter of unread reports, notes to himself stuck everywhere. The work surface had once been pristinely organized. Now it was deteriorating into chaos.

Across the room, a bank of televisions played security footage from I-Tech’s major accounts, along with news from the three local stations.

The news was al disaster coverage—befuddled weathermen predicting the second hundred-year flood in four years.

Sam doubted that’s what had unnerved him.

Why should he be surprised if the town hit a century mark every four years? He’d lost twenty years in a single morning. Time was col apsing around him. Chronology meant nothing anymore.

He got out his Post-it notes and a pen, checked his private line for messages.

There was only one—last night, 10:48 P.M. Erainya Manos.

The name snagged on his memory as he wrote it down.

The case he was working on . . . but Joe Pacabel said there was no case.

Erainya Manos said they needed to talk. Absolutely urgent. Sam would know what it was about.

But he didn’t know what the woman wanted.

He stared at her phone number until something on the television caught his attention—a reporter breaking in, a convenience store shooting in New Braunfels. Three masked gunmen had fatal y shot a clerk, made away with several thousand dol ars. Police were investigating for a possible link to yesterday’s jailbreak— the Floresvil e Five. Wil “the Ghost” Stirman, four other wanted men.

A mug shot of Wil Stirman fil ed the screen, and the world shifted under Sam’s feet.

The convict’s face was gaunt and hard, like weathered marble. He had dark, preternatural y calm eyes, and a faint triangle of buzzed black hair. If Sam didn’t know better, he would’ve pegged the man as a white supremacist, or an abortion clinic bomber. His expression suggested the same quiet confidence, the same capacity for fanatic violence.

Sam knew this man. This was who he’d seen on television earlier. This was the news that had shaken him.

He reached into his pants pocket, pul ed out a crumpled yel ow Post-it note he’d forgotten.

In his own shaky cursive, the note read: Stirman is free. He’ll be coming. I can’t go to the police.

Sam stared at it, then looked at the newer message from Erainya Manos.

He picked up the receiver, began to dial Erainya Manos’ number, then hung up again.

He had a bad feeling about this woman.

He had to think clearly.

Sam felt bitterness rising in his throat. It wasn’t fair for life to throw him one more problem. Not now, when he was struggling just to get by.

But it wasn’t Sam’s nature to surrender. He never played defense. The only way to survive was to plow forward, like he’d always done, right the f**k over anything and anyone who stood in his way.

He would let Erainya Manos do the talking. She would fil in the gaps. He had become an expert at covering his lapses that way, letting others talk into his silence.

He couldn’t remember why, but Wil Stirman was lethal. If Sam didn’t handle this just right, if he didn’t stay in control, he would be destroyed.

He picked up a pen and wrote himself a new note: I’m calling Erainya Manos. Be careful. I’m pretty sure she’s my enemy.

Chapter 4

Tres Navarre’s dating advice: If you’re going to meet your girlfriend for dinner, you might as wel do it in the middle of a flood, when there are dangerous convicts on the loose.

While you’re at it—go to a restaurant where the ma?tre d’ wants to kil you. It makes your romantic outing so much more special.

The forty-five-minute drive to San Marcos took me three hours, thanks to a flooded stretch on I-35 and a police roadblock north of New Braunfels. By the time I got to Pig Fal s Café, the rain clouds had broken for the first time in twenty-four hours, and an insultingly beautiful sunset was bleeding to purple.