Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(17)

Luis had never trusted that promise. He tried to believe it would happen, because he had nothing else.

He’d never real y cared about going home to El Paso. And there was no chance he or Elroy could have made it so far on their own. The Guide had saved their asses a dozen times already.

Luis knew the Canada trip was a diversion. It was a false flare to make the police think Stirman was going north. Luis just hoped he and Elroy wouldn’t end up like C.C.

“Least we take some heat off you, cuz,” he told Pablo. “Hope you get back to Angelina. Brother Stirman treating you right?”

Pablo stared out the warehouse windows, over miles of San Antonio railways.

Angelina. Al he wanted was to see her.

Pablo didn’t have the heart to tel Luis what he and Stirman had been doing—how C.C.’s death sounded like a joyride compared to his last two days.

I own you, amigo, Stirman had told him. You are my new right-hand man.

Pablo remembered yesterday morning, in this room, holding a video camera for hours as Wil Stirman interrogated the former owner of this warehouse, who used to be Stirman’s right-hand man.

“I’m cool,” Pablo told Luis. “Just be careful. I keep thinking, maybe me and Angelina—”

“Guide’s coming, man,” Luis whispered. “I got to go.”

The line went dead.

Pablo kept his eyes on the rain. He didn’t want to turn and see the work that was waiting for him.

He thought about the night four and a half years ago in El Paso when he’d lost everything, drinking straight tequila in a bar on Airway Boulevard while a so-cal ed good neighbor stoked his worst fears into anger. He was over there again last night while you were at work, ese . I hate to tell you this, but there ain’t no doubt. If I was you . . .

Pablo remembered very little about loading his shotgun, driving home.

He rubbed his eyes to get rid of the memory.

Stirman had promised a chartered plane from Stinson Field. There was a drug runners’ airstrip near Calabras, in the mountains south of Juárez, only a few miles from El Paso. Pablo would be able to contact his wife from there. Al he had to do was a few more days of service for Stirman.

Pablo mastered his nerves.

He turned. Behind him, waiting patiently in their metal chairs, were two corpses—a pair of f**king nobodies he had to dispose of before Stirman got back. Stirman hadn’t even hated these guys. They just happened to have some information he wanted. They’d recently seen some people Stirman was looking for.

So after their heartfelt conversation, Stirman had let them die pretty easy, which was why you could stil sort of recognize Lalu and Kiko Ortiz’s faces through the burn marks.

Wil Stirman focused on the boy.

Fred Barrow’s widow was in the drop-off line for the school summer camp. There were nine cars in front of her.

The boy had his arm out the passenger’s window. He was drumming his fingers against the Audi’s door.

He had a mop of black hair, a coffee complexion that was nothing like his mother’s.

The people Wil had questioned didn’t know much about the kid. He was adopted, they thought. From somewhere overseas. Not Fred Barrow’s blood, anyway. They looked at Stirman through their pain, as if wondering why the hel he cared. What was one more kid to a monster like him?

Wil pul ed out of line and parked on the side of the traffic circle. He didn’t have much time to think. He had misjudged the kind of place Erainya Manos would be going to. He had tailed her right into this wooded campus for the ultra-rich, the parking lot ful of Hummers and Cadil ac Escalades. His stolen Honda Civic stuck out like a skinhead in a Juneteenth parade. Soon, the uniformed security guard directing traffic would wonder what Wil was doing.

It pissed him off that a place like this could make him feel so nervous.

Maximum security prison was no problem. But a bunch of moms dropping their kids off at soccer camp— that made Wil ’s palms sweat. It pissed him off that Barrow’s widow sent her son to this school. No way could she afford it. It rubbed Wil ’s failure in his face, flaunted what Fred Barrow had done to him.

Seven cars before Erainya Manos reached the drop-off point.

Wil thought about the first time he’d met Soledad, in the burning fields.

It had been one of Dimebox Ortiz’s stupider ideas. He’d decided to let this group of il egals out of the truck just before the Border Patrol checkpoint, let them walk a few miles through the sugarcane fields, then pick them up on the other side. He forgot it was March—burning season.

Next thing, he was cal ing Wil in a panic. Dimebox was at the rendezvous point and the il egals weren’t there. He saw smoke—the whole area where the group was supposed to walk was on fire. Farmers were burning their crops as part of the yearly harvest.

Fortunately, Wil had been working a deal down in Harlingen, only a couple of miles away. He dropped what he was doing and got there in under ten minutes.

By that time, he could hear the screaming. And if he could hear it, he figured the farmers and the Border Patrol could, too.

He ran into the fields, toward the fire, and a young woman burst through the sugarcane. She was coughing, smoke rising from her clothes. She smel ed like burnt syrup.

She crashed right into his arms and said in Spanish, “There are two more! Right in there!”

Wil heard a megaphone in the distance. Border Patrol: instructions in Spanish, warning the il egals to get out of the fields.