Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(21)

“You’re making my stomach feel queasy,” Jem murmured.

Vespers’ stare was unpleasantly hungry.

“You need to leave,” I told him again, trying to keep my voice level. “Before I cal the police.”

Vespers rose.

“You think I’m a predator?” he asked. “You think I like little kids, is that it?”

I took out Erainya’s cel phone. For once, I was grateful she’d made me take it on the trip to San Marcos.

“I’m cal ing campus security.”

“This ain’t personal between you and me, Mr. Navarre,” Vespers said. “Think about that before you insult me. I need to talk to the boy.”

“The hel you do.”

Vespers’ hand drifted toward his side. He had something in his pocket—a lump I should’ve noticed before, maybe large enough to be a small gun.

Fifteen years of martial arts training told me that if I was going to act, I had to do it now.

But Vespers looked down at Jem again, and the rifle-scope intensity of his eyes dissipated, as if something much too close to target had moved into his field of vision.

“Tel your mother you saw me,” Vespers said. “She knows what I want. She’d best give it back.”

By the time I got Chuck Phelps, the school security captain, on the phone, the BMW’s tail ights had disappeared onto Hundred Oaks. I gave Chuck the BMW’s model and license plate, told him to cal the police.

I could hear Chuck flipping pages in his master directory. “Thing is, Mr. Navarre, that is Mr. Vespers’ car.

He does have a kid, Alec, in Jem’s grade. Alec’s in summer art class. Mr. Vespers waits on the street over there al the time.”

“Cal anyway.”

Chuck said okay, but I got the feeling my request had just been bumped down to low priority, and I didn’t insist it was an emergency.

I’d have plenty of time to kick myself about that later.

It would be almost a week, long after the worst had happened, before the police would find the silver BMW abandoned in a sorghum field in the north part of the county, the body of the real Jerry Vespers curled in the trunk. His death would become a mere sidebar to the story of the Floresvil e Five, a life cut short merely because it served Wil Stirman’s purpose to assume another identity for a few minutes.

But that afternoon, driving Jem back to his mother’s house, I was slow to process the obvious.

Nothing can prepare you for the moment a child you care about is threatened. Doesn’t matter if you’re a cop or a social worker or a private eye.

My upper brain functions shut down. My senses went feral. I was a cat under attack, crouching and blinking, smel ing my own blood, thinking of nothing beyond my claws.

We were halfway to Erainya’s before I realized who I’d been talking to, how close I’d come to dying.

Jem curled up in the cab of the truck, put his head on my lap like he used to in kindergarten.

“That isn’t safe, kiddo,” I told him. “We’re driving.”

But he was already asleep, his body trying to absorb a trauma bigger than he was.

I turned on Nacogdoches to avoid the flooding on Loop 410, but that proved a mistake. The low-water crossing by the YMCA field had become a river, black water cresting at the tops of the speed limit signs. A house was floating across the road.

Dozens of people had left their cars. They stood with umbrel as by the waterside, watching the prefab model sail slowly over the bridge. The house had white aluminum siding, a gray-shingled roof, blue curtains and a sign in the window that read, NO MONEY DOWN!!!

I should have backed up, but I sat in my truck, watching the spectacle, my hand on Jem’s feverish forehead.

I had failed to recognize Wil Stirman, even though his disguise had been nothing more than a pair of glasses and the fact that he had appeared out of any context I would’ve anticipated.

I had failed to take him down when I had the chance. I told myself I could have taken him.

But the truth was: Jem and I were alive for only one reason. Wil Stirman had let us go to deliver a message.

Tell your mother you saw me. She knows what I want.

The prefab house snagged on something, made a grinding noise as the current bent its wal s. It careened sideways and continued its stately journey.

Wil Stirman had tried to take Jem. He had dared to step into a little boy’s world.

I promised myself I would get the bastard for that.

I watched the house bob past the line of silent spectators with umbrel as, an American flag fluttering bravely on the doorpost as the building slipped off the bridge and glided downriver.

Chapter 7

Erainya held the line for ten minutes before Dimebox Ortiz’s brother-in-law came on.

“He’s a no-show,” the brother-in-law said, clearly reluctant to share the information. “Hearing was set for ten o’clock.”

Erainya swore. “You fronted bail for him again? The judge went for it?”

“Wel . . . you know. It’s just Dimebox. He’s got a good lawyer. Besides, he’s not exactly a serious threat . .

.”

“Ike, he sets people on fire.”

“That’s never been proven.”

“Jesus Christ.” But Erainya couldn’t help feeling a little relieved. Ever since she’d turned over Dimebox to the police, two days ago, she kept remembering what he’d said about her signing his death warrant.