Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(22)

“Listen, Ike. I’ve got to talk to him. On the off chance he’s stupid enough to cal you—”

“Hey, Erainya, don’t stress it, right? It’s another day’s work for you. I’l be happy to pay the regular bounty.”

“You’re a lunatic, Ike.”

“He’s my wife’s brother, okay? I’l give you a bonus. Probably just staying with Lalu and Kiko again.”

“Lalu and Kiko are nowhere,” Erainya said. “I’ve checked. They haven’t been seen in at least twenty-four.”

A pause. “Should I be worried?”

“Nah,” Erainya said, sarcastical y. “It’s just Wil Stirman on the loose. He’s not exactly a serious threat.”

“Oh, shit—you don’t think—”

Erainya hung up the phone. Ike and Dimebox were only related by marriage, but they seemed like blood brothers when it came to stupidity.

She turned back to the television. Constant flood coverage was giving her a headache. She kept waiting for news on Wil Stirman—anything that would confirm he had real y gone north. Al she got were pictures of livestock standing bel y-deep in water, people riding a boat down a street in New Braunfels.

Her nerves were frayed. She’d had two hang-up phone cal s in the middle of the night, both from blocked numbers. She’d yel ed at Jem that morning for something stupid—leaving his cereal bowl where she could trip over it. The memory of his shocked expression made her sick with guilt.

Taking him to soccer practice, she’d almost convinced herself she was being fol owed. She came very close to not letting Jem go. Then she decided she was being paranoid. Missing practice would crush the poor kid. Besides, Tres would be there the whole time. She couldn’t ask for better protection than that.

Now . . . Sam Barrera was ten minutes late. For al his other faults, Sam was never late.

Erainya’s mind raced with wild possibilities of what might’ve happened to him. If he did show up, what would she tel him? How far was she wil ing to go to save herself?

Sooner or later, Wil Stirman would contact her. She knew it. She wanted desperately to believe he would just disappear, or if he did go after Barrera, at least leave her alone, but she knew better.

She remembered last spring, when her best friend Helen Malski lay dying of lymphoma. Erainya had been with her in the hospital, holding her hand, as Helen labored to speak. “You can’t keep silent forever, Irene. You can’t.”

Helen had been one of the last people who remembered Erainya as Irene, who dared to cal her by the meek, Anglicized, failure-laden name of her marriage.

“I know,” Erainya had said. “I’l come clean.”

And Helen smiled, the grip of her hand loosening as she drifted off to sleep.

Erainya had lied to her best friend. She had no intention of tel ing anyone the truth.

She opened her desk drawer, stared at her Colt .45.

It won’t come to that, she thought. Not this time.

She picked up the photo of her dead husband. It was the only photo of Fred she kept in the house, and she kept it right under the gun—to remind her.

The picture showed a very young Fred Barrow, just after he’d left the Border Patrol to become a PI. His nose was broken from his days as an amateur boxer. His black hair was parted in the middle and feathered in that wretched late-seventies style. His smile had not yet gone sour, nor had he started drinking heavily, so it was possible to think he looked confident rather than bul headed, strong rather than brutal—the way Erainya had thought of him when they first met.

She’d been a shy, nervous col ege girl, working part-time in the county records office. Fred’s flirtations overwhelmed her whenever he came in to see a land deed or a tax record. He’d complimented her efficiency, her jewelry, her clothes and her eyes. A real private investigator—paying attention to her. The fourth time he visited, he sat at the corner of her desk and picked up her letter opener. As he talked, he kept testing the blade. Years later, Erainya would wonder if he’d been making a subconscious threat, or even trying to warn her.

He said he needed a good helper. His PI business was booming. He needed somebody who could double as a secretary and a life partner. The proposal made her dizzy. She found herself spil ing her dreams to him. She wanted children, the kind of big family she’d been denied, growing up. She told him about her parents, first-generation immigrants who’d been kil ed by a hit-and-run driver when Erainya was seven. She told him about the cold godparents who’d raised her, renamed her Irene, spent years trying to erase everything un-American and unladylike from her character. Fred listened sympathetical y. He didn’t say no to a big family. She convinced herself he would make a good father. They were married two months later.

At first, the partnership had gone wel . Erainya had been prepared to take the back seat to a man. Her foster parents had prepared her for that ever since she was a child.

Then Erainya made two startling discoveries. The first was that she liked investigations. Informants trusted her. They would tel her things they’d never tel Fred. She involved herself more in the cases. She was sure if she showed Fred what she could do, he would eventual y see that it made sense to give her more responsibility.

The more she did this, the more irritated Fred became. He began accusing her of butting in, messing up his business. And the more irritated he became, the more determined she was to try harder, and prove him wrong.