Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(33)

Soledad stopped in front of an eighteenth-century seascape. “I wanted to live on the beach, when I was little.”

Another security guard passed by, pointedly ignoring them.

“Why San Antonio then?” Wil asked her. “No beaches here.”

Soledad pinched her medal ion. “My father’s. He gave it to me before I left. San Antonio was his patron saint. Said the city would be lucky for me.”

San Antonio. Saint Anthony. Wil had lived here since he was eight, when his parents moved from West Texas hoping to escape the oil fields, but he’d never thought about what the city’s name meant. “Why lucky?”

Soledad raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know about Saint Anthony?”

Wil shook his head. At the time, he knew almost nothing about religion.

“I’l tel you sometime,” Soledad promised.

On the fourth floor, she squeezed his hand. She let him go forward without her.

Two men were waiting for him on the skywalk.

“Hey, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “I see you brought your daughter.”

Wil said nothing. It had been a mistake to bring Soledad. If Barrow said another word about her, Wil would break his neck. He could fix a lot of things with the police. He spread money around in a lot of places.

But he wasn’t sure he could fix murdering Fred Barrow, not with a witness, with armed security guards.

Barrow took the unlit cigar from his mouth. He had a nose that had been broken at least twice, a knife scar on his jaw. He wore a suit that fit his broad shoulders poorly. His eyes were not very different from the eyes of Wil ’s clients—the ones who appraised women for purchase.

“We want a confession,” Barrow told him.

Wil looked at the other man, Sam Barrera. It was common knowledge the two PIs hated each other, which was why Wil had agreed to this meeting. Despite the risks, despite Wil ’s dislike for them both, he was curious. He wanted to hear what they were cal ing an “urgent business proposition.” What could possibly bring these two men together?

“You give us a statement,” Sam Barrera said, “we can talk to the D.A. this morning. He’s wil ing to go with human trafficking only, drop the accessory-to-murder charges. You’ve just got to admit to supplying the women. You’l be out in five to ten.”

Wil shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

The two private eyes exchanged looks.

Immediately Wil remembered why he hated them. They thought they were so goddamn superior. Wil had crossed paths with both of them before, on separate missing persons cases. Families in Mexico had hired them to find kin who had crossed il egal y and disappeared. Unlike most gumshoes, Barrow and Barrera wouldn’t take Wil ’s money. They wouldn’t go away. They just kept digging as if Wil was beneath them, as if it would be insulting to cooperate with him. So Wil had taught them a lesson. He had made sure the people they were looking for disappeared permanently, al traces of their existence wiped out. He’d made sure the PIs knew it, too. Their investigations went nowhere. They couldn’t touch Wil .

“You went too far this time, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “Six women were murdered.”

Wil made the connection. “You’re talking about the McCurdy Ranch. Those women weren’t mine.”

Fred Barrow laughed. “Every slave laborer in South Texas has your handprints al over them.”

His eyes drifted over to Soledad.

“You look at her again,” Wil said, “I’l kil you.”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” Sam Barrera said.

A security guard drifted into view at the far end of the skywalk.

Wil had been stupid to come here. Barrera control ed the guards. They could set Wil up, find some pretext to kil him.

“I’m not confessing,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“We’l get you anyway,” Sam Barrera warned. “This is huge, Stirman. People want blood on the McCurdy case. We’re going to give it to them.”

“Not my blood.”

Barrera said, “We’ve got witnesses who can tie you to McCurdy.”

Wil knew he was bluffing. He had to be. There’d been nothing for anybody to witness.

“Thanks for the private tour, Barrera,” he said. Then to Fred Barrow: “Stay the f**k away from me. You understand?”

Barrow bit off the tip of his cigar, spat it at Wil ’s feet. “Stick around and enjoy the artwork, Stirman. We’l meet again soon. And, um, give your Mexican daughter a kiss for me, okay?”

The two men walked back across the skywalk.

Wil found Soledad running her fingers over the head of a Greek statue—a half-naked woman lying forlornly on a sofa. The card said, Ariadne waits for Dionysus. do not touch.

“Don’t let them anger you,” Soledad told him. “They aren’t worth it.”

“You heard?”

She turned, wrapped her arms around his waist, kissed his chin.

She made him feel worse than Barrow and Barrera ever could.

He was a smuggler. A murderer. He had disposed of human bodies like they were animal carcasses. He had put Soledad up for sale, and a thousand women like her.

“You can leave, if you want,” he told her.

She looked up at him, mystified. “I told you, loco boy. San Antonio is my lucky town.”