Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(57)

I could see Maia’s disbelief growing as she realized what I was thinking.

“Tres . . .” she warned.

“Go pack your bag, champ,” I said. “No mess on Maia’s floor.”

“Tres!” Maia said again.

“Okay,” Jem said. “The uniform, too?”

I looked at him.

“It was in the bottom of the bag,” he said. “You brought the goalie vest. That means everything wil be better by Saturday. I’l get to play.”

Maia glared at me as if I’d just sold the kid some real estate at the North Pole.

“I hope so,” I told him. “We’l hope, okay? Now go get packed.”

He hustled off, showing more energy than he had in days.

“How can you?” Maia asked.

When Maia got angry, she got cold. At the moment, her eyes could’ve frozen mercury.

“I need to use your phone,” I said. “Local cal .”

“If you think, for one minute, I’m going to let you—”

“Thanks.” I picked up her phone, dialed a friend of mine at the Texas Department of Human Resources. It took al of four minutes to ask an easy question, and get an easy answer. The organization I was inquiring about didn’t exist. Nor, according to the state’s records, had it existed eight years ago. I hung up, no doubt now, but feeling worse than ever.

“Wel ?” Maia demanded.

It would’ve been best to tel her.

I knew Maia would help me, if I explained. She would come to San Antonio, watch my back, fight my battles, do whatever she could to help save Erainya.

But it would be a mistake. I was already treading too far over the invisible line that separated our relationship from my work in San Antonio—the job Maia quietly resented. If I relied on her for more help, I’d be pushing us in the wrong direction. On some level she might never admit, Maia would take it as a sign of disrespect.

“Jem has to come with me,” I said. “He’s right. It may be the only way to resolve this without blood.”

“You’re absolutely insane.”

“Stirman won’t hurt him.”

“You’re sure of that.” Her words were like mist off a glacier. “You’re wil ing to risk his life.”

Out her window, a hawk circled through the slow persistent drizzle over Barton Creek.

For the first time, I understood Erainya’s dilemma as a parent—her sometimes crazy choices about what was best for Jem. The safest thing, the right thing, was rarely obvious.

I knew now why I had come to Austin. I knew exactly why Jem had to come back with me.

And I knew something else, too.

Standing in Maia’s kitchen, so much like her old kitchen on Potrero Hil , looking out at the vista she swore was not the ghost image of her lost home, I knew where to find Fred Barrow’s seven mil ion dol ars.

Chapter 19

Wil didn’t mean for it to happen.

Al he wanted was food and cash.

He passed up two convenience stores, convincing himself he needed to get farther away from the hideout.

He got on I-35, cruised down to Hot Wel s Boulevard, turned into the South Side neighborhood he knew so wel .

At the corner of South New Braunfels, the blue jeans factory he’d once used as a holding facility had been burned to crossbeams. The adobe house that belonged to his friend the Guide had been repainted lime green.

Farther down, on a ridge overlooking a swol en creek, the Estrel a Barbecue Pit stood abandoned, its back deck sagging over the water.

Wil had done business on that deck. He’d smoked cigars and drank Bacardi with clients while the air fil ed with brisket smoke, sulfur from the hot springs bubbling up in the creek bed, making soft milky rings in the mud.

Wil and his clients would sit around the picnic table, negotiating the price of women.

Panamanian girls fought harder than Guatemalans. Girls from Coahuila turned the best short-term profit.

The ones from the central mountains lasted longer. Twelve was too young to be reliably trained. Eighteen, too old. Glossy hair was a sign of health. Good teeth were a premium. Stirman wrote special orders on a yel ow legal pad.

The fol owing weekend, when Wil got across the Rio Grande, he would find every girl on his shopping list, as if writing their descriptions made them appear—hopeful and eager and wil ing to believe his lies.

He made a right on South Presa, passed several more ice houses. He rejected one because he used to know the owners; another, because too many kids were Rol erblading outside.

His own hesitation irritated him. He should just pick a place and hit it.

He wasn’t worried about being recognized. Since kidnapping Erainya Manos, he’d bleached his hair and shaved his five-day stubble. He’d gotten himself a pair of black rubber sunglasses, a blue Hawaiian shirt and jeans, boots that made him an inch tal er. He doubted anyone would identify him right away, even in his old home turf.

Stil he kept driving.

He turned on Dimmit Street because the name sounded familiar, and realized why only when he found himself in a dead end, facing a pink clapboard house. The hand-painted sign in the front yard read: TEXAS PRISON MINISTRY.

Wil stopped his car in the middle of the cul-de-sac. He stared at the sign.

Pastor Riggs had always cal ed his ministry headquarters Dimmit Street. Like it was some great central command, like the Pentagon or the White House.