Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(63)

“Let’s go,” Cooper told the uniforms.

DeLeon hesitated. “You will stay here, Tres. You understand that?”

“I’m taking care of Jem. I have no weapon and no money to bargain with. Does it look like I’m charging into battle?”

DeLeon glanced toward the patio, where Jem was teaching Robert Johnson how to block corner shots.

“Sergeant,” Cooper growled. “Now, or I leave without you.”

Her expression was stil troubled. She sensed something amiss. She said, “I’l get her back alive, Tres. I swear.”

Their patrol car disappeared down Queen Anne Street.

I opened the patio door and told Jem to bring the cat inside.

“Time to go?” he asked, setting a relieved Robert Johnson down by his food dish.

“Time,” I agreed. “You’ve got to be brave, champ. Can you do that for me?”

He nodded. “We’l get my mom back. He can’t take us both on.”

I tried to smile, despite the fact that I was betting everything—including our lives—on a guess.

I pressed play on the answering machine, let the tape continue from where I’d stopped it. I listened again to Sam Barrera’s second message—the one Ana DeLeon hadn’t heard.

Chapter 21

Erainya dreamed of J.P.

He stood over her, tel ing her not to worry—he’d have the ropes off in a moment. She could smel his cologne. She was grateful for the familiar silver stubble on his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw against the broadcloth col ar. His hands worked deftly at the knots.

But J.P. had been murdered. She had seen him fal in the al ey behind Paesano’s.

The man over her became Fred Barrow. He tugged at the ropes, clumsy and insistent, a gun in one hand, which made it impossible for him to get anywhere.

“Goddamn it, Irene.” He smel ed of cigars and bourbon. His bel y pressed against her ribs, crushing her as it had the night she’d kil ed him. “Wake up. Come on.”

Son-of-a-bitch.

She brought up her legs and kneecapped him in the face, sending him sprawling.

Erainya blinked, and came ful y awake.

She was lying on a dirty pile of blankets, her arms bound behind her, her dress soaked with sweat. The man she’d just kneed in the head was the young fugitive—Pablo.

He got up, cursing, went to the table and exchanged his gun for a knife.

“Hold stil ,” he growled, “or I’l cut your hands off.”

Erainya felt the cold metal blade slip between her wrists. Pablo tugged, and the ropes snapped. She sat up, tried to move her arms. She felt like someone had poured boiling water into her veins.

Pablo stepped back, retrieved his gun. “Do the rest yourself.”

Her fingers were numb. She managed to peel back the duct tape from her mouth.

“Get up.” Pablo stood by the plywood-barricaded window, peeking out a sliver of sunset at something below. “We don’t have much time.”

She fumbled with the knots that bound her ankles. She wanted to feel hopeful about being untied, but she didn’t like the urgency in Pablo’s voice. He had that wild, angry look in his eyes he got every time Wil Stirman yel ed at him.

She must have missed something. Had Stirman cal ed? Erainya cursed herself for fal ing asleep.

“Stand up,” Pablo ordered.

“My legs are numb.”

He turned toward her, the light from the window making a luminous pink scar on his left cheek. “Get over here if you want to live. You need to see this.”

Erainya got unsteadily to her feet.

At the window, Pablo put the gun against her spine. “Quietly.”

The evening air felt good on her face—better than the stifling heat inside anyway.

At first, Erainya saw nothing special—train tracks, a half-flooded gravel parking lot freckled with rain, empty loading docks and gutted warehouses. The sun was going down through a break in the clouds.

Then she noticed the blue van with tinted windows, parked under a chinaberry tree at the end of the block.

She caught a flicker of movement on a rooftop across the street. A glint of metal in an upper window that should’ve been empty.

“Cops,” Pablo told her. “Your friends broke faith.”

The muzzle of his gun dug between her vertebrae.

Erainya tried to steady her breathing. “I don’t see anything.”

“You won’t see them until they break down the door, huh? They’re setting up a perimeter. We’ve been screwed.”

His breath was sour from lack of sleep and canned food, his eyes red with shame, like a kid who’d just been beat up in the locker room.

Give him options, Erainya told herself.

Pablo had used the word we. He was desperate and alone. He was looking for help.

“Get away from the window,” she told him. “You’re giving the snipers a target.”

He pul ed her back, shoving her toward the mattress. “Your friend thought I wouldn’t shoot you? Is that what he thought?”

“You’re not cold-blooded, honey. You just cut me loose.”

“I can’t shoot a woman sleeping and tied up.” His voice quivered. “I wanted you to see them out there.

This ain’t my fault.”

A big rig rumbled by outside, drawing Pablo’s attention to the window.