Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(64)

Erainya could try to disarm him, but her limbs were sandbags. She’d grab for the gun only as a last resort.

She was afraid that decision might be just a few seconds away.

“Shooting me won’t help,” she said. “Don’t listen to Stirman.”

Pablo’s face was beaded with sweat.

“I can stil run,” he said. “The loading dock in back—”

“They’l kil you as soon as you step outside.”

“I’m not going to mess with a hostage, miss. I’m sorry.”

“Let me go out there,” she said. “I’l tel them Stirman forced you. That’s true, isn’t it? They’l treat you fair.

I’l stay with you, honey.”

Pablo blinked.

It had probably been a long time since anyone had offered to stay with him in a crisis.

He raised the gun. “I’m not going back to jail.”

“You don’t have to kil me.”

“If I don’t, Stirman wil find me—doesn’t matter if I’m in jail or out. I have to get home. My wife . . .”

Erainya imagined a SWAT team moving silently into position. A flash-bang grenade would rol in the door first. Maybe tear gas. It wouldn’t be soon enough. Pablo and she were both going to die.

“There’s another way,” she told him. She tried her best not to make it sound like a lie. “I have an idea.”

His finger was white on the trigger. “No time, miss.”

“Listen to me.”

Pablo shook his head, his eyes bright with anger as if he were stil hearing Stirman’s voice giving him orders.

Erainya started explaining anyway, describing her last-resort idea as Pablo took aim at her heart.

Chapter 22

The Art Museum was supposed to be closed for flood repairs, but when Jem and I got there the entranceway blazed with light. The glass front doors were propped open with a trash can.

Two cars sat at the curb—an old Ford station wagon and an ’83 Chevy Impala with naked-lady-silhouette mud flaps. Neither struck me as a typical art patron vehicle.

“I’ve been here on a field trip,” Jem informed me.

“That’s good,” I said. “So you know where the bathrooms are?”

He nodded. With his active bladder, Jem had men’s room radar.

“If I tel you to run,” I said, “go to the bathroom. Lock the door if you can, and cal 911. Okay?”

“Okay.” He slipped his mother’s cel phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Next time we do a heist, can we go to Malibu Castle?”

“Rendezvous, champ. Heists are what the bad guys do.”

I pul ed my truck up to the Grand Avenue Bridge and parked behind a dark stand of cottonwoods next to the swol en river. I wasn’t sure why. I just didn’t feel right leaving the truck in plain sight.

We walked back to the museum entrance.

I used my Swiss army knife to puncture the tires on the Chevy and the Ford. I was tempted to cut off the Chevy’s naked-lady mud flaps, but we were in a hurry.

Jem took my hand. It was the first time he’d done so in almost a year. We looked up at the two towers rising into the night, the glass skywalk between them, crisscrossed with neon. I wished they stil made beer here. I needed one.

Together we walked up the front steps.

The night watchman was slumped over the security desk. His gun holster was empty. He had a nasty lump on the side of his head. Spots of blood dribbled from his earlobe onto the security monitor.

“Is he okay?” Jem asked.

“Oh, sure.” I squeezed Jem’s hand and pul ed him away. “Probably just tired.”

Dripping water echoed in the vastness of the Great Hal . Three stories above, damaged skylights sent a steady stream of runoff onto the café tables and the chocolate Saltil o tiles, completely missing the buckets.

At the top of the staircase, two windows had been blasted out by the storms, replaced with plastic sheeting.

The hanging catamaran sculpture that always reminded me of a da Vinci contraption was wrapped in a tarp.

I glanced into the gift shop. No crazed kil ers.

The other direction, plastic-wrapped statues of Marcus Aurelius and Vishnu flanked the entrance to the Ancient Cultures wing.

A man’s voice crackled with static: “Upstairs.”

It came from the unconscious guard—or rather, from the two-way radio clipped to his belt.

“Hope you’re not as empty-handed as it looks,” Stirman’s voice said. “Mr. Barrera hopes so, too. West elevator. Al the way up.”

I looked around for a security camera. I didn’t see one.

“Let’s go,” I told Jem.

“You sure this isn’t a heist?” he asked.

The West Tower elevator was one of those see-through glass and steel jobs, set in the center of the room amidst Anubis statues and Middle Kingdom hieroglyphics. Getting inside made me feel like I was becoming one of the displays.

We ascended past Chinese porcelain and samurai armor. The pul ey system went by, its brass wheels and silver weights clicking. We stopped on the fourth floor. Tahitian masks and Aboriginal fertility statues stared at us from the shadows.

The gal ery space was tiny at the top of the tower. There was no place to go but the skywalk.