Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(65)

Wil Stirman stood at the far end, holding a two-way radio and a gun. Sam Barrera sat cross-legged in front of him, a black duffel bag at his side.

“Come across halfway,” Stirman told us.

We stepped out over the void between the towers.

To the north, past the rooftops of the small er gal eries, Highway 281 cut a glittering arc around the woods and the river. To the south glowed al of downtown—the Tower of the Americas, the enchilada-red library, the old Tower Life Building.

Stirman hadn’t needed a security camera to see us approaching. From this vantage point, you could see straight down to the front of the building, and inside the Great Hal through the skylights.

It was difficult to say whether he or Barrera looked worse.

Sam was dressed in his suit and tie, but looked like he’d been broiling in a hot car al afternoon. His face glistened. His expression was blank with pain. His hand appeared to be broken. He cradled it in his lap, the fingers purple and swol en.

At least he wasn’t covered in blood.

Stirman’s shoulder wound made him look like something out of a Jacobean tragedy. I tried to convince myself the amount of blood soaking through his makeshift bandages wasn’t as much as it appeared, but it looked pretty damn bad.

His feverish eyes studied me for a moment, then rested on Jem. “I see the child, but not the money. Why is that, Navarre?”

“You need a doctor, Stirman.”

He swayed back about five degrees. The guy had to be going into shock. If I could just wait for the right moment . . .

“Don’t get ideas,” Stirman warned. “Barrera got ideas. You can see they didn’t help him.”

“You okay, Sam?” I asked.

Barrera tried to move his swol en hand, winced. “Where’s Fred?”

“Dead, Sam. Dead eight years.”

Stirman threw his walkie-talkie against the window so hard the glass shuddered. Next to me, Jem flinched.

“The old man keeps yammering about Barrow like he’s stil alive,” Stirman complained. “He looks at me like he doesn’t know who I am.”

“Barrera’s il .” I tried to keep my voice even. “He’s losing his memory.”

I could tel from Stirman’s face that he didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to buy into Sam’s dementia— to think Fred Barrow real y was coming back from the dead, that he would show up any minute to get his just deserts.

“He brought me this.” Stirman picked up the black duffel bag, tossed it toward me. “What the hel is this?”

The zipper split open when it hit the carpet. Paper spil ed al over the skywalk.

Not money.

Photographs. Old yel owed photos. In some of them, I recognized Sam Barrera’s face—a much younger Sam, grinning with his arms around people I didn’t know. There hadn’t been a single photo in Sam Barrera’s house—but here they al were, a lifetime’s worth, stuffed in an old loot bag.

“More memory problems?” Stirman asked.

“It’s the right bag,” Barrera insisted. “Tel him, Fred.”

Stirman raised an eyebrow at me.

“Barrera spent his share of the loot years ago,” I said. “Used it to build up his company. He’s got nothing left.”

Stirman jabbed his gun to the back of Barrera’s head. “Too bad for him. Where’s Fred Barrow’s share?”

“You didn’t give me time to retrieve it.”

“But you know where it is.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’l take me there.”

“Look at yourself, Stirman. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

“You’l take me there,” he repeated. “And if you’re lying, you wil wish to God you weren’t.” He looked at Jem. “Come here, boy.”

“Jem, no,” I said.

Stirman blinked at me. He was swaying a little more now, his face blue in the walkway’s neon lights. “They took everything from me, Navarre. I mean to col ect.”

“You’d take Jem from Erainya.”

“Yes.”

“You’d take revenge on a little boy—”

“It isn’t revenge.”

“—a single mother, and an old man who doesn’t even remember why you’re mad at him. Is that satisfying? Is that what Soledad would’ve wanted?”

For a moment, I thought I’d pushed him too far, misread him completely.

But then he looked at Jem, and Stirman’s face took on that same hunger I’d seen at the soccer field.

Again, he forced himself to contain his anger. Stirman had been tel ing me the truth on the phone—he did need Jem here. The boy’s presence was the only thing keeping him sane.

Stirman told me, “I know what I’m doing.”

“Don’t lie to yourself,” I said. “This isn’t about what Barrow and Barrera took from you eight years ago.

This is about what you ran away from. You failed Soledad. You stayed silent about her baby. Al this time, you let the past stay buried. You can’t make that right now.”

Stirman’s jaw tightened. “Be careful tel ing me what I can and can’t do.”

“Listen to Jem,” I said. “Listen to what he wants.”