Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(66)

“I want my mother back,” Jem managed.

“Your mother . . .” Stirman’s eyes drifted, as if looking at Jem had suddenly become painful. “Boy, if you knew about your mother . . .”

At that moment, Stirman looked very much like Sam Barrera—like a man whose lifelong focus had started to unravel.

“Put down the gun,” I told him. “Surrender to the police.”

Stirman exhaled, a humorless laugh. “That’s your advice, huh? Death Row?”

“You won’t survive another day on the outside. If you want any time to make amends, if it’s real y not about revenge, then prison’s your only choice. It’s the only place you belong now.”

Stirman’s face had gone clammy. His bandaged shoulder glistened with new blood. The simple act of holding the gun to Barrera’s head must’ve been torture for him.

“Tel me where the money is,” he said. “Maybe I’l let you and Barrera go. But the boy comes with me.”

Sam Barrera said, “Like hel .”

He started to get up.

“Sit down, old man,” Stirman ordered, pushing Barrera’s col arbone with the gun.

Barrera ignored him. He got unsteadily to his feet. “I didn’t come this far to let him run, Fred.”

I said, “Sam—”

“Go ahead and shoot me,” Barrera told Stirman. “You think I don’t remember? I shot your wife. Don’t take it out on Fred and this little kid. You gonna shoot somebody, shoot me.”

Stirman stared at Barrera in disbelief. “But . . . it was Barrow . . . I saw him. Why are you—”

“Shoot me,” Barrera ordered. “Last chance. I got the whole goddamn FBI surrounding this place.”

Stirman took a step back—a deeply ingrained human instinct: Get away from the crazy person.

Barrera grabbed the gun.

It discharged, cracking the glass wal behind Barrera’s head.

I yel ed, “Jem, run!”

He fol owed my orders too wel . With perfect eight-year-old single-mindedness, he ran toward the nearest restroom, which happened to be the wrong way—directly past Stirman, in the East Tower.

“No!”

Another shot drowned out my voice. A tube of red neon exploded. Stirman shoved Sam Barrera against the glass, which buckled, shattered, and Sam Barrera went backward into the void.

Stirman turned as Jem brushed past him. He tried to catch the boy’s shirt. I tackled Stirman. The butt of his gun slammed into my ear.

The next thing I knew I was on the carpet. A photograph was stuck to my cheek.

I got up, my vision doubled. I leaned against the railing, now open to the wet night air, and I saw a pale human shape fifteen feet below, sprawled on the lower gal ery roof. Sam Barrera’s body.

I didn’t have time to think about that. Stirman hadn’t stayed to finish me off.

He had gone after Jem.

Chapter 23

Just as she heard the shot inside the warehouse, Ana DeLeon’s phone vibrated against her Kevlar vest.

The SWAT team was too wel trained to react to gunfire, but they al looked at her to see what was rattling.

She ripped the phone out of her pocket and stared at the display.

Ralph Arguello.

He never cal ed her at work. She imagined the baby in the emergency room, the house burning down— what would it take for him to cal like this?

There was nothing she could do. She stuck the phone back in her pocket and took out her sidearm.

The lieutenant in charge waved the team forward. Four guys in body armor moved into the warehouse, DeLeon in the rear, the unwelcome guest.

She wasn’t worried about her own safety, or about capturing Stirman.

SAPD had the whole area ringed with snipers, cordoned off with a double perimeter, two helicopters on standby. If Stirman was inside, he was screwed. The problem was getting Erainya out in one piece.

They secured the first floor in twenty seconds. Stairs led up, exactly where the schematics said they should. The shot had come from above—third or fourth floor, about where long-range mikes had zeroed in on voices.

Sixty-three seconds later, the team was in the fourth-floor corridor. DeLeon was melting from the heat and the Kevlar. She forgot about that when she heard Erainya’s voice—yel ing for help.

There was an open doorway at the end of the hal .

Smal er voices—two men in conversation.

“In here!” Erainya yel ed. “Anybody?”

It wasn’t the voice of a woman being held at gunpoint. But something felt wrong to DeLeon.

The SWAT lieutenant looked back at the entry team—not a question, but a silent warning. He, too, sensed the wrongness of the situation, the team’s uneasiness. But his look made it clear they would be fol owing the plan.

Their point man moved to the doorway, threw in the flash grenade.

The subsonic boom shook the plaster. Anyone within twenty feet would be knocked senseless.

The team moved in.

Their laser sites made a cluster of red dots on the source of the men’s voices—a portable radio.

Under the window, next to an overturned table, Erainya Manos lay stunned, her legs bound and a duct tape gag half peeled off her mouth. Her hands had been tied behind her, but one of them was partial y free.

That hand gripped a pistol.

DeLeon scanned the scene with disbelief. Erainya had crawled from the pile of filthy blankets in the corner, managed to kick over the table, where her captor had foolishly left a gun. She’d gotten her fingers free enough to grasp the pistol and fire a shot for help.