Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(70)

Would she forgive him?

Maybe if she’d seen Jem Manos’ face . . .

Wil started the truck’s engine. He set the duffel bag next to him. Al his pleasure at finding the money had drained away.

He realized bitterly that Navarre was wrong on one count. He would not die on the outside. Wil Stirman was too good at hiding and running. Nothing could catch the Ghost.

He would make it across the border, then eventual y down into Central America. He would get the shoulder wound treated and live to a ripe old age on some tropical beach, alone, dreaming every night about the people he had kil ed, waking up every morning with no one, remembering the face of Jem Manos, and wishing he was not a coward.

A distant rumble rattled the truck’s windows. Wil thought at first it was thunder, but the rumble didn’t die. It grew louder, building toward a crescendo. Thunder didn’t do that.

Wil put the truck in drive and eased forward, toward the bridge.

In his headlights, the Medina River was doing strange things. It was churning with foam, waves sloshing over the road. The ground was shaking.

Wil looked upriver. He could see nothing but that single yel ow light on the hil side.

He turned on the radio. Static.

It occurred to him then what might be happening—what they’d said on the news.

But that was impossible.

The roar fil ed his ears.

He looked north again, and this time his heart nearly stopped. The horizon was curling toward him, the earth lifting up like the edge of a carpet.

For a moment, his hand drifted toward the stick shift. He could punch the gas. He could run for higher ground.

Then a sense of calm came over him. He realized Navarre had been right on every count. So much for the uncatchable Wil Stirman.

He kil ed the truck’s engine and got out. He wanted to be standing on his own two feet for this.

The yel ow light on the hil comforted him, letting him know he wasn’t alone.

He heard Soledad’s voice: Maybe I’m what was lost.

He remembered her last kiss, and waited to be scoured away with al the other ghosts of the land.

The Cessna flew above the South Side, angling into the rain.

Pablo did not relax his guard, but he couldn’t help watching the lights below—the great expanse of San Antonio, and south: the small er towns of Poteet, Kenedy, and there, Floresvil e. He was almost sure he could see the prison.

He had no money. No resources. Nothing but a gun and a pilot who would betray him at the first opportunity.

But the airstrip was secluded in the mountains, in territory he knew wel .

He had already used the pilot’s phone to make a cal to El Paso—to an old friend who would relay a message to Angelina. It was risky, revealing his location like that. What Angelina would do with the information, he didn’t know. Perhaps she would be waiting for him. Perhaps the Mexican police would.

He had sent her instructions many times in his letters—always indirect references that she alone would understand. If she’d read the letters, if she wanted him back, she would know what to do.

She was to tel her friends and family to look for a yel ow cloth tied around the front porch post—the kind people left out for soldiers overseas. That would be her signal to them—the only goodbye she could give— to let them know she had disappeared on purpose, gone to join him.

Pablo wondered if she would do that.

The Cessna climbed higher, above the flooded farms and the dark ranch land of South Texas.

Pablo thought of El Paso, and his wife’s face.

For the first time since Floresvil e, since the last morning circle when he’d joined hands with his five brethren and Pastor Riggs, Pablo prayed.

Chapter 26

That bastard Wil Stirman stole my truck.

While I was busy getting chewed out by DeLeon, and the paramedics were tending to Sam Barrera, and the police were fanning out across every square foot of riverfront behind the museum, Stirman crept around the side of the building—exactly where it was most suicidal to go. He found my F-150 by the river, found the extra key I kept in the wheel wel , pul ed away over the Grand Avenue Bridge and disappeared.

It was twenty minutes before I noticed the truck was missing and we figured out what had happened.

By then, Stirman was long gone.

That same night, two hours later and twenty-five miles northwest of town, in the lightest rainfal of the month, Medina Dam broke.

The old McCurdy Ranch was right in the path of forty bil ion cubic feet of water. Century trees were uprooted. Boulders disappeared. New gorges and ravines were carved into the rock, and the cabin of Gloria Paz was reduced to a concrete slab and a few dark gold cinder blocks.

I don’t know what happened to Gloria. I’d like to think she got out, but somehow I imagine her standing on her front porch with her shotgun and her tin cup of goat’s milk and coffee, her milky eyes staring north as the wal of water came toward her. I imagine her smiling, thinking of her long journey on the Green Highway.

Perched on its high hil , the McCurdy ranch house itself was spared.

I didn’t need to go into the basement to see that Wil Stirman had been there. The tarp had been stripped off the abandoned building supplies. Dug out from the middle of the lumber and paint cans was a lockbox— now busted open and empty, a box the perfect size to fit a duffel bag ful of cash.

Fred Barrow was the San Antonio businessman who had purchased the McCurdy property. The mildewed fishing painting over the mantel was one of his, just like the ones hanging in Erainya’s study.