Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(73)

Erainya nodded. “Once I was released, Jem and I disappeared for a while. I’d done enough work on adoption cases. Faking Jem’s paperwork wasn’t hard. I made up his birthday. I kept thinking somebody would question . . . Stirman would raise hel . Barrera would squawk. But nothing like that ever happened.

Eventual y, I figured Stirman thought the child was dead, or he just didn’t care enough to protest. I felt safe enough to come back home, take over the agency. I couldn’t have left a baby like that, with his mother dead.”

“You made Jem’s birth date a clue.”

“I know. Stupid.”

“Classic guilt. Part of you wanted to get caught.”

“Stop talking like a PI.” There was a chal enge in her eyes, but it was frail.

She was a few weeks away from a whole new future. She was about to re-create herself for the second time. I could bring it al crashing down if I wanted to.

“You caught me,” she said. “Question is: What are you going to do about it?”

The game caught my attention. I shouted, “Jem, heads up!”

He crouched, ready for a chal enge.

The Saint Mark’s kicker drove the bal straight toward the goal.

Jem dove. The bal sailed right past him into the net.

The other team cheered like crazy.

Jem picked up the bal , ran it to the line, and threw it like it was stil in play. He kept smiling like everything was good. The Saint Anthony medal ion had come untucked from his col ar. It gleamed silver against his goalie vest.

“Honey?” Erainya said to me, her voice growing tense. “What do you want to do?”

Maybe everything was good. I caught Jem’s eye and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

He grinned, delighted.

I didn’t know what Stirman had told him. It didn’t matter.

The ref blew the whistle. Game over: a 2–1 loss.

“Not as bad as I’d feared.” I looked at Erainya. “For one thing, I’m going to insist on a legal name change.”

Erainya looked grim, but she managed to keep her composure. “If you seriously think . . .”

“The Tres Navarre Agency,” I said. “Much better ring to it.”

Then I did something I had never done. I kissed Erainya on the cheek, left her startled and blinking, and went out to give her son a big high five.

Chapter 27

A week later, I got a cal from Alicia, Sam’s personal secretary.

She couldn’t reach Sam at home again. He hadn’t reported to the office. She was worried, and I had become the person to cal .

Maia and I were at my apartment, having an argument with Robert Johnson about who made better cheese enchiladas. The cat was playing silent and diplomatic. He wanted a cook-off.

I hung up the phone and looked at Maia, who was dressed for work. She had a court date in Austin that afternoon.

“Problem with Sam,” I told her.

I hadn’t gotten a replacement for my truck yet, so I asked if she could spare an hour to drive me.

“That depends,” she said. “Are we going to talk on the way?”

So far, I had successful y avoided the subject of my hypothetical move to Austin. It hadn’t been easy keeping Maia’s mind off the topic. She’d made me work pretty hard at it al night long.

She knew I’d agreed to take over Erainya’s agency. She’d received that news so graciously I was pretty sure she was contemplating murdering me later.

What she wanted to know now is where I’d be living.

She was sure I could run the business from Austin. I could commute to San Antonio a few days a week, maybe hire one of my friends to cover for me part-time. I could slowly shift my clientele base to Austin, where business would be better.

The agency had no physical office space, anyway. Few assets. Even fewer steady clients. Maia wanted to know what was wrong with her plan.

I said, “Did I mention how outstandingly beautiful you look this morning?”

She picked her gun from the counter, pointed it at the front door, and said, “Walk.”

I had a pretty good hunch where Sam would be.

We found him sitting on the front porch of his childhood home on Cedar and South Alamo, the photographs from his black duffel bag spread around his feet. It looked like he was trying to group them by subject matter and year.

“Morning,” he told us.

He was dressed in a three-piece suit, clean-shaven, marinated with Old Spice. His left arm was in a cast, but it didn’t seem to bother him much.

I thought I’d taken al his guns away, but he’d found an old Smith & Wesson somewhere and stuck it in his shoulder holster. He had a Frosted Flake stuck to his chin.

“Hi, Sam,” I said. “It’s me, Tres.”

“I know that, damn it.”

“This is Maia Lee.”

I didn’t ask if he remembered her.

Sam picked up a photograph. “Lot of faces. Some of these are twenty, thirty years old. Nothing more recent than ten, I’d guess.”

“Your family.”

Barrera looked up at me. “What would you think—a guy who has a bagful of pictures like this? What’s your read?”

“Estranged,” I said. “But maybe he doesn’t real y want it that way.”

Sam considered. “Maybe.”