Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(8)

I leaned and tapped on Erainya’s window.

Halfway down the sidewalk, Dimebox Ortiz froze, staring in our direction. The rain was drenching him.

You don’t see us, I thought. We are invisible.

Dimebox yel ed back toward the house—his cousins’ names, some Spanish I couldn’t catch. He ran for his Lincoln Town Car, and I gave up on discretion.

“Erainya!” I yel ed, pounding on the driver’s-side door.

She took the phone away from her ear, just catching the fact that something was wrong as Dimebox’s tail ights flared to life and Lalu and Kiko came lumbering out their front door, their fists ful of things I was pretty sure weren’t wax apples.

Erainya climbed in, hit the ignition. “Jem, seatbelt!”

We peeled out, hydroplaning a sheet of water into the faces of the Ortiz cousins, who yel ed plentiful contributions to Jem’s cuss jar as they jogged after us, brandishing their army surplus door prizes.

Dimebox’s Lincoln turned the corner on Keslake as the first explosion rocked the back of our van. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw chunks of wet asphalt spray up from the middle of the street where our tailpipe had been a moment before.

“Fireworks?” Jem asked, excited.

“Sort of,” I said. “Get down.”

“I want to see!”

“These are the kind you feel, champ. Get down!”

The twins sloshed after us like a couple of rabid hippos.

Up ahead, Dimebox’s Lincoln Town Car dipped toward the low-water crossing on Sinclair.

A few hours ago when we’d driven in, Rosil io Creek had been ful , but nowhere near the top of the road.

Now, glistening in our headlights, an expanse of chocolate water surged over the asphalt. Clumps of grass, branches and garbage piled up on the metal guardrail. It was hard to tel how deep the water was. There was no other road in or out of the neighborhood, even if we could turn around, which we couldn’t with Se?or Dee and Se?or Dum lobbing munitions right behind us.

In the PI business, we have a technical term for getting yourself into this kind of situation. We cal it f**king up.

Dimebox’s brake lights flashed as he approached the crossing.

“He won’t make it,” I said, as he revved the Lincoln’s engine and plunged hood-first into current.

Ka-BOOM. Behind us, the low-water-crossing sign splintered into kindling.

“He’l make it,” Erainya insisted. “So wil we.”

I started to protest, but she’d already nosed the van into the water.

The sensation was like a log ride—that stomach-lurching moment when the chain catches under the boat.

Water churned beneath the floorboards, hammered the doors. The van shuddered and began drifting sideways.

Through the smear of the windshield, I saw Dimebox’s Town Car trying to climb the opposite bank, but his headlights dimmed. His rear fender slid back into the torrent, crunched against the guardrail. His headlights went dark, and suddenly the Lincoln was a dam, water swel ing around it, lapping angrily at the bottom of the shotgun window.

“Go back,” I told Erainya.

She fought the wheel, muttered orders to the van in Greek, eased us forward. We somehow managed to get right behind the Lincoln before our engine died.

Our headlights dimmed, but stayed on. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in front of us, waving one arm frantical y out his window. His driver’s-side door was smashed against the guardrail. Water was sluicing into his shotgun window.

Behind us, Lalu and Kiko were barely discernible at the edge of the water, watching mutely as our two vehicles were trash-compacted against the guardrail.

The railing moaned. Our van skidded sideways. The Lincoln’s back left wheel slipped over the edge, and Dimebox’s whole car began to tilt up on the right, threatening to flip over in the force of the water.

I grabbed Erainya’s cel phone, dialed 911, but in the roar of the flood I couldn’t hear anything. The LCD read, Searching for Signal. The water inside the van was up to my ankles.

“Rope,” I shouted to Erainya. “You stil have rope?”

“We have to stay inside, honey. We can’t—”

“I’m getting Ortiz out of that car.”

“Honey—”

“He won’t make it otherwise. I’l tie off here.”

“Honey, he isn’t worth it!”

Ortiz was yel ing for help. He looked . . . tangled in something. I couldn’t tel . Nothing but his head was above water.

I looked back at Jem, who for once wasn’t focused on the PlayStation.

“Pass me the rope behind your seat,” I told him. “You’re the man of the van, okay?”

“I can’t swim,” he reminded me.

His eyes were calm—that creepy calm I only saw when he tried to remember his life before Erainya, his thoughts thickening into a protective, invisible layer of scar tissue.

I shoved him the cel phone. “It’s okay, champ. Keep trying 911.”

He passed me the rope—fifty feet of standard white propylene. I didn’t know why Erainya stored it in the van. I suppose you never knew when you’d have to tie somebody up. Or maybe Dr. Dreamboat the ENT had strange proclivities. I didn’t want to ask.

I made a knot around the steering column, a noose around my waist. Then I rol ed down the passenger’s- side window and got a face ful of rain.