“Get away from the window,” she told him. “You’re giving the snipers a target.”
He pulled her back, shoving her toward the mattress. “Your friend thought I wouldn’t shoot you? Is that what he thought?”
“You’re not cold-blooded, honey. You just cut me loose.”
“I can’t shoot a woman sleeping and tied up.” His voice quivered. “I wanted you to see them out there. This ain’t my fault.”
A big rig rumbled by outside, drawing Pablo’s attention to the window.
Erainya could try to disarm him, but her limbs were sandbags. She’d grab for the gun only as a last resort. She was afraid that decision might be just a few seconds away.
“Shooting me won’t help,” she said. “Don’t listen to Stirman.”
Pablo’s face was beaded with sweat.
“I can still run,” he said. “The loading dock in back-”
“They’ll kill you as soon as you step outside.”
“I’m not going to mess with a hostage, miss. I’m sorry.”
“Let me go out there,” she said. “I’ll tell them Stirman forced you. That’s true, isn’t it? They’ll treat you fair. I’ll stay with you, honey.”
Pablo blinked.
It had probably been a long time since anyone had offered to stay with him in a crisis.
He raised the gun. “I’m not going back to jail.”
“You don’t have to kill me.”
“If I don’t, Stirman will find me-doesn’t matter if I’m in jail or out. I have to get home. My wife…”
Erainya imagined a SWAT team moving silently into position. A flash-bang grenade would roll in the door first. Maybe tear gas. It wouldn’t be soon enough. Pablo and she were both going to die.
“There’s another way,” she told him. She tried her best not to make it sound like a lie. “I have an idea.”
His finger was white on the trigger. “No time, miss.”
“Listen to me.”
Pablo shook his head, his eyes bright with anger as if he were still hearing Stirman’s voice giving him orders.
Erainya started explaining anyway, describing her last-resort idea as Pablo took aim at her heart.
22
The Art Museum was supposed to be closed for flood repairs, but when Jem and I got there the entranceway blazed with light. The glass front doors were propped open with a trash can.
Two cars sat at the curb-an old Ford station wagon and an ’83 Chevy Impala with naked-lady-silhouette mud flaps. Neither struck me as a typical art patron vehicle.
“I’ve been here on a field trip,” Jem informed me.
“That’s good,” I said. “So you know where the bathrooms are?”
He nodded. With his active bladder, Jem had men’s room radar.
“If I tell you to run,” I said, “go to the bathroom. Lock the door if you can, and call 911. Okay?”
“Okay.” He slipped his mother’s cell phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Next time we do a heist, can we go to Malibu Castle?”
“ Rendezvous, champ. Heists are what the bad guys do.”
I pulled my truck up to the Grand Avenue Bridge and parked behind a dark stand of cottonwoods next to the swollen river. I wasn’t sure why. I just didn’t feel right leaving the truck in plain sight.
We walked back to the museum entrance.
I used my Swiss army knife to puncture the tires on the Chevy and the Ford. I was tempted to cut off the Chevy’s naked-lady mud flaps, but we were in a hurry.
Jem took my hand. It was the first time he’d done so in almost a year. We looked up at the two towers rising into the night, the glass skywalk between them, crisscrossed with neon. I wished they still made beer here. I needed one.
Together we walked up the front steps.
The night watchman was slumped over the security desk. His gun holster was empty. He had a nasty lump on the side of his head. Spots of blood dribbled from his earlobe onto the security monitor.
“Is he okay?” Jem asked.
“Oh, sure.” I squeezed Jem’s hand and pulled him away. “Probably just tired.”
Dripping water echoed in the vastness of the Great Hall. Three stories above, damaged skylights sent a steady stream of runoff onto the cafe tables and the chocolate Saltillo tiles, completely missing the buckets. At the top of the staircase, two windows had been blasted out by the storms, replaced with plastic sheeting. The hanging catamaran sculpture that always reminded me of a da Vinci contraption was wrapped in a tarp.
I glanced into the gift shop. No crazed killers.
The other direction, plastic-wrapped statues of Marcus Aurelius and Vishnu flanked the entrance to the Ancient Cultures wing.
A man’s voice crackled with static: “Upstairs.”
It came from the unconscious guard-or rather, from the two-way radio clipped to his belt.
“Hope you’re not as empty-handed as it looks,” Stirman’s voice said. “Mr. Barrera hopes so, too. West elevator. All the way up.”
I looked around for a security camera. I didn’t see one.
“Let’s go,” I told Jem.
“You sure this isn’t a heist?” he asked.
The West Tower elevator was one of those see-through glass and steel jobs, set in the center of the room amidst Anubis statues and Middle Kingdom hieroglyphics. Getting inside made me feel like I was becoming one of the displays.
We ascended past Chinese porcelain and samurai armor. The pulley system went by, its brass wheels and silver weights clicking. We stopped on the fourth floor. Tahitian masks and Aboriginal fertility statues stared at us from the shadows.
The gallery space was tiny at the top of the tower. There was no place to go but the skywalk.
Will 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 smaller galleries, Highway 281 cut a glittering arc around the woods and the river. To the south glowed all 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 Hall 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 all 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 swollen.
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.”
