He swayed back about five degrees. The guy had to be going into shock. If I could just wait for the right moment…
“Don’t get ideas,” Stirman warned. “Barrera got ideas. You can see they didn’t help him.”
“You okay, Sam?” I asked.
Barrera tried to move his swollen hand, winced. “Where’s Fred?”
“Dead, Sam. Dead eight years.”
Stirman threw his walkie-talkie against the window so hard the glass shuddered. Next to me, Jem flinched.
“The old man keeps yammering about Barrow like he’s still alive,” Stirman complained. “He looks at me like he doesn’t know who I am.”
“Barrera’s ill.” I tried to keep my voice even. “He’s losing his memory.”
I could tell from Stirman’s face that he didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to buy into Sam’s dementia-to think Fred Barrow really was coming back from the dead, that he would show up any minute to get his just deserts.
“He brought me this.” Stirman picked up the black duffel bag, tossed it toward me. “What the hell is this?”
The zipper split open when it hit the carpet. Paper spilled all over the skywalk.
Not money.
Photographs. Old yellowed photos. In some of them, I recognized Sam Barrera’s face-a much younger Sam, grinning with his arms around people I didn’t know. There hadn’t been a single photo in Sam Barrera’s house-but here they all were, a lifetime’s worth, stuffed in an old loot bag.
“More memory problems?” Stirman asked.
“It’s the right bag,” Barrera insisted. “Tell him, Fred.”
Stirman raised an eyebrow at me.
“Barrera spent his share of the loot years ago,” I said. “Used it to build up his company. He’s got nothing left.”
Stirman jabbed his gun to the back of Barrera’s head. “Too bad for him. Where’s Fred Barrow’s share?”
“You didn’t give me time to retrieve it.”
“But you know where it is.”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll take me there.”
“Look at yourself, Stirman. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”
“You’ll take me there,” he repeated. “And if you’re lying, you will wish to God you weren’t.” He looked at Jem. “Come here, boy.”
“Jem, no,” I said.
Stirman blinked at me. He was swaying a little more now, his face blue in the walkway’s neon lights. “They took everything from me, Navarre. I mean to collect.”
“You’d take Jem from Erainya.”
“Yes.”
“You’d take revenge on a little boy-”
“It isn’t revenge.”
“-a single mother, and an old man who doesn’t even remember why you’re mad at him. Is that satisfying? Is that what Soledad would’ve wanted?”
For a moment, I thought I’d pushed him too far, misread him completely.
But then he looked at Jem, and Stirman’s face took on that same hunger I’d seen at the soccer field. Again, he forced himself to contain his anger. Stirman had been telling me the truth on the phone-he did need Jem here. The boy’s presence was the only thing keeping him sane.
Stirman told me, “I know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t lie to yourself,” I said. “This isn’t about what Barrow and Barrera took from you eight years ago. This is about what you ran away from. You failed Soledad. You stayed silent about her baby. All this time, you let the past stay buried. You can’t make that right now.”
Stirman’s jaw tightened. “Be careful telling me what I can and can’t do.”
“Listen to Jem,” I said. “Listen to what he wants.”
“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 really 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.
“Tell me where the money is,” he said. “Maybe I’ll let you and Barrera go. But the boy comes with me.”
Sam Barrera said, “Like hell.”
He started to get up.
“Sit down, old man,” Stirman ordered, pushing Barrera’s collarbone 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 wall behind Barrera’s head.
I yelled, “Jem, run!”
He followed my orders too well. 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 gallery 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.
23
Just as she heard the shot inside the warehouse, Ana DeLeon’s phone vibrated against her Kevlar vest.
The SWAT team was too well trained to react to gunfire, but they all looked at her to see what was rattling.
She ripped the phone out of her pocket and stared at the display.
