Southtown by Rick Riordan Read Free Book Online Page A

the distaste out of her voice. “Things have been good . . . bounty-hunting and whatnot? Driving into floods?”
    The stubborn side of me wanted to rise to Erainya’s defense, but Maia knew me too well. She had trained me as an unlicensed investigator before Erainya turned me legitimate. During our years together in San Francisco, Maia had used me as a secret weapon to keep cases from going to court, taught me all the dirty, borderline illegal, ruthlessly effective methods of investigative blackmail that Erainya had tried so hard to erase when she got me licensed. Each woman thought the other unprofessional, mostly because they both kept bad company—like me.
    “Erainya’s distracted,” I admitted. “Increasingly.”
    “Maybe it’s her boyfriend. Men affect one’s judgment.”
    I decided not to take the bait. I watched the swollen San Marcos River tumbling into the grotto thirty feet below us. The sky darkened. The water churned red.
    “Something’s bothering you,” Maia decided.
    “Those escaped convicts yesterday afternoon.”
    “The Floresville Five.”
    “How much have you heard?”
    She shrugged. “Just what’s on national news. Fugitive Task Force found a map of Kingsville in a cell, so they figured the convicts were heading south. Then there was the holdup this morning in New Braunfels, so maybe the map was a decoy. The cons seem to be staying together and heading north, which is pretty unusual. The ringleader, William Stirman, sounds like a great human being.”
    “Erainya’s husband put Will Stirman in jail.”
    Maia set down her margarita glass. “Fred Barrow. The husband she shot.”
    “Fred and another private investigator. Samuel Barrera, his biggest rival. Eight years ago, they collaborated to put Stirman behind bars. Now Erainya’s afraid Stirman will come after them. Barrera, for sure. Maybe her, too.”
    “She told you this?”
    “She won’t talk about it. I read some of the agency’s old files, some of her husband’s case notes.”
    “Behind her back?”
    “I kind of borrowed her file cabinet.”
    “How do you kind of borrow your boss’s file cabinet?”
    “We closed the Blanco office. A lot of stuff went into storage. I have the keys.”
    Maia looked at something across the room. “The news said Stirman was a coyote, smuggled people across the border. He was convicted on six counts of accessory to murder. You find out details?”
    I picked at a crabmeat flauta. I was reluctant to recall the images I’d seen in Fred Barrow’s files, copies of old police crime scene photos. “Yeah. I found out details.”
    “Knife,” Maia interrupted, suddenly tense. She was looking over my shoulder. Quentin Yates must be coming to say hello.
    I held my fingers three inches apart. “Knife?”
    She held her hands apart twelve inches. “Knife. In four, three, two—”
    I launched a backward elbow strike at groin level.
    Quentin Yates grunted, stumbling forward with his meat cleaver off target. He stabbed the table as I grabbed his shirt and used his own momentum to launch him across our crab flautas—Maia calmly lifting her margarita glass out of the way as Quentin went over our table, over the railing, and into space.
    A tiny
galosh,
the squawk of a startled duck, and all was quiet again except for the sound of the waterfall. Few patrons had noticed. Those who did quickly went back to their meals. Perhaps, they must’ve thought, this was like cherries jubilee, or a sizzling pan of fajitas brought straight to the table. Perhaps the high-diving maître d’ was a new kind of food delivery panache.
    Maia and I were fine, except for a few sprinkles of margarita on her blouse, a knee-print in my guacamole, and the twelve-inch meat cleaver shuddering in the tablecloth.
    Robert Johnson said, “Row?”
    “Yeah,” I agreed.
    Our waitress swept over with an oblivious smile and a leather-bound bill. “Well! Anybody save room for dessert?”
             
    The hotel room was too