And yet, instantly, I believe her. I believe the impossible is true.

“¿Y tienes pruebas?” I ask. And you have proof?

“No,” Lucía answers flatly.

“Then how?” Ava questions, taking a seat on Lucía’s right. “Pareces tan seguro.” You seem so certain.

A hesitation slips into Lucía’s posture, but she keeps her steady gaze on Ava, then me.

“My last name is Salazar,” she reveals, almost like a confession. “Me crié en Monterrey y serví al cartel allí antes de huir.” I was raised in Monterrey and served my family’s cartel before I fled.

Ava responds with wide-eyed curiosity. “The Salazar cartel?”

Lucía nods and my pulse beats faster, my mind racing with a thousand more questions.

Lucía is related to a water lord. The Salazar family commands a reign of terror all over northern and central Mexico. Is this why Lucía ran from her country? To get away from her cutthroat family?

I hold my breath, waiting for Lucía’s next words.

“I heard things,” Lucía continues. “Susurros de una alianza entre los Salazar y una poderosa familia extranjera.” Whispers of an alliance between the Salazars and a powerful foreign family.

“The Roths?” Ava cuts in.

“Nadie pronunció su verdadero nombre,” Lucía replies. No one ever spoke their true name.

I let out my breath. The alliance could be with any influential family on the continent. In the world.

“But they called them the Lone Stars,” Lucía whispers.

Ava and I lock eyes. Only one family bears that nickname.

“Right,” Ava says, popping up the hood of her jacket. “You can tell us more on the way.” She lifts Lucía and me to our feet, spins on her heel, and marches back toward the garden’s entrance.

“Where do we go now?” Lucía asks me.

“Para encontrar aquellos en quienes confiamos,” I say. To find those we trust.

She gives me a solemn nod, then pulls her thin cotton scarf over her eyes, cloaking her face in shadow. She catches me inspecting her gun, the very pistol that got our ragtag trio across the west Texas wasteland.

A single bullet. That’s all she’d had left. But it was all it took.

I blink and I’m back in the desert, the boy’s hands all over my body, ripping me away from my sister and my future.

With her last shot, Lucía took a man’s life to save mine.

And now here she is, saving me again. Telling me what I’ve ached to hear for the longest three weeks of my existence.

She can lead me to Roth. To Theo.

We can end this.

“Espero que hayas encontrado más balas,” I say, pointing to her pistol. I hope you found more bullets.

“Yes,” Lucía answers. “A donde vamos, los necesitaremos a todos.” Where we’re going, we will need them all.

I nod, a surge of exhilaration charging through my veins. I find myself smiling as we set off to catch up with Ava.

Recuerda. No tenemos miedo, Lucía and I once told each other before we faced a new danger.

Remember. We show no fear.

OWEN

“So . . . should we try slapping the kid awake?” I half joke after the doctor leaves us defeated in the hospital room. “Or maybe throw some water on his face?” Those tricks work wonders in the old classic films.

By the way, the Whiz Kid is an actual kid, it’s not just a nickname as I’d assumed. With such a baby face, there’s no way he’s even hit his midteens yet.

A wolf in lamb’s clothing. The whole innocent-looking thing—the rosy cheeks, soft auburn curls, and sweet smile, even while comatose—is one hundred percent a front. The kid’s calling card. But I bet he had a rap sheet filled with cybercrimes as long as my arm before he left grade school.

Blaise, Alexander—a recovery IV inserted into his wrist to sober him up—and I have been standing over the unconscious kid’s bed for the last half hour, impatient for a miracle.

The top reasons the doc said a person can faint: crazy high stress, overheating, exhaustion, or dehydration. No doubt the kid checked every one of those boxes.

Don’t we all?

But instead of waking up after a few minutes like normal, he’s totally lost consciousness for close to an hour.

He’s going to kill me! were the boy’s first and only words, according to Blaise, so I don’t blame the Whiz for checking out. He’s probably scared out of his mind that Roth is going to find him and lock him away. Or worse. It doesn’t matter that he’s just a kid. Pawel was just a kid too—didn’t even get the chance to hit his twenties—and Roth’s Guards shot him dead.

And Whitman only knows where this boy escaped from, and what it took for him to get to the Common’s HQ—the odyssey couldn’t have been easy.

I get that, I really do. Hell, most days I want to check out from all of this too. But we need the kid to snap out of it, ASAP, so he can tell us what he came here to say.

An entire army of search drones has nothing on this boy’s ability to hunt down Roth.

“How long do you think the Whiz will be out?” Blaise sighs, pushing up his shirtsleeves.

We’re both fully clothed again. There’s something formal about hospitals that makes you want to put your shirt back on. See, Common members have decency, I think, happy to prove my mom wrong.

But I’m regretting it in this heat.

“Are we positive he’s not faking it?” I press.

In answer, Alexander, dragging his mobile IV pole with him, shuffles closer to the Whiz and bends down to pry open the kid’s left eyelid. He then straight-up pokes the boy’s eyeball with his finger.

The Whiz Kid doesn’t flinch.

“Nope,” I say, shuddering. “It’s the real deal.”

With a long night of waiting ahead of us, I haul a chair over to the gurney and take a front-row seat to keep watch on the kid, monitoring for the slightest change that would indicate his consciousness returning from wherever minds go when they’re lost. It’s like waiting for water to boil.

So when the hospital room door slides open again, Alexander wastes no time rounding on the nurse before he can even step over the threshold. “I order you to revive him, now!” the newly restored officer barks, back to his usual bossy ways. “This is of national importance—”

But it’s not the nurse who walks through the entrance. It’s Ava and Mira, and they don’t walk, they storm into the room, outrage clear on their faces. A dark-haired twenty-something girl in combat gear pops in next, shutting the door behind them in a hurry. Is she a new Common recruit? An old friend? She looks as fired up as the sisters.

“Seriously though, did someone put a tracker on me?” I ask, baffled by how they found our top-secret room.

“Your car is parked outside,” Mira remarks, rolling her eyes with impatience.

“And your voice is louder than a bullhorn,” Blaise adds, unsolicited. “You’re an easy one to find.”

“Who’s that?” Ava asks, staring with raised eyebrows at the zonked-out boy in the bed.

“Who’s that?” I ask in turn, pointing at the stranger with a gun holstered all brazen at her hip.