“Highway 85 should be right here,” Ava stresses, stopping abruptly without warning, causing me to collide violently with her backside and lose my carefully placed footing.

I’ve been following Ava’s lead, literally, since we made our hasty retreat from the runaway truck. My own night vision goggles broke in the jump, cracked in two by a rock and my breastbone.

So I took to shadowing Ava’s footfalls, step for step.

Yet now I find myself on the ground, staring up at the stars, having fallen head over heels.

Ava spins around, the two tubes of her night vision goggles jutting outward like their own form of weapon.

“Shit, are you hurt?! You fell right onto a cactus!”

“I didn’t fall,” I answer, short fused. “I was blindsided.”

I see her hand hovering an inch from my nose, and I take it, wondering why my rear was spared the sharp pains that usually follow landing on a plant with three-inch spines for armor.

Back on my feet, Ava inspects me, her gloved fingers coming away with dozens of knifelike barbs.

“Your uniform caught them,” Ava says, relieved. Even in the pitch black, I can make out the angry crimson welts on her neck from her own rumble with a cactus. “Thank Whitman for the high-tech padding.”

Thank Ciro. He’s helping, even from afar.

Unlike us. Ava and me stumbling lost in a desert helps no one. My frustration forms as an icy burn in my chest, a weighted panic stored just below my heart. A cold sweat drips from my skin when I instinctively reach for my rucksack and remember it isn’t there.

We have nothing but our pistols, our wits, and each other. We’re northerners, outsiders, enemies, roaming the highly controlled Salazar territory, clinging tight to our ebbing conviction that we will make it to the People’s Militia’s headquarters.

Before the sun rises. Before we faint from exhaustion and dehydration.

Before the sicarios detect us.

Ava pockets the compass, tucking her map between her arm and ribs. “Keep going?” she asks.

Always keep going.

We found the highway.

Ava makes sure to maintain a wide distance from the road, although so far we’ve been the lone travelers in this isolated terrain.

“Seven more miles,” Ava announces up front. She picks up the pace.

I look at my watch, squinting down at the barely visible hour hand.

We’re making terrible time. There’s still more than a two-hour trek ahead of us.

“We’ll run into the team soon,” Ava says, more as an encouragement than a certainty. “We can’t be that far behind. No question Alexander’s slowing them down . . . He might be a Guard officer, but I know he hasn’t marched a day in his life.”

I nod, though I realize Ava can’t see me. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth like sandpaper, all my saliva dried up and long gone. I can’t waste my breath.

And Alexander is the last person I want occupying my mind. I feel lost enough as it is without that man veering me off course.

It’s all your fault.

I shake my head, clearing away his condemning words. Doubt and blame only misguide me, I’ve learned.

Besides, I’m on my way to make things right.

“Seven more miles,” I hear Ava repeat to herself.

She starts marching faster.

For an instant I consider yanking up the needled pads of the prickly pear cactus that surround our path. Nopals, for hydration, Lucía taught us in the west Texas desert.

I have no knife. No blade to scrape away the large spines. My gloves could work, but the act would feel desperate. Defeatist. Time-consuming.

I keep walking.

“Only two more hours,” I whisper out loud to make it feel real.

Two hours and we’ll find the town, the others, water.

It’s grueling, having to keep my eyes lowered on my feet, on Ava’s footsteps, when every urge and impulse in me craves to look up, around, behind me.

What’s out here, concealed in the dark?

To distract my thoughts from turning as bleak as this stretch of land, I think of Theo.

We’re on the same side of the border now. The same country, territory. Every step shrinks the miles between us. My fear, like a weight threatening to crush my chest, suddenly lightens.

I imagine Theo’s amber eyes, shining with life and hope. His fingers, soft and strong, wrapped around mine.

I can still feel his touch. The memory’s seared onto my palms like a tattoo. His right hand in my left, pulling me toward him.

If I could find him once, I can find him again.

I’m going to get you out, Theo. Save you, like I couldn’t save my father. Or Rayla.

Without fail, my thoughts flash to the man who took them all. Pure, unbridled hate courses through me, hot, like the blood in my veins.

What are you scheming, Roth? Did you really think you could run and hide behind a cartel stronghold?

Did you really think we wouldn’t come for you?

It’s not enough to merely take Roth’s title, his state. His country.

We must take his life.

And I know, like I have since the moment I watched my father leave this world, that I’m going to be the one who takes it.

“Six more miles,” Ava updates me over her shoulder.

I allow the hate to take hold of my heart in an iron grip. With every beat I harden. Strengthen.

We’re getting closer.

For two thousand footsteps I’ve managed to keep my mind an empty vault. So I’m as surprised as Ava must be to hear my voice over the monotonous silence.

“Are you and Owen—”

I seal my lips before I can finish the question. The accusation.

“No,” Ava says loud and quick like she wants to cover up the lingering unsaid word. Together. Are you and Owen together?

“No,” Ava repeats, quieter this time but just as forceful. I hear the catch in her whisper. A strained guilt, like I caught her cheating.

My sister and I were born soul mates. Where—how—do Theo and Owen fit into that inseparable bond?

I never speak to Ava of Theo. And she keeps Owen from me like a secret.

“We used to tell each other everything,” I whisper.

“We had to,” Ava says. “To stay alive.”

“And now?” I ask.

It’s all so different now.

Before she can answer, a light wind picks up, shifting the air, and I catch the smell. A strong, musky odor that sears my nostrils and flips my stomach.

It reeks like something died here.

“What’s that stench?” Ava asks, tugging her uniform over the lower half of her face.

I cover my nose with the ends of my scarf. It does nothing to block the foul stink.

“What’s that noise?” I ask, the more dangerous question.

It’s a sound like building thunder. No, more like a wall of water hurtling straight for us.

Ava whips her head left and right, scanning the night with her goggles.

I slam my back against my sister’s, in fighting position, and draw my gun. Before I can ask if she sees something, I spot a billowing dust storm and its wild cause.

Javelinas. An entire herd of them.

“It’s a stampede,” Ava breathes.

“My six o’clock!” I shout, and Ava springs to my side right as the first boar-like animal charges.

Ava and I leap in opposite directions, and the short, fifty-pound javelina strikes thin air. Ava pivots and gets a shot off before it can round for a second charge.