The accompanying screech tells me she found her mark.

“I don’t understand,” I say between ragged breaths. “Javelinas don’t attack humans!”

Yet ten more rush straight for us, the coarse salt-and-pepper fur on their necks bristling in alarm mode.

“Just keep shooting!” Ava yells above the pandemonium of their tiny hooves. “Scare them off!”

It’s when I feel the biting stab of a tusk tearing into my calf that I register this must be the sick work of the Salazar cartel. Their sicarios.

They must feed the javelinas. Make them attracted to humans who encroach on their territory.

This is a game to them. They think using wild animals to weaken their prey is much more fun than using drones.

But Ava and I fire again and again, refusing to go down easy.

Four or five of the small beasts scurry away, but the rest remain, frenzied and persistent.

A second stab to my left calf sends me to my knees. My uniform’s padding is no match for strong, clamping jaws.

I try to swallow my scream, but it’s useless. The shrieks from the animals will attract whoever’s out there listening. Lying in wait.

Next thing I know, Ava’s flat on the ground beside me, a jaw fastened around her thigh. She grunts in agony as she bangs the butt of her gun into the javelina’s snout.

It lets go and lunges for her neck, but my bullet’s quicker. The carcass drops stiff on top of Ava’s chest, it’s putrid musk mixing with her sweat.

Finally, the last half of the herd barrels off. And silence settles.

The ominous kind.

No time to nurse our wounds or formulate any real plan.

A single light materializes on the eastern horizon, deviating from the highway. Right toward us.

With one look Ava and I vault behind the nearest rock and collapse to our stomachs. Backs to the barrier, we each hastily unlatch a secret pocket in our uniforms. We throw cape-like blankets over our bodies and stay as still as possible, hoping we just disappeared.

Like me, Ava must be betting whoever is after us, almost certainly a Salazar’s sicario, is combing the dark with his own form of night vision optics.

But the aluminized plastic fabric of our capes should camouflage our body heat from his thermal energy goggles.

This will work. Just like the Scent Cloaks outsmarted the hummingbird drone.

The hitman’s motorcycle emits no sound. Beyond the hammering of my pulse, I only hear the cracking of cacti as the fat tires plow effortlessly over the three-foot plants.

The rider shouts while he searches for what he thinks is easy prey, his disembodied voice toneless. “Ustedes, estúpidos ratones, creen que son valientes . . .” You stupid mice think you’re brave . . .

His taunts echo across the mute desert, hitting me twice. Once in Spanish, and once translated through my ear cuff, making it feel like he’s right up against me. The wind is his breath. The rocks are his nails, digging into my throat. “If you’re so brave,” he mocks, “then stand up, militia mice!”

He thinks we’re members of the People’s Militia.

And I’m wagering he doesn’t think we have guns. I mentally send out a hasty thanks to Ciro for our pistols’ high-tech silencers.

The sicario circles our perimeter with his bike, the constant crack, crack, crack of the snapping cacti our only marker for his position.

One o’clock, twelve, eleven.

“Stand up and run! Show me what you’re good at!”

Crack, crack, crack. He’s getting closer.

My mind clears, and my pulse slows.

“Whoever runs fastest can die first,” he goads. “And when my blade kisses your throat, I’ll make it quick.”

The crack, crack, crack of tires tearing a path through the cacti grows louder. Nearer.

It’s only a matter of seconds before his bike’s headlight finds us.

Crack. Ten o’clock.

Crack. Nine.

“Now!” Ava whispers beside me.

Leaving no time for doubt or fear, I tear off my cape and surge to my feet. Standing, like he was calling for us to do. But instead of running, we fight.

Trailing the barrel of my gun on the moving gray shadow, I pull the trigger until my chamber empties.

One of our bullets lands, and the sicario flies backward into the air, his speeding bike racing forward without its driver.

After a few suspended heartbeats, the motorcycle crashes to the ground. The man, who I see only as an inanimate shadow, lies crumpled on a prickly bed of cacti.

“He’s dead,” Ava says. “Let’s move.” She holsters her gun, its silencer muzzle dipping below her belt. Just above her flesh wound.

My legs start throbbing, worse than the pain in my head.

Ava and I just killed another man.

I look down to see dark stains—My blood, I realize, dazed—soaking the uniform above my calves and shins.

“Can you keep going?” Ava asks me, but it’s a waste of breath.

There’s only ever been one option.

Always, forever, move.

AVA

It feels good to ride a motorcycle again.

All my senses are hyperfocused on the road in front of me, wholly attuned to my environment. The dusty, sweet, earthy scent of the desert fills my nostrils, stripping away the smell of blood. The wind simultaneously caresses the sweat off my body, kissing the stinging wounds on my neck and thigh, and screams nonsense into my ears, drowning out the memory of Mira’s cries.

The perfect balm after what we just survived.

The final stretch of Highway 85, before we reach the People’s Militia’s headquarters, is pure straightaway. I pull the electric motor’s throttle and everything speeds up as if I just hit a fast-forward button.

Mira wraps her arms tighter around my waist.

For the next five minutes it’s quiet. Hypnotic. Almost peaceful.

Then I hear them.

Church bells. Ringing loud and urgent.

At first, I think the haunting melody is heralding daybreak. But when we get closer to our destination, Mira squeezes my arm and points upward.

Freefall parachutes drop from the awakening sky, slow and eerie like umbrella-shaped jellyfish in the plum-tinted light.

An airdrop delivery?

From whom? We’re still too far away to make out the symbol on the chutes.

Just as I veer us onto a cavity-ridden exit ramp that leads to the small town ahead, fireworks explode inside the center plaza. Brilliant greens, pinks, and azure blues blast between the stucco buildings, not ten feet off the ground, like beautiful, luminous bombs.

These pyrotechnics aren’t aimed at the open sky like the lavish reelection celebrations Father would take me to at the Governor’s Mansion.

These fireballs are meant to do damage.

Is the People’s Militia using fireworks as weapons?

Bam, bam, bam!

A rain of gunfire breaks out, the rapid pops echoing off the mountains.

“Do you think our team’s in there?” Mira cries out behind me.

I don’t know which sides are battling—cartel versus militia, Roth versus militia, our team versus Roth and the militia—but I don’t hesitate.

I gun the motorcycle faster.

Mira and I shelter under a cathedral’s arched colonnade. The agreed meet-up spot if anyone gets lost or separated from the team.

We peer out into the square that’s distinguished by a tall pale-blue clock tower. The bells, which I now know are a warning siren, are so loud they rock my very core.