“Thanks for the ride, Duke,” I say, grateful for once that I didn’t have to manually drive the 250 miles to Laredo from Enchanted Rock. I hadn’t zonked out in over twenty-four hours, and I needed the recharge, bad.

First things first. I stretch and power on Duke’s operating system to check on my password-busting status.

Please tell me the decoding program was able to unlock another info gem. It’s been going at it for four hours.

But nope. Nothing useful.

The highlight is a file that contains an embarrassingly personal audio conversation between Director Wix and a much younger male employee of her Division. I did not need to hear that.

Looks like Roth installed spyware on his inner circle, giving him access to not only their GPS locations, call logs, and text messages, but the microphones on all their devices. He was creepily monitoring his subordinates’ private conversations from afar. No surprise there, really, that Roth’s a paranoid bastard.

I wonder if there’s saved data on Ava’s dad, Darren.

Not sure I want to step on that potential landmine—the guy was the right-hand man of the devil himself for decades.

But Ava loved him more than anything. Darren must’ve been one hell of a dad, raising and protecting Ava and Mira the way he did, under such insane surveillance.

I wonder if he’d like me. I know a thing or two about security . . . I can keep his daughter safe too.

Even in Salazar territory?

A Hart can try.

I double-check that my heavy-duty mission gear is all in order. Not antisurveillance Blackout Wear like Ava’s team wore on their mission to Dallas, but just as cool and illegal. Designed for battle, my charcoal-black combat uniform is more sophisticated than what the military’s elite commandos use. Definitely not approved for civilians.

Ava wasn’t overselling it when she said Ciro’s a man who can get ahold of anything.

“Duke, activate Image Magnify Mode, a hundred yards south,” I say.

I wasn’t going to let my car autonomously drive me right up to the infamous Big Fence without due diligence, was I?

While I’m sure Ava would never lead me here without good reason, that doesn’t erase the nineteen years’ worth of “you will die if you even get close enough to see the wall” indoctrination. So I instructed Duke to take me close to the map’s X coordinates, but not too close, and to hole up out of sight before sending me a wake-up call.

I squat in front of the wide control panel and get a close-up view of the last thing I expected to see.

A wide-open gate that leads directly through the fifty-foot border wall and into Mexico. That’s just too good to be true.

I call bullshit.

“Duke, magnify the east and west towers flanking the bridge,” I command, expecting to find troves of Border Guards. Maybe even one of those notorious gray wolves rumored to sniff out and attack would-be border hoppers.

But there’s zero activity.

Not possible. Border Guards never leave their posts.

Something scratches at my brain.

Unless they were forced to . . .

“Duke, zoom in on west tower, sixty feet up,” I say.

The screen switches to a large-scale image of a very dead Guard lying folded over the tower’s limestone battlements.

Did my team do that?

“Duke, pull back camera,” I say, still not fully believing that the crossing could be Guard—or cartel—free. I press my face an inch from the screen and scan for any hint of movement.

Still nothing, except a vulture that flies parallel with the Big Fence. This is my first time seeing the beast wall in person, and I swear it looks like the protruding back of a thousand-foot dragon that’s trapped below the hellish desert landscape.

Will it come alive if I make my move?

“What do you think, Duke?” I ask, rising to my feet.

After a lifetime of freewheeling on my own, packless, I’ve grown accustomed to having another person to pro and con decisions with me. First with Rayla, then Blaise.

Now I’m riding solo again.

I know what my parents would say. Dad would tell me I’m just a sucker kid who got dragged into something I can’t handle. Mom would tell me not to go. That I might not be able to come back.

What they don’t understand is, I’ve already come to terms with my one-way ticket.

But who will take care of us? my dad would ask if he were sitting in the passenger seat next to me. Of your dear mom?

I can’t think about that now.

Right now, I have to relink with my team. I have to get them the vital intel that Roth’s in Mexico City, not Monterrey—that something major is scheduled to go down.

And we all have to stop it.

“What if they’ve already gone to the wrong stronghold?” I ask myself out loud, preying on my worst fears. “What if they’re already hurt?”

There’s nothing for it, really, but to go forward.

Even if there are still enabled autotarget sentry guns guarding the border gate, Duke is bulletproof.

Which means so am I.

I move to the driver’s seat, pull down the emergency steering wheel, and floor it.

Mid–bridge crossing, the body count doubles. More unmoving shapes litter the road.

Cartel, not my side. Shots to the head.

I mentally block out the gruesome image and keep my eye on the south tower, prepared for a machine-gun welcome to Mexico.

But again, zero activity.

Team Takedown did it! They pulled off an extraordinary break-in. And by all accounts, lived to tell the tale.

Exhilaration rushes through me as I leave the Big Fence in my rearview mirror.

I made it through.

I’m in Mexico, one step closer to Roth.

My fingers dance across the steering wheel. It’s a small victory. But it’s progress. Eyes on the road, I dig in my bag for Ava’s paper map and clutch it tight in my hand. My thumb traces and retraces the town she circled a hundred miles south of the border.

“Ava, I’m on my way.”

This can’t be the town.

At least, I hope this isn’t the town Ava circled on the map. Four times, in blue ink.

Its dusty streets are deserted, and every vibrantly colored building appears unoccupied. The windows that aren’t boarded up with bullet-cratered sheets of metal are empty, both of glass and suspicious eyes.

It looks like nobody’s home.

Not good.

But most distressing of all is there’s no Common Guard SUV in sight. Did they already leave for Monterrey? Did they even make it here?

“Where are you, Team Takedown?” I say out loud, like this helps me not be alone with my bleak thoughts. And fears. “Don’t tell me I’m too late.”

I park Duke a block from the cathedral—where Ava drew a star with the word “safe house” in her sharp, slanted scrawl.

“Please be in there,” I pray to whoever will listen.

I confirm Duke’s computer system is still running the decoding software, triple-check my gun is stuffed with ammo, then pop open the door and make for the cathedral.

Duke can handle himself. If anyone dares to lay a finger on my car, he’s programmed to jolt them with the shock of their life.

Five steps into my dash across the plaza, I spot piles of cardboard shells on the rutted pavement. Are those M-1000 casings? Those firecrackers are all kinds of illegal in the States.