Chapter 12

The wait was the worst part. And yet ... maybe the best too.

We were tucked deep in the brush, well away from the road, the river in sight but not too close. No dogs barking, no headlights sweeping over us, no low voices crackling over radios. For once, we weren’t actively in danger. And that was new. Strange, almost.

We had a plan. We had time. And we had each other.

For the first time in what felt like a century, the tension began to let up. Little by little. Nobody said it out loud, but we were all thinking the same thing: we might actually pull this off.

Luz must’ve felt it too. She smiled—an actual smile, soft and real—and reached into her backpack. She pulled out the little pair of scissors we’d grabbed weeks ago in San Luis Potosí. I’d forgotten we still had them.

“You,” she said, looking at me, “are not meeting my parents looking like a caveman.”

I blinked. “Do they have something against cavemen?”

She gave me a look. “Don’t start. Sit down.”

So, I sat cross-legged while she kneeled behind me, fingers running through the tangled mess of my hair. I heard the snip of the blades and felt the tug as she went to work. A little clump of hair fell past my shoulder. Then another. I saw Luz’s smile widen as she continued to snip away, and larger clumps began to fall. She was enjoying this. Eventually, she moved to trim my beard as well.

Marisol and Isa watched this unfold with barely contained grins.

“Should we tell him you’ve never cut hair before?” Isa asked innocently.

“She’s doing fine,” I said, trying not to wince. “Right?”

“Eh,” Marisol said. “Pass me those scissors.”

I heard Luz sigh and surrender them, and then Marisol was behind me, fussing around my neckline. “You missed a whole patch back here,” she said. “You’re trying to make the man look homeless?”

“He is homeless,” Luz muttered, laughing.

Isa leaned in. “Give me the scissors! I think he’d look good with a mohawk.”

I twisted around. “That’s a hard no.”

“Come on, Brendan,” Isa mock-pouted. “Live a little. While we’re at it ... I’ll find some blue dye that will really make you look edgy.”

We all laughed. It was wonderful—it felt like something close to normal. Like we were friends hanging out on a lazy afternoon instead of four near-starving fugitives hiding in a thicket by the river.

The sun began to sink, slowly sliding behind the trees, and the golden light turned pink, then orange, then gray.

Slowly, the laughter faded. Our serious game faces returned, as one final challenge awaited us. None of us said it out loud, but it was written on every face ... this was it. The last hurdle.

We didn’t know the exact time. No phones, no watches, just the quiet rhythm of the world around us and our own instincts. But judging by the position of the half moon, low over the western horizon, we figured it was close enough to midnight.

Time to go. I was the first to stand. I pointed over at the opposite bank, mostly shrouded in darkness, a few distant lights shimmering through the humidity. “Home is ... where the river stops,” I declared. The others nodded.

We didn’t speak any more. We just exchanged looks, a silent agreement passing between us. The others rose from the underbrush, stiff and tense. We began to move in unison.

The canal’s spillway was just ahead, choked with reeds and mud, sloping gently down to the Rio Grande. The moonlight gave us hardly anything—a dull gray shimmer on the water—but it was enough to see the path without giving ourselves away. We crept forward, keeping low.

The ditch was rank. It smelled of damp rust and stagnant algae, but it was the only cover we had. Marisol crouched at the lip of the concrete spillway, scanning the far bank through a curtain of reeds.

“We go now,” she whispered without turning. Her voice quivered—not from fear, I told myself, but from exhaustion. Isa tightened the duct-tape brace around her ankle and nodded. Luz slid her fingers into mine, pulse skittering. I squeezed back, then eased away; I needed both hands free.

We sloshed down the chute into the Rio Grande. Marisol led, keeping her shoulders low. Isa followed, her limp subtle but there. Luz waded in next, backpack above her head. I brought up the rear, ears straining for engines or shouts. Somewhere downstream a dog barked, echoing off corrugated tin roofs; a gate clanged; then nothing but cicadas.

At mid-channel the depth hit my ribcage. Isa lost her footing on a slick algae-covered rock and went under with a gasp. I lunged forward, grabbing her pack strap. The river closed over my chin; silt filled my mouth. Luz shrieked—a small, muffled sound—and Marisol whipped around. Together we heaved Isa upright. She coughed, spat, and managed a thumbs-up. We pushed on, our hearts drumming.

The far bank crept closer, a wall of shadowed mesquite. I counted the final yards: eight ... six ... four. Then, my shoes found solid ground. I hauled Luz forward and helped Isa clamber onto the mudflat. Marisol followed, breathing hard, eyes darting toward a nearby barbed-wire fence. On the Texas side, less than fifty feet away, a single porch light glowed like a distant star. We quickly found the gap in the fence we’d spotted earlier and passed through it without ceremony. No spotlight swept across us. No engine started. Just the wet slap of clothes and the rasp of our lungs.

For just a moment, we crouched beneath the trees, dripping and trembling. Isa muttered a quick prayer in Spanish. Luz pressed her forehead to my shoulder; I could feel her smile even as she shivered. Marisol, mostly by touch, checked the makeshift brace on Isa’s ankle. The tape had held.

“We’re in,” she told us, voice barely audible. “Our house is maybe two hours away by foot.” She pointed the way through the brush.

I looked back at the river. In the darkness it was nothing but a ribbon of black glass, deceptively calm. Somewhere beyond the other bank the cartel would still be searching, photos in hand. But the water was between us now, and the air on my skin finally felt like home.