Clare had her stashes, Holden had safe houses—surely, he did—Jack had safety valves she couldn’t even pretend to guess at, and she had Paul and Janet Moore, parents without living children, grandparents with two grown grandbabies now out of state, fifth- and sixth-generation Texans, who years ago had found their home in a sudden no-man’s-land when one of the first border fences, a tall, slatted metal monstrosity, cut a swath through their property.

They weren’t naive enough to think of her as the daughter they’d lost, and she wasn’t innocent enough to view them as the parents she never had, but they were retirees on a fixed income, and she had more than enough money to share, and she needed a legitimate reason to hang out on this side of the fence when she needed access to the river, and they were content to let her come and go as she pleased.

The situation worked out well for everyone for as long as it did.

She knocked on the back door, waited for an answer and, when none was forthcoming, checked the garage. The truck was gone, they were out.

She continued around to the front porch, turned the door knocker up, and returned to the trailer or, more specifically, to the Fiesta under the carport and its key beneath the passenger seat. She tried the ignition, got nothing, and so lugged the battery charger and extension cord out from trailer storage, hooked that up, and returned inside to now-conditioned air and a chance to catch her breath and finally stop moving.

Holden was out of the shower when she walked in. Hair wet, towel low around his waist, chiseled abs still damp as he dug through his bag on the dining table.

She paused at the threshold, glanced at him, sighed on the inside, and turned away.

He said, “Got the tank heater going. Water’s not hot yet, but not cold, either.”

She pulled a drawer open, grabbed a clean T-shirt and sweats.

“Thanks,” she said.

He said, “Your parents okay?”

She kept her back to him. “They’re out. I’ll check in on them in the morning. Battery on the Fiesta was dead. I’ve got it charging.”

He said, “The car yours?”

She glanced over her shoulder. He’d added a shirt, was still wearing the towel, and damn if she didn’t still want to rip it off with her teeth.

“Define yours,” she said. “I have free use of it.”

He nodded appreciatively. “I like it,” he said. “Mostly farmland, not a lot of eyes, United States soil but south of the fence. There’s an unmanned pass-through, right? Motorized gates, keypads, secret codes, so citizens who live this side can get into town?”

“Nearest gate’s right down the road thataway,” she said.

“You have the code?”

“Of course.”

“And that’s linked to Homeland Security records for . . . ?”