The driver tossed his radio aside, pushing the van to its limits. They’d left the road and were driving downward through scrub, through ocotillo and yucca. They were bouncing up and down, the whole world shuddering, and what Juan Abrego had thought were bullets punching the sides and belly of the van were instead harmless rocks, churned up by the spinning wheels.

The driver, his expensive sunglasses crooked on his head and his face red from the sangre of the two fresh bodies in the car, called back to Juan Abrego.

“Padrino, I can buy you a few minutes, nothing more than that, so you and the girl can run, run . . .”

Juan Abrego had a small leather bag with him, the same bag he’d always carried for a moment like this. His son Martino had bought the bag for him in Los Angeles, or maybe San Diego. It was Gucci, expensive, and he rarely opened it. It had a few documents, a thick wad of both americano money and pesos, three cell phones, and a silver-plated Ruger. It would be easy enough to take the Ruger and shoot Zita and then himself, save them both from whatever horrors awaited them if they were caught alive . . .

Or he could run.

Zita huddled against him, crying. There was sangre in her hair, on the hands he held her tight with. His hands, again. He looked back to his driver, this man he did not know, who was no different from any of the men who’d surrounded him for years. Young, his thick mustache crimson. Sweat and blood plastering his wavy hair to his head. He truly looked like a little boy playing grown-up. He was scared. Shaking all over, but still he kept driving.

“What is your name?”

The driver did not turn, staring instead through the dust and sunlight that rose in front of them like a wall. “I am Abrahán Sierra. My family, my wife and my own daughter, are in Parral. Remember them, please, and this thing I do now.”

“I knew a Sierra once, long ago. I knew many men.”

“Please, padrino, they live in Parral. Parral.” He spat at the shattered windshield, adding, “Here . . . I can stop for a moment here . . . but no more than that.” He waved with a shaking hand. “This is a low place, sheltered. Follow the arroyo and they may not see you. I’ll drive back toward them, try to lead them away.”

Juan Abrego pulled Zita toward him, too roughly, and told her to get ready. “I will remember them, Abrahán. Parral. Your wife and daughter. La familia Sierra.”

The driver turned to him as the van shuddered to a halt, desert dust roiling through the open window. It coated them, choked them. There was the stink of sangre and heated metal. Somewhere, not far away, the sound of more gunfire and engines revving.