Chapters (110)
- Cover
- ALSO BY J. TODD SCOTT
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- PROLOGUE
- I
- II
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- PART TWO
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- PART FOUR
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- SEVENTY-SEVEN
- SEVENTY-EIGHT
- SEVENTY-NINE
- EIGHTY
- EIGHTY-ONE
- EIGHTY-TWO
- EIGHTY-THREE
- EIGHTY-FOUR
- EPILOGUE
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Excerpt from LOST RIVER
- LITTLE PARIS
- DILLON
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
As Chris drove them away from the Far Six, talking again about his ideas for the bookstore, Mel rolled down the window and just let him ramble.
He needed to do this, to talk about something other than what had happened. He needed to move on.
Chris had been worried all along if things would be different for them after Fox Uno, and she’d worried the same thing.
She wasn’t sure she had an answer before, or now.
In the days after, she hadn’t told him about the young boy and girl she and Javy had found out at his ranch. There hadn’t been a right time, or a right way.
Listening to Chris now, that time seemed to have passed altogether.
There were no good ways to lie.
—
THEY’D SHOWED UP OUTSIDE JAVY’S HOUSE in a stolen Charger, exhausted and gravely injured.
Javy had greeted them with a raised shotgun, only to find the girl had suffered a recent, horrible cut to her face, and the boy a more recent, and serious, gunshot wound. Javy spoke to the girl in Spanish and learned they’d crossed over the river, but they were never at the Far Six.
They knew nothing about Fox Uno or Chris or Danny or America.
They’d seen smoke over that way, a circling helicopter low in the sky, but nothing more.
Their injuries had come from other men.
—
BUT MEL UNDERSTOOD that their arrival, and their wounds, had everything to do with Fox Uno—and with all the events that were happening at the Far Six and the Big Bend in the days leading up to it. She couldn’t draw a straight line between those two things, but it was there all the same. She could feel it, as sharp as that splinter of Chris’s decision to risk everything to help America.
Fox Uno was a hole, sucking everything down. He’d nearly swallowed Chris and his friends.
Her family . . . the only thing that mattered to her.
By the time the boy and the girl arrived, Mel knew that Chris was okay—she’d heard from him, and then Joe Garrison. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave Javy to deal with those two injured kids alone. While he settled them in one of his bunkhouses, she called Vianey Ruiz, who in turn reached out to a young Hispanic EMT she knew from Presidio. His name was Lucas, and when he got to Javy’s place and took one look at the boy’s gunshot wound, he said he needed a hospital. When it was clear he wouldn’t go, Mel promised to pay Lucas whatever was needed to treat him at the bunkhouse, and Javy promised to make sure it was done.
Javy also got Zita to promise she would not tell anyone about what she’d seen, and she said she was good at keeping secrets, better than anyone she knew.