The cub rose to rule the pack. Now it was time to rule the rest.
Across the border, loyalties still lay with Grande, and those small towns were the other half of the equation. A tunnel needs a beginning and an end.
It was time to send a message, I told my three best friends.
First Alamo, like the fortress. He had that nickname from back when we played ball in the street. You could never get around him when he guarded the goal.
Then Asesino, the Assassin, a skinny kid who had his first kill even younger than me. He was wire slinking along walls, my shadow.
And Pozolero. We called him the Soup Maker. He learned how to get rid of bodies from the internet. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to.
Wolves have territories they will aggressively defend. They howl. And if their howls are not heeded, their next step is to crouch, fangs bared, and clash their teeth. They don’t usually bite at that point. It’s just a loud snap to remind everyone who is dominant.
That was the sort of warning I would send.
CADE
Something was wrong. The second we pulled up at school I knew it. No one was in the parking lot.
“Are we late?” Mattey asked, glancing at his watch in confusion.
Jojo scrolled fast through her phone.
“Oh . . . damn,” she breathed.
Jane didn’t say a thing, but her body had gone rigid beside me in the truck.
“What is it?” Mattey asked.
“Bunch of guys got killed on the bridge!” Jojo read.
“What bridge? The one right behind the practice field?” I craned my neck to try and see down the ravine.
“Hey, there’s Gunner’s mom,” Mattey pointed.
Two cruisers blocked the back entrance of the lot, lights flashing. The sheriff jumped out and jogged across the field.
“Everyone in the building immediately.” Principal Jackson had taken Coach Hollis’s bullhorn and was waving the last of us inside. Two sheriff’s deputies flanked him, hurrying us through the doors.
“Come on.” I put a hand on the small of Jane’s back as teachers waved us into the auditorium.
We filled up the seats fast, everyone falling in line quickly out of nerves and curiosity. Even my teammates, the twins included, shut up and sat down.
Principal Jackson looked very serious at the podium.
“Overnight a violent crime took place close to school grounds. It was only discovered a short time ago. Police are currently on the scene, so the school is officially on lockdown in accordance with our policies, even though they have everything under control. We’ve sent reverse 9-1-1 calls to notify your parents and guardians so that they don’t worry.”
A murmur buzzed through the room as everyone grabbed their phones and started pulling up information.
“We’re told it’s an isolated incident. And it was not random. The victims were specifically targeted. But out of an abundance of caution, no one comes, no one goes until we get the all clear. In the meantime, the school day will proceed as normal.”
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Even the teachers were scared. They didn’t try to stick to their lessons, instead letting us look up stuff and talk. Until lunchtime. That’s when all the details started coming out. They told us to put away our phones. We should discuss it at home, with our families. But it was out there by then.
I didn’t have any classes with Jane, and my lunch schedule didn’t line up with hers today either. I couldn’t get the look in her eyes out of my head as we went our separate ways from the assembly. She kept glancing back at me even after I’d grabbed her arm and told her this sort of thing isn’t new. It’s Tanner. But that was before I read everything. This was worse—way worse—than anything that had happened here before.
I saw Mattey real quick in the hall. “It’s cartels.”
“I know,” he said.
“Have you seen Jane? Is she okay?” I asked.
“Hard to tell. This couldn’t have to do with her, right?” Mattey looked as worried as I felt.
“You heard Principal Jackson. He said the victims were specifically targeted,” I reassured him . . . and myself.
“True. But don’t you think we should maybe tell someone?”
“Now? No way. We’d be in so much trouble.”
“But—”
“We can’t do that to Jane. Let’s wait and see once we find out more, okay?” I said.
“Okay,” Mattey tentatively agreed.
“Hey!” Jojo came blowing around the corner. “Did you hear? Some of the guys who were killed worked for Savannah’s dad!”
“That’s awful.”
“I know, right?”
“Did she read how they died?”
“Yeah.”
We got quiet. The bell rang in the emptying hallway, shrill metal.
Four men. One was missing his hands. One had no eyes. Another’s tongue had been hacked off. The last was burned to charred-black nothing. They were left hanging from the bridge behind the school, on the road that leads to the border crossing, hanging with a sign that said, in Spanish: Defect or die.
JANE
Defect or die. The warning on the bridge was a claw around my neck.
I was trapped. Killing time. We were stranded on lockdown for hours after the school day would normally be over, waiting for the all clear. Our teacher pretended to read a book, like we couldn’t tell she was constantly checking her phone.
I stared at the leftover algebra equations on the board, but all I could see was the number four. Four people tortured to death. I closed my eyes for a moment and watched the inside of my eyelids—my own gray and black, fuzzy dots like white noise blotting out the past.
The static scramble of emotions collected. The pool. The blood in the water and on the deck. Their faces . . . No. I wouldn’t think about Raff. If I thought of him I would stop being . . . this. There’d be no way to do things like brush my teeth or tie my shoes. Lunch. Lockers. Laughing. I wouldn’t be able to sit in this classroom. I would have to run screaming out the doors.
Bury it. Bury him. He gets no grave in the ground. He’s frozen somewhere in the coldest parts of me, the Ice Age in my head.
“Remember what happened to Lola Javier?” Jojo was whispering with a group of girls in the back, all of them straining to lean over their desks and listen.
“Her boyfriend was one of them. When she broke up with him, he took her to one of their hideouts and they sliced her tongue so she could never tell their secrets.”
My head shot up.
“What about the old postmaster?” another girl, Lucia, added. “The one who stopped delivering the cartel’s packages because he thought the feds were onto him?”
The girls nodded. I didn’t ask what happened to him. I could imagine all too well the body parts that got mailed to his family.
“And whatever happened to Hector?” Lucia continued. “Remember how his mother witnessed that huge shooting at the nightclub where she worked back in Mexico, and the cartel came and found her here? They kidnapped her husband, and the whole rest of the family had to go into witness protection.”
“Oh, and our neighbor’s cousin,” Jojo added. “She was a doctor who treated a little boy who got hit by a car. He couldn’t be saved. It was too late. But he was a cartel leader’s kid, so they ran over the doctor.”
“I still think the post office fire was the worst,” said Lucia.
Jojo argued. “That was years ago! I think the doctor is worse.”
“That’s just because you knew her.”
“That much has happened here? In Tanner?” I asked, heart pounding. “Because of cartels?”
“My dad calls them the devil puppet masters,” Jojo said. “But they come and go, you know? Like every couple of years some bad stuff will happen. Then th
e police crack down and it goes away.”
“Which cartels?” I tried to sound casual but my voice was high, and I’m sure my eyes were flashing panic.
Jojo gave me a funny look. “Haven’t you been checking your phone? Some new cartel trying to make a statement.”
She hadn’t noticed I didn’t own a phone. “They didn’t name them?”
“I mean, no. Aren’t they all, like, the same?”
Jojo’s voice started sounding far away and muffled to me, as if she were talking into her hand. I held on to each side of my desk like it was a boat about to capsize.
The intercom cracked. Thank God. I couldn’t listen to any more. We were finally cleared to leave school, the murder scene deemed secure. We’d been on lockdown for almost ten hours. It was already five thirty. I walked out of the classroom in a daze.
“There you are! I’ve been worried about you. Come here,” Cade’s voice cut through.
I almost broke into a run as I hurried toward him. He held out his arms . . . and a blond head collapsed against his chest. I stopped in my tracks. He hadn’t been talking to me.
Savannah’s shoulders shook as she cried into his shirt. I immediately slowed down to act natural as I approached, like I never thought his arms were open for me. I melted in with the rest of the group of friends, trying to disappear. An arm slipped over my shoulders. Gunner.
“Hey, don’t be freaked out,” he said. “My mom says we shouldn’t worry. None of us have anything to do with people like that.”
I blinked at him. No idea. I mean, how could he? The girl he thought he knew, Jane from San Diego, gave his hand a little pat to say, Thank you for the effort. Gunner responded with a sweet half smile of reassurance.
“Did you know them?” Cade was asking Savannah.
“I mean, I knew two of them by sight. Not well.” She sniffed. “But still . . . they worked for my dad.”
“Jane!” Savannah reached out as soon as she spotted me, pulling me in so I was right there next to her, pressed against Cade. I quickly untangled myself from the awkward group hug.
“You okay?” Cade asked.
“I’m fine.”
Cade frowned at me. “Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Do you all want to come to our house?” Mattey asked. “For dinner? I don’t know. I feel like none of us should be alone tonight.”
“Oh, Mattey, that’s so sweet.” Savannah wiped her eyes. “I would love to, but I’m supposed to go straight home.”
“Call your parents and ask?”
“Yeah, actually, I think . . . I think I will.” Savannah pulled out her phone and dialed. “Voicemail. Let me try my mom . . . annnd . . . voicemail.”
She bit her lower lip, thinking. “You know what . . . forget it. I’m coming. If they’re worried about where I am, they should pick up their phones, am I right?”
She looked proud of her tiny rebellion.
“Gunner? You coming?” Jojo asked.
“That’d be real nice, actually. My mom will be busy all night, and my dad’s on the road.”
As soon as Gunner and Savannah left the lot, Jojo spun around to us, her eyes wide and challenging. My whole body constricted at what she said next.
“Let’s go to the bridge.”
CADE
If Jane had said no, I never would have driven by. But she didn’t say a thing. She hadn’t even really looked me in the eye since the school hallway. And I was curious.
“I don’t know,” Mattey hemmed and hawed. “Why would we want to see something like that?”
“Don’t be that guy!” Jojo interrupted. “Everyone is going!”
Almost every car that left the student parking lot banged a right, like us, slow-rolling past the bridge, as close as we could get to the police tape.
The bodies were long gone. News trucks lined up along the street, reporters picking their way down the muddy embankment in fancy suits to do their live shots.
“Wow, even the national news is here.” Mattey pointed.
“Of course national news is here,” Jojo exclaimed. “So are the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security. I mean, please, it’s, like, a mass murder. They gouged out the one guy’s eyes and—”
“Please, don’t.”
Jane’s voice was the smallest I’d heard since those first few days I found her. I glanced over at her. She was pale, and her mouth was a thin line.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“I need to get out of here.”
I sped up and got us out of there.
“Sorry.” Jojo patted Jane’s shoulder. “I forget you’re not used to this stuff. I mean, first that guy who tried to rob Cade’s house, now this. Tanner’s going crazy.”
Jane stared straight ahead, giving Jojo only the tiniest nod that she’d heard her.
“You sure it’s okay we all come over?” I double-checked as we neared the Moraleses’ house.
“Are you kidding? You know my mom cooks enough to feed the whole school,” Mattey answered.
As we piled out, Jane’s fingers dug into my arm. She eyed Jojo and Mattey, waiting until they were out of earshot.
“I have to leave,” she whispered.
“You don’t want to go to dinner?”
“No. I need to leave leave. Like, leave Tanner.”
I froze.
“The bridge. It has to do with you?”
“It might.”
I swore under my breath. “Are you serious? Are you sure?”
My throat had a weird tightness to it when I thought about Jane leaving. Jane tried to read my face. I tried to read hers. We stared at each other for a second too long.
“What the heck are you two talking about back there?” Jojo called back to us from the porch. “Come on! Savannah and Gunner are already inside.”
“I guess let’s go in for now,” I said. “And then we’ll figure it out?”
I nudged Jane forward, and we stepped in to find Savannah already smooshed into one of Mrs. Morales’s bear hugs.
“Savannah! I haven’t seen you here since you moved to the big house!”
“I know,” Savannah said, squished against her. “I miss you! And your cooking. What can I do to help?”
“Here, honey, you set the table. Days like today, you hug your children extra, you know?”
Mrs. Morales grabbed each of our faces and planted big, wet smacks on our foreheads before a loud sizzle on the stove forced her back into the kitchen. She spilled some dry rice on the cluttered counter as she went to dump a scoop into a boiling pot of water. She shook a finger at the rice like it was at fault, not her, making a joke of it. But I could tell the events of the day had her stressed.
“Everyone, come and help yourselves. It’s all ready.”
She put Jojo and Gunner to work plopping enchiladas onto a row of colorful plates. Gunner managed to spatter sauce on his shirt almost immediately.
“Here, sweetie.” Mrs. Morales took her apron off and draped it over Gunner. “Okay. Better.”
“Mrs. Morales, come on,” he protested. Everyone cracked up at him in the ruffled apron except Jane and me. She barely seemed to notice what was going on around her, and I couldn’t ease the sick worry sitting in my core.
“How much?” Jojo asked.
“The usual,” I said. Jojo heaped a giant serving onto my plate.
“Jane, what about you?” she asked. “Jane . . . Jane?”
When she didn’t answer, Gunner reached out and touched Jane’s arm. “You okay?”
Jane nodded. “Yeah . . . sorry, just a little distracted.”
“It’s scary, what happened,” Gunner said. “But remember, they’re not after people like us.”
“Right,” Jane murmured.
“If you want, we could maybe go to a movie this weekend.
Get your mind off everything?” Gunner said.
Smooth, Gunner, I thought, trying not to roll my eyes.
“We have a lot of work to do on the farm,” I interjected and sat down next to Jane before Gunner could. He gave me a funny look and slid in next to Mattey, who was also giving me a double take.
“Why don’t we all go see a movie?” Savannah sat down across from me with a big smile. “It’s so nice to be together, isn’t it?”
No matter what was going on, it had always been easy to find comfort in the chaos of the Morales house, the food, the noise. I searched for it now.
The little girls, Nina and Viviana, burst into the kitchen and claimed their spots at the table. They immediately started arguing and teasing each other as they passed the bowls of food around.
“Ow, it’s hot—take it, take it, take it.”
“Put it down, boba, what’s wrong with you?”
“Hiiii, Cade. How’s fooootball?” Viviana flirted.
“It’s good. How’s school?”
“Well, today school was scary because of the people who died,” Nina announced matter-of-factly.
“Let’s not talk about this at the table,” Mrs. Morales said.
“Where else are we going to talk about it?” Dr. Morales walked in and flipped on the television before even taking off his shoes or washing his hands. “Savannah! How nice to see you. Hello, Gunner. How’s your mom?”
“She’ll be living at the cop shop for a while with all this going on,” Gunner said.
“No doubt. Well, you’re always welcome here. And you must be Cade’s cousin,” Mr. Morales said, extending his hand to Jane.
“Yes, sir. I’m Jane. Thank you for having us over,” Jane responded softly.
“Anytime. Where’s Sophia?”
Mrs. Morales looked down. “Late.”
“Is she with . . . him?”
“She’s with Diego, yes.”
“I’ll call her. I want my family home.” Dr. Morales pulled out his chair noisily. “It’s dinnertime. We eat together.”
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