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“I thought that I told you-”

“S?!” El Cheque interrupted, his temper about to flare. He then spoke carefully: “And I did do as you said. That is why we are here. Now it is ready for the trip.”

Delgado looked out the window and grinned to himself in the dark.

“What’re we going south for?” El Cheque said.

“The usual. And we need a new girl or two.”

El Cheque nodded.

“Any news on the kid?” Delgado said.

El Cheque shook his head. “Gomez is in College Station trying to follow his trail. What if it is Los Zetas?”

The mention of the Zetas caused Delgado to think of them with guns.

And that made him remember that he was unarmed.

Delgado glanced quickly around the dark SUV and said, “We got guns in here?”

El Cheque opened the top of the console that was between their bucket seats. He punched the overhead map light. Delgado looked inside. There were three handguns, butts up, one a TEC-9.

El Cheque said, “And there’s a twelve-gauge pump in the back.”

Delgado saw that one of the other pistols was a black Beretta Model 92, the same model Jes?s Jim?nez used to shoot Skipper Olde.

He pulled the semiautomatic nine-millimeter out and closed the top of the console. In the beam of the map light, he removed the magazine, then worked the slide. No round in the chamber. He pushed on the top round in the magazine. No movement downward, which meant the magazine was full. Good. He reinserted the magazine in the pistol’s grip, racked the slide, decocked the hammer, then slipped the pistol into his waistband beneath the tail of his T-shirt.

As Aguilar drove down Maple Avenue, Delgado took in the sights of the familiar neighborhood. Most of the signage and billboards were in Spanish, and it reminded him of that plaque at the airport.

“Mexican province of Tejas.”

With places like Little Mexico here, it may as well still be.

Or will be again…

They passed Maria Luna Park and approached Arroyo Avenue.

Up ahead on the southeast corner of Arroyo was a brightly lit convenience store. Taped to the inside of the plate-glass window beside the door was a handwritten sign reading:

NO BAO/NO TOILET! DON’T EVEN THINK OF ASKING!

At the covered island of fuel pumps was a somewhat battered white Dodge van. The chipped and faded black lettering on its side read FIRST UNITED CHURCH OF THE R

EDEEMER, BURKBURNETT, TEXAS. It was a Ram 3500 with seating for fifteen, and each row had a window, all painted over in white except for those on the doors of the driver and front passenger. The driver’s door was open.

A short, very grimy-looking Latino was walking away from the van. He’d left the pump handle in the van’s gas tank.

“Turn around,” Delgado said forcefully, looking over his shoulder as the man walked to the side of the convenience store. “Now!”

“What?” Aguilar said. But he was already spinning the steering wheel so fast that the tires screeched.

He made the U-turn on Maple and accelerated.

“Pull in to that store,” Delgado said, pointing. “To that side. Not in front.”

Aguilar looked where he pointed, hit his left signal, then found a gap in the line of headlights. He turned into the convenience store parking lot.