Javier’s land had one thing—and one thing only—going for it. It was endless. But it was dry and dusty. Colorless. Even the sky was a pale blue, as if every pigment of color had been leeched from the world.

They hadn’t even said goodbye.

Cora blinked hard, clearing her eyes of sudden tears, and tried finding something to focus on that wasn’t a bush or a rock. In the far distance, still hidden behind a heat haze, was what could have been a ridge of low hills. Or just a pile of stones. There were probably vultures out here. They’d circle whenever something died out here—which probably happened often—and then tear whatever was left—

“Elle?”

She snapped her eyes to Javier. He leaned forward on his gelding, peering intently at her from under the shade of his elaborately tooled cowboy hat.

“I’m sorry,” she began, but he gave a dismissive wave and straightened in his saddle. He had the easy-going sway of a trained rider, but she didn’t like how wickedly sharp his spurs were. Or how he’d dig them into his gelding whenever the animal didn’t obey him fast enough.

“You seem distracted,” Javier said. “Which is understandable. You must have a lot on your mind.”

“No, just…” she tightened her grip on the reigns and tried to let her body rock with her horse’s slow walk, but for some reason she couldn’t find her usual rhythm in the saddle. “I’m worried about Papá.”

“Yes,” Javier mused quietly. “I am too, my dear. I am too.”

The land began to incline slightly, and Cora gripped her gelding with her knees to keep her position in the saddle, leaning forward slightly. The horse sped up into a faster walk.

It had been antsy from the moment she’d seen it in the stables; prancing back and forth, hardly letting the groom saddle it. She’d worried if it would be a fierce ride, but it turned out the horse had just been anxious to get out.

Javier’s gelding had reared. And, even now, there was a less than domesticated air about the horse as it constantly tossed its head and tried to eye Javier on his back.

“Do not worry,” Javier said. When she looked up, he was still staring ahead, but his smile grew as if he could feel her eyes on him. “I prefer they have a little of the wild left in them. What’s the fun of riding a truly broken horse?”

Her heart thumped in her chest at the thought that she might be riding an unbroken horse. But her steed seemed calm compared with Javier’s. From the way his arm muscles bunched as he kept the horse in check, it had to have been exhausting riding him this far already—and they hadn’t even made it to whatever mysterious destination Javier had in mind.

“I’m glad we have this time alone,” Javier said.

She could read nothing from his tone, but it didn’t stop her from twisting her reigns in her hands as a wave of uneasiness swept over her. Suddenly, her jeans felt too tight, and the button up shirt she’d changed into for the ride too hot in the brightness of the day. Javier had urged a dark cowboy hat onto her head to ‘keep the sun off her beautiful skin’, but the headband itched where it made her sweat.

“What is it?” she asked, trying for an even voice.

“You must understand that there is a possibility neither of us will see your father again.”

Her heart turned to stone, and then sank into the bracken pool of her churning stomach. She licked her lips, and took a water bottle from her saddlebag so she could again hide sudden tears. One escaped her tightly squeezed eyes, but she hurriedly dabbed it with the collar of her shirt before she straightened and took a long drink from the bottle.

“I know this isn’t something either of us wants to think about, but—”

“Got it,” Cora said, perhaps a bit too harshly, for Javier gave her a hurt look and said, “Elle, I loved your father like a—”

“So what happens if he’s dead?” she cut in, squinting to look at that distant break in the horizon. “Do I inherit a few million or something?” She’d meant it to sound glib, but instead she just sounded spoiled.

Javier laughed. It was a deep, belly laugh that must have traveled half a mile. She forced herself to give him no more than a scant look. He had a smile on his face, and gave his head a rueful shake as he draped his reign-hand over his pommel. His gelding seemed to have resigned itself—for now at least—and was no longer fighting for control.

“Calling it a few million hardly does it justice.”

“Drug money,” she said. Her voice was dead flat now. She was trying to sound how Finn spoke most of the time, and perhaps she’d been around that man long enough to pull it off.

Javier didn’t seem comfortable with the turn of events. He let out another laugh, this one less mirthful than the one before. “Your father was a businessman who—”

“Worked for a cartel,” she cut in.

When she glanced across at Javier, she could see how little he appreciated being interrupted. His lips had gone white where he pressed them into a line, and the hand holding the reigns gripped the pommel now too. He drew his horse to a halt, swung it wide, and came to stand close beside her, facing back the way they’d come. Their knees almost brushed, and when he leaned toward her, she instinctively leaned away, nearly unbalancing before she gripped her gelding with her knees. Her horse started forward a little, but Javier simply backed his up so they could remain on eye level.

“Your father was a genius,” Javier hissed. “His convoluted mind turned the mess of cleaning our money into something as easy as rinsing a dirty plate.” His eyes flicked between hers, empty voids how his hat shaded them. “You will not disrespect him in my company, in my house, in your life.” The last was a furious whisper. Something dangerous glinted deep in Javier’s eyes, and it was all she could do not to spur her horse into a gallop to flee him.

Then he smiled, and it was as if a cloud that had passed over the sun evaporated. “You would be a very, very rich girl, Elle. But that is only the start of it.”

“Of what?” Her voice sounded horrible, so strangled and rough, but she forced the words out anyway.

“Should your father not return to us—” and here Javier paused, as if giving her ample opportunity to realize there was a double meaning in his words “—you will take his place.”

Ahead, a bird called out. Cora’s horse whinnied and shifted its hooves, taking her a step to the side. It felt like an elastic band snapping when she broke eye contact with Javier to look up.

The sky was black with crows.

A jangle broke the stifling silence that had descended between her and Javier. Cora started and looked back at him. He stared at her as he dug blindly in his saddle bag and pulled out a satellite phone.

“Yes?” he snapped.

Listened.

His nostrils flared, and he moved his horse away from hers, starting back for the villa. “When? Yes, let them back in. What? What message?” Javier went quiet then. His hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles went white. “Impossible,” Javier muttered. “I don’t care what he said, it’s impossible.”

Cora turned her gelding around, giving it a soothing stroke on its neck when it whinnied again. Was it picking up the tension in the air, or was it the murder of crows that had begun cawing above their heads that was freaking it out?

She couldn’t blame it. Her skin crawled like worms were burrowing around under it.

“Fuck!” Javier stabbed at a button on the phone and shoved it back in his saddle bag. His eyes flashed onto her, dark and suddenly desperate. “Did your father give you the archives?”

“Who was that?”

Javier waved away her questions with an angry swipe of her hand. “The archives! Do you have them?” Javier’s scanned her face, watched her mouth for a second, and then thumped a fist on his pommel. “Where are they?”

“I…I don’t…” She barely managed to keep her hand from lifting to the Santa Muerte pendant around her neck. She’d put it back on this morning, and ignore Ana’s pointed grimace in its direction when she and Silvia had seen them off at the stables.

Was that what her father had given her? Some archive of information? If so, why was Javier so upset that she had it on her?

“Tell me!” Javier bellowed.

“Tío…”

He gave her a derisive sneer. But his eyes were still frantic. “He will destroy me, now that he knows of this place. I need those files!”

That was what he was worried about? She forced a swallow, pitiful as it was. The urge to tell Javier, to show him the secret way her pendant opened, was intense. But another urge slowly crept over her. One that told her to wait. To see what would happen. To try and judge where Javier’s loyalties truly lay.

But Javier lost his patience. His spur caught the light an instant before he thrust it into his horse’s soft belly. “Keep up!” he yelled.

And then he was off, his horse tearing over the land in a streak of white. Cora stared after Javier for a moment before she could untangle her thoughts long enough to tap her gelding into a trot. Then a canter, gritting her teeth as her breasts bounced hard, and finally a gallop.

The horse stretched out under her. It was all she could do to stay in the saddle, her knees gripping the horse as she gave slack on the reigns and prayed to Santa Muerte that this wouldn’t be her last day on earth.

Please, help me, Santa Muerte. I’ll do anything. I don’t care if you send me an angel or a demon—I just want to see him one more time.

And she had no idea who she was referring to in that moment.

Her gelding caught up with Javier’s a few minutes later. The horses seemed to be competing with each other, stretching out their noses like they were both hankering for a photo finish at the tracks.

Javier didn’t seem to notice. His cowboy hat had been swept from his head and bobbed in the wind behind him, its leather strap just above his Adam’s apple. His face was set in a grim snarl.

She tried keeping her hat on her head with one hand, but then let it go. She hadn’t tightened the strap, so it whipped away and disappeared behind her own dust cloud. Her pendant bounced on her breastbone, and she hurriedly tore it off from around her neck and shoved in the pocket of her jeans before it could bounce loose and became just another dusty artifact.

Her gelding seemed to know the land better than her; sidestepping chunks of rocks and the occasional mesquite while barely breaking its speed.

“Ha!” Javier yelled, and his horse whickered when he shoved that spur into its belly again.

His gelding inched forward, and soon Cora had to force her gelding to the side to avoid the dust Javier kicked in her face.

Something spattered onto her hand. She glanced down, and caught sight of a mound of foam before the wind tore it off her skin.

Her horse blew under her, lungs bursting every time it hauled breath through foam-speckled lips.

“Tío!” Cora yelled, and then, “Javier!”

But either he ignored her, or he couldn’t hear. He was almost out of sight behind his own dust cloud now.

She could feel the rhythm of her horse changing. Its once smooth gallop became sluggish. Then erratic.

Cora hurriedly drew back on the reigns, squeezing the gelding with shivering thighs.

It ignored her.

As a wild horse would do.

“Whoa!” she screamed. “Whoa! Whoa!”

But it broke into a gallop again, as if all her words had done was spur it on.

“Mierde!” Fear had her in its grip now. The landscape was a stream of beige, and tears blurred her vision. She was numb from her ribs down, and her hands were sweating against the reigns. “Whoa!” she yelled, and again tried to use every cue she could think of to get the gelding to slow.

Perhaps he hadn’t been taught any. What he had learned, however, was how to get his bit between his teeth.

She’d lost all control of the beast between her legs.

She yanked on the reigns, knowing instantly how suicidal it was. The horse, thank god, didn’t rear. Instead, it tossed its head hard enough to rip the reigns from her hand. She screamed, floundered, and almost tumbled backward over the horse. If one flailing hand hadn’t found the pommel and gripped it, she would have been found on the desert floor, bent like a broken toy.

Her gelding—had Javier even named the beast?—darted to the side to avoid a large rock. And its hooves lost traction on a patch of stones.

It didn’t happen in slow motion. It happened too fast, almost instantly. Something impossibly strong and invisible ripped Cora from the saddle. Pain speared through her leg, her hips, her arm. Her head struck something, and scraped over dirt. There was no sound. Just the taste of blood and dust—a disgusting, organic mud—on her tongue. Her jaw stung, as did her cheek.

She didn’t know she could move until a cough wracked her hard enough to send her sprawling onto her back. Some of that bloody mud oozed down her throat and she retched. Agony tore through her body as her muscles contracted to expel the mud in her throat.

And above, that murder of crows circled and circled. Demons who’d found a crack in hell’s abyss and torn and fought their way onto earth.

A shadow eclipsed the merciless sun.

“Elle,” Javier panted. “Can you move your legs?”

For a petrifying second, she couldn’t. And then her left foot twitched and scraped through the dirt.

Hot, furious pain arrived a second later. She cried out, rolling onto her side and bringing her fingertips to hover over the exposed skin where her jeans had been torn open. Blood. Flesh. A sliver of pink-specked knee bone. And sand embedded through everything.

Javier scooped her up, and hoisted her onto the back of his blowing horse. It whickered, and he slapped its rump with a ring-bedazzled hand hard enough that it pawed at the ground with a hoof. But it didn’t bolt. Didn’t fight.

Perhaps because it was too horrified by the twisted, ruined body of its fallen comrade.

Cora squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away the image of the horse she’d been riding. It lay on its side, two legs showing bone, and its once white hide spotted with blood and foam and dust.

It lifted a tired head when Javier came close, and then dropped it again, hard enough that dust puffed up and settled over its beautiful face.

Javier took a pistol from his holster, aimed, and shot the horse in the head.

The pistol crack seemed to go on forever. Ghostly echoes found their way back, but by then Javier was hoisting himself up behind her on the saddle. He laced an arm around her waist, murmuring something soothing when she yelped in pain, and spurred his horse forward.

When they arrived back at his compound, she couldn’t feel her left leg anymore. Which was wonderful, because the pain was gone. But as a flurry of grooms and stable hands rushed over to them to help her off the horse and take Javier’s gelding to get cooled down, she was worried that she couldn’t feel that pain anymore because she’d been paralyzed. Or badly concussed.

Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she lost consciousness…but not before catching a glimpse of the sky.

And that same circle of black birds.

Patiently circling as they waited for something—someone—to die.