The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(34)

“It has to just be an airliner. Even Roth couldn’t afford to send out a surveillance aircraft to search for us.” Ava nods, but the tension in her jaw tells me she’s not convinced.

Whatever is up there passes overhead, and I duck and cover beneath the hood of my vest, despite fully knowing that if it is indeed a surveillance drone, then the infrared cameras would have already detected our presence. But they won’t know it’s us, I persuade myself.

The oppressive rumble of the aircraft wanes as it speeds over our position, heading south—away from us and somewhere toward the heart of Texas.

One threat gone, I turn my attention to Lucía. I find her curled underneath a rock beside our shelter, scanning the starless sky.

“?Dónde estabas?” Ava asks. Where were you?

Ava rises from beneath the canopy and tries to keep her voice calm, but her words sting with suspicion.

Lucía shifts her eyes to Ava and crawls out from the refuge of the cliff. She struggles to her feet against the strong Panhandle winds, the loose strands from her ponytail floating above her head as if from electric charges in the atmosphere. I notice her fingers are caked in dirt as she reaches for something in her pocket. Simultaneously, Ava and I reach for our knives. She fastens her eyes on Ava, then me, but we keep our weapons drawn. Slowly, she lifts her hand from inside her jacket, revealing a fistful of what looks like the small green pads of a cactus.

“Nopales,” she says. She holds out her open palm, offering us the pile. “Para darnos fuerza.” To give us strength.

There’s such frank sincerity in her countenance, it shames me into lowering my blade.

“También podemos usarlos como medicina,” I say, accepting the nopales with a respectful nod. We can also use them for medicine.

“Agarren más. Tengo muchos.” Take more, I have many.

Ava lifts her hand, palm red and blistered from the steady grip of traveling beneath her umbrella, and accepts several nopales from Lucía’s generous stockpile.

“Gracias,” Ava says and turns back to the fort to resume her watch.

Lucía nods, and with one last look at the pitch-black sky, she sinks down into the dirt. Molding her body into a shallow indentation along the cliff, she hugs her knees for warmth and closes her eyes.

I squeeze in next to Ava at her lookout and tuck my head into her shoulder. I drape my vest over our legs to shield us from the chilly air. As Ava scrapes away the spikes from the cactus pads with her knife, I replay the terrorizing sound of the aircraft in my mind. I dissect every layer of vibration, scrutinize every note, every tremor. Finally I conclude the engine sounded more like the vacuum noise of a passenger plane than the characteristic hum of a drone.

“Dron,” Lucía repeats as if she were listening in on my thoughts. “Era un dron.” It was a drone.

“Roth,” I exhale in a long, flat sigh. I clutch my sister’s hand, our cold fingers intertwining, uniting. Courage, Ava tells me with the pressure of her grip.

Lucía’s hair blocks her profile, but the wind picks up and blows her dark veil away from her face, revealing her worried, red-rimmed eyes. No need to ask how she knows this with certainty. Drones swarm the entire US-Mexico border, supplying 24/7 surveillance. She must have memorized their sound before she crossed, knowing they meant capture. Knowing they meant death.

She watches Ava and me closely, her eyes flicking back and forth between us before landing on me. Even with the dark as my protector, I shrink from her inspection. I lift my head from my sister’s shoulder and use the end of my vest to deflect her gaze.

“Está bien,” she says quietly. It’s okay.

There’s something in her tone that draws my eyes to hers.

“Ellos dicen que no soy bienvenida aquí tampoco.” They say I don’t belong here either.

I do not hide, recoil, or even blink. We stare at one another with an intense understanding before she finally turns away to nestle against the rigid rock face. Ava’s muscles harden, and she begins to rise.

“It’s okay,” I say, both to her and myself. “She doesn’t seem to know who we are. Just what we are.”

The tightness in her muscles softens slightly, but she releases her grip on my hand and moves her fingers to her knife.

“Three more hours of rest, then we move.”

I nod and close my eyes, the deafening silence from earlier replaced by the sound of my beating heart. In spite of the incredible danger, there is liberation, and profound relief, in having another person know I’m alive. In having this knowledge accepted with no outrage or indignation. No hostility or condemnation.

As I drift into oblivion, my last conscious thoughts are of Roth. The eye in the sky might have been him, but there are thousands of transients wandering around the open spaces still left in this country. Millions of acres left for us to drop off the map. We just have to keep him guessing.

Same game, different scenery.

Except now I exist.





AVA

The night feels close and heavy around us. It’s almost as if we’re wrapped inside a dark blanket with holes poked into it to let in the stars, except without the benefits of a blanket’s warmth and protection. But I don’t mind being cold and exposed—it keeps me alert and moving.

We walk in line once more—Lucía at the end, Mira in the middle, and me at the front leading our quiet progress north. Twenty-seven miles until we reach Kipling. Our bodies rested and sufficiently nourished, we should make it to the second safe house in ten hours with minimal breaks. We just have to keep pushing.