ANN MAJOR lives in Texas with her husband of many years and is the mother of three grown children. She has a master’s degree from Texas A&M at Kingsville, Texas, and is a former English teacher. She is a founding board member of the Romance Writers of America and a frequent speaker at writers’ groups.

      Ann loves to write; she considers her ability to do so a gift. Her hobbies include hiking in the mountains, sailing, ocean kayaking, traveling and playing the piano. But most of all she enjoys her family. Visit her Web site at www.annmajor.com.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Prologue

      South Texas

       The borderlands

      Black feathers spun lazily above in a cloudless, azure sky.

      Teo’s head hurt as he lay on the hard earth watching the big black birds. His stomach throbbed queasily.

      He didn’t know where he was, only that he was somewhere north of the border, somewhere in Tejas. Somewhere on a huge ranch the coyote had called El Dorado.

      Teofilo Perez was ten years old and he was dying.

      “Mamacíta!”

      Teofilo’s hands clawed sand. Then he remembered.

      She’d sent him off to scavenge another part of el dompe with Chaco and his gang. Then she and Papacíto had run away.

      When Teo had stayed up all night waiting for them, Chaco had laughed.

      “They aren’t coming back. It happens all the time. Todo el tiempo.” Chaco had stared indifferently toward the north. “There are many orphans in el dompe. Left behind when their families disappear over the wire. My father…too.”

      Now Chaco was gone as well.

      Sweat stung Teo’s eyes like hot tears. Where was he?

      Burrs and thorns bit into his back. Here there were snakes and spiders in the high grasses; wild animals, too. If Teo didn’t get up and go on, he’d die.

      Then it would all be for nothing.

      He was burning up, from the inside out; starving, too. He felt as thirsty for water as a bone-dry sponge. Then the coyotes started howling again, and he tasted the coppery flavor of his own panic.

      He had to get up and catch Chaco. He had to keep walking north through the endless sandy pastures choked with mesquite and huisache that led to el norte.

      To Houston. To Tiá Irma.

      Chaco had warned him to stay out of the open, so La Migra couldn’t spot him from their helicopters.

      Teo felt too weak to stand, so he lay on the hard, packed ground, his swollen, sunburned lids blinking, his eyes blurring every time he opened them. Through the screen of his dense lashes a too-bright sun spun above the stunted oak trees, shooting diamond-patterned pricks through the branches. The orange orb grew bigger and bigger until it exploded in a blinding brilliance that flooded the white-heat of that harsh, unforgiving sky.

      His last meal had been breakfast two days ago—two boiled eggs and three tortillas that had been gritty and stale. His hands fisted again; he tried to swallow, but his tongue was too swollen and his throat too raw and gritty.

      Fat black flies buzzed. Some mysterious creature grunted and snorted in the thicket. Teo shivered as he imagined the claws of a puma or the teeth of a coyote.

      “Ayudame, Dios.”

      He wanted to go home, not to Cartolandia, which was pocho for Cardboard Land, the barrio where they’d lived near el dompe in Nuevo Laredo. No, he wanted to go back home to his mountainous village, Tepóztlan. But there were no jobs there for Papacíto, no future for any of them. Nothing.

      Nada, nada, mi hijo.

      Papacíto had said those same words a week ago after government tractors and bulldozers had crushed their shack and bedraggled garden along with thousands of others and left them homeless again.

      The next day, Papacíto had run away. Probably to look for work in el norte.

      Teo couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in school or even his last bath. He felt like a slab of meat drying in the sun, a worn-out corpse.

      Papacíto had promised him a house in el norte with a flush toilet, toys, a garden where he could play.

      Swish. Black feathers were falling out of the sky, crash-landing clumsily, settling themselves in the branches of the thorny thicket.

      Vultures.

      Teo stared stupidly at the big black bird folding his wings. Another bird hopped out of a tree and scuttled closer.

      Teo had to get up, but when he struggled to his knees, he reeled dizzily. Once he had crawled on bleeding knees to pray to the Virgin in Mexico City. That memory was followed by a sweeter one. He was home in the cool shade of his porch, lying on his hammock, and his mother and grandmother were singing him a lullaby. He began whispering his Hail Marys.

      When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, and the buzzards were circling lazily against the pale blue. Through swirls of dust, a lone rider on a big black horse moved toward him. The tall man, whose low-crowned sombrero was the color of dust, wore a strange costume of weathered rawhide. He was as filthy as Teo, yet he sat on his horse with a world-weary cockiness that said he was somebody, more than border trash from el dompe.

      Although the man’s coppery face was hard and lean, his teeth were as white as the chicles Teo had sold to the fat gringo turistas. He had a golden mustache.

      Terrified, Teo grabbed at his plastic bag of tortillas that Chaco had tied to his belt. In his other hand he gripped the bottle that held the remains of Chaco’s red soft drink. Swaying weakly, drowning in the blinding sunlight, Teo struggled to his feet.

      The man called down to him gently in his native tongue, more gently than Papacíto ever spoke. “Cuidado, manito.”

      Was he a phantom? A trick, like the trick the coyote had played when he’d dumped Chaco and the other toughs from el dompe here, in the middle of nowhere, swearing that a truck would be waiting for them a little farther where the pasture hit the road past the immigration checkpoint.

      The stranger’s manner and the fact that he spoke a lilting, peculiarly accented Spanish was more terrifying than anything.

      Then he saw her.

      The trees began to whirl, and Teo was on the ground again, his dirty white shirt covered in blood. Only it wasn’t blood. It was the sugary soft drink. He’d spilled the last of Chaco’s precious drink.

      Chaco would beat him for sure. Sobbing, he begged God to tell Chaco he was sorry, to tell his mother he was sorry he hadn’t minded when she’d told him to sweep the street or bring her a bucket of water.

      When the tall dusty rider got off his horse,