The Stronghold. Lisa Carter

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      “Exactly.”

      “What girl?”

      He shifted. “There’s been a flood of illegals this year. From as far away as Guatemala. Mostly children. Border Patrol picked up a bunch of them last month. Took them into temporary custody at the Nogales Detention Center.”

      “But this girl?”

      “Got a file.” He jutted his chin toward the backseat. “To get you up to speed.” Engaging the ignition, Alex did a three-point turn and headed back to Pilar’s house.

      She reached over the seat and retrieved the file. She extracted the photo of a dark-skinned girl in her mid-teens. “What’s her name?”

      “Don’t know. Seemed to understand Spanish and English. Refused to speak either.” His mouth tightened. “And you note how she’s dressed?”

      Pilar studied the overblouse and traditional three-tiered skirt. The dirty, matted hair was chopped off shoulder-length. Resembling photos she’d seen of nineteenth-century Apache women. Except this photo was in color.

      “You think the girl’s Apache? News flash, Torres. I promise you every girl in San Carlos speaks better English than Apache. And nobody wears this getup anymore unless they’re one of the Old Ones or for a ceremonial purpose.”

      She lay the photograph between them. “How’d the FBI get involved in a border issue? This have something to do with your undercover work in Mexico?” She reddened at what she’d let slip.

      He grinned. “Glad to hear you were keeping track of me.”

      She scowled. “Keeping track so I’d be sure to steer clear.”

      He veered into her driveway and parked. “I’d already been compromised when—”

      She inhaled. “Your cover was blown?”

      Before she could stop herself, her finger brushed the small scar at the edge of his brow. “Is that how you got this? Did they hurt you?”

      He caught her hand and ran her palm across the five o’clock stubble of his jawline and across his mouth. His breath warmed her skin.

      She snatched her hand away. What on earth possessed her to touch him? Except for Manny, she didn’t touch people.

      Pilar buried her hands in her lap. Just because they’d loved each other once—correction, hindsight always 20/20—she’d loved him. A long time ago. A lifetime ago.

      But her fingertips tingled.

      Alex swallowed. “Though I never met him, I guess I’m the Salazar expert after I managed to infiltrate the cartel. Only just escaped, too.”

      He shrugged. “Lots of scars, most not so visible.” He put a finger to the scar on his brow. “Afghanistan, not Mexico.”

      She’d spent a half-dozen years not watching the news when she learned Alex was over there. “What makes you think this girl is connected to the bodies here on the rez?”

      “Emily says—”

      “Your Emily seems to be an authority on everything.”

      He settled against the seat. “First off, she’s not my Emily.”

      Pilar grabbed the door handle. “Why don’t the both of you take a long walk across the desert and interview this girl?”

      He shook his head. “She was like a caged animal. Pacing, the guards said. Howling. Frightened the other children. Wouldn’t eat. Starving herself. She was scared out of her mind. By us. By everything.”

      Pilar placed the folder on the seat. “Take her back to wherever she came from. She sounds mental. This isn’t some story about a feral child raised by Mexican wolves in the desert, is it?”

      “Look, I’m as patriotic as the next. Maybe more than most. But I’ve more than a little sympathy for those desperate enough to sell their soul to the coyotes promising them the American dream across a river. I’ve seen the poverty. The violence. The fear that keeps them heading north toward hope.”

      She pursed her lips. “Where they end up, often as not, on our land. Rez land. No love has ever been lost between a Mexican and an Apache.”

      “Don’t know as I’d agree with that last statement.” The look he gave her scorched Pilar. “Would you?”

      Pilar’s heart hammered. “We were talking about the girl.”

      His eyebrow quirked. “Were we?”

      She fidgeted under his scrutiny.

      He blew out a breath. “Before we could interview her, the girl escaped and climbed onto the roof of the detention center. When one of the agents followed, she jumped.”

      Pilar released the catch on the seatbelt. “She must’ve been Apache then. Death before captivity. Never surrender is kind of our thing.”

      Alex flicked her a glance. “Tell me about it.”

      He shoved the folder at her. “She’d been marked. Like another dead Jane Doe we found on the New Mexico side. Not far from the Mescalero rez. Marked like the body Dr. Chestuan found on San Carlos land.”

      Marked . . . nausea churned Pilar’s stomach.

      “We think maybe she got away and the others weren’t so fortunate. I’m here to do a job and then I promise to be out of your—” He flushed, biting off his words as a palpable memory surged between them.

      Of his fingers entwined in her hair. Those five glorious days when she loved him so completely. Reckless of her heart. In total disregard for the future.

      With an abandon perhaps only possible when one is as young as she’d been then.

      She blinked back tears. Apaches didn’t cry. Her eyes strayed to the panic and hopelessness etched on the young girl’s face in the photograph. What had been her story? Where had she come from? Was it fear that drove her north?

      Or something else?

      Perhaps you only learned self-preservation as you grew older. When you no longer believed in immortality, much less invincibility.

      The silence lengthened.

      He moistened his lips. “Another disturbing fact has come out of the autopsies. Each can be traced to the perigee.”

      At her upraised brow, he continued. “The supermoon. When the moon’s larger on the horizon due to its closest orbital proximity to earth. Including according to Em the latest vic, dead only a month sometime during August’s perigee.”

      “The killer stalks his victims by the light of the moon?”

      “And I back-checked the night you disappeared, Pilar. All those years ago, when a supermoon filled the night sky.”

      She sucked in a breath.

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