The troopers are lining people up against the stone wall of the little cemetery, dishing out slaps and kicks as they interrogate the villagers and demand to know where El Señor is.

Keller walks up to Vera. “Don’t do this.”

“Mind your own business.”

“This is my business.”

“They know where he is!”

“They know where he was,” Keller says softly. “This will do more harm than good.”

“They need to be taught a lesson.”

“Wrong lesson, Gerardo.” Keller walks over to the line of people, who look terrified and resentful, and asks, “Where is the family of Juan Cabray!?”

He sees a woman put her arms around her children and turn her face away. It has to be Cabray’s wife and kids. An elderly woman standing next to them looks down. He walks up to her, takes her by the elbow, and walks her away from the group. “Show me his grave, señora.”

The woman walks him to a new headstone of handsome granite, much better than a campesino could afford.

Juan Cabray’s name is carved into the stone.

“It’s beautiful,” Keller says. “It honors your son.”

The old woman says nothing.

“If El Señor was here,” Keller says, “shake your head.”

She stares at him for a moment and then shakes her head violently, as if refusing to answer.

“Last night?” Keller asks.

She shakes her head again.

“Do you know where he went?”

“No sé.”

“I’m going to handle you a little roughly,” Keller says. “I apologize but I know you understand.”

He takes her elbow, shoves her away from the grave and back to her family. The villagers lined up against the wall avoid his look. Keller walks back to Vera and Aguilar, who is arguing with his colleague to “stop this fruitless and illegal barbarity.”

“He was here last night,” Keller says. “You know that if you burn this village, every campesino in the Triangle will know about it within twenty-four hours and we’ll never get their cooperation.”

Vera stares at him for a long moment then snaps an order for his troopers to stand down.

Barrera slipped out of this one, Keller thinks. But at least they have a hot trail, and now Vera turns his energies to directing the hunt and ordering resources. Army patrols go out, local and state police, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft go up, covering the roads.

But Keller knows that they aren’t going to find him. Not in the mountains of Durango, with its heavy brush, impassable roads, and hundreds of little villages that owe more loyalty to the local narcos than to a government far removed in Mexico City.

And Barrera owns the local and state police. They aren’t hunting him, they’re guarding him.

As they drive away from the village, Aguilar says, “Don’t say it.”

“What?”

“What you’re thinking—that Barrera was tipped off.”

“I guess I don’t have to.”

“For all you know,” Aguilar snaps, “it could have been someone from DEA.”

“Could have been.”

But it wasn’t, Keller thinks.

—

Adán got out just before they came.

He was at the house in Los Elijos when Diego sent word that the AFI was on the way. Now he’s tucked away in a new safe house across the state line in Sinaloa.

“Someone tipped them off,” Adán asks Diego. “Was it Nacho?”

Maybe he decided to turn the tables, cut a deal of his own.

“I don’t think so,” Diego says. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Then who was it?” Adán asks.

“I’m not sure it was anyone,” Diego says. “Listen, the government has brought someone in.”

“Who?”

Adán can’t believe the answer.

“Keller,” he repeats.

“Yes,” Diego says.

“In Mexico.”

Diego shrugs an assent.

“In what capacity?!” Adán asks, incredulous.

“There’s something called the ‘Barrera Coordinating Committee,’ ” Diego says, “and Keller is the North American adviser.”

It makes sense, Adán thinks. If you’re going to trap a jaguar, get the man who’s trapped a jaguar before. Still, the nerve of that man is outrageous, to come down to Mexico and stick his head in, as it were, the jaguar’s mouth.

And just like him.

Keller had once risked his own life saving Adán’s. It was back before Adán was even in the trade, but was caught up in an army sweep of the Sinaloa poppy fields. They beat the shit out of him, poured gasoline up his nose until he thought he was going to drown, then threatened to throw him out of a helicopter.

Keller stopped them.

That was a long time ago.

A lot of blood under the bridge since then.

“Kill him,” Adán says.

Diego nods.

“You can’t,” Magda says.

Those aren’t words Adán is used to hearing, and he turns around and asks, “Why not?”

“Isn’t there enough pressure on you already?”

Truly, the pressure has been as heavy as it was unexpected. After taking off from the prison, the helicopter flew just a few miles and dropped them off in a small village. They rested for a few hours, then left in a convoy. They’d been gone for just an hour when the army and police pulled in and burned every house in the village as a punishment and an example.

It didn’t do any good.

The government set up a “Barrera Hotline” that got a call every thirty seconds, none of them accurate, none of them from people who had actually seen him. Half the calls were “flak,” made by Diego’s people to create hundreds of false leads that the police had to waste time chasing down.

Diego even hired three Barrera lookalikes to wander the country and provoke more false leads.

For weeks Adán moved only by night, changing safe houses as often as he changed clothes. He dressed as a priest in Jalisco and as an AFI trooper in Nayarit. All the time, the pressure was brutal. Helicopters flew over their heads, they had to skirt army checkpoints, taking back roads that were little more than ruts.

Finally Adán had the brilliant idea to go to Los Elijos, where the campesinos, far from resenting him for killing Juan Cabray, welcomed him as a benefactor who had done Cabray honor and helped their village. Adán and Magda moved into the best house in town, small but comfortable.

No one in Los Elijos or the surrounding countryside breathed a word about El Señor and his woman being there. But the hunt continued, and the government brought in Art Keller, who came within a couple of hours of capturing them.

And now Magda is objecting to having Keller killed.

“You of all people should know,” she says, “what happens when a North American agent is killed in Mexico. Be patient and all this will die down, but kill this Keller person and the North Americans will never quit—they’ll force the government to keep after you. I’m not saying ‘no,’ I’m saying ‘not now.’ ”

He has to admit that she’s speaking wisdom. That smart son of a bitch Keller knows that he’s safer here in Mexico than he was in the States. Knows that if you stick your head far enough into the jaguar’s mouth, it can’t clamp its jaws shut.

“I won’t stay my hand forever,” Adán says.

Magda is smart enough to suppress a smile of victory, but Adán knows that she’s won, and in doing so, saved him from his rasher impulses.

Diego hadn’t even wanted to include her in the escape.

“It’s going to be hard enough to hide the most famous narco in the world,” he said. “The most famous narco in the world and a former beauty queen? Impossible.”

“I’m not leaving her in Puente,” Adán said.

“Then at least split with her,” Diego said. “Go separate ways.”

“No.”

“Dios mío, primo,” Diego said, “are you in love?”

I don’t know, Adán thinks now, looking at Magda. I might be. I thought I was acquiring a beautiful, charming mistress, but I got a lot more—a confidante, an adviser, a truth-teller. So he asks her, “What should I do about Nacho?”

“Reach out,” she says. “Set up a meeting. Offer him something that he wants more than he fears the government.”