He wasn’t going to leave me again. I knew that, believed it with all my heart. Today was just one day. There couldn’t be anything special about it.

I’d traveled the road into Tijuana a hundred times, but today it felt different.

The air whipped my face as the Harley roared along a strip of highway with the US border fence to my right and a tight line of dilapidated buildings on the left. I hadn’t warned Rosa I was coming. She might not even be home.

A couple kids looked up from kicking a ball in the streets as I turned off the highway and into the city. I had to concentrate on the asphalt, the crumbling edges of the road, and not think that any of these boys could belong to Rosa.

Or to me.

My fingers tightened on the bars. Couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it be. I just had to see him. I’d know. Surely I would know. You knew your own kid, right?

I had to force Corabelle out of my mind, what she would think or do. This might be the final blow. She’d leave me. I couldn’t blame her. Another boy, not hers. Shit.

I slowed down as we started approaching streets with traffic, banging my palm against the rubber grip. We could not catch a break anywhere.

Maybe it wasn’t true.

I had to cling to the hope that all this would turn out to be some trick, a way to bleed me for money. I knew Rosa was poor, and maybe all that fear she’d always shown that her boss would find out what she was doing on the side had come back to bite her in the ass. She thought I had something, and she could get it. Ha. I was lucky to pay rent every month.

If he was mine, hell, what would I do? Quit school for sure. I’d need that money for child support.

No. It wasn’t true. I was not going to let it be true. I’d see the kid, and he would clearly belong to somebody else. We could test him, I guess. Surely somebody did that here.

Stop. Stop thinking about it until you have more facts.

The red-light district was quiet midafternoon, dirty and ugly in the light of day. Not that it was pretty at night, but the colored neon and dark spaces kept the grit out of immediate view.

A woman sat against a crumbling wall, a blanket covering her legs. A little kid clung to her side and peeped out with big solemn eyes.

Jesus. I imagined Rosa there with her son. Maybe my son.

Hell. Even if it wasn’t mine, I couldn’t let that happen to her. I needed to know what sort of trouble she was in. Maybe I could bring her stateside. If the boy was mine, I could do that, right? Without marrying her?

Despite the chill, a bead of sweat slid from my temple. I cornered the last turn to her place. She wouldn’t have called from work. She had to be off today, but I’d go to the farmacia next if I couldn’t find her here.

I killed the bike next to the space that divided the two halves of her building. All the doors to the outside were locked and someone from inside always had to let you in. I had to call her and wait.

No one was around, but I felt wary. The spot where I shoved that dealer into a car and took his gun wasn’t twenty feet away. I hadn’t planned on ever coming back. Hopefully that asshole was still sleeping off whatever debauchery had occurred the night before.

I rolled the Harley into the covered walkway and jerked my phone from the pocket of my leather jacket. Be there, I ordered. Let’s finish this.

She picked up quickly. “Gavin?”

“Yeah. I’m downstairs.”

“Here?”

“By the door.”

Through the phone I could hear the squeal of hinges and the echo of steps, so I figured she must be coming down. I stuck the phone back in my pocket.

A voice from behind me snarled, “So lookit who’s back on my streets. Been waiting.”

Bloody hell.

I turned to see Sideburns, looking a little roughed up but as short, squat, and fiery as before, in white pants and a red jacket. He still had the brass knuckles on his left hand.

“That’s a pansy-ass outfit,” I said. Last time I’d been anxious and in a hurry. Today, I had nothing to lose.

“I want my gun.”

I held up my hands. “Sorry, not on me.”

He grinned beneath a heavy mustache. “That’s what I like to hear.”

And that’s when he pulled out a beat-up black Glock.

Rosa would come out any second. I had to shut this down. “You sure have a lot of those lying around.” I leaned against the wall as if I couldn’t give a shit about anything.

Sideburns passed the gun from hand to hand. “I ought to plug you, but I tell you what. Hand over that ride, and we’ll call it square.”

The fact that he hadn’t shot me already meant that either he wasn’t locked and loaded, or else he had a reason to believe he couldn’t get away with it at this moment. Maybe too many cops around, not that I had any faith in the law enforcement in Zona Norte.

“Let’s take a look at it, see if it meets your high standards.” I pushed away from the wall and backed up to the bike.

Sideburns narrowed his eyes, and I gave him reason to be very nervous as I ran my hand along the leather saddlebag. He was assuming the gun was in there, and now I was close to it.

Still, he didn’t pop me when he could. Something was holding him back.

“Built it myself,” I said.

He took only one step when I charged. How stupid could he be, when I shut him down so handily a couple weeks ago? I brought him to the ground, and a sharp crack of my elbow against his wrist forced him to drop the Glock.

Rosa stepped out right then and screamed.

This made Sideburns go manic, kicking and punching at me like a tornado. The boy definitely had something to hide.

I delivered a bone-crushing blow to his jaw to slow him down and pinned his chest with my knee. Rosa, to her credit, calmed down instantly and went for the gun. I could see she knew her way around a weapon, so I jumped off Sideburns and let him stand as she aimed the Glock at his head.

“Puta,” he spat at her.

“Su madre es puta,” she said.

“Ay yi yi.” Sideburns held out his hand to receive his gun back.

“Don’t give it to him,” I told Rosa. “It has your prints.”

She shook her head at me as she pushed the release and deftly snatched the magazine in her left hand. She tossed it my direction, and I caught it.

I was about to remind her of the round in the chamber when she jerked the slide and cupped the last bullet in her hand. She threw the gun at Sideburns’s face.

He backed up and trapped it against his chest before it could fall and hit the ground.

“Vamanos,” Rosa said and pushed me toward the Harley.

I swung my leg over and waited for her to settle behind me, shoving the magazine in my jacket. The engine noise was deafening in the covered space. I turned around and passed Sideburns. I’d had just about enough of Tijuana.

We only went a few blocks before Rosa leaned forward and shouted, “Turn aqui,” and pointed down another, larger street. We followed it for a long while, then she tapped my shoulder. “Stop.”

I pulled up beside a rundown pickup parked by a line of cinder-block buildings that looked occupied. My heart hammered since this might be where the boy lived, beating harder than it had during the fight. Rosa jumped off the back, came around, and punched me in the chest.

“What?” I asked.

“You cabron! You idiot!” She was hysterical now, crying and screaming.

I grabbed her and pulled her against my chest. “Hey, hey, we’re okay. We’re fine.”

Rosa kept hitting me, the blows getting less and less energetic, until she finally settled down.

“Do you know that guy?” I asked.

“¡Por supuesto! Of course! Everybody knows Antonio. Big jerk. Big asshole.”

I’d never heard Rosa curse or even be upset. I guess in the context of how we saw each other, it didn’t come up. “Will he bother you?”