Because only a handful of them ever came back alive.

They gave up the search for the morning and headed back to the place where they had parked their cars. Young women were emerging from their shacks and huts, huddling by the side of the road for the busses that would take them to the factories. As they passed through the fence again, Caterina watched as dirt-biker cutting through the dunes to intercept them, plumes of dust kicked up by his rear wheel. He rolled to a stop fifty feet away and removed his helmet. He was wearing a balaclava beneath it. He gunned the engine two times, drawing attention to himself, a reminder that they were trespassing and that they needed to get out.

5

Six hours later. Caterina sat in front of her laptop, willing a response to her last message. She bit her lip anxiously but the cursor carried on blinking on and off, on and off, and the message did not come. She ran her fingers through her long dark hair, wincing as she stared at the screen. She had scared the girl off. She had pushed too hard, gone too fast, been too keen for her to tell her story, and now she had lost her.

Damn it. Damn it all. She kicked back, rolling her chair away from the desk a little and stretched out her arms above her head. She was tired and stiff. She had spent eight hours at her desk, more or less, just a five minute break to go and get lunchtime gorditas and quesadillas from the take-out around the corner, bringing them back and eating them right here. The papers were still on the floor, next to the overflowing bin where she had thrown them. Yesterday had been the same, and there had been little sleep during the night, either. When she was in the middle of a story, like this, she allowed it to consume her. She knew it was a fault but it was not one that she was prepared to correct. That was why she did not have a boyfriend or a husband. It would take a very particular type of man — a very patient, very understanding man — to put up with a woman who could become so single-minded that she forgot to wash, to eat properly, to go out, to do anything that was not in the service of furthering the story.

But that was just how it had to be, she reminded herself.

The story was the most important thing.

People had to know.

The world had to know what was happening in Ciudad Juárez.

She did her work in the living room of her one bedroom flat. The walls had been hung with large sheets of paper, each bearing scribbled ideas for stories, diagrams that established the hierarchy of the cartels. One sheet was a list of three hundred female names. There was a large map to the right of the desk, three hundred pins stuck into the wall to mark where the bodies had been found. Caterina’s second-hand MacBook Pro sat amidst a whirlwind of papers, books and scrawled notes. An old and unreliable iMac, with an opened Wordpress document displayed, was perched on the corner of the desk. Minimised windows opened out onto search results pages and news stories, everything routed through the dark web to ensure that her presence was anonymous and untrackable. Caterina did not know whether the cartels themselves were sophisticated enough to follow the footprints from the Blog del Borderland back to this flat in the barrio but the government was, and since most of the government was in the pocket of the cartels, it did not pay her to be blasé. She was as sure as she could be: nothing she wrote could be traced, and her anonymity — shielded behind a series of online pseudonyms — was secure. It was liaisons like this one, with a frightened girl somewhere in the city, that were truly dangerous. She would have to break cover to write it up and all she had to go on with regard to the girl’s probity was her gut.

But the story was big. It was worth the risk.

She checked the screen.

Still nothing.

She heard the sound of children playing outside: “Piedra, papel, tijeras, un, dos, tres!” they called. Scissors, paper, stones. She got up and padded to the window. She was up high, third floor, and she looked down onto the neighbourhood. The kids were playing in front of the new church, the walls gleaming white and the beautiful new red tiles on the domed roof. The money to build it came from the cartels. Today — and yesterday, and the day before that — a row of SUVs with tinted windows had been parked in front of the church, a line of men in DEA windcheaters going to and from the garden at the back of the house three doors down from her. She could see all the gardens from her window: the backs of the whitewashed houses, the unused barbeques, rusted satellite dishes, the kid’s trampoline, torn down the middle. The third garden along was dominated by pecan trees and an overgrown creosote bush. The men in the windcheaters were digging a deep pit next to the bush. Cadaver dogs sat guard next to the pit, their noses pointing straight down, tails wagging. Every hour they would pull another body out.

Caterina had already counted six body bags being ferried out.

Like they said.

Ciudad Juárez.

Murder City.

The City of Lost Girls.

She pulled her chair back to the desk and stared absently at the computer.

“I am here.”

The cursor blinked at the end of the line.

Caterina sat bolt upright, beginning and deleting responses until she knew what to say.

“I know you’re scared.”

There was a pause, and then the letters tapped out, one by one, slow and uncertain: “How could you know?”

“I’ve spoken to other girls. Not many, but a few. You are not the first.”

“Did they tell you they could describe them, too?”

“They couldn’t.”

“Then the stakes are much higher for me.”

“I accept that.”

“What would I have to do?”

“Just talk.”

“And my name?”

“Everything is anonymous.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re right to be scared. I’m scared, too. These men are dangerous. But you can trust me.”

The cursor blinked on and off again. Caterina found she was holding her breath.

“If I come it would just be to talk?”

“It would be whatever you want it to be. But talking is fine.”

“Who would be there?”

“Me and my partner — he writes, too. You can trust him.”

Another pause, and Caterina wondered whether she should have said that it would just be her alone. Leon was a good man, but how was she to know that? A fear of men whom she did not know would be reasonable enough after what Delores had been through.

The characters flickered across the screen again. “I can choose where?”

“Wherever you want — but somewhere public would be best, yes?”

“La Case del Mole — do you know it?”

Caterina swept the papers from the iMac’s keyboard and typed the name into Google. “The restaurant on Col Chavena?”

“Yes.”

“I know it.”

“I could meet you there.”

“I’ll book a table. My name is Caterina Moreno. I will be there from 8PM. OK?”

There was no immediate reply.

And then, after a pause, three letters: “Yes.”

6

Lieutenant Jesus Plato stopped at the door of his Dodge Charger police cruiser and turned back to his three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Juárez. His pregnant wife, Emelia was at the door, with their youngest — Jesus Jr — in her arms. She was calling him.

“What is it?”

“Come here,” she said.

He tossed his shoulder holster, the Glock safely clipped within it, onto the passenger seat, and went back to the house. “What did I forget?”

“Nothing,” his wife said, “I did.” She stood on tip-toes and he bent a little so that she could plant a long kiss on his lips. “Be careful, Jesus. I don’t want to hear about you taking any risks, not this week. Lord knows you’ve done enough of that.”

“I know. I won’t — no risks.”