None of the brothers knew how to make popovers. These days Tim and his brothers lived on sandwiches and take-­out stuff from Bashas’—­food that didn’t need cooking. The kinds of food that would drive Lani nuts, Gabe thought, especially peanut butter sandwiches made with white bread. Thinking about peanut butter made him glance at the dresser drawer where he’d hidden both Tim’s mysterious note and the jar of peanut butter. What was that all about? Probably just some brother kind of thing. Tim’s older brothers often teased him unmercifully, and maybe the peanut butter was Tim’s way of getting back at them for a change.

Gabe sometimes wished he had brothers. Maybe Tim didn’t always get along with the ones he had, but at least they were there. Tim wasn’t alone, not really—­not the way Gabe was alone.

Gabe picked up his phone, the one Lani had taken away from him the day before. His dad had left it on the kitchen counter, and Gabe had found it when he went out to make some toast. He tried calling Tim again. Still no answer. That was odd. If Tim’s plans for the day had changed, wouldn’t he at least have let Gabe know? Disappointed, Gabe slid the phone back into the pocket of his jeans.

His bedroom door opened, and his mother poked her head inside. He could tell from the frown on her face that she was still angry that he hadn’t stayed out on the mountain overnight.

“I have to go to the office for a ­couple of hours, then I’m going grocery shopping. Your dad’s going to be late. There was some trouble out that way when he went to pick up Lani. You’re to stay here until he gets home, understand?”

Gabe nodded.

“Oh, and if you talk to Timmy, let him know you’re grounded. He can see you at school on Monday, but not for the rest of the weekend. Got it?”

“Okay,” he muttered. She left, and he allowed himself a few moments of gratitude. At least she hadn’t taken his Xbox away, and she hadn’t made him go shopping with her, either. It was bad enough that he’d had to go camping with Lani. If the kids from school saw his mother dragging him around the grocery store on Saturday morning, he’d never hear the end of it.

After his mom left, Gabe kept right on playing. Some time had passed—­he wasn’t sure how much—­when someone knocked on the bedroom door. He was going for a really high score. Thinking the visitor was most likely Tim, Gabe called for him to come in.

A moment later Henry Rojas appeared in the doorway. Gabe knew Henry. He was one of the Shadow Wolves who worked with Dan Pardee. Henry’s wife was a nurse at the hospital, and they lived in one of the units at the hospital compound, but as far as Gabe knew, Henry wasn’t a good friend of either one of his parents. Among the Tohono O’odham, only relatives and very close friends ever ventured inside someone else’s home and, even then, not without an express invitation.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I was talking to your friend Tim José,” Henry said. “He’s in some trouble and asked me to come pick you up and take you to him. Oh, and he wants you to bring along the package he left for you last night.”

Gabe tried playing dumb. “What package?”

“You know which package,” Henry said. “Now get it and come on. There’s not much time.”

“I’m grounded,” Gabe said. “My mom says I’m not allowed to go anywhere.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your mom wants. Get the damned peanut butter and come on!” Henry’s hand went to the grip of the pistol he wore on his hip. “I have a gun and I’m prepared to use it. Get moving.”

And so Gabe moved, stumbling toward the dresser and pulling open the drawer like a bumbling sleepwalker. He reached for the peanut butter jar, leaving the bag and the note behind. As his fingers closed around the plastic jar, he knew two things with sickening clarity. One, his best friend was in trouble, maybe even dead. And two, Henry Rojas, the man who stood blocking the doorway? He was clearly one of the Bad ­People—­PaDaj O’odham—­the very ones Lani had been trying to warn Gabe about. She had thought the José brothers were bad somehow, but Gabe understood that this man—­dressed in his uniform, wearing a badge, and carrying a weapon on his hip—­was someone truly evil.

With the jar in one hand and leaving the drawer partly open, Gabe straightened up and turned to face the intruder. Henry Rojas had yet to move. He stood there, still as can be, blocking the doorway.

“What happened to Tim?” Gabe asked.

“Believe me,” Rojas said, “you’ll know soon enough. Now move.”

As Gabe walked past, Henry leaned toward him. “Walk straight,” he ordered. “Don’t do anything out of line. I’ve got my Taser right here.”

It was only when Gabe looked at the Taser that he realized the man was wearing gloves—­surgical gloves. Henry had no intention of leaving any fingerprints behind.

As they stepped outside, there was no one around. It was a quiet Saturday morning. The other houses in the Ortiz compound seemed deserted. No children played kickball in the dirt outside. If women were inside neighboring houses doing chores or washing dishes, there was no sign of them, either. A block or so away, he saw ­people over by his dad’s garage, but none of them was close enough for Gabe to call for help.

Henry marched him over to the passenger side of a truck that was parked just outside—­a black Chevrolet with a camper shell on it. It wasn’t the Border Patrol vehicle Henry drove when he was on duty. This was private.

Henry opened the door to the cab. “Get in,” he ordered.

Gabe tried to twist away, but Henry grabbed his neck in a viselike grip and shoved him headfirst into the cab. Then, before Gabe could right himself, a jolt of electricity from a stun gun shot through his body. When he came to, a second or so later, Henry was removing a hypodermic needle from Gabe’s bare arm.

“Hey,” he objected, “what are you doing?”

Henry didn’t answer. He slammed the door shut, locking it with his key fob, before he walked around the front of the pickup to the driver’s door. Gabe tried to unlock the door manually, but his muscles were still disrupted by the stun gun charge. Before he could make them respond properly, they went numb. Suddenly helpless, he fell back against the seat.

As Gabe drifted into unconsciousness, he had a strange thought. Lani had told him that the Bad ­People always came from the South. Henry Rojas was Navajo. Weren’t Navajos from the North?

He’d have to ask Lani to explain that to him the next time he saw her.

CHAPTER 16

THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG ago that in the summers, when it was very hot and the low-­lying water holes all dried up, the Desert ­People would leave their villages behind and go to the foothills at the base of one of I’itoi’s sacred mountains—­Ioligam, which means Manzanita, or Baboquivari, which means The Mountain That Is Small in the Middle.

The Elders—­Kekelimai—­say that once the sacred peak of Baboqui­vari was shaped like the thing the Milgahn—­the Anglos—­call an hourglass. One day Beautiful Girl’s brother returned from the heavens. In the quake that followed his arrival, the top of the hourglass broke off, leaving Baboquivari looking the way it does today, like a spool sitting in the middle of the desert.

BEFORE BRANDON HEADED FOR FLORENCE, he made a call to clear the way. His younger son, Quentin, an intravenous drug user, had developed hepatitis C, which had morphed into cirrhosis before he had managed to store up enough meds to end it all with an overdose.

During the last year of his life, when Quentin had spent far more time in the infirmary than in his cell, Brandon and Diana had both been constant visitors. One or the other of them had been in the infirmary with him almost daily, providing care and comfort that would otherwise have been delegated to overworked and understaffed nurses and orderlies. Over time, surprisingly enough, they had developed a first grudging but eventually enduring friendship with the warden.