Frustrated and helpless, Gabe resumed his former position. “Are you awake?” he attempted to mumble through the tape. What actually came out of his mouth was nothing more than a garbled moan, but an answering moan told him that his companion wasn’t sleeping.

That was when Gabe realized that he needed to pee, desperately, and there was nothing for it but to do it, letting the wet warmth run through his underwear and puddle around his butt. When the urine encountered the entrance wounds from the cactus, it hurt like hell. Surprisingly enough, that shocked him out of his strange lethargy.

If he’d been Lani, he might have tried singing a song just then, a song to Elder Brother asking for help, but he doubted I’itoi would be listening. Gabe needed help that was closer at hand.

Then he remembered something important about his friend Timmy. Tim was actually several months older than Gabe. For Tim’s birthday, just after Christmas, Carlos and Paul had given their little brother his heart’s desire—­a switchblade knife. The school campus was, of course, a weapon-­free zone. There were signs on every door that said so. That didn’t mean, however, that any of the kids paid attention. Timmy, who liked to carve his initials on trees and to whittle little figurines out of pieces of mesquite, took his knife to school with him every day, wearing it tucked inside his sock.

It occurred to Gabe that if Henry Rojas hadn’t been smart enough to take his prisoner’s cell phone away, maybe he had failed to go looking for a possible weapon as well.

With some effort, Gabe managed to use one of his shoes to peel off the other. Then he ran his sock-­covered foot along the pant leg of the person lying beside him. It took only a matter of seconds for him to find it. The knife was here—­he felt it under the cloth. If Tim was bound the same way Gabe was, the knife would be out of Tim’s reach, but with any kind of luck, maybe Gabe could retrieve the knife and somehow manage to cut them both loose.

Knowing the knife was there and being able to lay hands on it, however, were two different things. It took time to figure out how to approach the problem. Finally, by throwing his legs over Tim’s in a way that formed a human X, Gabe was able to slither snakelike far enough down that his fingers touched the handle of the knife. Extricating it from the sock was another whole exercise that left Gabe out of breath, sweating and exhausted.

Back in his original position he had to rest for a bit—­rest and think. How much time had passed? Was it day or night? Their cage—­that’s how he thought of it—­was gradually heating up, probably due to the warmth of the two bodies trapped inside it and maybe from sunlight, too—­but not direct sunlight. Even in March, if the black truck had been parked in the sun, the boys would have died from heatstroke by now. So where were they then? Gabe suspected the truck was parked inside some kind of shaded structure, far enough off the road that there were no sounds of passing vehicles.

Why do we still have air? Gabe wondered. There had to be some form of ventilation that he couldn’t see. Were there ventilation holes that kept them from running out of oxygen? If so, he wondered if that meant that he and Tim weren’t the only ­people who had been transported in the back of Henry Rojas’s pickup truck.

Tim moved impatiently beside him as if to say, What’s the holdup?

Somewhat rested now, Gabe clicked the button. The knife sprang open with such force that it almost shot out of his hand. It was awkward to hold it, but Gabe was gratified to discover that his exertions had somehow weakened the grip of his restraints. He had more range of movement than he’d had earlier. That meant that he should probably be the one wielding the knife blade, even though he’d be working in the dark. And, clumsy as he was, he’d be working with his right hand. If Tim used the knife, he’d be using his left.

Gritting his teeth, dreading that the smallest slip of the blade might mean slicing into Tim’s arm, Gabe snuggled over until their two bodies were once again touching. Then, after ascertaining where the tape started and stopped as best he could, he began to pick away with the tip of the razor-sharp blade. He couldn’t see in the dark, but biting his lip, he concentrated as though he could and hoped that I’itoi or maybe one of the night-­flying bats that had filled his dreams would be there to help him.

As he did so, Gabe felt a surprising sense of joy rise in his heart. He was doing something. He was taking action, and for a change he wasn’t afraid.

Maybe I’itoi had heard him after all.

CHAPTER 20

THE NEXT DAY, NAWOJ, MY friend, when the women came again, Shining Falls was still sleeping. The women tried to awaken her, but she would not open her eyes. The women were frightened. When they tried to question the Evil Giantess, Ho’ok O’oks hid in the black cloud of her hair and would not answer them.

But there was one thing the Evil Giantess did not know and that the Indian women did not know, either. While Ho’ok O’oks was singing and waving the feathers over Shining Falls’s face, she had dropped a single white feather. It was Alichum S-­toha A’an—­Little White Feather. Shining Falls had put her hand over it, and while she lay sleeping, she held Little White Feather ever so tightly in her hand.

After a time, Little White Feather grew very tired from the weight of Shining Falls’s hand and cried out for help. Some White-­Winged Doves—­O-­okokoi—­heard Little White Feather’s cry for help. It was really a song, and it goes like this:

White Feather, White Feather, child of my mother,

You in the air look down on your brother.

Alone am I here in pain and in trouble.

One of the White-­Winged Doves said to the others, “Why, I believe that is one of my feathers calling to us.”

You must understand, nawoj, my friend, that it is the law of the desert that you must always answer a call for help, so the White-­Winged Doves circled in the air to try to learn what the trouble was.

BRANDON WAS SPEEDING SOUTH ON Highway 77 when his phone rang. He answered it through the Escalade’s sound system, and Diana’s voice came out through the speakers.

“Have you talked to Lani today?” she asked with no preamble—­without asking where Brandon was or what he was doing. That was unusual in and of itself.

“No, why?”

“Gabe’s gone missing,” she said.

“From Kitt Peak?” Brandon asked. That was the last thing he had known about the weekend’s plans—­that Gabe and Lani were going to camp out on the mountain on Friday night and that the whole family planned to make a daylong expedition to the book festival in Tucson on Sunday.

“Not exactly,” Diana said. “Gabe and Lani evidently got into some kind of hassle, and he walked off the mountain. He made it home, but now no one can find him. Later, after Gabe left, Lani witnessed a shooting—­heard it rather than saw it—­in which two boys from Sells were killed. It’s a mess, and Lani’s really upset about it, but I have another panel to go to . . .”

“Not to worry,” Brandon said. “I’ll call her right now.”

He did so. “What’s going on?” he asked when Lani answered.

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me.”

Brandon listened patiently to the whole story, but he noticed there were undertones of things not said. “I know Gabe,” Brandon said when Lani finally came to a stop. “He’s a good kid. And I’ve met Tim, too. I can’t imagine either of them getting mixed up in any kind of smuggling enterprise.”