"Who is this Esmail?" Daniel asked.

"Me," a voice said over the speakers. "I am in control of this prison and whether or not any of you make it out alive is entirely in your hands."

"What do you want?"

"Not anything you can't learn to part with. My demand is quite simple. Kill Root. Or I kill everyone else in this prison."

:\\

The being known as Sameen Shaw almost laughed. Esmail was either being exceptionally perceptive or exceptionally thick with his ultimatum; there was nothing that would ever make her put Root's life in jeopardy, yet her association with Finch and Reese meant that she was obligated to at least try to keep Esmail from acting on his oath.

"Don't even fucking think it," Shaw growled when Root shot her a glance out of the corner of her eye.

"Relax sweetie, I wasn't going to suggest you kill me," Root said dryly.

"Yeah well, you're crazy as a bag of cats. There's not much I would put past you."

"You two are taking this kinda seriously," Daniel said worriedly. "One guy can't be that dangerous."

"Esmail is… special. Uniquely talented at making my life particularly difficult. And unfortunately, if there's one thing he can be relied upon, it's to keep his word."

"So, do you have a plan that gets us all out of here?" Jason asked.

"You know what you must do, Aurine. You cannot stop me from killing those I've promised to kill; you know me better than to think I'd default on my oaths."

When neither Root nor Shaw immediately answered the disembodied voice's demands, the three men's concerns immediately increased. Root might insist on protecting them but Shaw's willingness was much less apparent.

"We're going," Shaw replied. She wasn't certain how Esmail was listening to them as she doubted the whole prison was bugged but it didn't really matter, she supposed. All that mattered was getting Root out.

"There are two men here in the observation center with me." A pause, no longer than three seconds and a crackling sound that could almost be mistaken for static came from the intercom. "Now there is one. I'm not going to fight you, my love. There would be no point in that. You know what must be done. If you don't, the other man here has ten seconds to live."

Shaw closed her eyes and wracked her brain for something, anything she could do to help the men trapped in the prison. One did not get to be in a place like Badiraguato without being a sinner but she doubted few, if any, had sinned gravely enough to deserve what Esmail would do to them when she got away.

Resigning herself to the consequences, Shaw turned, summoning her spear with a jab of her right hand and cut her way through the door. The prison was in full lockdown, alarms womp-womping as the red emergency lighting threw shadows.

Shaw ignored the stares from the four hackers boring into her back. There was no way this was Esmail's full plan; he had to know there was a snowball's chance in hell of her doing what he demanded and that made her nervous. At this point, she just wanted to get the hell out of the prison as quickly as possible before the rest of Esmail's plan could come into effect.

Going was slow. They were in the high security wing while the prison was on lockdown. It took her less than ten seconds to break down each door but even that took longer than she wished. She kept expecting Esmail or something worse to be waiting behind each door, something not so easy to protect Root from.

Sure enough, they only made it halfway to the exfiltration point before the hallway rumbled a split-second before ceiling came crashing down.

Shaw sucked in a breath as the first pieces of the ceiling came down so she wasn't coughing up a lung with the rest. The ceiling had been collapsed just ahead of them so nobody was in danger of being crushed, but that didn't mean they were out of danger.

Shaw whirled around, spear held defensively, fully expecting Esmail to be waiting behind them. Surprisingly, he wasn't, but yet another team of riot guards was stacking up two locks down, barking orders at them.

Shaw grimaced pushing Root for to the side before some trigger-happy, third world, mall-cop reject shot her.

"Uh, Shaw, think you can do something about the angry men with guns shouting at us?" Daniel asked.

She tried not to kill anyone, wrapping Geddroux's alabaster wings around the blade to blunt it though one of the guards lost his two front teeth when she hit him with the gem-capped butt.

"There's no escape from me, Aurine," Esmail said over the PA system again in English when the last of the guards fell. "I will raze this prison to the ground before I let you go again."

"You weren't kidding about the jealous-ex thing," Jason commented.

"That's enough from the peanut gallery," Shaw growled. "If I want an opinion, I'll beat it out of you."

"Sweetie…"

"I deal with enough crap from you, Root, I'm not taking any from your guy-gaggle."

Daniel and Jason drew fingers across their lips when Root looked back, while Daizo (who had yet to annoy Shaw) simply nodded.

The cave-in meant they had to backtrack the way they came to find an alternate route out. The smell hit Shaw only a moment before the rest of the group, Daniel and Daizo almost immediately having to cover their mouths or risk spewing the contents of their stomach.

"What is that?" Jason asked, looking as green as the rest even if he didn't appear to be in immediate danger of vomiting.

"Men dying badly," Shaw said quietly.

Shaw led them around a corner to a section with inmate housing only to find it in a very different state then it had been just a few minutes ago. There were about two dozen cells along each side of the hall, each with the door open. Their former inhabitants were spread across the length of the hall in such a manner that individual burials would be impossible.

Esmail was standing at the opposite end of the hall. Malchigis, his göttam gacé was in his preferred form for close-quarters fighting, that of an urumi with an aggressive, forward-sweeping crossguard and a spiked knucklebow. He held it loosely at his side, blood slowly flowing down the blade from just shy of the quillions to drip from the point of the three-foot blade.

Shaw inhaled deeply, resisting wave of memories the fetid, rotting odor of dead flesh brought to mind. Battlefields, graveyards… massacres decades, centuries, millennia past. Normally it took much longer than a few minutes for a corpse, even a dozen corpses to acquire such a stench. Esmail was the one who'd killed them though. Men slain by the physical manifestation of War, of Conflict and Combat fell to Death more quickly than other men.

"Esmail," the being known as Aurine-Taslima-Sameen hissed, her fear spiking as Root rounded the corner and came into Esmail's line of sight. Shaw knew this was the only way her plan was going to work but her heart still jumped into her throat for a beat before she was able to slide into a high guard between the two.

"You aren't touching her," Shaw growled.

"It never ceases to amaze me how obstinate you can be," said Esmail in the tone of a consciously verbal thought.

Shaw didn't reply, springing into action. She crossed the the thirty-odd feet in a quicksilver blur, stopping just out of range of Malchigis, jerking to the right to bounce off the wall, touched down down behind him for a split second and then ricocheting off the other wall to end up back where she started.

If there was one weakness to Esmail's warsight, it was that it only foresaw direct threats to himself. Shaw took full advantage by not attacking him directly. She infused the scraps of notebook paper with chi, sticking the cage-seal she had inscribed onto the quartered notebook page to the floor and walls around him.

"Clever, Aurine, but you know this won't hold me for long," Esmail said, reaching out with a hand to probe the invisible barrier.

A quartered cage-seal was designed as a temporary measure and would buy them no more than ten minutes so she didn't waste a second. There wasn't any way to get past the cage-seal without breaking it so Shaw ushered the others back towards the cave-in Esmail had initially used to force them into his ambush. Shaw had memorized the plans to the prison on the flight to Mexico, so she knew the cell toilets on this block backed to a maintenance area for the heating and plumbing.

The toilet was made of a single piece of stainless steel bolted to the solid concrete wall. A twirl of her spear easily separated the bolt heads from the shafts and a couple strikes from the butt moved the toilet so they could crawl through the hole. The maintenance area was cramped and dank, though it was a thankfully short trip. She stopped at a rusted metal grate about a hundred yards from the hole, knocked it out and jumped down into the shin-deep water.

"That was simultaneously the easiest, yet most revolting escape possible," Jason said once she'd kicked out the grate blocking the exit out and they breathed fresh air.

We're not escaped yet. Esmail won't be far behind us," Shaw assured the group. "We're going to need a lot more distance before I'll consider us safe. Got anything for us on that front, Scarlett?"

Their stolen radios remained silent but the buzzing sodium-vapor lamp overlooking the outflow went out for a couple seconds before it started flickering. "She says to head this way," Root said, walking off into the heat.

"That going to be it?" Shaw asked Root, trailing after her.

"She she was using the same access as Samaritan to keep an eye on us at the prison; it's gonna be back to minimal contact again."

Shaw's resisted the urge to sigh. She'd been spoiled by constant access to God mode. It would be good for her to have to look over her own shoulder again (though she hadn't ever stopped, not really.)

Forty-five minutes of jogging got them away from the prison and the use of a shiny, hardtopped Jeep parked at the entrance to a desert hiking trail. Judging by the stuff in the footwells, they had liberated it from some tourists, almost certainly foreigners (Americans most likely) so she felt less bad.

With the Machine incommunicado again, Root deflated, staring mindlessly out at the landscape while the boys sat nervously in the back. Shaw dropped one hand from the wheel, running it along Root's arm until she could twine their fingers together, palm to palm. Shaw caught the startled look Root shot her out of the corner of her eye but studiously ignored the heart-eyes Root sent her way after a moment.

That being said, Shaw didn't mind the quiet that much. It had been a while since she'd shared a living space with a partner, with a husband or lover, fifty years or more. Root was far from the worst roommate she'd ever had but even so, being forced to share a six-by-twelve box had been a little wearing.

She started heading east and then cut north across the desert about an hour later when Root roused just long enough to relay the Machine's terse instructions.

She pulled onto a poorly-paved road fifteen minutes before arriving in a no-name, one gas station village a few minutes after midnight. Shaw parked behind a run-down strip mall with a thrift store and followed Root around to the back of the Jeep. Root pulled the top of her jumpsuit down and her white undershirt off.

Shaw's eyes immediately darted to where the boys sat in the car, engine still running. "Root, this is not the time," Shaw said shortly.

"Trust me, this isn't that. This is for you."

"Why are you giving me your shirt?"

"You need something to cover your face with when you break into the store to get us a change of clothes. Don't know if the place has cameras but better safe than sorry." Shaw grunted in agreement and wrapped Root's shirt around her head in an improvised veil. She snapped the lock easily enough, gripping the knob and twisting with both hands. The store was completely open, shelves along the outer walls and racks of clothes filling the rest of the space. There were signs conveniently hanging from the ceiling to mark off the different sections which made it easy to collect what she needed.

Shaw shot the boys a glare when Daniel's gaze dipped down to the extra cleavage Root flashed when she bent over to rifle through the pile of bags in the middle of the back footwell.

Shaw parked in the back lot of the third motel in a strip. They managed three rooms without much fuss, taking all of the cash and some barter scrounged from the Jeep. The Hilton it was not, but the springs didn't jab up through the mattress, so it was bearable.

Root arrowed in on the bathroom as soon as she was in the door, eager to wash the day off. She left the door to the bathroom open and the hiss of water sputtered to life a moment later.

Shaw threw their bags of stolen clothes on the foot of the bed. Root's head and shoulders appeared between the door and the frame. "This place probably doesn't have much hot water. You should hurry up and get in here before I use it all."

She would do it too; Root never made idle threats. Shaw strutted over as Root backed up, letting the door swing open to reveal she had already stripped down.

Shaw stepped out of her pants as she crossed the threshold and curled her arms behind her to unhook her bra but not taking it off (because Root was adjusting the water temperature and not looking so what was the point?)

Shower stalls are not her favorite place to fuck, usually resulting in as many accidental bruises as orgasms but the sight of Root standing there, bare as the day she was born, one hand measuring the water and hair cascading down her back in those luxurious curls… The embers of desire that had been smoldering in the pit of her stomach for the last few days roared into a bonfire of lust.

"See something you like?"

Shaw started, realizing that she'd been staring and judging from the smirk curving Root's lips, she'd been caught at it.

"Shut up. You're hot; we both know it."

"Well as a certain someone once said, 'a girl can appreciate a little appreciation every once in awhile.'"

Shaw was sure she bent the hooks in the clasp as she jerked her hands roughly in order to get her bra off. Root's smirk remained firmly in place when Shaw pushed her back into the stall, her head thumping dully against the tiles. Root's smirk didn't waver though and that just made the fire burn hotter.

Root opened her mouth to utter another of corny one-liner but Shaw rushed up to push it back between her lips with a kiss. The water coming out of the showerhead was still cold and barely arced out but she didn't notice. Root wouldn't have been surprised if the water flashed to steam when it hit their bodies given the way Shaw flattened her against the shower wall. The hot water suddenly kicked in and she wasn't sure whether it was the hand on her breast or the shock of steam that stole her breath, but either way it was the fingers between her legs that made her see stars.

Root was vaguely aware that two of the boys had a room on the other side of the wall their bed was up against, but when Shaw threw her down against into the mattress, she couldn't give a flying fuck. Shaw's tongue and teeth left little sparks of mind-blanking pleasure, tracing a winding trail from the corner of her mouth all the way down her body. The hand pinning her wrists above her head was like handcuffs, the other alternately caressing and pressing little spots of pain-pleasure into her skin.

She passed out somewhere around her sixth orgasm. (Or so she guessed; she lost track pretty quickly.) The sheets were sodden with sweat and other fluids as she floated off but she could barely twitch a finger, so she marked it as something for tomorrow!Root to deal with. She'd never slept so well in her life.

:\\

Root woke up in the morning feeling thoroughly wrung out and simultaneously still buzzing with afterglow. The other side of the bed was empty but warm, Shaw nowhere in sight but the light shone from the bathroom. "Shaw!" She shifted slightly and immediately regretted it, her muscles still burning and sore. "Shaw! Help! I think you broke me!"

She called again, frowning when Shaw still didn't answer. Root slid from under the sheets and padded gingerly across the industrial carpet to lean in the doorway. Shaw is peering into the mirror closely, examining the hairline of her temple. "Something the matter?"

'I have a gray hair."

"What?"

"You heard me," Shaw said, glaring at Root through the mirror. "Don't be dumb." It's an effort to keep her eyes on Root's face but she does so, intent on not letting Root distract her with her nudity.

"Let me rephrase. So?"

Shaw's brows furrow, look taking on an edge. "I've been thirty for, well, basically forever. I'm with you for a week and now I got gray hairs."

"Some women consider gray to be sexy," Root said, arching a brow.

"Maybe on George Clooney or Brad Pitt. It's just old on anyone else."

Root closed the distance between them, pulling Shaw's hand down from her temple and resting her chin on the crown of the shorter woman's head, arms wrapped around her waist, both staring into the mirror. "Sweetie, a little gray is nothing to fret over. It adds character."

Shaw turned in her arms, eyes narrowing. "Character? Sounds like you're calling me old."

"Are you going to question me every time I give you a compliment that could possibly, maybe be an an insult if you turned it on its head and squinted at it sideways?"

"Only when you give you give me compliments that could maybe, possibly be an an insult if you turned it on its head and squinted at it sideways."

"You are the literal worst," Root said with a half-groan, half-laugh.

"Call 'em like I see 'em," Shaw said, hiding a smirk as she slipped out from between Root's arms.

Root leaned against the edge the edge of the sink, following Shaw out after a few seconds. The other woman was stuffing their bag with the detritus of the previous night's fuckfest. It was still early; the alarm Shaw had set wasn't due to go off for another twenty minutes but there was no reason to linger longer than necessary. Root left Shaw to keep packing while she went to rouse the boys. It wasn't yet six a.m. and she immediately regretted stepping outside in just her shirtsleeves as her breath steamed in thick clouds. She hopped in place while she waited for the boys to answer their doors.

Root felt a twinge of guilt when Daniel answered his door, looking quite bleary. His look morphed to one of mild irritation after he rubbed his eyes clear.

"Get your stuff together, we're leaving as soon as you're ready." Daniel grunted, closing the door without a word.

"The boys ready?" Shaw asked as Root shut their door behind her.

"Will be in a few. Got any idea how we're gonna get across the border? She says He had our plane impounded."

Shaw grunted, shoving the last of their belongings in the bag and zipping it up. "I might know a coyote that could smuggle us across. He owes me a favor or three."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"1989. I was freelancing for some fairly dangerous people based not far from here who had contracted his services as a smuggler. We did our job and then they decided we were… superfluous."

"That was stupid. Did you leave any of them alive?"

"Ever heard of the Martinez Cartel?" Root shook her head. "Well now you know why. Anyways, he managed to stay close enough to me during my dismantling of the group that he made it through mostly in one piece."

"That was almost thirty years ago. You sure he's still alive, let alone smuggling?"

"He was like, twenty-two or something at the time. And around here, crime isn't something you just quit. Especially with the crews that run this part of the country."

"Do you know where to find him?"

"Most of the smuggling in this part of the country is run out of Nogales. If he's anywhere to be found, it'll be there."

The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon by the time they pulled out of the parking lot, Daizo, Casey and Jason going back to sleep while Shaw leans her head against the window, catching glimpses of the speeding landscape as her eyelids drift downwards.

"So what was it like, being a pirate?" Root asked without preamble.

Shaw cracks her eyes, giving Root a sidelong glance before sitting up. "You been thinking about that much?"

"Only every free second."

"Fun," Shaw answers after a moment of consideration. "Profitable. Insanely dangerous. Just about the most dangerous profession I can think of, then or now."

"Seems like it. Doesn't seem like you'd have a great deal of control of things when you got cannonballs flying at you."

Shaw smirked. "Taking a prize is the least dangerous part of sailing under the black. Want to know why Anne Bonney never tried to captain her own ship?"

"Enlighten me."

"Politics. Unlike military or merchant crews, most pirate crews were democratic, even anarchic at times. Everyone had an equal share in the ship and prizes. Captains were elected by the crew and your captaincy was dependent on the whims of your crew, their perception and opinion of you. A successful pirate captain was one who took rich prizes with minimal loss of life. Pirate crews could be… mercurial. And even the most successful captains could fall prey to the bad humor of their crews. Sometimes all that stood between a man and command of his ship was a single prize." Shaw shrugged.

"And what about the Pirate's Code? I thought there was some provision in it about mutineering?"

Shaw shook her head. "Adherence to the Pirate's Code, any of them, is pure fantasy. Every crew worked out their own ship's articles before they signed on with a new captain. Even then, articles were only worth the paper they were written on as long as the captain kept the confidence of his crew."

"What was it like being a woman pirate? There couldn't have been much privacy on a ship."

"Modesty was pretty pointless," Shaw agreed. "And it really wasn't that different than being a man, for me at least. Jack made sure his crews knew that I wasn't to be touched without permission."

"That seems unlike you, letting someone else speak for you."

"It was a different time, different me. Besides, I made sure that they knew no meant no pretty quickly."

"Oh yeah?" Root asked with a cocked eyebrow.

Shaw looked back over her shoulder to make sure the boys were still asleep before she continued. "Yeah. I may have made a 'gotta beat me to fuck me' rule."

"I almost want to say that's not very fair but then I think about you sleeping with someone else and I want to punch them."

Shaw rolled her eyes. "Yeah, only downside to that was I got promoted to quartermaster right after that."

"I don't follow."

Quartermaster had two main responsibilities; keeping the crew happy, healthy and fed and leading boarding parties."

"That makes sense I guess."

"Annoying is what it was," Shaw growled. "The crew got way too much pride and amusement out of being the only ship with a female quartermaster. Not to mention that the quartermaster was a one-man HR department."

"I would've thought you'd make your crew settle their own differences."

"I tried that. Our bosun got into a… dispute with one of the deckhands and got stabbed."

"And I take it that was really bad?"

"Bosun is the guy in charge of keeping the ship running, managing the sails, rigging, stores…"

"Ah."

"Yeah. Anyways, I made sure the crew only bothered me with important stuff, but it was still annoying."

"Couldn't you have just said no to being quartermaster?"

"Trust me when I say pirate crews generally have a habit of getting what they want. There are a lot of reasons why someone might turn pirate but having a problem with authority is usually high on the list. So the crew voted me quartermaster and refused to hold another election when I said I didn't want the job."

"That must have been just terrible."

"Doubly so because I couldn't even reveal myself properly."

"How come?"

Shaw gave Root a considering look before answering. "I may have been running from a papal death warrant."

"What?"

Shaw sighed. "I'd been working in the Papal States as a hitter and fixer. I killed a couple nobles around the peninsula and maybe a cardinal or bishop or two. The Inquisition somehow figured out what was going on and who I was and started looking for me."

"So? Couldn't you have just faked your death or something?"

Shaw shook her head. "The Roman Inquisition had known about us Pillars for a while so if I'd let myself get caught I would've spent the next hundred years getting my skin peeled off or something."

"I'm glad you got away then. I'd hate to think of anyone marring your beautiful skin," Root said, running a hand up her arm. Shaw shook her head and turned to look out the window, but let Root's hand stay where it was. The clock on the dash read 10:11 when Root pulled off the highway, cruising by a string of fast food restaurants.

"Hey, we're stopping for breakfast. Have a preference?"

Shaw cast her gaze about and pointed to the Chick-Fil-A behind them. Root turned the Jeep around and pulled into the drive-through. Shaw leaned over Root to convey the group's orders in Spanish when Root gave her a 'well, waiting on you,' look. Root paid out of a wad of crumpled ones and fives, passing the bag to Shaw to split the food up.

"Where'd the money come from?" Shaw asked a minute later through the two spicy chicken sandwiches she crammed in her mouth.

"Pickpocketed some schmuck at the gas station when I refilled."

"How much we got left?"

Root fished the balled-up bills out of her pocket for Shaw to count. "Thirty-eight dollars. Should be enough to get us to Nogales. Probably gonna have to refuel at least once in this guzzler. Couldn't you have stolen something else when you were gassing up?"

"We're trying to stay under the radar, Sweetie. A string of car thefts is just the kind of thing that Samaritan could use to track us. Besides, this thing is completely analog, no Bluetooth, GPS, nothing trackable."

Shaw grunted in acknowledgment of her point. The three men in the back seat got into a hushed argument as Shaw crumpled up the last of her wrappers and threw it out the window. "So you guys wanna tell me what you're whispering about back there?" Shaw asked, twisting in her seat.

Daniel and Tatsuro threw a final round of rock-paper-scissors before Daniel grinned at his win. "We was wondering," Daizo began slowly. "What… who are you? We saw what you did in the prison. You did not move as woman should. Daniel, Jason and me have been debating where your powers come from."

"And?"

"I think you find that spear somewhere and it give you powers. Danny think you make a deal with spirit."

"So what do you think?" Shaw asked Jason.

"I think you're either a mutant or a mutate."

"Translation?" Shaw asked Root.

"He thinks you're either Jean Grey or the Invisible Woman."

"Not a sixteen-year-old boy here. I know who they are but still not getting the reference."

"Mutants like Jean Grey and Wolverine are born with their power, mutates get their power from accidents and experiments, like the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man."

Shaw grunted. "Well, Casey's got it the closest. Long story short is that I was in a bad way a very long time ago and was… given something that lets me do the things you saw."

"You mean your spear," Daizo said.

"Yeah, my spear," Shaw agreed.

"And what about Esmail, what's his deal?" Daniel asked.

"You already know everything you need to know; obsessive bastard who can't take no for an answer. He's the most dangerous man you will ever meet. The last one you will piss off too, so try not to attract his attention. Like at all, because he likes people less than me and will kill you as easy as breathing. You've seen a bit of what he can do. Trust me, that was only scratching the surface of his capabilities."

The three guys nodded at her utterly serious expression. "You make it sound like we should expect to see him again."

"Like I said, he's more than a little obsessed with me. You hang around and it's a question of when, not if."

"So what should we do if he does turn up?"

"Run. If you're lucky he won't be there for you."

"And if he is?"

"Then I'm sure it will be a nice funeral."

"Shaw," Root said disapprovingly. "They get it, you don't have to beleaguer the point."

"No they don't and sugar-coating it won't do anyone any favors."

"Yeah we get it. He's dangerous, stay away from him," Jason said, a hint of irritation edging his tone.

Shaw grunted and turned back around in her seat. "Whatever. You've been warned. Wake me when you need directions."

:\\

Nogales was much like one would expect of a mid-sized, Mexican border town. The roads were in better repair than the desert highway with strip clubs next to grocers and laundromats.

"How do we know where to find this friend of yours?" Root asked.

"Coyotes aren't hard to find around here. Plus I called the Sumir and had the Spyglass do its thing. Most of the skin and drug trade is run out of a club called the Honeytrap."

"Subtle," Root groused.

"It's Mexico. Subtle is rarely the point."

"You weren't kidding," Root commented a minute later when they rolled up on the Honeytrap. It was a single-story building, edges lined with neon that flowed into a giant glowing honeysuckle flower in place of a name. The interior was all silky velvets and soft red lighting, nearly circular booths lining the walls with single-occupancy tall tables filling the space between the booths and the stage. The place almost looked more like a brothel than a strip club, which was probably the point. The bouncer let the five of them in with barely a second glance and Shaw waved the boys off to a booth while she and Root took stools at the bar.

"I'm looking for the Hare," she said in Spanish before the bartender had a chance to ask for their drinks.

"You're in the wrong bar then, gringa. Nobody here by that name."

"Of course not. But why don't you go in the back and tell your boss the Puma is here for him." The bartender considered her for a moment. Flagging a hostess down to take his place behind the bar, he ascended a single flight of railless stairs around the corner.

"Did you just call yourself the Puma?" Root asked, eyes sparkling with a choked-back laugh.

Shaw rolled her eyes. "This part of the country is basically the Wild West. You're not a proper criminal unless you have some ridiculous nickname no one actually uses."

"You're gonna tell me the story behind that, by the way." Shaw just grunted noncommittally.

The bartender returned about ten seconds later with a man in tow. He was slender, wiry, five-nine or five-ten with a close-cropped, evenly salt-and-pepper beard. His mouth widened into a grin as his arms spread, rounding the bar for a hug. Shaw allowed him to embrace her, patting him on the back twice before extricating herself from his grip.

"Marisol! What are you doing back in my part of the world? You said that I would never see you again after you saved my life."

"Never planned on being back, honestly. Only reason I am is because I need help getting into the States."

"I heard about what happened in New York. I thought to myself, 'that can't be Marisol, she is far too young, but I see that you've barely aged a day since the last I saw you."

"What can I say, I've aged gracefully."

Root ordered a daiquiri and looked on in silence as the pair continued to jabber in Spanish. The man Shaw had called the Hare got up after another ten minutes of discussion, returning up the stairs.

"So?" Root asked.

"He's moving a shipment up for us. We leave in the morning."

"Wouldn't it be better to leave at night?"

Shaw shook her head. "Border can't be crossed at night, at least not in this area. Border Patrol has IR drones and cameras covering the area now. No, he's going to get us across with the rest of the illegals, across the desert."

"Sounds like fun."

Shaw snorted. "We're gonna spend the whole day hiking across the desert. When was the last time you spent any time in the wilderness? That's what I thought, " she said when Root didn't reply." And you are gonna need to cover up. You're gonna fry like lobster with your skin. I don't envy you growing up in Texas."

"I didn't usually spend enough time outside for that to be a concern."

"Somehow not a surprise. Just do what Miguel and I tell you and you'll be fine."