The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow

before, but she never fully realized what it meant until the rumors about Adán’s death began to swirl. Then she was besieged—reporters even had the nerve to set up post outside her house in Tijuana. She couldn’t go out the door without being harassed by questions about Adán.

      “How many ways can I say ‘I don’t know’?” she had said to the reporters. “All I can tell you is that I love my brother and pray for his safety.”

       “So you can confirm he’s missing?”

      “I love my brother and pray for his safety.”

       “Is it true your brother was the world’s biggest drug trafficker?”

      “My brother is a businessman. I love him and pray for his safety.”

      Every fresh rumor prompted a new assault. “We’ve heard Adán is in Costa Rica.” “Is it true he’s hiding in the United States?” “Adán has been seen in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Paris …”

      “All I can tell you is that I love my brother and pray for his safety.”

      The pack of hyenas would have eaten little Eva alive, torn her to shreds. If they could have found her. It wasn’t for lack of trying. The media flooded Culiacán, Badiraguato. An ambitious reporter in California even tracked down Eva’s condo in La Jolla. When they couldn’t find her, they pestered Elena.

       “Where is Eva? Where are the boys? There are rumors they’ve been kidnapped. Are they alive?”

      “Señora Barrera is in seclusion,” Elena said. “We ask you to respect her privacy in this difficult time.”

       “You’re public figures.”

      “We’re not,” Elena said. “We’re private businesspeople.”

      It was true—she had retired from the pista secreta eight years ago, when she agreed to turn over the Baja plaza to Adán so he could give it to the Esparzas. She had done so willingly—she was tired of the killings, of the death, that went along with the trade and was happy to live off her many investments.

      And Eva knows as much about the drug trade as she does about particle physics. Goodhearted, beautiful, and stupid. But fecund. She served her purpose. Gave Adán sons and heirs. The twin boys—Miguel and Raúl. And what will become of them? Elena wonders.

      Eva is a young Mexican woman, a young Sinaloan woman. With her father and husband apparently dead, she probably feels that she has to obey her older brother, and Elena wonders what Iván has been telling her.

      I know what I would tell her, Elena thinks. You’re an American citizen and so are the boys. You have enough money to live like a queen the rest of your life. Take your sons and run back to California. Raise your children away from this business, before you and they are trapped in it for another generation. It will take some time, but eventually the media circus will pack up and move to the next town.

      Hopefully.

      The bizarre social alchemy of this vulgar age has turned Adán into that most precious of public commodities—a celebrity. Images of him—old mug shots, random photos taken at social events—are plastered over television screens, computer monitors, front pages of newspapers. The details of his 2004 escape from prison are recited with titillated delight. “Experts” join panels of talking heads to assert Adán’s power, wealth and influence. Mexican “witnesses” are interviewed to testify about Adán’s philanthropy—the clinics he built, the schools, the playgrounds. (“To you he is a drug trafficker. To us he is a hero.”)

      Celebrity culture, Elena thinks.

      An oxymoron.

      Even if you could control the traditional press, corralling social media is like grabbing mercury—it slips out of your hand and breaks into a thousand more pieces. The internet, Twitter, Facebook are electric with “news” about Adán Barrera—every rumor, whisper, innuendo and bit of misinformation went viral. Behind the screen of digital anonymity, people inside the organization who know they shouldn’t be talking are leaking what information they have, mixing little bits of truth into a stew of falsehood.

      And the most pernicious rumor of all—

      Adán is alive.

       It wasn’t Adán at all in Guatemala, but a double. The Lord of the Skies outsmarted his enemies yet again.

       Adán is in a coma, hidden away in a hospital in Dubai.

       I saw Adán in Durango.

       In Los Mochis, in Costa Rica, in Mazatlán.

       I saw him in a dream. The spirit of Adán came to me and told me everything will be all right.

      Like Jesus, Elena thinks, resurrection is always possible when there’s no body. And just like Jesus, Adán now has disciples.

      Elena walks from the living room into the enormous kitchen. She’s thought of selling and downsizing now that her sons are grown and out. The maids busy preparing breakfast look away and seem even busier as they try to avoid her glance. The servants always know first, Elena thinks. Somehow they always hear of every death, every birth, every hurried engagement or secret affair before we do.

      Elena pours herself a cup of herbal tea and walks out onto the deck. Her house is in the hills above the city and she looks down at the bowl of polluted smoke that is Tijuana and thinks of all the blood that her family shed—in both the active and passive sense—to control this place.

      Her brother Adán and her brother Raúl—long dead—had done that, taken the Baja plaza and turned it into the base of a national empire that had risen and fallen and risen again, and now …

      Now Iván Esparza has it.

      Just as he will have Adán’s crown.

      With Adán’s sons mere toddlers, Iván is next in the line of succession. The news of Guatemala had barely reached their ears before he was ready to declare his father and Adán dead and announce that he was taking over.

      Elena and Núñez talked him down from that tree.

      “It’s premature,” Núñez said. “We don’t yet know for a fact that they’re dead, and you really don’t want to step up to the top position anyway.”

      “Why not?” Iván demanded.

      “It’s too dangerous,” Núñez said. “Too exposed. In the absence of your father and Adán, we don’t know who will stay loyal.”

      “Some ambiguity over their deaths has its uses,” Elena said. “The doubt about whether they might be alive keeps the wolves at bay for a while. But if you announce that the king is dead, everyone from the dukes to the barons to the knights to the peasants will see a weakness in the Sinaloa cartel as a chance to seize the throne.”

      Iván reluctantly agreed to wait.

      He’s a classic, almost stereotypical third-generation spoiled narco brat, Elena thinks. Hotheaded, violently inclined. Adán didn’t like or trust him and worried about his taking over when Nacho died or retired.

      So do I, Elena thinks.

      But the only alternatives are her own sons.

      They’re Adán’s true nephews, the Barrera blood flows through them. Her oldest son, Rudolfo, has done his time, figuratively and literally. He went into the family business young, trafficking cocaine from Tijuana into California, and did well for years—bought nightclubs, owned top recording bands, and managed champion boxers. A beautiful wife and three beautiful children.

      No one loved life more than Rudolfo.

      Then he sold 250 grams of coke to a DEA undercover at a motel in San Diego.

      Two