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

Ric asked her.

      “I like to get high, I like to fuck guys, I like to fuck girls, and I like to kill people,” Belinda said. “If I have a soul, it’s not much of a soul.”

      Now Belinda looks at him and says, “Anyway, I couldn’t let the crown prince blow his own brains out.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “Think about it,” she says, handing back the joint. “Barrera’s probably dead. Nacho’s dead for sure. Rudolfo is a zero. Your father? I love your father, I kill for him, I’d die for him, but he’s a placeholder. You’re the godson.”

      Ric says, “You’re talking crazy. Iván’s next in line.”

      “I’m just saying.” She takes the joint from him, sets it down and kisses him. “Lie back, baby. If you can’t fuck me, I’ll fuck you. Let me fuck you, baby.”

      She licks her finger and then snakes it into his ass. “You like that, don’t you?”

      “Fuck.”

      “Oh, I will, baby,” she says. “I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you good.”

      She does.

      With her mouth and her fingers, and when he’s about to come she takes her mouth off him, shoves her fingers in deep and says, “It could be yours, all of it. The whole cartel, the whole country, if you want it.”

      Because you’re Adán Barrera’s godson, he hears her tell him.

      His rightful heir.

      The anointed one.

       El Ahijado.

      Weeks went by, then months, then a year.

      The anniversary of the reputed battle in Guatemala coincides with the Day of the Dead, and makeshift shrines to Adán Barrera—photos of him, candles, coins, little bottles of booze and papel picado—spring up all over the country, even in Juárez. Some are left intact while others are torn down by angry adherents claiming there’s no need for shrines because “Adán vive.”

      For Keller, the Christmas holidays come and go with little fanfare. He joins Marisol and Ana for a subdued dinner and an exchange of small gifts, then goes back to Juárez and gives Chuy a new video game that the kid seems to like. The next morning’s newspapers carry stories of toys magically appearing for poor children in rural villages and city barrios in Sinaloa and Durango from their “Tío Adán.” Baskets of food arrive in town plazas, gifts from “El Señor.”

      Keller barely acknowledges New Year’s Eve. He and Marisol share an early dinner, a glass of champagne, and a chaste kiss. He’s in bed asleep before the ball drops in Times Square.

      Two weeks into the new year, Chuy disappears.

      Keller comes back from grocery shopping, the television is off, the Xbox cables unhooked.

      In Chuy’s room the backpack Keller had bought him is gone, as are the few clothes Chuy owns. His toothbrush is missing from the ceramic rack in the bathroom. Whatever storms blew inside Chuy’s head, Keller thinks, have apparently driven him to leave. At least, as Keller discovers when he searches the room, he took his meds with him.

      Keller drives around the neighborhood, asking at local shops and internet cafés. No one has seen Chuy. He cruises the places downtown where teenagers hang out, but doesn’t see Chuy. On the off chance that the kid has decided to go out to Valverde, he calls Marisol, but no one has seen him there, either.

      Maybe, Keller thinks, he’s crossed the bridge back into El Paso where he grew up, so Keller goes over and drives around the barrio, asks some reasonably hostile gangbangers who instantly make him as some sort of cop and tell him that they haven’t seen any Chuy Barajos.

      Keller reaches out to old connections with the El Paso PD narcotics squad and finds out that Chuy is a person of interest in several local homicides back in ’07 and ’08 and they’d like to talk with him. In any case, they’ll keep an eye out and give Keller a call if they pick him up.

      Going back to Juárez, Keller finds Terry Blanco at San Martín over on Avenida Escobar downing a Caguama at the bar.

      “Who is this kid?” the cop asks when Keller explains the favor he wants.

      “You know who he is,” Keller says. “You see him when you scope my house.”

      “Just checking on your welfare,” Blanco says. He’s drunk more than one beer. “Tough times here, Keller. We don’t know who to report to anymore, who’s in charge. You think he’s alive?”

      “Who?”

      “Barrera.”

      “I don’t know,” Keller says. “Have you seen this kid?”

      “You know how many fucked-up kids we got running around Mexico?” Blanco asks. “Shit, just in Juárez? Hundreds? Thousands? What’s one more? What’s this one to you?”

      Keller doesn’t have an answer for that. He says, “Just pick him up if you find him. Bring him to me.”

      “Sure, why not?”

      Keller leaves some money on the bar for Blanco’s next beer. Then he gets back in his car, calls Orduña and explains the situation.

      “This Barajos was in Guatemala?” Orduña asks.

      “Yeah.”

      “Was he a witness?”

      “To what, Roberto?”

      “Okay.”

      “Look, you owe this kid,” Keller says. “He killed Forty.”

      After a long silence Orduña says, “We’ll take good care of him. But, Arturo, you know the odds of finding him are …”

      “I know.”

      Infinitesimal.

      The long drug war has left thousands of orphans, shattered families and dislocated teenagers. And that doesn’t include the thousands fleeing gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, passing through Mexico to try to find sanctuary in the United States. A lot of them don’t make it.

      Chuy is now both a monster and a ghost.

      Senator Ben O’Brien calls.

      He’s in El Paso, phones Keller and asks for a meeting. What he actually says is “Keller, let me buy you a beer.”

      “Where are you staying?”

      “The Indigo. On Kansas Street. You know it?”

      Keller knows it. He drives up to the city and meets O’Brien at the hotel bar. The senator has gone back to his roots, wearing a denim shirt and Lucchese boots. His Stetson is perched on his lap. Good as his word, he brings a pitcher of beer, pours one for Keller and says, “I saw something interesting driving through El Paso today—a homemade sign that read ‘Adán Vive.’”

      Keller isn’t surprised—he’s seen the same signs in Juárez and heard that they’re all over the place in Sinaloa and Durango. “What can I tell you? The man has a following.”

      “He’s becoming Che Guevara,” O’Brien says.

      “I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder.”

      “You heard anything more?” O’Brien asks. “About his death?”

      “I don’t follow that world anymore.”

      “Bullshit.”

      Keller shrugs—it’s true.

      “Do you read the American papers?” O’Brien asks.

      “The sports pages,” Keller