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

what she does, shoot junk, a verb.

      Now she fights off an urge to puke.

      Jacqui hates puking. She needs a wake-up.

      Elbowing Travis, she says, “Hey.”

      “Hey.” He’s out of it.

      “I’m going out to score.”

      “’Kay.”

      Lazy prick, she thinks, I’m going out to score for you, too. She pulls on an old UConn sweatshirt, slips into her jeans, then puts on a pair of purple Nikes she found at a yard sale.

      Slides the door open and steps out into a Staten Island Sunday morning.

      Specifically Tottenville, down on the south end of the island across the river from Perth Amboy. The van is parked in the lot at Tottenville Commons, out behind the Walgreens along Amboy Road, but she knows they’ll have to move this morning before the security guys throw them out.

      She walks into the drugstore, ignores the cashier’s dirty look and goes to the back to the restroom because she really has to pee. Does her business, washes her hands, splashes water on her face and is pissed at herself because she forgot to bring her toothbrush and her mouth tastes like day-old shit.

      Which is pretty much what you look like, Jacqui thinks.

      She doesn’t have any makeup on, her long brown hair is dirty and stringy and she’s going to have to find a place to deal with that before she goes to work today but right now all she hears is her mother’s voice: You’re such a pretty girl, Jacqueline, when you take care of yourself.

      What I’m trying to do, Mom, Jacqui thinks as she walks out of the store and gives the cashier a fuck you smile on her way out.

      Fuck you, bitch, you try living in a van.

      Which is what she and Travis have been doing since her mom threw them out, what, three months ago, when she came home from the bar early—miracle of miracles—and found them shooting up.

      So they moved into Travis’s van and live basically as gypsies now. Not homeless, Jacqui insists, because the van is a home, but they’re … what’s the word … peripatetic. She’s always liked the word peripatetic. She wishes it rhymed with something so she could use it in a song, but it really doesn’t. It sort of rhymes with pathetic, but Jacqui doesn’t want to go there because it has the ring of truth.

      We are, she thinks, kind of pathetic.

      They want to get an apartment, plan to get an apartment, but so far the first—and last—and the damage deposit have been going up their arms.

      Back out in the parking lot she starts working the phone and calls her dealer, Marco, but it goes right to voice mail. She leaves a quick message—It’s Jacqui. Looking for you. Call back.

      She really wants to hook up by phone because she’s starting to feel seriously sick and doesn’t want to have to get in the van and go all the way over to Princes Bay or way the hell up to Richmond, where the street dealers work.

      It’s too far and it’s too risky, because the cops are clamping down, chasing the slingers inside. Or worse, you buy from some narc and get busted and what Jacqui really, really doesn’t want is to get arrested and detox at Rikers.

      She’s about to go back to the van and drive down to Waldbaum’s parking lot where you can usually score and then her phone buzzes and it’s Marco and he isn’t happy. “It’s Sunday morning.”

      “I know, I need a wake-up.”

      “You should have saved some from last night.”

      “Yes, Mom.”

      “What do you need?” Marco asks.

      “Two bags.”

      “You want me to come out for twenty bucks?”

      Jesus, why is he hassling her? Her nose is starting to run and she thinks she’s going to puke. “I’m getting sick, Marco.”

      “Okay, where are you?”

      “The Walgreens on Amboy.”

      “I’m at Micky D’s,” Marco says. “I’ll meet you behind the Laundromat. You know where that is?”

      Yeah, she does her laundry there all the time. Well, not all the time, when she thinks about it. When it gets too disgusting. “Duh, yes.”

      “Half an hour,” Marco says.

      “To walk across the parking lot?”

      “I just got my food.”

      “Okay, I’ll come there.”

      “Ten minutes,” Marco says. “Behind the Laundromat.”

      “Bring me a coffee,” Jacqui says. “Milk, four sugars.”

      “Yes, Lady Mary,” Marco says. “You want, like, a McMuffin or something?”

      “Just the coffee.” She’s just going to be able to keep that down, never mind greasy food.

      Jacqui crosses the parking lot and walks out to Page Avenue, then up to the next strip mall, which has a CVS, a McDonald’s, a grocery store, a liquor store, an Italian restaurant and the Laundromat.

      She walks behind the CVS and waits out the back of the Laundromat.

      Five minutes later, Marco pulls up in his Ford Taurus. He rolls down the window and hands her the coffee.

      “You drove across the parking lot?” Jacqui asks. “Global warming, Marco? Ever heard of that?”

      “You have the money?” Marco asks. “And don’t tell me you’ll get it, you’re totally out of credit right now.”

      “I have it.” She looks around and then hands him a twenty.

      He reaches into the console and then slips her two glassine envelopes. “And a buck for the coffee.”

      “Really?” Marco’s gotten kind of salty since he started dealing. Sometimes he forgets he’s just another addict, slinging shit so he has the money to get himself well. A lot of people are doing that these days—every dealer Jacqui knows is a user. She digs into her jeans pocket, finds a dollar bill and gives it to him. “I thought you were being a gentleman.”

      “No, I’m a feminist.”

      “Where are you going to be later?”

      Marco holds his little finger to his mouth and his thumb to his ear—“Call me”—and pulls away.

      Jacqui puts the envelopes in her pocket and walks back to the van.

      Travis is awake.

      “I scored,” Jacqui says, pulling the envelopes out.

      “Where?”

      “From Marco.”

      “He’s an asshole,” Travis says.

      “Okay, you go the next time,” Jacqui says.

      Fuck the lazy bastard, she thinks. She loves him, but, Jesus, he can be a pain in the ass sometimes. And speaking of Our Lord and Savior, Travis looks a little like Jesus—shoulder-length hair and a beard, all slightly tinged with red. And thin like Jesus, at least like he looks in all the pictures.

      Jacqui finds the cut-out bottom of a soda can she uses instead of a spoon for a cooker and pours the heroin into it. She fills her syringe out of a water bottle, squirts it into the heroin, then flicks on her lighter and holds it under the cooker until the solution bubbles. Taking the filter out of a cigarette, she dips it in water and gently lays it into the solution. Then she puts the tip of the needle into the filter and sucks the liquid into the syringe.

      She