Chapter 1

Prologue

Cuidad El Paso, USA

Late spring

4:30 A.M.

Juan Pablo Garcia y Calderon crept along the dark alley. He moved as quietly as his feline counterparts who haunted the place. They slipped off ahead and aside, silent as shadows, granting a fellow traveler passage. If the saints and Mother Mary were kind, he’d evade those who pursued him. Approaching dawn tinged the eastern horizon with the faintest hint of color, but in El Paso’s bleakest barrio, the only colors were shades of gray.

A slight sound halted his progress. A whimper, a whine, the merest whisper of distress? Where? What? He stopped to listen with total concentration. Again, there, just to his left. Close. He stooped to reach with a careful hand, mindful of hidden dangers. Rags, tattered papers, and trash were all his questing fingers found. Then…Wait…softness and a trace of warmth. He groped deeper in the litter, finding a small body, merely thinly furred skin stretched over fragile bones, but it stirred and gave off a trace of living heat.

The creature did not resist when he scooped it up. The fading darkness and his night-tuned vision let him discern the color—pale tan—and the shape, head too big for the small body with stick-like legs and large ears. A Chihuahua puppy by the looks of it. He tucked the shivering little shape into his sweatshirt and cradled it there with one hand as he pressed on, moving faster now under the spur of urgency. He needed to be far from here before sunrise.

No time to dawdle now. Albuquerque and the relative safety of Tio Tomás’s home were still far away. Juan broke into a trot, trying to steady the small dog against his body. He still scanned the area around him as he loped along, alert for hazards and danger, but eager to leave the ugly reality of the border city as far behind him as he could. He’d made it this far, and with luck, he’d never return to Cuidad Juarez and its war-torn streets again. His brief time there had almost cost him his life. He’d learned it had taken his brother’s. Pedro had been working for the Federales undercover and someone had caught onto him—that was the only thing Juan could figure.

The puppy didn’t move as they headed toward safety. At the moment, he was not even sure of the gender ofthe pup he’d found but its shivering had stopped. Still he could feel the slight flutter of breath and heartbeat and knew the little dog was alive. Saving it became almost as critical a need as saving himself. They were two of a kind—throw-away refugees, devalued by the unforgiving society that had made them outcasts and judged their lives of no worth. Juan was tough. If the pup were equally so, they would make it.

Sunrise found him in the northwest quadrant of the city, moving along the Rio Grande, between it and thehumming busy-ness of Interstate 25. Following those two arteries would lead him eventually to Albuquerque. It was a long way to walk, but he’d already come a longer way. A few more kilometers, even many, were not too far to go for safety and a chance at tomorrow.

1

Ten months later

Albuquerque, NM

Troy Cantrell stepped through the revolving door of the new high-rise AmBank Building into the sun-washed rush of midday. Maybe a walk would clear his head. It held a tangle of demands and issues that had become the norm in his job as a financial advisor in these troubled times. Clients were much choosier and more suspicious than they had been mere months ago. They asked tough questions and challenged traditional notions he’d learned in college while earning his MBA. Times really were achangin’ and a person had to change along with them, but it was not often easy and it was always stressful.

He turned down Lomas Boulevard and stepped out briskly, dodging among others hurrying one way or strolling along the other, his goal the small park a few blocks away where he could find relative quiet and maybe catch a bit of calming sunshine and peace for a few minutes before he returned to work.

A streak of tan came shooting toward him, zigzagging among legs and bicycles. What the hell? As it got close, he recognized the scampering scrap of fur as a small dog, probably a Chihuahua. Incredibly, the creature came straight to him, slowing its headlong flight right at his feet. There it sat, looking up at him with unblinking bright eyes, a twitching, inquisitive black nose, and chocolate-edged ears cocked like antennas.

As he reached down to scoop up the little critter before it came to harm in the flurry of traffic and pedestrians, a slender dark young man burst through the crowd and skidded to a stop when his gaze fell on the dog, cradled now in Troy’s left arm.