Roth’s only response is a gunshot in her direction.

Shrieking what I can only imagine to be first-class curses in their code language, two cartel women and an entire line of men in suits break from the girl’s side and charge at Roth, gold-plated guns blazing.

Roth and his soldiers start picking off the Salazars who rush at him, one by one.

A man with a blinding snarl I recognize as the lieutenant of Monterrey grabs hold of the girl. He tries to drag her from the dam, but a bullet lodges into his thigh and he stumbles.

Is that a briefcase in his hand?

It falls to the ground. Swallowed up by storming feet.

How can something so small carry such a world-altering weapon?

Without a second thought I start sprinting toward it.

Toward Roth.

I’m still forty yards and a battlefield away.

I’ll never get there.

But a Hart has to try.

AVA

I’m falling through the darkness, strapped to a chair. My body feels battered, bruised, like I just hit a wall of concrete.

Hands claw at me—tugging at my ankles and wrists. Just like the nightmares Mira would have in the basement back at Trinity Heights.

But unlike my sister, I don’t hear my mother’s voice singing to me, soothing me.

Only my own drowned screams.

I was set on fire. Burned alive.

And now I’m sinking again. Headed for a watery grave.

Then my wrists and ankles are suddenly free to kick. To fight for life.

But they feel as heavy as lead. Useless.

An arm wraps around my chest, then another, pulling me to the water’s surface in a chaotic whirl of bubbles and limbs.

When I emerge, I gulp down air, still screaming.

Someone has hold of me, keeping me afloat. A lifesaving grip, swimming me to the shore, past pieces of the shattered wooden chairs. Voices shout at me over and over, but all I hear are my own cries.

I’m alive, I’m alive. I didn’t burn.

When we reach solid ground, I frantically search my body, expecting to find blackened skin, severe burns. But I see only minor holes in my uniform, minimal damage to my hair and exposed skin. How? I was set on fire. Ciro’s high-tech uniform couldn’t have saved me so wholly from those flames.

Stunned and disoriented, I take deep, shaking breaths to try to stop my cries.

I’m alive. I didn’t burn.

My eyes sting from the gasoline, but through blurry tears I see something small floating in front of me.

A dragonfly. Electric blue and yellow, buzzing peacefully. Its four paper-thin wings glide over a bag lying discarded on the embankment.

Mira’s.

I pick it up and cling to it like an anchor.

Suddenly I notice what’s happening outside myself.

Loud bangs resolve into gunshots. Shouting into words. Whirling shapes into people.

“Ava, are you all right?!”

Theo.

He reaches out his hand, attempting to help me to my feet.

I jump, rising on my own, searching for a gun.

My sister was wrong about Theo. He’s a Roth.

A liar.

Dangerous.

He set me on fire.

I find a pistol on the ground, lift it, and take aim.

“We switched one of the cans with a fire-retardant gel!” Theo spits out, desperate to explain. “It was part of my escape plan . . . The servant girl helped me! She’s really a militia spy.”

My head’s spinning.

The bottom of Theo’s pants are scorched, and he grasps Mira’s knife tight, his knuckles cut and bleeding. He must’ve been the one to cut my cuffs—he’s the one who saved me from drowning.

Beside us, Alexander and Barend unload their weapons, holding back a cartel assault. My old instincts come rushing back to me. We have to move.

The man who was ignited alongside me is unharmed too. He fights back to back with Lucía, bullet shells dropping to their feet like a golden hailstorm.

Boom! Boom! Firework explosions go off forty yards away, brighter than the Fourth of July, lighting up the battlefield.

It’s chaos. The Salazar cartel and the People’s Militia bitterly fight all across the stronghold’s vast property. But it’s not just the Salazars that our side’s combating with now—there’s a second enemy at play.

Roth’s State Guard.

This is where the bulk of his soldiers must have been. Hiding in Mexico. All at once it hits me that Roth’s making a play to seize control of the cartel’s water supply.

If he controls the priceless resource, he can rebuild his empire twice as strong.

This is the real reason he fled here—not to trade weapons—he already has the most powerful one of all.

“¡Tenemos que seguir adelante!” Lucía warns. We have to press forward!

Then there’s a short break in the gunfire.

Alexander takes advantage of the reprieve and falls on his son. “Mijo!” He embraces Theo so tight it’s like he never plans to let go. Another boom! causes him to finally pull away.

“You have to remove your uniform!” Alexander appeals. He starts pulling off Theo’s officer’s jacket, desperate to make his son less of a target.

Our team or the People’s Militia could confuse Theo for a State Guard and kill him by mistake.

When Theo’s left standing there in his shirtsleeves, half-naked and vulnerable, a translator device fastened to him like a gold collar, I remember what Mira brought all this way just for him. I quickly tear open her bag and pull out the extra battle uniform.

“Hurry—put this on,” I tell him.

Lucía rushes over to unlock his necklace with an expert tap of her fingers. When two rapid firework bursts illuminate the casualties strewn across the war zone, the wounded crying out for help, my head starts spinning again.

“You’re bleeding,” Alexander says. My hand jumps to my throat, tracing the gash the vicious capo cut into my neck. Leaving her mark on me.

Alexander strips a piece of cloth from the cast-off State Guard uniform, presses it to my neck, then resumes unloading his weapon into the onslaught of soldiers and cartel gunmen.

Firing round after round, Barend withdraws to my side and crouches. “We’re easy marks standing here, we need to move,” he shouts. “Can you run? Roth’s still on the dam.”

All at once my focus zeros in on our target, the reason we’re all here: Roth.

I take Barend’s night vision goggles, press them to my face, and look up just as Roth raises his pistol and shoots President Moore in the chest.

The most influential leader in the world falls to the concrete, dead, splayed out like a rag doll. Roth steps over his body and grabs hold of the briefcase, continuing to volley bullets at the advancing cartel, surrounded by his Guards.

This time, Roth didn’t run from the fight.

And neither will we.

Then my heart jumps to my throat when I zoom out my goggles’ field of vision.

Mira.

She’s sprinting for Roth, with Haven and Skye at her side.

Theo, now in his charcoal-black battle gear, sees her too. I feel his body tense next to mine.

We raise our weapons.

“To the dam!” I shout.

We can’t let her face Roth without us.

MIRA

There are just too many.

The Salazars, the Guards, they keep coming in waves.