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excruciating. The border guard had nearly given her a heart attack when he’d spent long minutes scrutinizing Moira Fitzgerald’s passport. There’d been another terrorist alert and the guards were spotchecking the cars coming through. Charlotte could feel the blood oozing into the packing gauze. She had on a white tee shirt she’d bought in a package of ten from a supermarket outside Chicago, to be worn under a cheap scratchy sweater. She’d taken the sweater off without thinking. Soon, the blood would seep through the gauze, staining the tee shirt. The guard would surely notice. Her shoulder throbbed. The blood would be showing any minute now.
    Charlotte was used to schooling her face to impassivity so she knew she looked relaxed, even bored, while under the cotton tee shirt her heart was racing. Nervous sweat trickled down her temples but she didn’t wipe it away. The guard would just assume she was the usual gringa who couldn’t deal with the heat.
    He was leaning with one arm on the sill of the driver’s window, studying her passport, then looking intently at her.
    The woman in the passport photo, Charlotte’s maid Moira, didn’t really look like Charlotte. The face in the passport was round and Moira had light brown hair. Charlotte’s face was slender and she was blonde. But police officers were used to women changing their hair color and losing weight. To a not-very-attentive eye, she and Moira shared a look—young, healthy, attractive, well-groomed.
    Charlotte couldn’t smile to make herself look more like the woman in the photo. Simply couldn’t. She didn’t know how to anymore. So she sat very still behind the wheel of the SUV, staring straight ahead while the guard decided her future.
    “ Guapa ,” the guard murmured, handing her the passport back. Beautiful. She relaxed the sweaty death grip on the wheel by a fraction.
    He was flirting.
    Charlotte’s breathing slowed, and panic loosened its hold on her brain. She turned her head. She should smile at him, flirt back a little. It would be expected, after all. A harmless little exchange between a man and a woman who would never see each other again. He was an attractive young man, with glossy black hair, healthy olive-toned skin, and sparkling dark brown eyes.
    She couldn’t flirt, couldn’t smile, couldn’t do anything but simply look at him. After a long moment, he stepped back and gave the roof of the car a slap, indicating she was free to go.
    She shot out like a bat from hell, heart racing, driving for nine hours straight through the desert until she was so exhausted she found herself weaving across the center line at dusk. She had to stop or she’d kill herself. She turned off at the next town, San Luis, nestled along the rim of a long, curving bay.
    And the miracles started happening.
    San Luis was lovely at dusk, the dying sun’s rosy light gentle and kind to the many ramshackle buildings. As the big red disk of the sun slipped beneath the Pacific, Charlotte stopped in the main square overlooking the beach.
    cantina fortuna, a wooden sign read outside an adobe tavern.
    Yes, please, Charlotte thought. I need all the luck I can get. The cantina was run by a boisterous Mexican family, overlooked by the all-knowing black eyes of a short, stout elderly lady. She took one look at Charlotte, and without a word, sat her down on a bench and started bringing food. Tacos, bocadillos, burritos, albondigas. At first, Charlotte had looked at the heaps of steaming, fragrant food in despair, her stomach clenching.
    “ Comes, mujer ,” the elderly lady said gently, and put a fork in her hand. Eat, girl. Charlotte dug into the tastiest burrito she’d ever eaten, taking tiny bites at first, uncertain how her stomach would react.
    It reacted enthusiastically. She hadn’t had a warm, home-cooked meal in what felt like forever, simply grabbing what junk food she could while on the run. The elderly lady sat across from her, watching her eat, until a family