PROLOGUE

Small and thin, she lay motionless in the gutter, the cacophonous, late-night New Delhi street bustling with shoulders rubbing, people passing, and cars honking. Her young face and long dark hair were coated in blood, her right cheek and forehead peeled by road friction. Dressed in rags and barefoot, her feet were blackened by grime.

“She’s just a child,” Constable Kyra Dillon, only 26 herself, expelled softly, kneeling by the body. 

She glanced up at her partner, Constable Anil Chandra.

“And none of the hundred people here saw the vehicle that hit her?”

“Seems not,” Anil replied, standing, his eyes on the girl.

Kyra scanned the gathered crowd. 

“Surely someone saw the car that did this!” she called out, frustrated.

“It was a black car, maybe a sedan,” a gentleman from the front replied.

“And you saw it?”

“No, maám.”

“Then who did?”

“This other man—he’s gone now… He said it was a black car.”

“And who is he, this other man?”

“I don’t know maám.”

“So, our only witness to a hit and run has just wandered off?”

“Apparently, maám.”

“What was she doing on the road in the first place?”

“Selling good luck charms.”

Kyra observed the girl and the vacant surrounding area.

“Then where are they, these lucky charms?”

“Someone took them.”

“Not very lucky, are they?” Kyra huffed. “How long ago was she hit?”

“Maybe an hour, I’m thinking. I’ve been here for forty minutes,” the man said.

Kyra shook her head despondently Anil’s way.

“It’s 2:00 a.m.… She’s barely ten and selling trinkets on the street at one in the morning.

 “Does anyone know who she is?” she asked, turning to the man, the apparent spokesperson for the group.

“She’s a local street girl.”

“And where’s her family?”

“No family, maám. Her mother, father, and brother died last year. They got sick. They were originally from somewhere up north—not from here.”

Kyra leaned over the dead girl in the gutter and held her hand. In her short time on the force, she had seen too much death, too many impoverished children used and abused, doing whatever they could to survive. Children who never experienced childhood, or at least what it should be, seeking happiness from a flicker in their day.

“You poor little thing,” she uttered.

She felt movement. The girl's tiny fingers lightly gripped her own. 

“She’s alive! “Get the paramedics! Now!” she snapped to Anil.

She dashed her fingers to the girl’s neck… There was a pulse. It was slow and weak but consistent. Leaning in, she studied the girl’s blood-coated face… It would have been pretty—not now.

“Come on, little one, hang in there.”

The child’s eyelids drowsily opened. Large brown eyes, tired and vague, looked at her from behind the blood.

“Maman?” the girl's voice hushed weakly, her gaze deep into Kyra's heart.

Connected to the girl like no one else existed, Kyra shifted in, torn between hope and anguish.

“No darling, my name is Kyra.” 

“Maman?” the girl repeated softly.

“No, darling. I’m Kyra.”

“Papa? Raj?” the girl whispered, her eyes losing their connection to life.

“Your Papa’s not here…is Raj your brother?” 

The girl's eyes began closing… She was fading.

Kyra looked up at the crowd, their eyes on the spectacle. The girl shouldn’t die like this, alone and sad, an anonymous child amongst a street of strangers, her death a momentary curiosity forgotten by the morning.

“Quickly, does anyone know her name?!”

“Anika!” a woman yelled from the back. She calls herself Anika!

Kyra leaned down and came in close.

“Anika! Anika! Wake up! Wake up, Anika!” 

The girl’s eyes remained closed. 

“Shit! …Ah, fuck! …Anika, It’s Maman! It’s your Maman!”

The girl's eyelids sluggishly opened and stared into hers.

“Maman?” the child uttered.

“Yes darling, it’s Maman… Maman wants you to keep your eyes open.” 

CHAPTER 1  Maria Sanchez

Sixteen Years Later

The water pushed briskly against Maria Sanchez’s short legs as she paced across the Rio Grande with her group of twenty—mostly young men—a few women. Three of their troop had traveled from Nicaragua, two from Venezuela, and one from Africa; the others were Mexican like herself.

They had departed their meeting point only an hour earlier, at sunrise. Yet, the cloudless morning had heated quickly, beading sweat on her forehead despite the coolness of the river’s flow against her calves. It was a firm current that demanded concentration, especially as the pebbly, undulating riverbed made foot placement tricky.

At least she was twenty-four and fit, unlike the older couple ahead. Even from behind, she saw their anxiousness as they interlocked arms and assisted each other’s wade, a bag over the man’s shoulder not helping. That’s all they were allowed, one bag each—her own being a modest backpack stuffed with a set of spare clothes, a jacket, a bottle of water, some money, her National Electoral ID card, and her phone.

The heavy, plodding splash of a woman in her early thirties emanated from her right. Also struggling, the woman was both pleasant and apprehensive. Maria had met her that morning as their group assembled, and unlike her, the woman had people waiting for her in the US—Phoenix if she made it that far. Though her relationship with them seemed vague at best. 

“Just some people,” was all the woman elaborated.

The elderly couple in front, having slowed those behind, including Maria, finally stepped up the embankment onto U.S. soil. Their ascent onto dry land was helped by the sharp tug on their arms by a tall, muscular, Caucasian man of perhaps forty. Wearing a tan cowboy hat, blue jeans, and a grey and blue plaid shirt, he had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder—and she had seen enough of them to know its make. 

Her turn to depart the river, she ignored the outreached hand of the armed American. Leaning into the slope, she pushed her hands on her knees and efforted up two steep steps. Taking a few more paces onto level ground, she shuffled aside to make room for those behind. 

She had made it. She stood on U.S. soil.