The dust came first, always. It rose from the hardpan in ochre clouds, settled on everything — the cracked leather of saddles, the warped planks of the mission steps, the black fabric of Sister Marguerite's habit. She stood in the doorway of the mission's small infirmary, watching three riders approach through the heat shimmer. The sun was a white coin hammered flat against the sky.
Behind her, a child coughed. Wet, rattling. The fourth one this week.
"Sister." Father Brennan's voice, low and careful. He'd come up beside her without sound, the way he did when he was worried. "You should step inside."
She didn't move. The riders were closer now — she could make out details. Two men flanking a woman. The woman rode like she'd been born to it, spine straight, hands easy on the reins. Expensive boots. A carpetbag strapped behind her saddle. The men had the look of hired guns — tied-down holsters, eyes that never stopped moving.
"Sister Marguerite."
"I see them, Father."
Another cough from inside. She felt it in her chest like a fist closing. Little Ana, seven years old, fever that wouldn't break. And before Ana, there'd been Miguel. Before Miguel, the Reyes twins. All of them drinking from the mission well, all of them sick within days.
The riders pulled up at the base of the steps. Dust swirled and settled. The woman swung down from her horse with practiced ease — silk dress already filmed with grime, hat pinned at an angle that suggested vanity hadn't quite died despite the hard travel. She looked up at Sister Marguerite with eyes the color of creek water.
"This the mission?" Her voice had East Coast polish worn thin at the edges.
"San Marcos Mission," Father Brennan said. "How can we help you?"
The woman's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "I'm looking for medical care. Heard you had an infirmary."
"We do." Sister Marguerite descended the steps. Up close, she could see the shadows under the woman's eyes, the way she held herself — careful, like something hurt. "What's the injury?"
"Not for me." The woman glanced back at her companions. Neither had dismounted. "For my husband. He's three hours behind us, coming by wagon. Took a bullet two days ago. Needs tending."
Sister Marguerite felt something shift in her awareness — the old instinct she'd spent six years trying to bury. The woman's story had holes. The timing didn't track. Bullet two days ago but she'd ridden ahead, left him hours behind? And the two men with her weren't looking at the mission — they were watching the town, the street, the few people visible in the afternoon heat.
"A bullet," she said carefully. "Was there a doctor in the last town?"
"Dead River?" The woman's laugh was brief, bitter. "That town doesn't have shit except a saloon and a crooked card game. Your mission is the closest thing to medical care for fifty miles."
That was true enough. San Marcos sat at the edge of nothing — too small to be called a town, too stubborn to die. The mine had played out three years back. Most folks had moved on. What remained was the mission, a general store, a stable, and the hollow-eyed remnants of hope.
"We'll do what we can," Sister Marguerite said. "When your husband arrives—"
"Catherine." One of the men spoke for the first time, voice tight. "Someone's coming."
They all turned. Another rider, moving fast, cutting a line of dust down the main street. Sister Marguerite's hand moved without thought — reached for something that hadn't hung at her hip in six years. She caught herself, forced her fingers to stillness against the rough fabric of her habit.
The rider resolved into a boy, maybe sixteen, on a horse too good for him. He pulled up hard, the animal dancing sideways, foam at its mouth.
"Sister Marguerite!" The boy's face was flushed, wild. "It's the Alvarez place. Someone's shot Tom Alvarez. He's alive but—" The boy's eyes skittered to the strangers, back to her. "The sheriff's there. He sent me to fetch you."
Father Brennan touched her elbow. A warning, maybe. Or a question.
Sister Marguerite looked at the woman in the silk dress, at the two men still mounted, still watching everything with eyes that calculated and measured. She looked at the boy on the lathered horse. She thought about Ana's cough, about the pattern of sickness, about the way violence had a smell — cordite and copper and fear.
"Father Brennan will prepare the infirmary," she said. "I'll go to the Alvarez place."
"Sister, I don't think—"
"Someone's been shot." She met his eyes. "That takes precedence."
She moved past the strangers, down the steps, toward the stable. The woman called after her: "My husband will be here in a few hours. You'll be back?"
Sister Marguerite didn't answer. She was already calculating distance, time, what she'd need from the medical supplies. The boy followed her, leading his horse, talking fast about what he'd seen — Tom Alvarez on his porch, blood soaking through his shirt, the sheriff kneeling beside him, the strange thing about it all being that nobody heard the shot, nobody saw the shooter.
The stable was dim and cool. Her horse, a gray mare named Witness, nickered at her approach. Sister Marguerite ran her hands down the mare's neck, the familiar ritual steadying her thoughts. She could feel it trying to surface — the old self, the one who'd known how to read violence, how to move through it. The one who'd killed three men before her twenty-fifth birthday.
She'd buried that woman. Taken vows. Promised God and herself that those hands would heal, not harm.
But San Marcos was dying of something worse than drought, and the dust tasted like blood, and somewhere in the mission a child was coughing herself toward a grave.
Sister Marguerite swung into the saddle. The boy was already mounted, waiting.
"Show me," she said.
They rode.
The Alvarez place sat a mile west of the mission, where the desert started winning its war against habitation. Adobe walls the color of old bone, a roof that sagged in the middle, a well that had run dry two summers back. Tom Alvarez had stayed anyway, stubborn as the mesquite that clawed up through the hardpan. He ran a few head of cattle on land that couldn't support them, fixed wagons and tack for the handful of folks still passing through, and kept to himself.
Sister Marguerite saw the blood before she dismounted.
It painted the porch in a long smear, dark and arterial, leading from the steps to where Tom lay propped against the wall. A man crouched beside him — tall, wearing a sheriff's badge that caught the light. The star looked newly polished.
She swung down from Witness, already assessing. Tom's face was gray, sheened with sweat. His shirt was soaked through on the left side, just below the ribs. Pressure wound — someone had wadded cloth against it, was holding it there. Tom's eyes tracked her approach, lucid enough. That was good. Shock hadn't taken him yet.
"Sister." The sheriff stood, stepped back to give her room. "Glad Peter found you."
She knelt beside Tom, her hands already moving — checking pulse at his throat, then his wrist. Rapid but steady. His breathing was shallow, careful. She eased the wadded cloth away, just enough to see. Entry wound, clean edges. Small caliber, probably a pistol. No exit wound she could see, which meant the bullet was still in him.
"Tom." She kept her voice level, calm. "Can you move your legs for me?"
He shifted his feet. Both responded. No spinal involvement, then.
"How long ago?" she asked, not looking up.
"Hour, maybe." The sheriff's voice came from behind her. "I was making rounds, heard him call out. Found him like this."
Sister Marguerite's hands stilled for just a fraction of a second. Making rounds. San Marcos didn't have rounds to make — it barely had streets. The old sheriff, Garrett Ross, had spent most of his days playing checkers outside the general store, rousing himself only when someone got drunk enough to cause trouble.
She filed the thought away, returned her attention to Tom. "Did you see who shot you?"
Tom's lips moved. His voice came out thread-thin. "No. Was checking the fence line out back. Heard something... then fire in my side. Dropped. By the time I got up, nobody there."
"He crawled to the porch," the sheriff added. "That's where I found him."
Sister Marguerite looked at the blood smear again. It ran from the steps up to where Tom lay — which meant he'd crawled from somewhere else to the steps, then been moved or helped the rest of the way. The story fit, mostly. But something about the distribution bothered her. Too much blood on the porch itself, not enough trail leading to it. Like he'd bled here, not just while being moved.
She pushed the observation down. Old habits. Old eyes that saw violence and read its signatures.
"We need to get him to the mission," she said. "The bullet needs to come out, and I can't do it here. Peter, ride back and tell Father Brennan to prepare the surgery room. Tell him I'll need boiled water, clean linens, and the instrument case."
The boy nodded, already turning for his horse.
"And Peter — check on Ana while you're there. If her fever's climbed, have Father Brennan start cool compresses."
Peter rode off in a cloud of dust. Sister Marguerite turned back to Tom, pressed the wadded cloth firmly against the wound again. His face tightened but he didn't cry out.
"Can you ride?" she asked. "Or do we need a wagon?"
"Wagon," the sheriff said. "I'll fetch it from town. Ten minutes."
He moved toward his horse with long strides. Sister Marguerite watched him mount, watched the way he sat the saddle — competent but not natural, like a man who'd learned to ride rather than grown up doing it. The old sheriff had been bow-legged from birth, moved like he and his horse were one creature.
"Sister." Tom's voice pulled her back. His eyes were on her face, intent despite the pain. "Wasn't an accident."
She kept pressure on the wound, waited.
"Someone's been... watching the place. Past few days. Thought I was imagining it." His breathing hitched. "But this morning, found tracks by the well. Boot prints. Fresh."
"Your well's been dry for months," she said carefully.
"That's the thing." Tom's hand came up, gripped her wrist with surprising strength. "It ain't dry anymore. Week ago, I dropped a stone down — heard it splash. Went down with a bucket yesterday. Water's back."
Sister Marguerite felt something cold move through her chest. The mission well. The children coughing. Water where there shouldn't be water.
"Did you drink it?" she asked.
"No. Smelled wrong. Chemical, like. I was going to..." He stopped, sucked in air. "Going to tell someone. The sheriff. Then this."
The sound of hoofbeats. Sister Marguerite looked up — not the sheriff returning, too soon for that. Another rider, coming from the direction of town. As the figure resolved through the heat shimmer, she recognized the shape of Father Brennan's old roan.
He pulled up at the edge of the yard, dismounted stiffly. His face was drawn, older than it had been an hour ago.
"Sister, you need to come back. Now."
"Tom's been shot. He needs—"
"Ana's dead."
The words hit like a fist. Sister Marguerite's hands didn't move from the wound, but everything inside her went still and sharp.
"When?"
"Ten minutes ago. She just... stopped breathing. I was with her. There was nothing—" Father Brennan's voice cracked. "Sister, it's not just her. Two more children came to the mission while you were gone. Same symptoms. Same fever. Whatever this is, it's spreading."
Tom's grip on her wrist tightened. "The water," he whispered. "Someone poisoned the water."
Father Brennan stared at him. "What?"
"His well," Sister Marguerite said. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears, clinical. "It was dry. Now it's not. He says it smells chemical."
"The mission well—"
"I know."
They looked at each other. Seven years she'd known Father Brennan. Seven years since she'd stumbled into San Marcos with blood on her hands and a hole in her soul, and he'd taken her in despite knowing what she was. He'd taught her to pray. To believe that killing could stop, that a person could choose a different path.
Now a child was dead. More were dying. And someone had poisoned the only water source for miles.
"The sheriff's coming back with a wagon," she said. "For Tom. I'll ride back with him, get him stable, then we shut down the well. Nobody drinks from it until we know what we're dealing with."
"And if someone's deliberately poisoning it?" Father Brennan's voice was quiet. "If this isn't an accident?"
Sister Marguerite didn't answer. She was watching the horizon where the sheriff had disappeared. Thinking about a badge that looked too new, about a man who didn't ride like he'd
grown up in a saddle. Thinking about a woman in silk who'd left her wounded husband hours behind. Thinking about Ana's small body going still, and Miguel before her, and the Reyes twins.
Thinking about the girl she'd been at twenty-four, fast with a gun and slow with mercy.
"Sister Marguerite." Father Brennan's voice held a warning she recognized. "Whatever you're thinking—"
"I'm thinking a child is dead and more are dying." She met his eyes. "I'm thinking someone needs to answer for that."
"Not you. Not that way."
"Then what way, Father?" The words came out harder than she intended. "Prayer? While they cough themselves into graves?"
Tom's breathing had gone ragged. She adjusted her pressure on the wound, felt the hot seep of blood against her palm. How many times had she done this before? Held pressure on a wound, felt a life pulsing beneath her hands. The difference was, back then, she'd usually been the one who caused the bleeding.
"I'm not suggesting we do nothing," Father Brennan said. "I'm suggesting we don't lose you to what you used to be. That woman is dead, Sister. You buried her."
"Maybe she needs to wake up."
"And maybe that's exactly what someone wants."
The words hung in the air between them. Sister Marguerite looked at him — really looked. Father Brennan was sixty-three, gray-haired and thin, but his eyes were sharp. He'd been a doctor once, before he took vows. He understood violence in his own way, understood the calculations people made when they decided who lived and who died.
"What are you saying?" she asked.
"I'm saying this feels orchestrated. The poisoning. Tom getting shot right after he discovers it. Those strangers arriving at the mission the same day." He moved closer, lowered his voice. "Someone wants chaos. Someone wants the mission compromised. And if you become what you were — if you pick up a gun and start killing — you give them exactly what they need. A reason to burn us down."
Sister Marguerite wanted to argue, but the logic held. She'd spent six years learning to think differently, to see past the immediate solution of violence. It was harder than she'd expected, even now. The old patterns ran deep.
"Then what do we do?" she asked.
"We keep people alive. We figure out who's behind this. We do it carefully." Father Brennan glanced at Tom. "And we don't trust the sheriff."
Tom's eyes had drifted shut. His pulse was weaker. Sister Marguerite checked the wound again — still bleeding, but slower now. Either he was clotting or he was running out of blood to lose. She needed to get him to the mission, get that bullet out, before the decision made itself.
The sound of wagon wheels on hardpan. She looked up to see a buckboard approaching, the sheriff driving, a spare horse tied behind. He pulled up in a swirl of dust, set the brake, climbed down.
"Got here quick as I could," he said. His eyes moved between Sister Marguerite and Father Brennan, reading the tension. "Something wrong?"
"A child died," Father Brennan said flatly. "At the mission. While you were gone."
The sheriff's face went carefully blank. "Died? From what?"
"Same illness that's been taking them all week. Fever, coughing, respiratory failure." Father Brennan's voice was steady, clinical. "We believe it's connected to the water supply."
"The well?" The sheriff frowned, and Sister Marguerite watched his face, looking for the tells. There — a tightness around his eyes, a fractional delay before the frown. Like he was performing concern rather than feeling it. "You think the well's contaminated?"
"We're going to test it," Sister Marguerite said. She kept her voice neutral, gave nothing away. "But right now, Tom needs surgery. Help me get him in the wagon."
The three of them moved Tom as carefully as they could — Father Brennan supporting his shoulders, the sheriff taking his legs, Sister Marguerite keeping pressure on the wound. Tom groaned once, low and animal, then went quiet. Not a good quiet. The kind that meant the body was shutting down to conserve what little it had left.
They laid him in the wagon bed on a blanket the sheriff had brought. Sister Marguerite climbed up beside him, wadded more cloth against the wound. Father Brennan mounted his roan.
"I'll ride ahead," he said. "Get everything ready."
He kicked the horse into a canter, heading back toward the mission. The sheriff climbed onto the wagon seat, gathered the reins. Sister Marguerite positioned herself so she could watch both Tom and the sheriff's back. Old habit. Never give anyone a clean shot at your blind side.
The wagon lurched into motion. The ride back was going to be rough — the road was more suggestion than reality, all ruts and rocks. Every jolt would push that bullet deeper, do more damage. But there was no choice. Tom would die here or he'd die on the way, and at least the mission offered a chance.
"Sister." The sheriff spoke without turning around. "This business about the well. You really think someone poisoned it?"
"I think it's possible."
"Why would anyone do that?"
Sister Marguerite watched the back of his head, the way he held his shoulders. "I don't know. Why would anyone shoot an unarmed man checking his fence line?"
"Could be bandits. Could be someone with a grudge."
"Tom Alvarez doesn't have enemies. He barely has neighbors."
The sheriff was quiet for a moment. The wagon wheels creaked. In the distance, a hawk circled, dark against the white sky.
"Everyone has enemies," the sheriff said finally. "Sometimes they just don't know it yet."
Sister Marguerite's hand moved to Tom's wrist, checking his pulse. Still there, barely. His skin was cool and clammy. Shock was setting in despite the heat. She needed to work faster, needed to get him stable, but first she needed to understand what was happening.
"How long have you been sheriff?" she asked.
The shoulders stiffened. "Few months. Why?"
"Just making conversation. I don't recall seeing you before a few weeks ago."
"Been busy settling in. It's a big territory to cover."
"It's twelve buildings and a mission. The old sheriff covered it from a chair outside the general store."
"Maybe that's why he's not sheriff anymore."
The words came out too sharp, too defensive. Sister Marguerite filed that away too. She was building a picture, piece by piece. A man wearing a badge who didn't move right, didn't talk right, who showed up just as the poisoning started. A man who'd been conveniently close when Tom got shot, who'd found him quickly — too quickly, maybe, for someone who was just making rounds.
Behind them, the Alvarez place receded into the heat shimmer. Sister Marguerite thought about the blood on the porch, about the distribution that hadn't quite made sense. About boot prints by a well that had been dry.
"Sheriff," she said carefully. "When you found Tom, was he conscious?"
"Barely."
"Did he say anything? About who shot him?"
"No. Just that it came from behind."
Tom had told her he'd been checking the fence line, heard something, then felt the bullet. He'd said nothing about it coming from behind specifically. Sister Marguerite kept her face neutral, kept her hand on Tom's wrist. The pulse was fainter now, threading away.
"We need to move faster," she said.
The sheriff snapped the reins. The wagon picked up speed, rattling over the rough ground. Tom's head lolled with each impact. Sister Marguerite braced him as best she could, one hand on his shoulder, the other maintaining pressure on the wound. Blood seeped through the cloth, warm and persistent.
She found herself praying — not the formal prayers Father Brennan had taught her, but the raw ones, the desperate bargaining she'd done in the old days. Let him live. Let me get there in time. Let me be enough.
The mission came into view, adobe walls solid against the empty land. She could see Father Brennan in the courtyard, directing Peter and another boy to prepare the surgery room. As the wagon pulled up, they came running.
"Get him inside," Sister Marguerite said, already climbing down. "Carefully. Father, is everything ready?"
"As ready as it can be."
They moved Tom again, four of them this time, carrying him through the mission doors into the dim coolness of the interior. The surgery room was barely worthy of the name — a small chamber with a wooden table, a cabinet of instruments Father Brennan had brought from his doctor days, a basin for water. But it would have to be enough.
They laid Tom on the table. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused.
"Sister," he whispered. "The well. You have to—"
"I will. Stay quiet now. Save your strength."
Father Brennan was already laying out instruments, his hands moving with the muscle memory of his old profession. Scalpels, forceps, probe, needle and gut for suturing. Sister Marguerite scrubbed her hands in the basin, the water turning pink with Tom's blood.
The sheriff stood in the doorway, watching. "You need me to stay?"
"No," Sister Marguerite said without turning. "But don't leave town. We'll need to talk more about what you saw."
She heard his boots on the floor, receding. Heard the outer door close. Only then did she look at Father Brennan.
"He's lying," she said quietly.
"I know."
"About how he found Tom. About how long he's been sheriff. Probably about his name, too."
Father Brennan selected a scalpel, tested the edge with his thumb. "The question is what we do about it."
Sister Marguerite looked down at Tom's gray face, at the blood soaking through his shirt. Thought about Ana's small body, cooling in the next room. About the two children currently fevered and struggling in the infirmary. About boot prints by a poisoned well.
"We save who we can," she said. "And then we find out who's killing them."
She picked up the forceps. Father Brennan made the first incision, widening the wound so they could see. Blood welled up, darker now. They worked in silence, two people who'd done this before in different lives, their hands remembering what their hearts had tried to forget.
Outside, the sun hammered down. Inside, in the cool darkness, they fought death with steel and prayer and stubborn human will.
And in the back of Sister Marguerite's mind, behind the concentration and the careful movements, something old and cold began to wake.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
~3,578 words
The bullet came out in three pieces.
Sister Marguerite held the largest fragment up to the lamp light — misshapen lead, flattened where it had struck bone. The other pieces were smaller, shrapnel that had scattered through the muscle. She'd found them all by feel, her fingers learning the landscape of Tom's torn flesh, finding each piece of metal by the wrongness of it.
"That's the last," she said, dropping it into the basin with a wet clink.
Father Brennan was already threading the needle, his hands steady despite his age. They'd worked for nearly two hours, first extracting the bullet, then repairing what damage they could. Tom had passed out halfway through, which was a mercy. His pulse was stronger now, his breathing deeper. He'd live, probably. Infection was still a risk, but they'd done what could be done.
Sister Marguerite stepped back from the table, her habit stiff with dried blood. Her hands ached. She flexed them, watching Father Brennan make the final sutures — small, precise stitches that pulled the wound closed. He'd been a good doctor, once. Before whatever had happened to drive him to the priesthood.
They'd never talked about their pasts, either of them. It was an unspoken agreement.
"I'll watch him tonight," Father Brennan said, tying off the last stitch. "You should check on the other children."
Sister Marguerite nodded. She washed her hands again, scrubbing until the water ran clear, then stepped out of the surgery room into the corridor. The mission was quiet except for the soft sound of coughing from the infirmary. Two children, Father Brennan had said. She walked toward the sound, her footsteps echoing on the stone floor.
The infirmary held six beds. Two were occupied — a boy of maybe nine, and a girl slightly older. Sister Marguerite recognized them both: the Morales children, from one of the few families still trying to farm the dead land south of town. The boy's breathing was labored, each inhale a visible effort. The girl's fever had painted her cheeks bright red.
Sister Teresa sat between the beds, a damp cloth in her hand. The younger nun looked up as Sister Marguerite entered, and the relief on her face was immediate.
"Sister Marguerite. Thank God. I didn't know what to do. They came in about an hour ago — their mother brought them. She said they'd been fine this morning, then suddenly—" Sister Teresa gestured helplessly at the children.
"The fever came on fast?"
"Yes. And the coughing. Just like the others."
Sister Marguerite moved to the boy's bedside, placed her hand on his forehead. Hot enough to bake bread. His pulse was rapid, thready. She checked his eyes — pupils responsive, at least. Then his tongue, his throat. The telltale redness was there, inflammation that spoke of chemical irritation rather than disease.
"Did they drink from the mission well today?" she asked.
Sister Teresa thought. "I don't know. Possibly. Their mother might have brought water from home, but..." She trailed off, understanding dawning. "You think it's the water."
"I know it's the water. The question is what's in it, and who put it there."
Sister Marguerite straightened, her mind working through the problem. They needed to stop people from using the well immediately. They needed to find another water source. And they needed to figure out what the contaminant was, in case there was a treatment.
She was turning toward the door when she heard the commotion outside.
Raised voices. The clatter of hooves. Then a gunshot — flat and sharp in the evening air.
Sister Marguerite ran.
She burst through the mission's main doors into the courtyard. The sun had dropped toward the horizon, painting everything in shades of copper and blood. The woman from earlier — Catherine — stood near the well, her silk dress torn at the hem, dust-covered. One of her hired guns was beside her, pistol drawn and pointed at the sky. The other was mounted, holding the reins of a horse hitched to a wagon.
In the wagon bed, covered by a canvas tarp, was a shape that could only be a body.
Father Brennan was already there, hands raised in a calming gesture. "There's no need for weapons. This is a house of God—"
"Your house of God just killed my husband," Catherine said. Her voice was raw, shaking. She pointed at the well. "He drank from that well. Your water. He was thirsty, and we didn't have any left, so he drank from that goddamned well, and now he's dead."
Sister Marguerite descended the steps slowly, her hands visible, non-threatening. She could see the hired gun tracking her with his eyes, the pistol still raised. The other man on horseback had his hand on his own weapon.
"When did this happen?" she asked quietly.
Catherine's laugh was brittle. "An hour ago. Maybe less. We were camped three miles out, waiting for the heat to break before we came in. David was... he was hurt, but he was talking, he was fine. Then he said he was thirsty. There was a stream nearby — just a trickle, but water. He drank from it." She stopped, swallowed hard. "Ten minutes later he couldn't breathe. Twenty minutes and he was dead."
Father Brennan's face had gone pale. "The water system. It must be connected underground. If the mission well is contaminated—"
"Then anything feeding from the same aquifer would be too," Sister Marguerite finished. She looked at Catherine, really looked at her. The woman's grief was real — raw and terrible. But there was something else underneath it. Something that didn't quite fit. "Your husband was shot two days ago, you said. Where?"
Catherine's eyes narrowed. "What does that matter?"
"It matters because if he was gut-shot, he'd have been dead long before any contaminated water got to him. If he was shot somewhere else, the poison might have complicated things. I need to know what we're dealing with."
"We're dealing with murder," the hired gun said flatly. His pistol lowered, but only slightly, now pointing at the ground between them. "Someone poisoned the water. Someone killed David. And you people—" he gestured at the mission with the barrel "—you're right in the middle of it."
"We're victims too," Father Brennan said. "Four children have died this week. Two more are sick right now. We didn't poison our own well."
"Maybe you didn't. But someone did. Someone who knew we'd be coming through."
Sister Marguerite felt the pieces shifting in her mind, trying to form a picture. Catherine arriving ahead of her husband, asking about medical care. The husband conveniently delayed, supposedly wounded. Then dying not from a bullet but from poisoned water — water he drank miles from the mission, from a source that shouldn't have been connected.
Unless someone knew the aquifer's layout. Unless someone had planned for the poison to spread beyond the mission well.
"Who knew you were coming here?" she asked.
Catherine's jaw tightened. "What?"
"To San Marcos. Who knew you'd be passing through?"
"I don't see how that's relevant—"
"It's relevant because your husband's death wasn't an accident, and neither were the children's. Someone is poisoning the water deliberately, and they're doing it in a way that spreads beyond a single well. That takes knowledge. Planning." Sister Marguerite took a step closer, holding Catherine's gaze. "So I'll ask again: who knew you were coming here?"
The hired gun moved, positioning himself between Catherine and Sister Marguerite. "That's close enough, Sister."
"Let her talk," Catherine said quietly. She studied Sister Marguerite with eyes that had gone cold and calculating. The grief was still there, but it was wrapped now in something harder. "You're not like the other nuns I've met. The way you move. The way you look at things." A pause. "What were you before you took vows?"
"Someone else."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." Sister Marguerite shifted her weight slightly, a subtle adjustment that would let her move fast if she needed to. Old muscle memory, reasserting itself. "Your husband. What was his name?"
"David. David Carlisle."
"And you're Catherine Carlisle."
"Yes."
"What business brought you through San Marcos?"
Catherine's mouth curved in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Surveying. My husband was a geological surveyor. We were mapping the territory for—" She stopped herself. "For potential investors."
"Mining investors."
It wasn't a question. Sister Marguerite watched Catherine's face, saw the confirmation there before the woman could hide it.
"The mine played out three years ago," Father Brennan said, his voice careful. "There's nothing left to invest in."
"Maybe the original owners didn't dig deep enough," Catherine said. "Or maybe they were looking for the wrong thing."
Sister Marguerite felt something cold settle in her chest. "You think there's still mineral wealth here. Enough to make it worth buying up land. Enough to make it worth driving people away."
"I think my husband is dead, and someone in this godforsaken town killed him."
"Your husband drank from a stream three miles out. Not from the mission well."
"Same water source, you said so yourself."
"Which means someone poisoned the aquifer deliberately, knowing it would spread. Knowing it would affect more than just the mission." Sister Marguerite took another step forward, ignoring the way the hired gun's hand tightened on his pistol.
"Knowing it would kill anyone who depended on that water source," Sister Marguerite continued. "Including children. Including your husband."
Catherine's face went rigid. For a moment she looked like she might strike out, might let rage overtake calculation. Then something shifted — a decision made, a line crossed. She reached into the wagon bed, pulled back part of the canvas tarp.
David Carlisle lay beneath it, his face already waxen in death. But Catherine wasn't looking at her husband. She was reaching past him, pulling out a leather satchel that had been tucked beside the body. She unbuckled it with shaking hands and pulled out a rolled map, thick paper covered in careful notations.
"You want to know what we were doing here?" Her voice was tight, controlled. "This. We were doing this."
She unrolled the map across the wagon's side panel. Sister Marguerite moved closer, Father Brennan beside her. The hired gun tracked their movement but didn't interfere.
The map showed the territory around San Marcos in meticulous detail. But it wasn't the surface features that drew the eye — it was the web of blue lines beneath them, spreading like veins through the earth. Water channels, tributaries, underground rivers. And at the center of it all, directly beneath the mission, a massive reservoir marked in darker blue.
"Jesus," Father Brennan whispered.
"Your aquifer doesn't just feed the mission well," Catherine said, her finger tracing the lines. "It feeds everything for twenty miles in every direction. Every stream, every seep, every spring. David mapped it over six weeks. It's the largest underground water source in the territory." Her finger stopped on a notation near the edge of the map. "And it's all connected. Poison one point, you poison it all."
Sister Marguerite stared at the map, her mind racing. The implications were staggering. In a territory where water meant survival, where drought had driven away most of the population, whoever controlled this aquifer controlled everything. The land, the future, the very possibility of life.
"Who hired you?" she asked quietly.
Catherine's laugh was bitter. "Does it matter? Some consortium out of Denver. Rich men who saw an opportunity. They wanted a survey, wanted to know if the rumors about water were true. David was good at his job — the best. He found it. Mapped it. Confirmed it." She looked down at her husband's body. "And now he's dead because someone else wants the same thing."
"Or because someone wants to make sure the survey never gets used," Sister Marguerite said. "If this map reaches the territorial government, if water rights get established—"
"They're already established," Father Brennan interrupted. His voice was strange, distant. "God in heaven. They're already established."
They all turned to look at him. The priest's face had gone pale, his eyes fixed on something in the middle distance.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
~4,491 words
The sheriff's hand froze halfway to his holster.
Not because Sister Marguerite had moved — she hadn't. Not because anyone had drawn a weapon. But because something in her smile, in the absolute stillness of her body, had triggered recognition. She watched it happen: the slight widening of his eyes, the quick reassessment, the way his weight shifted back in the saddle.
"You know," he said slowly, "there was a woman, years back. Down in Arizona Territory. They said she was the fastest draw south of Denver. Said she killed nine men in Tucson over a card game that went bad. Said she rode with the Garrett brothers before they got themselves hanged." His voice was careful now, probing. "They called her the Cimarron Ghost. On account of how she'd appear out of nowhere, settle whatever business needed settling, then vanish like she'd never been there at all."
Sister Marguerite said nothing. The smile stayed fixed on her face like a death mask.
"Story goes she disappeared about six years ago. Just dropped off the face of the earth after she put three bullets in a man named Virgil Kane. Some said she'd been killed in the aftermath. Some said she'd run to Mexico. Some said—" He paused, studied her face in the dying light. "Some said she'd found God."
Behind Sister Marguerite, she heard Catherine's sharp intake of breath. Heard one of the hired guns mutter something under his breath that might have been a curse or a prayer.
"That's a hell of a story," Sister Marguerite said. Her voice was still that flat, dead thing. "But stories are just stories. This here's a mission. I'm a nun. You're a lawman — supposedly. And we're having a disagreement about a map."
"Are we?" The sheriff's hand had moved away from his gun entirely now, resting on his saddle horn instead. Casual, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. "Because it seems to me we're having a different kind of conversation. The kind where I need to decide if you're bluffing."
"I'm not."
"The Cimarron Ghost was fast. Fastest I ever heard of. But she had guns." He gestured at Sister Marguerite's habit, at her empty hands. "You're a woman in a dress, standing in a church courtyard, unarmed. Even if you were her — and I'm not saying you are — what exactly do you think you're going to do?"
Sister Marguerite's smile widened just slightly. "You ever wonder why they called her a ghost?"
"Enlighten me."
"Because by the time you saw her, you were already dead. You just didn't know it yet."
The courtyard had gone absolutely silent. Even the wind had died, leaving only the sound of breathing and the creak of saddle leather as one of the sheriff's men shifted nervously.
Catherine stepped forward, her voice tight. "Sister Marguerite—"
"Go inside," Sister Marguerite said, not taking her eyes off the sheriff. "You and your men. Go inside the mission and lock the doors. Father Brennan will let you in."
"We're not leaving you out here—"
"Yes, you are. Because what's about to happen isn't something you want to be part of." She paused. "Trust me."
There was a long moment of hesitation. Then Catherine nodded once, sharply, and backed toward the mission doors. Her two hired guns followed, their weapons drawn now, covering the retreat. The doors opened — Father Brennan's pale face visible in the gap — and they slipped inside. The bar dropped back into place with a sound like a coffin closing.
Sister Marguerite stood alone in the courtyard.
The sheriff watched this happen with an expression somewhere between amusement and calculation. "That was stupid. You just gave up your backup."
"I don't need backup."
"Against six armed men? Sister, I don't care how fast you were. You're not faster than bullets, and we've got a lot of bullets."
"You're right," Sister Marguerite said. She reached up slowly, deliberately, and unpinned her wimple. The fabric fell away, revealing dark hair shot through with silver, pulled back tight. She looked younger without it — and harder. The face of someone who'd lived rough and violent before the Church had tried to gentle her. "I'm not faster than bullets. But I don't need to be faster than bullets. I just need to be faster than you."
She dropped the wimple on the ground. Then, moving with the same deliberate slowness, she reached into the folds of her habit. The sheriff's men tensed, hands dropping to guns. But what she pulled out wasn't a weapon. It was a rosary — wooden beads on a leather cord, worn smooth from six years of prayer.
She held it up so they could all see it. Then she kissed the cross once, gently, and set it on top of the discarded wimple.
"I took vows," she said quietly. "Poverty. Chastity. Obedience. I meant every word. I've spent six years trying to be worthy of those vows. Trying to be someone different than who I was." She straightened, and something in her posture changed — shoulders back, weight balanced, hands loose at her sides. Fighter's stance, so natural it might as well have been breathing. "But there's a fourth vow I took. One that mattered more than all the others."
"What's that?" the sheriff asked.
"Do no harm." She paused. "Unless harm is the only option left."
The sheriff studied her for a long moment. She could see him weighing it — the legend against the reality, the risk against the reward. Behind him, his men were getting restless. One of them, a scarred man with a cavalry mustache, leaned forward in his saddle.
"Boss, we doing this or not? Sun's almost down."
"Patience, Travis."
"Patience hell. There's six of us and one of her. We can—"
"You can die," Sister Marguerite said flatly. "That's what you can do. You, specifically. You'll be first. You're leaning too far forward, your gun hand is too tight, and you're thinking about me instead of watching your flanks. I'll have your gun before you even realize I've moved, and I'll put two rounds in you before your body hits the ground."
Travis's face went red. "You threatening me?"
"Just making an observation." She shifted her gaze to the next man in line — younger, nervous, his horse dancing under him. "You'll be second. You're scared, which makes you fast on the draw but wild with your aim. You'll get a shot off but it'll go wide. I'll take you in the throat because center mass would waste time."
The young man swallowed hard.
Sister Marguerite looked at the third man — older, calm, professional. "You might actually hit me. You've got the look of someone who's done this before. But you're also smart enough to know that even if you hit me, I'll still get one of you. Maybe two. And you're wondering if it's worth dying for whatever they're paying you."
The man's expression didn't change, but she saw his hand relax slightly on his reins.
The fourth man was the biggest — built like a bull, with small eyes and a scar that ran from temple to jaw. Sister Marguerite studied him for a moment. "You're the problem. You're big enough to take a bullet and keep coming, and you're mean enough not to care about dying as long as you take me with you. So you'll be third, and I'll have to put three rounds in you to make sure you stay down. That's wasteful, but necessary."
She finally looked at the sheriff. "Which leaves you. The man in charge. The one who decided this was a good idea." Her voice dropped to something almost conversational. "Tell me, Sheriff. Are you fast?"
"Fast enough."
"Fast enough for what? Fast enough to draw before I move? Fast enough to hit a moving target in bad light? Fast enough to live?" She tilted her head slightly. "Because I've killed men who were fast. I've killed men who were careful. I've killed men who were lucky. And I'm still here."
The sheriff's jaw tightened. "So what's your play here, Sister? You kill all of us? That make you feel righteous? That fit with your vows?"
"My play," Sister Marguerite said, "is that you turn around and ride out of here. You go back to whoever's paying you and tell them the mission isn't for sale. The aquifer isn't for sale. And if they keep poisoning the water, keep killing children, keep sending men with guns to threaten priests and nuns—" She paused. "Then the Cimarron Ghost comes out of retirement. Permanently."
"You can't fight them all. Whoever's behind this, they've got money, resources, more men—"
"I don't need to fight them all. I just need to fight you. Right here. Right now." She took a step forward. "And then whoever replaces you. And then whoever replaces them. One at a time, until they decide it's not worth it anymore. Until the cost of taking this aquifer is higher than they're willing to pay."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the mission seemed to be holding its breath.
Finally, the professional — the third man — spoke up. "Sheriff, I didn't sign on for this. You said it was simple intimidation. You didn't say nothing about the goddamn Cimarron Ghost."
"She's bluffing," the sheriff said, but his voice had lost some of its certainty.
"Is she?" The man backed his horse up a step. "Because I knew a man who saw her work in Tucson. He said she killed six men in the time it took him to blink. Said she moved like water, like something that wasn't quite human." Another step back. "I'm not dying for your water rights, Sheriff. Not for this."
He turned his horse and rode off into the gathering darkness.
The young nervous one followed immediately, his relief visible even from a distance. The big man hesitated, looking between Sister Marguerite and the sheriff, then spat in the dust and wheeled his horse around. Within seconds, it was just the sheriff and Travis — the scarred man who'd spoken first.
Travis's face was dark with anger. "You running too, boss?"
The sheriff didn't answer. He was still staring at Sister Marguerite, and she could see the calculation happening behind his eyes. Finally, he spoke. "This isn't over."
"No," Sister Marguerite agreed. "It's not. But it's over for tonight."
"They'll send more men. Better men."
"Let them."
"They'll burn the mission to the ground."
"They can try."
The sheriff shook his head slowly. "You're signing your own death warrant. You know that, right? You and everyone in that building behind you. All because you won't hand over a goddamn map."
"It's not about the map," Sister Marguerite said quietly. "It's about children drinking poisoned water. It's about Tom Alvarez getting shot for trying to report what he found. It's about David Carlisle dying because he became inconvenient." She paused. "It's about making sure that when the Devil comes to San Marcos wearing a badge and a smile, someone stands up and says no."
For a long moment, the sheriff just looked at her. Then he touched the brim of his hat — a gesture that might have been respect or might have been mockery.
"I'll see you soon, Sister."
"I'm counting on it."
He turned his horse and rode off, Travis following with one last poisonous glare. Their hoofbeats faded into the darkness, leaving Sister Marguerite alone in the courtyard with her discarded wimple and her rosary lying in the dust.
She stood there for a long time, feeling the adrenaline drain away, feeling the weight of what she'd just done settle onto her shoulders. Behind her, she heard the mission doors open. Footsteps on stone. Father Brennan's voice, quiet and sad.
"I was hoping we'd never see her again. The woman you used to be."
Sister Marguerite bent down, picked up her rosary. The beads were cool against her palm, familiar. She'd prayed with them every night for six years. Prayed for forgiveness, for peace, for the strength to be someone better.
"So was I," she said.
Father Brennan didn't say anything else. He simply stood there in the doorway, backlit by the mission's interior lamps, his shadow stretching long across the courtyard stones. Sister Marguerite finished retrieving her wimple, shook the dust from it, but didn't put it back on. Not yet. She felt raw, exposed — like a wound freshly opened.
Catherine appeared beside the priest, her two hired guns flanking her. They looked at Sister Marguerite with new eyes now. The kind of eyes that assessed threat level, calculated odds, measured distance to cover. Professional courtesy between people who understood violence.
"The Cimarron Ghost," Catherine said. Not a question. Just a statement, testing the shape of it in her mouth.
"That was a long time ago."
"Six years. That's not so long." Catherine descended the steps, moving carefully, her silk dress whispering against stone. "David used to tell stories. He'd been through Arizona Territory back then, heard the legends. Nine men dead in Tucson. The Garrett brothers' enforcer. The woman who walked into a saloon in Tombstone and walked out alone while six bodies cooled on the floor." She stopped a few feet away. "He said you were a myth. Something men made up to scare each other."
"Maybe I was." Sister Marguerite met her eyes. "Maybe I still am."
"That wasn't a myth that just faced down six armed men." Catherine's voice was quiet, almost awed. "That was real. I could feel it — the certainty. You meant every word. You would have killed them all."
"Yes."
"Could you have? Really? One woman, unarmed, against six?"
Sister Marguerite looked down at her hands. They were steady now, but she could still feel the phantom weight of a pistol in her palm. Muscle memory that six years of prayer hadn't erased. "Travis would have died first, like I said. His gun would've been in my hand before he processed the movement. Two shots — chest, then head, because a man that angry might keep fighting through a body wound. The young one would've panicked, fired wild. I'd have used Travis's body as a shield, put him down with the third shot. That's three seconds, maybe four."
She flexed her fingers, watching the tendons move beneath the skin. "The professional would've been calculating his angle, trying to get clear of the others. Smart. But that hesitation would've cost him. I'd have rolled left, come up firing. Center mass, because he was calm enough to be accurate but not fast enough to adjust for lateral movement. That's six seconds."
Father Brennan had gone very pale. Catherine's hired guns had unconsciously shifted their stances, no longer quite so casual.
"The big man would've charged by then," Sister Marguerite continued, her voice distant, clinical. "Absorbing bullets like they were bee stings. I'd have put two in his chest to slow him, then one through his eye socket when he got close enough. The skull's thinner there — the round would've scrambled his brain before he could crush me. That's eight, maybe nine seconds."
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
~3,217 words
Sister Marguerite let Father Brennan's words settle into the stone silence of the refectory. She understood what he was saying — not just the confession itself, but the weight beneath it. The fear that violence was a door you walked through once and never quite closed behind you. That picking up a scalpel to heal and picking it up to kill weren't as different as you wanted them to be.
"We're a hell of a congregation," she said finally. "A gunslinger playing nun. A doctor playing priest. Two hired guns and a widow with blood on her hands. If this were a story, someone would call it heavy-handed."
"It's not a story," Catherine said. Her voice was steady now, the initial shock of revelation worn away by practical necessity. "It's what we have. The question is what we do with it."
"We fight," Cole said simply. He'd been studying the maps while they talked, his finger tracing lines and distances. "But we fight smart. They've got numbers, money, organization. We've got knowledge and surprise. Maybe."
"Maybe?" Lyle's voice cracked slightly on the word.
"They know we have the map now," Cole explained. "They know we didn't hand it over. That sheriff's going to ride back and report that Sister Marguerite — or whatever name they knew her by — is here and not cooperating. So they'll escalate. Send more men, better men. Maybe burn us out, maybe lay siege. Depends on how much attention they want to draw."
"They can't draw too much attention," Father Brennan said. He'd recovered some of his composure, slipping back into the analytical mindset that had probably kept him alive during the war. "A full military assault on a Catholic mission would bring territorial authorities, maybe even federal marshals. The consortium wants this quiet, contained. They need us to disappear without anyone asking too many questions."
Sister Marguerite stood, moved to the window. Outside, the courtyard was dark except for the faint glow from the chapel. The night smelled like dust and creosote, familiar desert scents that reminded her of Arizona, of the woman she'd been before she'd run this far south looking for absolution.
"The mining shaft," she said, not turning around. "That's the key. Catherine, you said it's half a mile north?"
"According to David's notes. Old Spanish silver mine, probably abandoned for fifty years or more. But the main shaft goes down about two hundred feet, and there are lateral tunnels that connect to the aquifer caverns."
"So whoever's doing the poisoning is working from there," Sister Marguerite said. "Drilling down, introducing concentrated arsenic into the water flow. They'd need equipment, supplies, probably guards. It's not a one-person operation."
"Which means it's a target," Cole said. He'd moved to stand beside her at the window, his voice pitched low enough that the others had to lean in to hear. "We scout it, figure out their strength, then hit them when they're vulnerable. Cut off the poisoning at its source."
"That's a military solution," Father Brennan said. "Strike at their infrastructure, force them to pull back and regroup. It buys us time."
"Time for what?" Lyle asked. "They'll just come back. You said it yourself — they've got money and men. Even if we stop the poisoning, even if we hurt them, they'll keep coming until they get what they want."
He wasn't wrong. Sister Marguerite could feel the shape of the problem like a knot in her chest. You could win individual battles against an enemy like this, but wars were won with resources she didn't have. Unless—
"The deed," she said slowly, turning back to the table. "Father Brennan, where's the original Spanish land grant? The one that gives the mission perpetual water rights?"
"In the archive room. Locked in a strongbox with the other important documents." He frowned. "Why?"
"Because that's what they really want. Not the map — they already have David's survey, or at least the first version of it. They want the deed destroyed. As long as it exists, as long as the mission has legal claim to the aquifer, they can't take possession. Not cleanly."
Catherine's eyes widened. "That's why they're poisoning the water. They're not just driving people away — they're trying to force the mission to close. To abandon the property. Once it's empty, once there's no one to contest it, the deed becomes meaningless. They can claim the land was abandoned, that the grant has lapsed—"
"And a territorial judge who's been paid enough will agree," Father Brennan finished. He stood abruptly, began pacing. "But if the mission stays open, if we keep operating despite the poisoning, if we can prove they're deliberately contaminating the water—"
"Then we have leverage," Sister Marguerite said. "We can go to the territorial authorities, maybe even federal. Make enough noise that they can't quietly steal the aquifer. Force them to either back off or expose themselves."
"That's a big if," Cole said. "We'd need proof. Witnesses. Documentation. And we'd need to survive long enough to get it to someone who matters."
"The mining shaft," Sister Marguerite said again. She pulled David's second map toward her, studied the notations. "If we can get inside, document what they're doing, maybe capture one of their men for testimony — that's proof. Combine it with David's map showing the arsenic deposits, the mission's records of the sick children, Tom Alvarez's testimony about being shot—"
"It might be enough," Father Brennan said quietly. "If we can get it to Santa Fe. To the territorial governor."
"That's three days' hard ride," Cole pointed out. "Who goes? Who stays? Because they'll hit us while we're split up."
The room fell silent as everyone absorbed the tactical reality. They were planning an operation against an enemy with superior numbers and resources, using a ragtag collection of reformed killers and desperate survivors. The smart play would be to run — take the maps, scatter, hope the consortium gave up and found easier prey.
But Sister Marguerite looked at the faces around the table and knew no one was running. Father Brennan, because this mission was his penance and his purpose. Catherine, because her husband's murder demanded justice. Cole, because professional pride wouldn't let him walk away from a fight he'd already entered. Even Lyle, terrified as he was, had too much at stake to bolt now.
And herself? She'd spent six years trying to be someone better than the Cimarron Ghost. Trying to prove that violence wasn't the only answer she had. But maybe the abbot had been right. Maybe God didn't waste tools. Maybe all those deaths, all that blood, had been preparation for this exact moment — when innocent people needed someone willing to stand between them and the wolves.
"We move in stages," she said, her voice taking on the command tone she hadn't used in years. "Tonight, we fortify. The mission has walls, limited access points. We board up the windows, set watches, make sure no one gets in without us knowing. Father Brennan, you have any weapons stored here?"
"Two rifles in my quarters. A shotgun in the sacristy. Some ammunition, not much."
"Better than nothing. Cole, you and Lyle take the rifles. Set up overlapping fields of fire from the bell tower and the western wall. Anyone approaches, you see them coming." She turned to Catherine. "Your men will need rest in shifts. One awake while the other sleeps. We don't know when they'll come back, but they will."
"What about the shaft?" Father Brennan asked. "When do we scout it?"
"Tomorrow, first light. Before they have time to reinforce it, before they know we're planning to hit them." Sister Marguerite traced the route on the map with her finger. "Half a mile north. That's rough terrain, probably no direct line of sight from here. We'll need someone who can move quiet, get close without being seen."
"I can do it," Cole said. "Used to scout for the cavalry. I know how to read ground, how to spot sentries."
"You'll need backup. Someone to cover you if it goes wrong."
Cole looked at her directly. "You volunteering?"
Sister Marguerite felt something shift inside her — not quite breaking, but bending. Six years of careful construction, six years of being Sister Marguerite instead of the Ghost, and here she was planning a raid like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she'd never stopped.
"Yes," she said. "I'll go with you."
Father Brennan's expression was unreadable. "And the rest of us?"
"You stay here. Keep the mission secure, keep the patients safe. If we're not back by noon, assume the worst and make your own decisions." She paused, met his eyes. "And if they come while we're gone, you do what you have to do. No hesitation, no mercy. These people have already killed children. They don't deserve your compassion."
"That's not your decision to make," Father Brennan said quietly.
"No. But it's advice from someone who's been where you are. Someone who waited too long once and watched good people die because of it." Her voice softened slightly. "I know you want to be better than what you were. So do I. But being better doesn't mean being weak. Sometimes it means being strong enough to do the terrible thing so others don't have to."
Father Brennan held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded once, sharply.
"All right," Sister Marguerite said. She began folding the maps, careful to keep them separate. The first one — David's official survey — would stay hidden. The second, with its damning notations about arsenic deposits, would go with them tomorrow. "We have our plan. Cole, Lyle, get those rifles and set up your positions. Father Brennan, check on our patients one more time, then try to sleep. Catherine—" She paused, studying the widow. "You should rest too. Tomorrow's going to be hard."
"I'm not tired."
"You will be. Trust me." Sister Marguerite's voice was gentle now, almost maternal. "Go to the guest quarters. Lie down even if you don't sleep. Your body needs to recover from the shock, and your mind needs to stop running scenarios that don't help anyone."
Catherine started to protest, then seemed to deflate slightly. The adrenaline that had kept her upright was fading, leaving exhaustion in its wake. She nodded, gathered up David's official map, and left the refectory without another word. Sister Marguerite watched her go, then turned back to the scattered papers on the table. The flickering candlelight cast long shadows across the documents, and she found herself studying the map David had been working on before his disappearance. The coastline was meticulously detailed, each inlet and outcropping marked with precise measurements. But there, in the northwestern quadrant, the lines became hesitant, uncertain—as if David himself had begun to doubt what he was seeing.
Cole and Lyle left to retrieve the weapons, their footsteps echoing down the stone corridor. Sister Marguerite remained at the table, David's annotated map spread before her like a tactical diagram. Father Brennan lingered in the doorway, neither staying nor leaving, caught in that liminal space between conversation and departure.
"You should sleep too," she said without looking up.
"I will. After I check on Tom and the children." He paused. "Elena—"
"Don't." She finally raised her eyes to meet his. "Don't use that name. Not yet. I'm not sure I've earned it back."
"You never lost it. Names aren't something you forfeit because of what you've done. They're who you are beneath all the blood and prayer."
"That's a very pastoral observation, Father."
"I'm a priest. It's what I do." But there was something else in his voice — a question he wasn't quite asking. Sister Marguerite could feel it hanging in the air between them, the same unspoken agreement they'd maintained for six years: don't ask about the past, don't confess the details, just be present in whatever redemption looks like day to day.
That agreement had just shattered. They'd both laid their ghosts on the table tonight, and there was no pretending they didn't know what the other was capable of anymore.
"You're wondering if it was worth it," she said quietly. "The monastery, the silence, the vows. You're wondering if you just wasted six years pretending to be someone you're not."
Father Brennan's jaw tightened. "That's not—"
"It is. I'm wondering the same thing." She traced one of the blue aquifer lines with her finger, following its branching path across the map. "I thought if I prayed hard enough, served faithfully enough, maybe I could become someone who didn't instinctively calculate kill vectors when threatened men rode up. Someone who didn't feel that cold clarity when violence became the only option." She looked up at him. "But it's still there. All of it. Like I never left Arizona at all."
"That doesn't mean the six years were wasted."
"Doesn't it? Because right now I feel exactly like I did when I walked into that saloon in Tombstone. Calm. Focused. Ready." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "And the worst part is how good it feels. How right. Like I've been holding my breath for six years and finally remembered how to exhale."
Father Brennan moved into the room properly now, pulled out a chair, sat down across from her. The candlelight carved deep shadows in his face, making him look older, harder. More like the man who'd killed three Pinkertons with surgical precision.
"I delivered a baby last month," he said. "Breech birth, complications. Should have lost both mother and child. But I didn't. I knew exactly what to do, exactly where to cut, exactly how to turn the infant without damaging either of them. Afterward, holding that crying baby, watching the mother's relief—" He stopped, swallowed. "That felt right too. That felt like redemption."
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
~4,628 words
Dawn came copper and cold, the sun still hidden behind the eastern ridgeline when Sister Marguerite met Cole in the courtyard. He'd changed from his traveling clothes into darker canvas, practical for moving unseen through desert scrub. Two canteens hung from his belt alongside a holstered revolver. The rifle was slung across his back.
"You look ready," she said quietly.
"Been ready since midnight. Too wired to sleep." He studied her in the pre-dawn light. "You bring a weapon?"
Sister Marguerite lifted the edge of her habit slightly, revealing the gun belt underneath. The Colt Peacemaker sat in its worn leather holster, exactly where it had rested for years before she'd locked it away in her trunk. The weight of it against her hip felt like memory and muscle combined — familiar, inevitable.
"Didn't think nuns were allowed those," Cole said with a slight smile.
"They're not. But I stopped being just a nun about twelve hours ago." She glanced toward the bell tower where Lyle's silhouette was barely visible against the lightening sky. "Father Brennan knows we're leaving?"
"Saw him twenty minutes ago. He's with the patients." Cole's expression shifted, became more serious. "He asked me to bring you back alive. Said it specifically. Not 'both of you' — just you."
"He worries."
"He's not wrong to. Whatever we find up there—" Cole gestured north toward the invisible mining shaft. "It's going to be bad. They wouldn't kill a surveyor and poison children unless the stakes were high enough to justify it. Which means they'll have protected their operation. Guards, probably. Maybe worse."
Sister Marguerite had already calculated the same thing. A half-mile approach through open desert terrain, a mine shaft with unknown numbers of hostiles, and the very real possibility that someone would recognize her the way the sheriff had. The Cimarron Ghost's reputation had spread through Arizona and New Mexico territories like wildfire six years ago. People remembered legends, especially when those legends walked back into their lives wearing a nun's habit.
"We go quiet," she said. "Scout only. Get close enough to see their setup, count their men, identify their equipment. Then we come back and plan accordingly."
"And if they spot us?"
"Then we run. Or we fight. Depending on who's faster." She met his eyes. "You ever kill anyone, Cole?"
He didn't flinch from the question. "Yes. Three men during the Apache campaigns, two more in a range war outside Silver City. Not proud of it, not ashamed either. It was what the situation required."
"Good. That's the right way to think about it." Sister Marguerite adjusted the canteen at her own belt, checked that David's annotated map was secure inside her habit. "Let's move. We're burning daylight."
They left through the mission's northern postern gate, a small service entrance that opened onto rough country beyond the cultivated grounds. The desert here was all creosote and scrub, scattered rocks and deep arroyos where flash floods had carved channels through softer stone. No cover to speak of, but the terrain rolled enough that careful movement could keep them below sight lines.
Cole moved well — low and quiet, using the landscape's natural contours. Sister Marguerite followed, matching his pace, her body remembering skills she'd thought were safely buried. How to read the ground for prints and disturbance. How to move without silhouetting against ridgelines. How to breathe slowly and keep her heart rate steady even as adrenaline tried to spike.
The sun cleared the ridgeline as they moved, turning the desert gold and amber. Heat rose quickly, pulling moisture from the air and leaving everything sharp-edged and clear. Half a mile wasn't far, but in this terrain it took nearly forty minutes of careful approach before Cole raised a hand, signaling halt.
Sister Marguerite dropped into a crouch beside him behind a tumble of red rock. Ahead, perhaps two hundred yards distant, the mining operation spread out like a wound in the earth.
It was far larger than she'd anticipated.
The shaft itself was obvious — a timber-reinforced opening descending into darkness, maybe ten feet across. But surrounding it was an entire encampment. Three large canvas tents, a cook fire with smoke rising lazy and thin, wooden crates stacked under tarps, and equipment she recognized from her years riding through mining country. A steam-powered pump. Chemical barrels labeled with shipping marks from Denver. Drilling apparatus that looked new, expensive, industrial-grade.
And men. She counted seven visible from their vantage point, though movement inside the tents suggested more.
"Jesus," Cole breathed beside her. "This isn't a poisoning operation. This is a full mining setup."
Sister Marguerite pulled David's map from inside her habit, unfolded it carefully, compared the notations to what lay before them. The surveyor had marked this location with red ink, had written "primary injection point" beside the shaft symbol. But seeing it in person made the scope horrifyingly clear.
"They're not just contaminating the aquifer," she said quietly. "They're preparing to extract it. Look at the pump, the drilling equipment. They're setting up infrastructure to tap the water source directly once they own the land rights."
"But the arsenic—"
"Was always temporary. Poison the water, drive everyone away, buy the land for nothing, then 'discover' the contamination was natural and limited. Drill down, install permanent pumps, and sell water rights to every ranch and settlement within fifty miles." She traced the aquifer lines on the map. "David estimated the underground reservoir at billions of gallons. In this territory, that's worth more than gold."
Cole was quiet for a moment, taking it in. Then: "We need to get closer. See what's in those barrels, document the equipment. If we can prove they're set up for extraction, not just contamination—"
He stopped mid-sentence. Sister Marguerite had gone rigid beside him, her entire body suddenly tense. She was staring at one of the tents, at a figure that had just emerged into the morning sunlight.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in trail clothes that had seen hard use. He moved with the careful precision of someone who'd spent years learning to read violence in other men's postures. His right hand rested casually near his holstered revolver — not threatening, just aware. And his face, weathered and scarred, was one Sister Marguerite had last seen six years ago across a poker table in Tucson.
Dutch Corrigan. Enforcer for the Garrett brothers. A killer so efficient and cold that even other outlaws had given him wide berth.
And the man who'd been tracking her when she'd killed Virgil Kane and vanished south into Mexico.
"We need to leave," Sister Marguerite said, her voice absolutely level. "Right now."
Cole heard the change in her tone, didn't question it. They began backing away slowly, using the rocks for cover, keeping low. But desert silence was a fragile thing, and somewhere in their retreat Sister Marguerite's boot scraped against loose stone — a small sound, barely audible, but enough.
Dutch Corrigan's head came up like a wolf scenting prey. His eyes swept the ridgeline, the rocks, the morning shadows. Then his hand dropped to his revolver and he called out, loud enough to carry: "Got movement on the north approach! Two contacts!"
The camp exploded into motion. Men poured from the tents, grabbing weapons, fanning out. Sister Marguerite and Cole abandoned stealth for speed, running now, using the arroyos for cover as shouts rose behind them and the first gunshot cracked across the desert morning.
The arroyo was deeper than Sister Marguerite remembered from their approach — maybe eight feet of vertical drop carved by decades of flash floods. She hit the bottom hard, Cole landing beside her a heartbeat later as bullets whined overhead, kicking up plumes of red dust from the rim above.
"How many?" Cole gasped, already moving, using the arroyo's curves for cover.
"Too many." Sister Marguerite ran, her habit tangling around her legs, the gun belt underneath digging into her hip. Behind them, shouts multiplied as the miners spread out, trying to flank their position. Professional movements, coordinated. These weren't hired drunks like the sheriff had brought. These were men who knew what they were doing.
The arroyo branched ahead — left toward rougher country and sparse cover, right toward a cluster of boulders that might offer defensive positions. Sister Marguerite chose right without thinking, the tactical calculus automatic. Get to cover, establish fields of fire, make them pay for the approach. She could hear Father Brennan's voice in her head asking if running wasn't the better option, and maybe it was, but Dutch Corrigan was back there and Dutch didn't give up. Ever. If they ran, he'd track them all the way to the mission, bring his entire force down on the defenseless patients and children.
Better to bleed him here. Make him cautious. Buy time.
They reached the boulders as the first pursuer appeared at the arroyo rim. Cole swung his rifle up smoothly, fired once. The man jerked backward, disappeared. Not dead, probably — the range was tricky and Cole had been moving — but hurt enough to make the others think twice.
"How long can we hold?" Cole asked, already reloading.
"Long as we have ammunition." Sister Marguerite drew the Peacemaker, felt its weight settle into her palm like coming home. Six years since she'd fired this gun. Six years since she'd killed anyone. The muscle memory was still there, though, waiting beneath the prayers and penance. "But they'll try to surround us. We've got maybe five minutes before they're positioned."
"So we move again."
"We move smart." She pointed south, toward a ridgeline that offered higher ground and better sight lines. "There. We can see the mission from that rise, and they'll have to come at us uphill. Harder shot for them, easier for us."
Cole studied the route, calculating. "Hundred yards of open ground. They'll have clear shots the whole way."
"Then we make them count their bullets." Sister Marguerite checked her ammunition — fifteen rounds in the belt, six in the cylinder. Not enough for a prolonged firefight, but enough to be dangerous. "On three. Stay low, move fast, and don't stop even if you're hit. We stop, we die."
"Comforting."
"It's true." She met his eyes. "Ready?"
Father Brennan's hands were already on Cole, examining the shoulder wound with practiced efficiency. "Clean through. You're lucky." He glanced up at Sister Marguerite, and she saw something shift in his expression—not quite fear, but recognition. He was seeing her now, really seeing her, with the Peacemaker still in her hand and that particular emptiness in her eyes that came after killing.
"How many?" he asked quietly.
"Three down, maybe four. At least eight still mobile." Sister Marguerite moved to the gate, peered through a gap in the timber. The desert beyond was empty, but she could feel them out there, regrouping, planning. Dutch wouldn't rush this. He'd been hunting dangerous prey too long to make amateur mistakes. "They'll come before nightfall. Full assault, probably try to burn us out."
"We can't hold against eight men," Lyle said from where he'd descended the bell tower ladder. His face was pale, but his hands were steady on his rifle. "Not with our numbers, not with our ammunition."
"We don't have to hold forever," Sister Marguerite said, though she wasn't sure she believed it. "Just long enough to—"
"Elena." Father Brennan's voice cut through her tactical assessment. He'd finished binding Cole's shoulder and now stood facing her fully, his expression grave. "There's something you need to see. Tom woke up an hour ago, and he's been asking for you. Says it's urgent. Says it changes everything."
Sister Marguerite felt a cold finger of intuition trace down her spine. "What did he say?"
"He wouldn't tell me. Insisted it had to be you." Father Brennan gestured toward the infirmary. "Whatever it is, he seemed frightened. Not of dying—of what he knows."
Sister Marguerite looked back at the gate, calculating. Dutch and his men would take time to organize their assault. Thirty minutes, maybe an hour if they were smart about it. She had time. Barely.
"Stay on the walls," she told Lyle. "You see movement, you sound the alarm. Don't try to be a hero—just give us warning." She turned to Cole, who was already trying to stand despite Father Brennan's protests. "You should rest."
"I can still shoot," Cole said through gritted teeth. "One arm's enough for that."
"Then get to the western wall. Cover the approach from that angle." She met his eyes. "And Cole? Thank you. For not running when you had the chance."
"Seemed rude," he said with a ghost of his earlier humor, then limped away toward his position.
Sister Marguerite followed Father Brennan through the courtyard toward the infirmary. The morning sun was fully up now, turning the mission's white adobe walls brilliant and harsh. Catherine emerged from the chapel as they passed, her face drawn with exhaustion but her spine straight.
"I heard gunfire," she said. "Are they—"
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
~4,913 words
They gathered in the refectory—Father Brennan, Cole with his bandaged shoulder, Lyle still nervous but holding steady, and Catherine who'd refused to stay hidden when summoned. The afternoon sun slanted through the high windows, painting the rough-hewn table in amber light. Sister Marguerite stood at the head, her habit dusty and torn from the morning's violence, the Peacemaker still holstered at her hip beneath the fabric.
"Dutch wants me," she said without preamble. "That's leverage. We're going to use it."
Father Brennan's jaw tightened, but he said nothing yet. Waiting. She'd asked for that much—hear the whole plan before objecting.
"I'm going to accept his parley," Sister Marguerite continued. "Walk out there under truce, talk terms, let him think he's won. While he's focused on me, someone else rides south to Santa Fe with the evidence." She pulled the folded documents from inside her habit, laid them on the table. "Tom's letter proving the federal trust claim, David's maps showing the poisoning operation. Together, these are enough to bring territorial marshals, maybe even federal investigators. But only if they reach the right hands."
"And you think Dutch will just let you walk away after this parley?" Cole's voice was flat, skeptical. "He's been hunting you for six years, Sister. He's not interested in conversation."
"No, he's interested in killing me slowly enough to savor it." Sister Marguerite's tone didn't change—still level, clinical. "Which means he'll take his time. Set up some kind of spectacle, make an example. That gives us a window. Small, but real."
"A window for what?" Lyle asked, though his expression suggested he already knew the answer and didn't like it.
"For me to kill him and anyone else who gets in the way." Sister Marguerite met each of their eyes in turn. "Dutch thinks he's facing a nun pretending to be dangerous. He doesn't fully believe I'm still the woman who put Virgil Kane in the ground. That's his mistake, and we're going to exploit it."
Father Brennan finally spoke, his voice quiet but strained. "You're proposing to walk into an armed camp, alone, and murder your way out while someone else escapes with evidence that could save us all."
"Yes."
"That's not a plan. That's suicide with extra steps."
"It's suicide if I'm alone," Sister Marguerite corrected. "But I won't be. Not entirely." She turned to Lyle. "You're the best shot we have with a rifle. How far can you make an accurate shot?"
Lyle blinked, surprised to be addressed directly. "Three hundred yards, maybe three-fifty in good conditions. Beyond that I'm guessing more than aiming."
"The mining camp is half a mile from our walls. You position yourself on the bell tower, wait until I've drawn their attention, then start picking off targets. You won't get them all, but you'll create chaos, make them think we're mounting a full assault. That gives me room to work."
"Work," Father Brennan repeated, the word bitter in his mouth. "You mean kill."
"I mean survive." Sister Marguerite's voice hardened slightly. "Father, we've had this conversation. You know what I am. You've always known. This is the moment when we stop pretending that prayer alone will save these people."
"I'm not pretending anything," Father Brennan said, his hands flat on the table. "I know exactly what you are, Elena. I've known since the day you arrived here with a gun in your trunk and nightmares that made you scream yourself awake for months. I gave you sanctuary because I believed—still believe—that redemption is possible even for people like us. But this plan asks you to throw away six years of that redemption for a chance at survival."
"It asks me to use six years of skill for the purpose it was always meant for—protecting people who can't protect themselves." Sister Marguerite leaned forward, her voice dropping. "You wanted me to be different, Father. To be transformed. And maybe I am, in ways that matter. But transformation doesn't mean becoming helpless. It means choosing when and why to use the tools you've been given."
The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken history. Catherine broke it, her voice surprisingly steady: "Who rides to Santa Fe?"
Sister Marguerite turned to her. "You. You're the only one Dutch doesn't know by sight, the only one who can move fast without raising immediate suspicion. You take the documents, ride hard, don't stop until you reach the territorial marshal's office. Tell them everything—the poisoning, the conspiracy, the mining operation. Show them the evidence."
"I can't ride," Catherine said. "I mean, I can, but not well. Not fast enough to outrun anyone who might chase me."
"Then you'll learn on the way." Sister Marguerite's tone softened slightly. "Mrs. Carlisle, your husband died trying to expose this conspiracy. You have a chance to finish what he started. That's worth more than fear."
Catherine's hands trembled as she reached for the documents, but her voice was firm: "When do I leave?"
"As soon as I walk out that gate. Dutch will be watching me, his men will be positioned around the camp. You go out the southern wall, use the arroyo system to stay hidden, then ride like hell once you're clear. We'll give you every minute we can buy."
Cole shifted in his chair, wincing as the movement pulled his shoulder. "And what about us? After Lyle starts shooting and you're doing whatever you're going to do out there?"
"You hold these walls," Sister Marguerite said simply. "Dutch will send men back here once he realizes what's happening—probably half his force. You make them pay for every inch. Father Brennan knows where the ammunition is stored, and there are defensive positions we prepared last night. You don't have to win. You just have to not lose until help arrives."
"Help that might take days to get here," Lyle pointed out. "Assuming Mrs. Carlisle even makes it to Santa Fe."
"She'll make it." Sister Marguerite said it like fact, like something already written. "Because we're all going to do our parts, and we're going to do them right, and we're going to survive this because the alternative is letting murderers and thieves win. I've spent six years trying to be someone better, someone worthy of redemption. Maybe this is what that looks like—not refusing to fight, but fighting for the right reasons."
Father Brennan stood slowly, his chair scraping against the floor. He walked to the window, stared out at the courtyard where afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen. When he spoke, his voice was thick with something that might have been grief or acceptance or both.
"I came to San Marcos because I'd killed three men in Bellwood and couldn't live with what I'd become. I thought that if I served long enough, prayed hard enough, saved enough lives, I could balance the scales. Make up for what I'd done." He turned back to face them. "But scales don't balance, do they? The dead stay dead. The blood stays on your hands no matter how hard you scrub. All you can do is choose what you do next, and why."
"Yes," Sister Marguerite said quietly. "That's all any of us can do."
"Then I hate your plan," Father Brennan said. "I hate that it requires you to become what you've spent six years trying to leave behind. I hate that it puts Catherine in danger and asks Lyle to kill men he doesn't know for reasons he barely understands. I hate all of it." He paused, his jaw working. "But I don't have a better one. So yes. We do this. God forgive us."
Sister Marguerite felt something loosen in her chest—not relief, exactly, but a kind of grim validation. She looked around the table at these unlikely defenders: a priest who'd been a killer, a widow seeking purpose, hired guns who'd become something more than mercenaries, a young man learning what courage actually cost.
"One hour until Dutch's deadline," she said. "Catherine, start preparing. Take our fastest horse, light provisions only. The maps and letter go in a waterproof pouch—Father Brennan, you have one in the medical supplies. Lyle, get to the bell tower and sight your rifle. Find your firing positions, calculate your drops. Cole, you and Father Brennan reinforce the gates and set up defensive positions. I want overlapping fields of fire, clear sight lines, anything that makes them think twice about rushing us."
They stood, each moving toward their assigned tasks with the mechanical efficiency of people who'd accepted the inevitable. Only Father Brennan lingered, his hand on Sister Marguerite's shoulder as the others filed out.
"Elena," he said quietly. "When you walk out there—when you face Dutch—don't lose yourself completely. Remember why you're doing this. Remember that you're more than just the Ghost."
"Am I?" The question came out more raw than she'd intended. "Or is that what I've been all along, just wearing different clothes?"
"You're both," Father Brennan said. "That's what makes this so hard. But it's also what makes you dangerous in ways Dutch can't anticipate. He thinks he's facing the woman you were. He has no idea what six years of trying to be better has actually taught you."
Sister Marguerite thought about that as Father Brennan left, his footsteps echoing in the empty refectory. The Peacemaker was heavy at her hip, familiar and terrible. In an hour she would walk out that gate into the desert heat and face a man who wanted her dead. She would probably kill him. Might kill others. Would certainly become, once again, the thing she'd spent six years praying away.
But maybe Father Brennan was right. Maybe she wasn't just the Ghost anymore. Maybe she was something worse—someone who knew how to kill and had learned, through hard experience, exactly when it was necessary.
She stood, gathered the documents, and went to help Catherine prepare for a ride that might save them all or damn them completely.
The sun was lower now, the shadows longer. Time was running out.
Catherine's hands shook as she folded the waterproof pouch into her saddlebag, but her voice remained steady. "I've never shot anyone before. If they catch me—"
"They won't." Sister Marguerite cinched the saddle tight, checked the stirrups, ran her hands along the mare's legs feeling for any weakness. The horse was young, strong, with good wind. Catherine would need all of that. "You stay in the arroyos until you're three miles clear, then you ride straight through. Don't stop for anything. Don't look back."
"And if I hear gunfire from the mission?"
"You keep riding." Sister Marguerite met her eyes, let her see the absolute certainty there. "Mrs. Carlisle, if you stop, if you turn back, if you let fear or guilt or anything else slow you down, then everyone here dies for nothing. Your husband died for nothing. Those children in the infirmary die for nothing. The only way any of this matters is if you get those documents to Santa Fe."
Catherine's throat worked, but she nodded. "I understand."
"Good." Sister Marguerite pulled a small revolver from inside her habit—not the Peacemaker, but a lighter piece, easier for untrained hands. "You know how to use this?"
"Point and pull?"
"Close enough. Six shots, then it's empty. Don't fire unless someone's close enough you can't miss. And if they get that close—" She pressed the gun into Catherine's palm, closed her fingers around it. "—you empty the cylinder. Don't hesitate. Don't warn them. Just shoot until they stop moving."
Catherine stared at the weapon like it might bite her. "I don't know if I can."
"You can. Because the alternative is worse." Sister Marguerite softened her tone slightly. "You're stronger than you think, Mrs. Carlisle. You've already lost your husband, buried him, and chosen to stay and fight instead of running. That takes more courage than pulling a trigger."
Father Brennan appeared in the stable doorway, carrying a canteen and wrapped provisions. "Food and water for two days, though you should make Santa Fe in less than one if you push hard." He handed them to Catherine, his expression grave. "There's a marshal named Carson in Santa Fe. Former cavalry, honest as they come. Ask for him specifically. Don't trust anyone else until you've put those documents in his hands."
"Marshal Carson," Catherine repeated, committing it to memory. "And if he's not there?"
"Then you wait. In the church, in a hotel, wherever feels safe. But don't give those papers to anyone else." Father Brennan glanced at Sister Marguerite. "It's almost time. Dutch's messenger said one hour, and we're at fifty minutes."
Sister Marguerite nodded, helped Catherine mount. The widow sat awkwardly in the saddle, her posture too rigid, but she'd learn or she wouldn't. Either way, she was their best chance.
Dutch Corrigan looked older than Sister Marguerite remembered—lines carved deeper around his eyes, gray threading through his dark hair—but the cold calculation in his expression hadn't changed. He wore his gun low on his hip, tied down, the holster worn smooth from years of practice. Professional. Deadly.
"Elena Reyes," he said, her name rolling off his tongue like a curse and a prayer combined. "Six years I've been looking for you. Six years of following cold trails and dead ends, asking questions in every backwater town from Tucson to Chihuahua. And here you are, playing dress-up as a nun."
Sister Marguerite said nothing, just stood with her hands loose at her sides, reading the positions of his men. Seven visible—two flanking Dutch, three more near the equipment, another two positioned higher on the rocks with rifles. Lyle would take the riflemen first when shooting started. The others would be hers.
"Not going to defend yourself?" Dutch stepped closer, his boots crunching on the hard-packed earth. "Not going to tell me you found God, that you're reformed, that the woman who killed my brother is dead and buried?"
Brother. The word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples outward. Sister Marguerite's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind her eyes. Virgil Kane had been Dutch's brother, not just his employer. That explained the six-year hunt, the obsessive dedication, the willingness to work for a consortium poisoning children just for a chance at her.
"I didn't know," she said quietly. "About the relation. He never mentioned you."
"Why would he?" Dutch's voice went sharp with old pain. "Virgil was the smart one, the charming one, the one who could talk his way into any game and out of any trouble. I was just muscle, good for keeping people in line and burying bodies. But he was my brother, Elena. My blood. And you put three bullets in him over a card game."
"It wasn't about cards." Sister Marguerite's voice remained level, factual. "He was cheating, I called him on it, and he drew first. I was faster. That's all there was to it."
"That's all?" Dutch laughed, the sound harsh and bitter. "You killed the only family I had over fifty dollars and wounded pride, then disappeared like smoke. Do you have any idea what that did to me? What I became trying to find you?"
"I know exactly what you became." Sister Marguerite gestured at the mining camp behind him, the equipment, the poisoned barrels. "You became someone who kills children for money. Someone who'd work for people poisoning wells and murdering surveyors just for a chance at revenge. If Virgil could see what you've become in his name, he'd be ashamed."
Dutch's hand twitched toward his gun, but he controlled it. Barely. "Don't you dare speak his name. Don't you dare judge what I've done when you're the reason I had to do it."
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
~1,769 words
The walk back to the mission felt longer than it should have. Sister Marguerite's legs moved mechanically, carrying her across the half-mile of desert while the sun began its descent toward the horizon. Her throat still ached where Dutch had gripped it, and her hands—steady during the violence—now trembled slightly as the adrenaline drained away.
She'd killed Dutch Corrigan. Put two bullets in him at point-blank range and watched him die in the dust. Six years of prayer and penance, six years of trying to be someone different, and it had taken less than five minutes to become the Cimarron Ghost again.
The mission gate stood open, Father Brennan silhouetted in the entrance. Even at this distance she could read the tension in his shoulders, the way he stood perfectly still as he watched her approach. Waiting to see who walked back through that gate—Sister Marguerite or Elena Reyes.
Maybe both. Maybe neither.
She crossed the threshold and Father Brennan pulled the gate closed behind her, dropped the bar into place. They stood in the courtyard, the silence between them heavy with things neither wanted to say first.
"Catherine got away clean," Father Brennan finally said, his voice carefully neutral. "We watched from the eastern wall. She made the arroyo system, headed south. No pursuit that we could see."
"Good." Sister Marguerite's voice came out rougher than intended, scraped raw from Dutch's grip and the taste of gunpowder and something else she couldn't name. "Dutch's men scattered. Four rode out, three ran on foot. They won't regroup. Not today."
"And Dutch?"
"Dead."
Father Brennan closed his eyes, his jaw tightening. When he opened them again, there was something in his expression that might have been grief or might have been relief or might have been both tangled together until they were indistinguishable.
"You killed him," he said. Not a question.
"I killed him." Sister Marguerite met his gaze, refused to look away. "Shot him twice at close range while Lyle was providing cover. He died fast. Faster than he deserved, probably."
"Elena—"
"Don't." She held up a hand, stopping whatever he'd been about to say. "Don't tell me I had another choice. Don't tell me I could have wounded him, captured him, found some other way. We both know that's a lie. Dutch would have kept coming. Would have brought more men, more violence. The only way to end it was to end him."
"I wasn't going to say any of that." Father Brennan's voice was quiet, almost gentle. "I was going to say I'm glad you survived. That whatever you had to do to walk back through that gate was worth it because you're alive and the mission is still standing."
The words hit harder than Sister Marguerite expected, cutting through the numb emptiness that had settled over her. She felt her throat tighten—not from Dutch's grip this time, but from something closer to tears that she absolutely would not allow herself to shed.
"I don't feel like I survived," she said, the admission coming out barely above a whisper. "I feel like I died six years ago in that chapel in Tucson, and what walked out was just wearing my face. And now that thing is all that's left."
Father Brennan stepped closer, his hand finding her shoulder. "That's the guilt talking. The weight of taking a life, even when it's necessary. I know what that feels like, Elena. I've carried it myself."
"How do you bear it?" She looked up at him, this man who'd been a killer before he was a priest, who understood the particular burden of having blood on your hands. "How do you wake up every day knowing what you've done and still believe you deserve redemption?"
"I don't believe I deserve it," Father Brennan said simply. "I believe God offers it anyway. That's what grace means—getting something you don't deserve, something you could never earn, simply because you're willing to accept it. You don't have to be worthy, Elena. You just have to be willing."
Before Sister Marguerite could respond, Lyle appeared from the bell tower, his face pale and his hands still gripping his rifle like a lifeline. Cole followed behind, moving carefully to favor his wounded shoulder. Both men looked shaken, the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came after violence.
"I killed two men," Lyle said, his voice hollow. "I've never—I mean, I've shot at people before, but I never actually—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "I watched them fall. Through the scope. I saw their faces."
Sister Marguerite turned to him, saw the young man struggling with what he'd become in the space of an hour. She knew that struggle intimately, had lived it herself more times than she could count.
"You saved my life," she said, making sure he heard every word. "And you saved everyone in this mission. Those men you shot were going to kill us all—the children in the infirmary, Tom Alvarez, everyone. You stopped them. That matters."
"Does it?" Lyle's eyes were haunted. "Does it matter if I can still see their faces when I close my eyes? If I keep thinking about who they were, whether they had families, whether—"
"Yes." Sister Marguerite's voice was firm, leaving no room for doubt. "It matters because you're asking those questions. Because you're not celebrating or making excuses. The fact that it weighs on you means you're still human, still capable of feeling what violence costs. Don't lose that, Lyle. Don't let it harden you until killing feels easy."
Cole cleared his throat, his expression grim. "We need to talk about what happens next. Dutch is dead, but that doesn't end this. The consortium he was working for—they're still out there. They still want this land, still want the aquifer. And now they know we're willing to fight."
"He's right," Father Brennan said. "We've bought time, but not safety. Catherine needs at least a day to reach Santa Fe, maybe two before marshals can respond. Until then, we're exposed."
Sister Marguerite nodded, her mind already working through the tactical realities. "We fortify what we can. Set watches, rotate rest periods. Lyle stays in the bell tower—he's earned that position. Cole and Father Brennan take the walls. I'll stay mobile, respond to wherever we need strength."
"And if they come tonight?" Cole asked. "If the consortium sends more men before Catherine can bring help?"
"Then we hold these walls until we can't hold them anymore." Sister Marguerite's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "We've got ammunition, defensive positions, and the advantage of knowing this ground. They'll pay dearly for every inch."
"That's not a plan," Lyle said. "That's just dying slower."
"Sometimes that's all you get." Sister Marguerite looked at each of them in turn—young Lyle still processing his first kills, wounded Cole who'd stayed to fight despite having every reason to leave, Father Brennan who'd buried his own violent past and now watched her resurrect hers. "But we're not dead yet. And as long as we're breathing, we keep fighting. We keep protecting the people who can't protect themselves. That's what matters."
The sun touched the horizon, painting the mission walls in shades of copper and blood. Sister Marguerite felt the weight of the Peacemaker at her hip, still warm from recent firing, and wondered if she'd ever be able to set it down again. If the woman who'd walked out that gate to face Dutch Corrigan could ever go back to being the nun who'd prayed in the chapel and tended the sick.
Maybe not. Maybe that version of herself had died the moment she pulled the trigger. Maybe all that was left was this—a killer trying to use her skills for something that mattered, hoping that intent counted for something in whatever final accounting awaited her soul.
"Get some rest," she said to Lyle and Cole. "Eat something. Father Brennan and I will take the first watch. We'll rotate in four hours."
They dispersed, each carrying their own burdens, their own questions about what they'd become in the name of survival. Sister Marguerite walked to the chapel, pushed open the heavy door, and stood in the familiar quiet. The space smelled of incense and old wood and the particular silence that came from years of prayer.
She didn't kneel. Didn't pray. Just stood in the dimness, the Peacemaker heavy at her hip, and wondered if God was still listening to someone like her. If redemption was something you could lose by taking it up again after setting it down. If trying to be better had ever mattered at all.
Father Brennan appeared in the doorway behind her, his presence solid and steady. "You don't have to carry this alone."
"Don't I?" Sister Marguerite didn't turn around. "You said it yourself, Father. I'm a killer. That's what I've always been. Six years of playing dress-up doesn't change it."
"No," Father Brennan agreed. "But six years of trying does. Six years of service, of healing, of choosing to be different even when it was hard—that matters, Elena. That changes who you are, even if it doesn't erase what you've done."
Sister Marguerite finally turned to face him, and in the chapel's dimness she could almost believe he was right. Almost believe that she was more than just the Ghost, more than just a killer wearing a nun's habit. Almost believe that the blood on her hands could be washed clean through enough prayer and enough time and enough choosing to do better.
Almost.
"Dutch said we were the same," she said quietly. "Him and me. Both damned, both killers, both too broken to ever be anything else."
"He was wrong." Father Brennan's voice was certain, absolute. "You're not damned, Elena. You're just tired. And scared. And carrying more weight than anyone should have to bear alone. But you're not damned. Not yet. Not ever, if you don't choose to be."
Outside, the desert night was falling, bringing with it the cold and the darkness and the knowledge that tomorrow would bring new violence, new choices, new tests of who she was and who she wanted to be.
Sister Marguerite touched the Peacemaker one more time, then let her hand fall away.
"Let's check the walls," she said. "Make sure we're ready for whatever comes next."
They walked out together into the gathering dark, two killers turned faithful, two sinners seeking grace, two people trying to protect something good in a world that seemed determined to burn it all down.
The night was long. And morning, when it came, would bring answers neither of them was ready to face.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
~2,999 words
The night passed in two-hour watches, each rotation marked by exhaustion that settled deeper into bone. Sister Marguerite took the last watch before dawn, standing on the eastern wall while the desert emerged from darkness in shades of ash and copper. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, but she'd learned long ago how to function through exhaustion—it was just another kind of pain, and pain could be endured.
Below in the courtyard, Tom Alvarez coughed—a wet, rattling sound that carried through the pre-dawn stillness. The infection she'd feared was setting in despite Father Brennan's careful wound care. They had limited supplies, and what little laudanum remained was being rationed for the Morales children whose lungs still struggled with whatever chemical had poisoned the water.
The sound of hoofbeats reached her before the rider came into view. Single horse, moving at an easy trot rather than the urgent pace of someone fleeing or pursuing. Sister Marguerite's hand found the Peacemaker automatically, her body responding before her mind fully processed the threat.
The rider emerged from the dawn haze—a man in a dark suit and bowler hat, sitting his horse with the careful posture of someone who'd learned to ride but hadn't been raised to it. He carried no visible weapons, though that meant nothing. A leather satchel hung from his saddle horn, the kind lawyers and government officials favored.
"Father Brennan," Sister Marguerite called down to the courtyard, not taking her eyes off the approaching rider. "We have company."
The priest appeared moments later, still buckling his belt, his face drawn with the same exhaustion they all carried. He joined her on the wall, squinting into the morning light.
"Government man," he said after a moment. "Or wants us to think he is."
"Same thing, maybe." Sister Marguerite watched the rider approach the gate, noted how his eyes moved across the mission walls—cataloging, assessing. "He's looking for weak points."
The rider stopped thirty yards out, well beyond effective pistol range but close enough to be heard. He removed his hat, held it across his chest in a gesture that was probably meant to look respectful.
"Good morning," he called out, his voice carrying the flat vowels of somewhere back East. "My name is Gerald Pierce. I'm with the Territorial Land Office, sent to investigate reports of water contamination in this area. I'd appreciate a moment of your time to discuss the situation."
Sister Marguerite and Father Brennan exchanged glances. The timing was too convenient, the official too prepared. This was the consortium's next move—not violence, but bureaucracy. A man with papers and authority, come to make their resistance seem unreasonable.
"The mission is closed to visitors," Father Brennan called back. "We've had trouble recently. I'm sure you understand."
"I do understand, Father." Pierce's smile was professionally sympathetic. "That's precisely why I'm here. The territorial governor received word of violence at the mining operation north of here—several men killed or wounded. There are also reports of water poisoning affecting local residents. As a federal trustee of this land, the mission is obligated to cooperate with official investigations."
The words were carefully chosen, each one a small trap. Federal trustee—acknowledging the mission's legal status while simultaneously asserting government authority over it. Obligated to cooperate—implying that resistance would be illegal, unreasonable, grounds for stripping their protections.
"We've had no official notification of an investigation," Father Brennan said. "No written orders, no advance warning. You'll forgive me if I'm cautious about opening our gates to a stranger."
Pierce's smile never wavered, but something cold flickered behind his eyes. "I have documentation, of course. Letters of authority from the territorial governor's office, along with a warrant to inspect the premises and collect evidence related to the poisoning. I can show them to you, if you'd like to examine them before allowing me entry."
"Slide them under the gate," Sister Marguerite said, speaking for the first time. "We'll review them and let you know."
Pierce's attention shifted to her, his gaze taking in the nun's habit, the gun at her hip, the way she stood with the easy confidence of someone comfortable with violence. His smile faltered for just a moment before reasserting itself.
"I'm afraid that's not how this works, Sister. The documentation must be presented in person, and I must be allowed to conduct my investigation. If you refuse to cooperate, I'm authorized to report back that the mission is obstructing a federal inquiry. That would have... unfortunate consequences for your legal standing."
There it was—the real threat. Not violence, but the slow grinding machinery of law and paperwork. The consortium couldn't take the mission by force, not with Catherine carrying evidence to Santa Fe. But they could tie it up in legal challenges, send officials with warrants and authority, create enough bureaucratic chaos to delay or prevent any help from arriving.
"Give us a moment," Father Brennan said. He and Sister Marguerite descended from the wall, moved to where they couldn't be overheard.
"He's lying," Sister Marguerite said immediately. "Or at least stretching the truth. No territorial official moves this fast unless they're being paid to."
"Agreed." Father Brennan's jaw was tight, his hands clenched at his sides. "But if he does have legitimate documentation, refusing him gives them grounds to claim we're in violation of federal trust obligations. They could use that to strip our legal protections."
"And if we let him in, he'll destroy or steal whatever evidence we have left. Count our numbers, assess our defenses, report back on our vulnerabilities." Sister Marguerite's mind was already working through the angles, the ways this could go wrong. "He's a scout, same as if they'd sent an armed man. Just dressed differently."
"So what do we do?"
Sister Marguerite thought for a moment, weighing options that all felt like different flavors of the same trap. Finally she said, "We let him in. But we control what he sees. I'll take him to the infirmary, show him the sick children, make him understand what the poisoning has done. You stay with Tom and the documents—don't let him near either. Cole and Lyle stay on the walls, ready to close the gate if this goes wrong."
"You think you can manage him alone?"
"I think I can make him uncomfortable enough that he reports back exactly what we want him to see—a mission barely holding together, not worth the effort of a direct assault." Sister Marguerite touched the Peacemaker at her hip. "And if he tries anything else, I'll handle it."
Father Brennan's expression was troubled, but he nodded. They returned to the wall where Pierce waited with the patience of someone who knew he held the stronger position.
"We'll allow you entry for a limited inspection," Father Brennan called down. "But you'll be accompanied at all times, and you'll leave your satchel at the gate. No documents come inside until we've verified your authority."
Pierce's smile tightened, but he dismounted and approached the gate. Sister Marguerite descended to the courtyard, nodded to Lyle who stood ready with his rifle, and lifted the bar.
The gate swung open. Pierce stepped through, and Sister Marguerite immediately moved to his side—close enough that he'd feel the implicit threat, far enough to react if he reached for a hidden weapon.
"This way," she said, her voice flat and professional. "I'll show you what your consortium's poison has done to our children."
Pierce's professional mask slipped for just a moment, genuine surprise flickering across his face. "I don't know what you're talking about, Sister. I'm here on behalf of the territorial government, not any private—"
"Save it." Sister Marguerite started walking toward the infirmary, not looking back to see if he followed. "The mining operation half a mile north, the chemical contamination of the aquifer, the systematic poisoning designed to drive us off this land—we know all of it. The only question is whether you're stupid enough to think we'll cooperate with helping you finish the job."
Behind them, the gate closed with a heavy thud. Pierce stood in the courtyard, surrounded by mission walls, watched by armed men, and Sister Marguerite could see him recalculating—understanding that he'd walked into something more dangerous than he'd expected.
"Perhaps we should start over," he said carefully. "I think there's been a misunderstanding about my purpose here."
"No misunderstanding." Sister Marguerite turned to face him fully, let him see the woman beneath the habit—the killer, the Ghost, the thing that had put bullets in Dutch Corrigan and would do the same to anyone else who threatened her people. "You're here to scout us. To see how weak we are, how close to breaking. So let me save you some time: we're exhausted, we're running low on supplies, and we're desperate. But we're also armed, we're dug in, and we've already killed the men who came before you. How desperate we get depends entirely on what you do next."
The morning sun climbed higher, burning away the last shadows. In the infirmary, children coughed. On the walls, Lyle and Cole watched with fingers near triggers. And in the courtyard, a government man who'd expected an easy investigation found himself face to face with something he hadn't prepared for—a nun who'd stopped pretending she wasn't a killer.
Sister Marguerite led Pierce through the courtyard toward the infirmary, watching his eyes catalog everything—the fortified positions, the armed men on the walls, the water barrels they'd filled from the creek before dawn. She could see him making mental notes, preparing his report.
"You should understand something," she said as they walked. "The people in that infirmary aren't obstacles to your consortium's plans. They're children. Three of them, all under ten years old, all suffering from chemical pneumonitis because someone decided poisoning an aquifer was an acceptable business strategy."
"I told you, I'm not—"
"I don't care what you told me." Sister Marguerite stopped, turned to face him. "I care what you do next. So look at those children. Look at what your investigation is really about. Then decide if you can live with being part of it."
She pushed open the infirmary door. The smell hit first—sweat and sickness and the medicinal tang of the limited supplies they had left. Three small beds held the Morales children, their breathing labored even in sleep. Father Brennan's careful nursing had kept them alive, but their faces held the pallor of bodies fighting a battle they were slowly losing.
Pierce stopped in the doorway. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't this. Sister Marguerite watched his professional detachment crack, watched him see past the property dispute and legal maneuvering to the human cost of what was happening here.
"Jesus," he whispered.
"He's not here right now," Sister Marguerite said. "Just us. And you. Making choices about what kind of man you want to be."
Pierce stood frozen for a long moment, his gaze moving from one child to the next. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost its bureaucratic smoothness. "I was told this was a straightforward land dispute. Property rights, legal technicalities. Nobody said anything about children dying."
"Would it have mattered if they had?"
The question hung between them. Pierce's hands trembled slightly as he reached into his coat—Sister Marguerite's hand moved to the Peacemaker automatically, but he pulled out only papers, folded documents with official seals.
"I need to give you these," he said, his voice hollow. "I'm sorry. But I need to give you these."
Sister Marguerite took the papers, unfolded them, and felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Emergency petition. Territorial court. Claims of abandoned federal trust obligations. And at the bottom, stamped and signed: Eviction order. Forty-eight hours to vacate the premises.
"They filed yesterday," Pierce said quietly. "Before the violence at the mining camp. They had a judge in their pocket, someone who signed the order without investigation. By the time anyone realizes it's fraudulent, the deadline will have passed and they'll have legal grounds to remove you by force."
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
~1,535 words
They gathered in the refectory as the sun reached its zenith—Father Brennan, Cole, Lyle, and Sister Marguerite. Tom Alvarez remained in the infirmary, too fevered to move, while the Morales children slept their exhausted sleep. The room felt smaller than it had days ago, the walls pressing in with the weight of what was coming.
Sister Marguerite laid the eviction papers on the table. The official seals caught the light, made the documents look more legitimate than they had any right to be.
"Forty-eight hours," she said without preamble. "Then federal marshals arrive with legal authority to remove us by force. They'll have twenty men, maybe more. Court order signed by a territorial judge. Everything official, everything legal. And we'll be criminals if we resist."
Cole leaned forward, his wounded shoulder making him wince. "Criminals or corpses. Those are the options?"
"Those are the options they're giving us." Father Brennan's voice was hollow. "The consortium couldn't take us by force, so they bought a judge. Filed emergency papers claiming we'd abandoned our federal trust obligations. By the time anyone investigates, we'll be gone and they'll control the land."
"Catherine—" Lyle started.
"Won't make it." Sister Marguerite's words cut through the hope before it could take root. "Pierce warned us. They have riders watching the southern roads. A woman traveling alone with documents? She'll be stopped before she reaches Santa Fe. Maybe already has been."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to suffocate. Lyle's hands trembled on the table. Cole's jaw worked like he was chewing on words he couldn't quite spit out. Father Brennan stared at the papers with the expression of a man watching his faith burn.
"So we lost," Cole said finally. "All of it—the fighting, Dutch, everything—and we still lost."
"We lost the legal battle," Sister Marguerite corrected. "The question now is what we do with the time we have left."
"Leave." Cole's voice was flat. "Pack what we can carry, get the sick people onto wagons, and disappear before the marshals arrive. Live to fight another day."
"There is no other day." Father Brennan's hands were clenched on the table. "The land grant protects this mission specifically. If we abandon it, the protection dies. The consortium gets exactly what they want—an empty property they can claim was voluntarily abandoned."
"Better than a graveyard full of people who died for nothing."
"Is it?" Sister Marguerite's question hung in the air. "We leave, they win. They poison the aquifer, extract billions of gallons of water, and sell it for profit. Next mission, next community in their way—same thing happens. Because we taught them there's no cost. That you can murder children with paperwork and nobody fights back."
Cole's expression hardened. "So your plan is to die here? Make a statement? That's not strategy, that's suicide with extra steps."
"My plan," Sister Marguerite said carefully, "is to make them understand that some things cost more than they're willing to pay. Twenty marshals against four armed defenders in a fortified position—they'll take casualties. Maybe a lot of casualties. And when word spreads that federal authority was used to evict a mission protecting poisoned children, when marshals died enforcing a corrupt judge's fraudulent order—that's a story people remember."
"A story told about our corpses," Lyle said. His voice cracked on the last word. "We can't win this. Even if we kill half of them, they'll still take the mission. And we'll be dead. Or arrested and hanged as outlaws."
"Yes." Sister Marguerite didn't flinch from the truth. "That's the reality. We can't win. We can only make it cost enough that maybe—maybe—someone investigates. Maybe the territorial governor looks into how a mission got evicted so quickly. Maybe a newspaper picks up the story. It's not much. But it's all we have."
Father Brennan stood, walked to the window, stared out at the courtyard where they'd already buried too many. "I became a priest to atone for violence. To prove I could be something other than a killer. And now the only way to honor that choice is to kill again. Do you understand how that feels? Like God is laughing at every prayer I ever said."
"I understand." Sister Marguerite's voice was soft. "I understand exactly. Six years as Sister Marguerite, trying to become someone worthy of forgiveness. And the moment it mattered, I was the Ghost again. Like I never changed at all."
"So what's the point?" Lyle's question came out almost pleading. "If we're still killers, if we're still damned—what's the point of any of it?"
"The point," Father Brennan said, still staring out the window, "is that we choose what we kill for. Dutch came for money and revenge. The consortium poisons wells for profit. But we—if we stand here, if we fight—we do it for children who can't fight for themselves. For people who have nowhere else to go. That doesn't make us righteous. But maybe it makes us something better than we were."
Cole pushed back from the table, stood, paced the length of the refectory. His boots echoed on stone floors that had witnessed two centuries of prayers and masses and desperate people seeking sanctuary. "I'm a hired gun. Was hired to protect Catherine and David, and David's already dead. My contract doesn't cover dying for a doomed mission. Nobody would blame me for walking away."
"No," Sister Marguerite agreed. "Nobody would."
"But if I do—if I ride out before the marshals come—I spend the rest of my life knowing I left when it mattered." Cole's laugh was bitter. "Funny thing about getting older. You start caring about the man you see in mirrors."
"You don't have to stay," Father Brennan said. "None of you do. This isn't your fight. It's mine and Elena's—we're the ones who took vows to protect this place. We're the ones who brought violence here, who killed to defend it. If anyone has to stand and face what's coming, it's us."
"Bullshit." The word came from Lyle, surprising everyone. The young man's face was pale but his voice was steady. "You didn't bring violence here. The consortium did. They poisoned children. Shot Tom. Killed David. All you did was refuse to roll over and die quietly. That's not bringing violence—that's refusing to be a victim."
Sister Marguerite looked at the three men—Cole with his mercenary pragmatism warring against something deeper, Lyle with his fear transforming into resolve, Father Brennan with his faith cracking under impossible weight. This was her congregation now. Not people seeking salvation through prayer, but through the harder choice of standing when running made more sense.
"Here's what I know," she said. "The marshals come at dawn in two days. They'll have numbers, authority, and the law behind them. We have four guns, limited ammunition, and a building that's not really built for siege defense. If we stay, we probably die. If we fight, we're outlaws. And if we win somehow—which we won't—we're still criminals who fired on federal officers."
"But?" Cole prompted.
"But those children in the infirmary are alive because we stayed. Tom Alvarez is breathing because we fought. And maybe—just maybe—if we make this cost enough, someone asks why federal marshals died evicting a mission that was protecting poisoned children. Maybe someone investigates the judge who signed the papers. Maybe the story spreads and the next community in the consortium's way knows to fight back."
"That's a lot of maybes," Cole said.
"It is." Sister Marguerite met his eyes. "But it's all we have. So I'm asking—not ordering, asking—what do you want to do with the next forty-eight hours?"
The silence stretched. Outside, wind moved through the courtyard, carrying the smell of dust and creosote and the chemical taint that still lingered in the air. Somewhere a child coughed. Tom Alvarez called out in fevered delirium. The mission continued its slow dying, indifferent to their choice.
Lyle spoke first. "I stay. I'm scared, and I don't want to die, but I stay."
Father Brennan nodded slowly. "I took vows. To serve, to protect, to be shepherd to those who had no one else. I stay."
Cole looked at each of them in turn, his expression unreadable. Then he smiled—bitter and resigned and somehow genuine. "Hell. I've done stupider things for worse reasons. I stay."
Sister Marguerite felt something loosen in her chest—not relief, exactly, but recognition. They were all damned now. All choosing to stand at the edge of the abyss and see what looked back. But they were choosing it together, for reasons that mattered more than survival.
"Then we prepare," she said. "We fortify every position, stockpile ammunition, fill every water barrel. We write down everything we know about the consortium, the poisoning, the corruption—and we hide copies where they might be found later. We make sure that if we die here, the truth doesn't die with us."
"And when the marshals come?" Lyle asked.
Sister Marguerite touched the Peacemaker at her hip. "We give them one chance to stand down. To question their orders, to see they're being used. And if they don't—" She met each man's eyes in turn. "Then we make them remember San Marcos Mission for as long as the territory stands."
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
~2,818 words
Dawn broke cold over San Marcos Mission. Sister Marguerite stood in the bell tower beside Lyle, watching the eastern horizon bleed from black to purple to the pale gold that promised heat later. The desert stretched empty in every direction—until it didn't.
They came as a dark line against the sunrise. Twenty riders, maybe more, moving in formation that spoke of military discipline. Federal marshals, their badges catching first light like distant stars. Behind them, two wagons—one for prisoners, one for whatever they planned to salvage from the mission before burning it to the ground.
"Jesus," Lyle breathed. His hands were steady on his rifle, but his face had gone the color of old parchment.
"They're early." Sister Marguerite checked her Peacemaker's chambers for the third time that morning. Six rounds. She had another dozen in her pocket, and that was all. Cole and Father Brennan had even less. "Wanted to catch us sleeping, probably. Make it quick and clean."
"Are we really doing this?"
She looked at the young man—barely twenty-five, still young enough to believe the world made sense. "You can still leave. Take one of the horses, ride west before they close the perimeter. Nobody would fault you."
"Would you leave?"
"No."
"Then neither will I." Lyle settled into position behind the bell tower's low wall, his rifle barrel resting on stone worn smooth by two centuries of wind. "But I'm still scared."
"Good. Fear keeps you alive." Sister Marguerite descended the ladder, her boots finding rungs she could navigate without looking. "They'll send a rider first. Someone to read the eviction order, make it official. That's when I talk. You don't shoot unless they do."
"And if they shoot?"
"Then you make every bullet count."
The courtyard was quiet in the pre-dawn chill. Father Brennan waited near the chapel entrance, his rifle held with the casual competence of a man who'd carried weapons longer than he'd carried a rosary. Cole had positioned himself behind the fountain—dry now, its basin filled with sand and memories of better days. Both men looked up as she approached.
"Twenty-three," she said. "Professional formation. They'll establish a perimeter, then send someone to parley."
"And when the parley fails?" Father Brennan's voice was steady, but she could see the cost of that steadiness in the lines around his eyes.
"Then we find out if any of them have the courage to question their orders." Sister Marguerite moved to the main gate—heavy oak reinforced with iron, built to withstand Apache raids in an earlier century. She'd barred it from the inside, but it wouldn't hold against a determined assault. Nothing would. "They'll offer terms first. Surrender peacefully, nobody gets hurt. Standard procedure."
"You think any of them believe that?" Cole asked.
"No. But they'll say it anyway. Makes them feel better about what comes after."
The riders drew closer. Sister Marguerite could make out details now—the lead marshal rode a gray gelding, sat his saddle with the ease of someone who'd spent more time on horseback than on his feet. Older than she'd expected, maybe fifty, with a weathered face that had seen too many ugly situations to approach this one with enthusiasm. The man beside him was younger, rigid in his saddle, the kind who'd memorized regulations and mistaken rules for righteousness.
They stopped fifty yards from the gate. The lead marshal raised one hand—a signal that rippled through the formation behind him. The riders spread out, encircling the mission with practiced efficiency. Escape routes cut off. Perimeter established. Everything by the book.
Sister Marguerite stepped up onto the gate's firing platform, making herself visible above the wall. The morning sun was at her back, putting her face in shadow. Small advantage, but she'd take what she could get.
"That's far enough," she called out. Her voice carried across the empty ground between them. "State your business."
The lead marshal nudged his horse forward—alone, hands visible and empty. Brave or stupid, she couldn't tell yet. He stopped twenty yards out, close enough for conversation, far enough to avoid a quick grab.
"I'm Federal Marshal Thomas Bennett." His voice was graveled by years of dust and hard riding. "I'm here under authority of the territorial court to enforce an eviction order against San Marcos Mission. I'm asking you to stand down, open the gates, and allow us to execute our legal duty without violence."
"Legal duty." Sister Marguerite let the words hang. "Tell me, Marshal Bennett—did you read the eviction order? Or just the judge's signature?"
Something flickered across Bennett's face. Not quite doubt, but close enough. "I read it. Mission failed to maintain federal trust obligations, endangered public health, violated multiple territorial regulations—"
"Did you read the part about how we're protecting children poisoned by a mining consortium? How the water contamination was deliberate? How a territorial judge signed that order three days after receiving a substantial payment from the same consortium that wants this land?"
"That's not my concern." But his voice had lost some of its certainty. "I have orders. A signed court document. I enforce the law—I don't interpret it."
"The law." Sister Marguerite felt the old anger rising, cold and focused. "The law says we have perpetual mineral and water rights under a Spanish land grant confirmed by federal treaty. The law says you can't evict us without proving we abandoned our trust—which we didn't. The law says a lot of things, Marshal. But you're not here because of law. You're here because someone with money wanted us gone, and bought a judge to make it look official."
The younger marshal—Rawley, she guessed—spurred his horse forward, stopping beside Bennett. "This is a waste of time. They're refusing a lawful order. We have authority to remove them by force."
"Nobody asked you, son." Bennett didn't look at his second-in-command, but the rebuke was clear. To Sister Marguerite: "I don't like this any more than you do. But I've got twenty men and a court order. You've got—what? Four guns? Maybe five? This ends one way. The only choice you have is whether people die first."
"You're right." Sister Marguerite kept her hands visible, her voice calm. "This probably ends with us dead or in chains. But here's what happens after—newspapers pick up the story. Federal marshals killed while evicting a mission protecting poisoned children. Territorial governor gets questions from Washington. Someone investigates the judge who signed your order, finds the consortium's payment. Maybe it takes a month, maybe a year—but eventually the truth comes out. And you're the man who pulled the trigger."
Bennett's jaw worked. She could see the calculation behind his eyes—duty versus conscience, orders versus consequences. A good man caught in an impossible situation. Exactly the kind the consortium had counted on.
"I have sympathy for your position," he said finally. "But my orders are clear. I'm giving you thirty minutes to evacuate the mission. Take the sick, take whatever you can carry, and walk away. After that, we're coming in. And if you resist, I will not hesitate to respond with force."
"Thirty minutes." Sister Marguerite looked past him at the line of marshals, their rifles ready, their faces set. Young men and old, all carrying the weight of authority and the assumption that legal orders made them righteous. "And then you become murderers with paperwork."
"And then I do my job." Bennett turned his horse, rode back to the line. Over his shoulder: "Thirty minutes. Use them wisely."
Sister Marguerite descended from the platform. Father Brennan and Cole were waiting, their expressions grim.
"He's conflicted," she said. "Doesn't like the orders, but he'll follow them. The young one—Rawley—he's dangerous. True believer. He'll push Bennett to act."
"So we wait thirty minutes and then die?" Cole's voice was flat.
"We wait thirty minutes and make them understand the cost." Sister Marguerite checked her Peacemaker again. Still six rounds. Still not enough. "They come through that gate, we make every bullet matter. We make them remember San Marcos. And maybe—just maybe—someone asks why they had to kill us."
Father Brennan nodded slowly. "I'll be in the chapel. If anyone wants to pray, now's the time."
"And if prayer doesn't work?" Cole asked.
The priest smiled—sad and knowing and resigned. "Then we remind them that even sinners can die for something worth dying for."
Twenty-three minutes.
Sister Marguerite stood behind the fountain with Cole, her Peacemaker drawn but held low against her thigh. Father Brennan had positioned himself near the chapel entrance, his rifle angled toward the gate. Lyle remained in the bell tower, his vantage giving him clear sight lines across the courtyard and beyond the walls.
The sun climbed higher. Heat began to shimmer off the packed earth. Sister Marguerite's throat was dry, but she didn't drink from the canteen at her hip. Water was scarce enough without wasting it on nerves.
"They're moving," Lyle called down, his voice tight. "Formation shift. Looks like they're preparing to advance."
Seven minutes early. Sister Marguerite felt the cold certainty settle into her chest—the place where fear should be, where normal people kept their survival instincts. The Ghost lived there instead, patient and watchful.
The gate shuddered. Once. Twice. Testing the strength of the bar.
"Open up!" The voice was young, sharp with authority that hadn't been earned yet. Rawley. "Your time is up. By order of the territorial court, you are commanded to vacate these premises immediately."
"We have seven minutes," Sister Marguerite called back. "Marshal Bennett gave us thirty."
"Marshal Bennett's patience has limits. Open the gate or we breach it."
She looked at Father Brennan, saw the resignation in his eyes. They'd both known it would come to this—that bureaucratic violence was still violence, that men with badges killed just as dead as men without them.
"No," she said simply.
The first rifle shot cracked across the morning. Not from the marshals—from Lyle's position in the tower. Sister Marguerite's head snapped up in time to see a marshal tumble from his saddle, clutching his shoulder. Not a kill shot. A warning.
"They're flanking!" Lyle shouted. "East wall—three men with a ram!"
Everything accelerated. The gate exploded inward as the ram connected—oak splintering, iron hinges screaming. Marshals poured through the breach, rifles up, spreading into tactical positions with the smooth efficiency of men who'd done this before.
Sister Marguerite fired twice. The first marshal dropped, leg wound spinning him to the ground. The second caught her bullet in the shoulder, his rifle clattering against stone. She moved before they could return fire, diving behind the fountain's far side as bullets chewed into masonry where she'd been standing.
Cole's revolver barked three times in quick succession. A marshal went down hard, not getting up. Another staggered back through the gate, hand pressed to his side. The third shot went wide—Cole's wounded shoulder affecting his aim.
"Infirmary!" Father Brennan's voice cut through the chaos. Sister Marguerite's head turned in time to see Rawley and two marshals breaking toward the building where Tom and the children lay helpless. The young marshal's face was set with righteous fury, his rifle leading the way.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
~2,984 words
They worked through the afternoon heat, moving with the efficiency of people who understood that survival depended on speed. Tom Alvarez could barely sit upright, but he insisted on being loaded into the wagon alongside the Morales children. The fever had broken in two of them; the third—little Maria—still struggled to breathe, her small chest hitching with effort that tore at something deep in Sister Marguerite's chest.
Father Brennan's wound was clean, the bullet passing through muscle without striking bone. Sister Marguerite had packed and dressed it while he gritted his teeth and made no sound beyond a single sharp intake of breath. The bleeding had slowed. Infection remained a risk, but they'd face that risk on the road rather than waiting for the consortium's next move.
Cole and Lyle loaded supplies—water barrels they'd filled from the stream three miles west, dried goods from the mission stores, blankets and medical supplies and everything they could carry. The horses stood patient in their traces, desert-bred and accustomed to hardship.
Sister Marguerite stood in the chapel one last time. The crucifix above the altar caught afternoon light through the high windows, casting long shadows across worn pews. She'd knelt here hundreds of times over six years, seeking peace or forgiveness or some confirmation that her penance mattered. The silence had never answered.
It didn't answer now.
She turned to leave and found Father Brennan in the doorway, his wounded arm bound tight against his chest.
"You're not coming back," he said. Not a question.
"No." Sister Marguerite looked at the altar, the adobe walls, the physical structure of sanctuary she'd tried to inhabit. "I don't know what I am anymore. Not a nun. Not entirely the Ghost. Something in between that doesn't have a name."
"Most of us live in that space." Father Brennan stepped inside, his boots quiet on stone floors. "Between what we were and what we're trying to become. The Church calls it purgatory. I call it being human."
"You can still be a priest. You chose to protect, not to murder. That matters."
"And you chose to defend children instead of walking away. That matters too." He moved to stand beside her, both of them facing the altar like penitents who'd forgotten the words to their prayers. "Elena—Sister Marguerite—whoever you are now—you're not damned. You're just someone who discovered that redemption doesn't mean becoming helpless. Sometimes it means remembering how to fight for the right reasons."
"I killed Dutch. I shot three marshals today. How many more before I'm just the Ghost again?"
"You wounded three marshals. You could have killed them—we both know you're capable. But you chose to disable, to warn, to make them understand the cost without making them pay with their lives. That's not the Ghost. That's someone who learned something in six years of trying."
Sister Marguerite wanted to believe him. Wanted to accept that the line between righteous violence and simple murder was clear, that her choices today had been justified by their necessity. But Rawley's body still lay in the courtyard, and Father Brennan's bullet had put it there.
"You killed a man for me," she said quietly. "For us. For the children. I know the reasons were good. But you still killed him."
"I did." Father Brennan's voice was steady, but she could hear the cost beneath the words. "And I'll answer for that. To God, to myself, to whatever judgment comes. But I don't regret it. Rawley was going to shoot his way into that infirmary. He was going to drag sick children into the sun and call it law. I stopped him. If that damns me, then I'll be damned knowing I chose correctly."
They stood together in the silence, two killers who'd tried to become something better and discovered that transformation was more complicated than either had imagined. The mission had been their sanctuary, their penance, their attempt to prove that people could change. Now it was just walls and memories, another place they'd have to leave behind.
"Where will you go?" Sister Marguerite asked.
"Wherever these people need me. Tom's going to need care. The children need someone to keep them alive until they heal. And someone needs to make sure Catherine's evidence reaches the right hands." Father Brennan smiled—tired but genuine. "I'm still a priest. Still a doctor. Still someone who can do some good before the end. That's enough."
"And me?"
"You're the woman who held off twenty-three federal marshals with four guns and sheer certainty. You're the legend who came back from the dead to protect children from poisoners. You're Sister Marguerite and the Cimarron Ghost and whoever you decide to be tomorrow." He turned to face her fully. "What happens next is your choice. It's always been your choice."
Sister Marguerite looked at her hands—scarred from work, steady from training, stained with blood that soap couldn't quite wash away. The same hands that had delivered babies and dressed wounds and killed men who needed killing. She'd spent six years trying to erase the Ghost, to become someone gentle and holy and worthy of redemption.
Maybe that had been the mistake. Maybe redemption wasn't about becoming someone new, but about learning to be yourself for better reasons.
"I'm going north," she said. "There are other communities like this one. Other places where consortiums and mining companies and corrupt officials think they can take what they want because nobody will stop them. I'm going to stop them."
"As Sister Marguerite?"
"As whoever I need to be." She met his eyes. "I'm done pretending the Ghost is dead. She's not. She's just learned to choose her battles."
Father Brennan nodded slowly. "Then God go with you. Both of you."
They left the chapel together, stepping into afternoon sun that turned the courtyard amber and gold. Cole had finished loading the wagons. Lyle stood near the horses, his rifle slung across his back, looking toward the southern road with an expression caught between hope and fear.
"Catherine should have reached Santa Fe by now," he said as they approached. "If she got through. If the consortium didn't catch her."
"She got through." Sister Marguerite said it with certainty she didn't entirely feel. "Catherine's smarter than Dutch gave her credit for. She'll find help."
"And if she doesn't?"
"Then we make sure her evidence survives anyway." Sister Marguerite checked the wagon's load, the supplies that would keep them alive for two weeks if they rationed carefully. "We head west first, then north. Stay off the main roads. Find communities that need doctors and warn them about the consortium's tactics."
"Warn them how?" Cole asked. "By telling them a priest and a nun-turned-gunslinger killed a federal marshal and ran?"
"By telling them the truth." Father Brennan's voice was quiet but firm. "That corrupt officials will use law as a weapon. That property is worth more than people to men with enough money. That sometimes survival means standing and fighting even when the odds are impossible."
Tom Alvarez raised his head from the wagon bed, his face pale but his eyes clear. "Tell them about San Marcos. Tell them we stood. Some of us bled, but we stood. And maybe that matters more than whether we won."
Sister Marguerite looked at the shattered gate, the mission walls that had sheltered and confined her, the blood drying in the dust. They'd defended this place. They'd survived. But survival wasn't the victory—the victory was in the choosing, in the moment when Bennett's conscience had cracked and he'd decided that orders weren't enough justification for murder.
"Mount up," she said. "We're losing daylight."
They rode out as the sun touched the western horizon, four adults and three children and one wounded man, leaving behind the only sanctuary any of them had known. Sister Marguerite rode at the front, her Peacemaker heavy against her hip, her rosary tucked into her pocket where she could feel its weight without needing to display it.
Behind them, San Marcos Mission stood empty against the darkening sky—walls that had witnessed two centuries of prayer and violence and the endless human struggle to be better than survival demanded. The crosses on the chapel roof caught the last light, holding it for a moment before darkness claimed everything.
Sister Marguerite didn't look back. The Ghost had never been one for sentiment, and the nun she'd been had learned that sometimes the only prayer worth speaking was the one you lived instead of recited.
They had forty-eight hours before someone came looking. Maybe more if Bennett's report got lost in bureaucracy, maybe less if the consortium pushed hard enough. Either way, they'd be gone—scattered into the territory like seeds on desert wind, carrying the truth of what had happened here.
And if the consortium came looking for the Cimarron Ghost, they'd find her. But they'd also find that six years of trying to be better hadn't made her weaker.
It had just taught her to aim more carefully.
Three weeks later, Sister Marguerite stood on a ridge overlooking the Verde Valley, watching smoke rise from cookfires in the settlement below. The sun was setting behind her, painting the landscape in shades of copper and gold that reminded her of the mission courtyard on that final afternoon. She'd stopped thinking of herself as Sister Marguerite somewhere between the Arizona border and this nameless ridge. The habit was gone, traded to a widow in Prescott for trail clothes and supplies. The rosary remained in her pocket—not as a symbol of faith she'd lost, but as a reminder of what she'd tried to become.
The Cimarron Ghost had returned, but changed. Tempered by six years of healing hands and morning prayers, sharpened by the understanding that some fights were worth the cost of fighting them.
Father Brennan and the others had turned east two days after leaving San Marcos, heading toward Santa Fe with Tom and the children. She'd watched them go with something that felt like grief but tasted like relief. They were good people trying to do right in a world that punished righteousness. They didn't need the Ghost riding alongside, drawing violence like lightning to a high point.
She'd ridden west instead, following rumors of water rights disputes and mining operations that asked no permission. In Wickenburg, she'd stopped a claim-jumping operation with three warning shots and a conversation that ended with five men riding away and leaving their equipment behind. In Prescott, she'd delivered a letter to the territorial marshal—Catherine's evidence, copied in her own hand, with an account of San Marcos and the names of everyone involved.
The marshal had listened. Had promised investigation. Whether that promise meant anything depended on how deep the consortium's corruption ran and whether Catherine had reached Santa Fe alive.
Sister Marguerite—Elena—the Ghost—whoever she was now—had stopped waiting for institutions to deliver justice.
Hoofbeats on the ridge path pulled her attention. She turned, hand instinctively moving to the Peacemaker on her hip, then relaxed as Lyle crested the rise on a paint mare she didn't recognize.
The young man looked different. Harder around the edges, but not broken. His rifle rode easy across his back, and his eyes had lost some of their fear without gaining cruelty. He'd followed her west despite her telling him not to, showing up in Wickenburg three days after she'd arrived and refusing to leave.
"Town's called Verde Springs," Lyle said, swinging down from his saddle. "About two hundred people. Mostly farmers and ranchers. They've got a problem."
"They always do."
"Mining outfit moved in last month. Diverted the creek that feeds their irrigation. Claim they've got legal right to the water for their operation." Lyle pulled a folded paper from his coat. "This is the claim document. I talked to the town council. They've got a Spanish land grant that predates the mining claim by eighty years, but the territorial office says the grant isn't valid because it wasn't properly registered after the Mexican War."
"The original land grant," he said slowly. "When the Spanish crown established the mission. It included mineral and water rights in perpetuity. I've seen the deed — it's in the mission's records. We own everything beneath this land, including—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "Including the aquifer."
Silence fell over the courtyard. Even the hired guns had gone still, understanding the weight of what had just been said.
Sister Marguerite felt the pieces clicking into place with terrible clarity. A mission sitting on top of a fortune in water, unaware of what it possessed. Surveyors hired to map the resource. A mysterious consortium with enough money to buy up land — or enough ruthlessness to poison it until the owners fled. A sheriff who appeared just as the poisoning started. Children dying to drive people away.
"They're trying to steal it," she said. "The whole aquifer. They can't buy the mission — the Church won't sell. So they're making it uninhabitable. Poison the water, kill enough people, and eventually the mission closes. The land gets abandoned. Then they swoop in and claim it."
"But the deed—" Father Brennan started.
"Means nothing if there's no one alive to enforce it." Sister Marguerite looked at Catherine. "Your husband was part of this. You both were. You came here to map the water so they could steal it."
Catherine's hand moved to the pistol at her belt — a small thing, pearl-handled, probably expensive. She didn't draw it, but the threat was clear. "We came here to do a job. That's all. We needed the money and they were paying well. We didn't ask questions about what they planned to do with the information."
"Your husband drank poisoned water and died," Sister Marguerite said flatly. "That's what they planned to do with it. They poisoned the aquifer your husband found, and it killed him. It killed children. It would have killed everyone if we hadn't figured it out."
"I know." Sister Marguerite's tone softened slightly. "You were tools. Useful until you weren't. Now your husband's dead and you're holding evidence that could destroy whoever hired you. Which makes you dangerous."
Catherine's face went very still. "They killed him."
"Yes."
"The people who hired us. They killed David to keep him quiet. To make sure the survey..." She looked down at the map, her hand trembling. "To make sure no one could prove what they're doing."
"That would be my guess."
The hired gun who'd been quiet until now finally spoke. His voice was rough, western. "We need to leave. Right now. If what you're saying is true, if they killed Carlisle to cover this up—"
"Then they'll kill anyone else who knows," Sister Marguerite finished. "Including all of you. Including everyone at this mission."
"Then we burn the map," the other hired gun said. He was younger, his face hard but scared underneath. "Burn it and ride out. Nobody knows we have it, nobody knows what we found—"
"The sheriff knows," Father Brennan said quietly. "He had to. He's part of this. Why else would he be here?"
As if summoned by his name, they heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Multiple riders, coming fast from the direction of town. Sister Marguerite turned, her hand moving instinctively to her hip before she remembered there was no gun there anymore. Just fabric and prayer beads and six years of trying to be someone different.
The riders resolved out of the dusk — five of them. The sheriff in the lead, his badge catching the last light. Behind him, four men who definitely weren't deputies. They had the look of hired muscle, the kind of men who did what they were paid to do and didn't ask questions.
They pulled up at the courtyard's edge, forming a loose semicircle. The sheriff's eyes went immediately to the map spread across the wagon, then to Catherine, then to Sister Marguerite. His face was unreadable.
"Mrs. Carlisle," he said, his voice carrying false sympathy. "I heard about your husband. Terrible tragedy. I came as soon as I could."
"How did you hear?" Sister Marguerite asked. "They only arrived twenty minutes ago."
The sheriff's eyes flicked to her. "Small town. Word travels."
"Not that fast. Not unless someone was watching."
The silence stretched. One of the men behind the sheriff shifted in his saddle, his hand drifting toward his gun belt. The sheriff raised a hand slightly — a gesture of restraint, or maybe just delay.
"I'll ask you to step away from the wagon, Sister," the sheriff said. "All of you. Mrs. Carlisle, I'm going to need you to come with me. There are some questions about your husband's death that need answering."
"She's not going anywhere," Sister Marguerite said.
"This isn't a request."
"And this is a mission under the protection of the Catholic Church. You have no authority here."
The sheriff's smile was thin, cold. "I have all the authority I need. A man is dead. His widow is in possession of valuable property. For her own safety—"
"For her own safety, she should stay as far away from you as possible." Sister Marguerite took a step forward, positioning herself between the sheriff and the wagon. "You're working for whoever poisoned the water. You're part of this."
"That's quite an accusation, Sister."
"It's the truth. You showed up right when the poisoning started. You were conveniently close when Tom Alvarez got shot. You're here now, with armed men, demanding we hand over evidence of a massive water theft." She paused, let the words hang in the air. "How much are they paying you to help them steal the aquifer?"
The sheriff's face hardened. "Last chance. Step aside."
"No."
Father Brennan moved up beside her. Then Catherine's two hired guns, spreading out, their hands near their weapons. Then Catherine herself, holding the map against her chest like a shield.
Seven people facing six. The math wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. And Sister Marguerite knew — could feel it in the tension of the moment, in the way the sheriff's men were watching their boss, waiting for the signal — that this was about to turn violent.
She'd spent six years trying to avoid this moment. Six years proving she could be something other than what she'd been. A killer with fast hands and dead eyes, leaving bodies in her wake.
Now children were dead. Tom Alvarez had a bullet in him. David Carlisle lay cold in a wagon bed. And the man responsible was sitting on a horse twenty feet away, wearing a badge that meant nothing, backed by men who would kill them all if given the word.
Sister Marguerite felt something shift inside her. Not breaking, exactly. More like a door opening that she'd kept locked for a very long time.
"Father Brennan," she said quietly, not taking her eyes off the sheriff. "Take the map inside. Lock it in the sacristy. Do it now."
"Sister—"
"Now."
Father Brennan hesitated only a moment, then took the map from Catherine's hands and moved toward the mission doors. The sheriff's hand dropped toward his gun.
"I wouldn't," Sister Marguerite said. Her voice had changed — gone flat, cold, empty of everything except certainty. "You draw on a priest, you'll be dead before your gun clears leather. All of you will."
The sheriff's eyes narrowed. He was seeing it now — the thing she'd buried, the person underneath the habit. "You're a nun."
"I'm a lot of things. Nun is just the most recent."
They stared at each other across the dusty courtyard while the sun finished dying in the west. Behind Sister Marguerite, she heard the mission doors close, heard the heavy bar drop into place. Father Brennan and the map were safe, at least for now.
The sheriff's smile returned, but there was no humor in it. "You've made a mistake, Sister. A big one. That map is evidence in a murder investigation. Interfering with it is a crime. Threatening a lawman is a crime. I could arrest all of you right now."
"You could try."
"Or you could make this easy. Hand over the map, and maybe we forget this conversation happened. Maybe you get to keep running your little mission, helping your sick kids, doing your good works." His voice dropped, became almost gentle. "Or you can fight, and tomorrow this place is ashes and everyone in it is dead. Your choice."
Sister Marguerite looked at the men behind him — four hired guns with dead eyes, men who'd killed before and would again. Looked at the sheriff with his new badge and his old lies. Looked at Catherine and her two men, who'd come here for money and found themselves in the middle of something that would probably get them killed.
Then she looked past them all, toward the town. In the fading light, she could see a few people watching from doorways and windows. Not many — San Marcos didn't have many left. But enough. Witnesses to what was about to happen.
"No," she said simply.
The sheriff's hand moved toward his gun.
Sister Marguerite smiled. It was not a kind smile.
"I said no."
She finally looked up, met Catherine's eyes again. "Which leaves the sheriff. He'd have drawn by then, probably gotten a shot off. But he was thinking too much, watching me too carefully. Hesitation, even a fraction of a second, is fatal. I'd have put him down before his second shot. Ten seconds, start to finish. Maybe twelve if the big man had been tougher than he looked."
The silence that followed was thick enough to cut. One of Catherine's hired guns — the older one, with gray in his beard — let out a long, slow breath.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered. "You've done it before. Exactly that. Counted it out like a math problem."
"It's not math," Sister Marguerite said. "It's pattern recognition. Bodies move in predictable ways under stress. Fear makes you fast but sloppy. Anger makes you committed but blind. Training makes you mechanical. You learn to read those patterns, you learn where the bullets go before they're fired." She turned toward the mission doors. "Come inside. We need to talk about what happens next."
The infirmary was quiet when they gathered there. The two Morales children were sleeping now, their fevers broken by whatever herbs Father Brennan had administered. Tom Alvarez was stable in the surgery room, his breathing deep and regular. Sister Teresa sat with him, keeping watch, her rosary moving through her fingers in an endless loop of prayer.
They assembled in the mission's small refectory — a stone room with a long table, simple chairs, and a crucifix on the wall that had been there since Spanish colonial days. Catherine spread David's map across the table. In the lamplight, the blue lines of the aquifer seemed to glow, pulsing like arteries.
"We need to understand what we're up against," Father Brennan said. He'd found a bottle of whiskey from somewhere — probably confiscated from a parishioner who'd needed other kinds of salvation — and poured small measures into tin cups. "They've already killed for this. They'll kill again."
"The consortium." Catherine's finger traced the edge of the map. "That's what David called them. He never knew their real names — everything went through intermediaries. But the money was real. Fifty dollars for the survey, another fifty when we delivered the map. That's more than most people out here see in a year."
"Blood money," Sister Marguerite said flatly.
"We didn't know." Catherine's voice sharpened. "We thought it was just geological mapping. Investment speculation. We didn't know about the poisoning, didn't know children were dying—"
"But you knew something was wrong." Sister Marguerite leaned forward, her hands flat on the table. "You came here ahead of your husband. Asked about medical care before he'd even arrived. You were testing us, seeing if we'd noticed anything unusual. Why?"
Catherine's jaw tightened. For a moment Sister Marguerite thought she might refuse to answer. Then her shoulders sagged slightly, some internal wall crumbling.
"Because David found something else," she said quietly. "When he was mapping the aquifer. Something that wasn't on the survey specifications." She reached into her bodice, pulled out a second folded paper — smaller, more worn. "He made a second map. One he didn't send to the consortium."
She unfolded it beside the first. This one showed the same aquifer network, but with additional notations in David's hand. Chemical compositions. Mineral traces. And at three specific points — including one directly beneath the mission — dark marks with numbers beside them.
"Arsenic deposits," Father Brennan said, reading the notations. His voice was hollow. "Natural arsenic in the rock formations surrounding the aquifer."
"Not just surrounding it," Catherine said. "Leaching into it. David said the concentrations were minimal, well below dangerous levels. The water was safe to drink — had been for centuries. But if someone knew where those deposits were, if they knew how to access them..." She trailed off, the implication clear.
Sister Marguerite felt something cold settle in her stomach. "They could introduce more arsenic. Make it look natural. Poison the water while making it seem like a geological problem, not murder."
"Exactly." Catherine's finger moved to one of the marked points on the second map — a location about half a mile north of the mission. "This is where David found the highest concentration. He said there was an old mining shaft nearby, probably from when they were working the silver veins. If someone drilled down from that shaft into the aquifer, they could introduce concentrated arsenic directly into the water flow."
"Killing everyone who depended on it," Father Brennan said. "Mission. Town. Anyone downstream for miles."
"And making the land worthless," Sister Marguerite added. "No one would settle here if the water was poisoned. The mission would close. The deed would become meaningless — you can't claim water rights to water that's toxic. The consortium could buy up everything for pennies, wait a few years for people to forget, then 'discover' that the contamination was temporary. Suddenly you've got the largest water source in the territory, all to yourself."
Catherine nodded. "That's what David thought. That's why he made the second map. He was going to report it to the territorial government, prove what they were planning. But then..." Her voice caught. "Then he got shot. We thought it was random — wrong place, wrong time. But it wasn't, was it? They knew he'd figured it out. They tried to kill him, and when that didn't work fast enough, they poisoned the water. Made sure he'd drink it before he could talk to anyone."
One of Catherine's hired guns — the younger one, who'd been silent until now — spoke up. His voice was rough, angry. "We should burn both maps. Ride out tonight. Let these people figure out their own problems."
"Can't do that, Lyle," the older hired gun said. He was studying the maps with a thoughtful expression. "They've seen us. They know we were with Carlisle. If we run now, we'll have targets on our backs for as long as we live."
"So what, we stay and fight? Against a whole consortium? Against men with enough money to buy sheriffs and poison wells?" Lyle's hands were shaking. "We're guns for hire, not heroes. This isn't our fight."
"It became our fight when they killed our employer," the older man said. "When they made us witnesses." He looked at Sister Marguerite. "Name's Cole. This is Lyle. We've been riding with Mrs. Carlisle for about three months now. Good pay, easy work, no questions asked. But I don't work for murderers, and I don't run from them either."
Sister Marguerite studied him — weathered face, calm eyes, hands that knew their way around a gun but weren't eager to use it. A professional, like she'd assessed earlier. The kind of man who'd made peace with violence but didn't love it.
"Can you shoot?" she asked.
"Well enough."
"How well?"
Cole shrugged. "I was a cavalry sharpshooter during the war. Did some bounty work after. Haven't missed a shot that mattered in fifteen years."
"And you?" Sister Marguerite looked at Lyle.
The younger man swallowed hard. "I'm fast. Maybe not as fast as... as what I saw out there tonight. But fast enough."
"Fast doesn't matter if you panic."
"I won't panic."
"You already are." Sister Marguerite's voice wasn't unkind, just factual. "Your hands are shaking. Your breathing's shallow. You're running scenarios in your head, and every one ends badly. That's not panic exactly, but it's close. It'll get you killed."
Lyle's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. Sister Marguerite turned to Father Brennan.
"What about you?"
The priest looked up from his whiskey, surprised. "Me?"
"You were a doctor before you were a priest. Those are steady hands, careful hands. But they're not just surgeon's hands." She gestured at the way he held himself — the slight forward lean, the way his weight stayed on the balls of his feet even sitting down. "You've been in fights. Real ones. And you didn't lose."
Father Brennan's face went carefully neutral. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do." Sister Marguerite leaned back in her chair, studied him. "You move like someone who's been hurt and learned from it. You read a room before you enter it. When those men rode up tonight, you positioned yourself at an angle that would've given you a clear path to cover. That's not priestly training. That's something else."
The silence stretched. Finally, Father Brennan set down his cup with a soft click.
"I was a field surgeon," he said quietly. "During the war. Union army. I saw more death in four years than most people see in a lifetime." He paused, his hands folding together on the table. "After the war, I went west. Thought I could start fresh, use my skills to help instead of hurt. Opened a practice in a town called Bellwood, up in Colorado Territory."
His voice had gone flat, distant — the same tone Sister Marguerite had used when describing how she'd kill the sheriff's men. The voice of someone looking at old ghosts.
"There was a mine there," Father Brennan continued. "Silver. The owners were pushing the workers too hard, cutting corners on safety. Men were dying. I treated them as best I could, but I knew the real problem wasn't medical. So I started talking. Started organizing. Got the miners to demand better conditions, or they'd strike."
"Let me guess," Sister Marguerite said. "The owners didn't like that."
"They sent men. Pinkertons, or something like them. Came to my office one night to... convince me to stop making trouble." His hands tightened. "There were four of them. They thought a doctor would be easy to intimidate. They were wrong."
"What happened?"
"I killed two of them. Broke the third one's neck. The fourth ran." Father Brennan looked down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time. "I used a scalpel on the first one. Knew exactly where to cut. The second one I beat to death with a medical bag full of surgical tools. The third tried to shoot me, but I got inside his guard, twisted his head until I heard the vertebrae snap."
The room had gone absolutely still.
"Afterward," Father Brennan said, "I looked at what I'd done. Looked at the blood, the bodies. Looked at my hands and realized I'd killed three men with the same precision I'd used to save lives. It was... easy. Too easy. And that scared me more than anything."
He reached for his whiskey, drained it in one swallow. "So I left. Burned my practice, changed my name, walked until I found a monastery that would take me. Spent two years in silence, trying to understand what I'd become. Trying to figure out if a man who could kill that efficiently could still serve God." He smiled, but there was no humor in it. "The abbot told me that God doesn't waste tools. That maybe my past was preparation for something. That maybe I was meant to be somewhere I could use both skills — healing and protecting."
"So you came here," Elena said softly.
"So I came here," he confirmed. "To this place where the sick need care and the vulnerable need defending. Where a doctor who knows how to fight might actually make a difference." He met her eyes directly. "I've delivered seventeen babies in this village, set countless broken bones, treated fevers and infections. And yes, when the bandits came last spring, I stopped them. I don't apologize for that. But I need you to understand — I'm not that person anymore. The man who walked away from those bodies isn't the man standing here now."
"So which one is real? The healer or the killer?"
"Both. Neither." He spread his hands on the table. "Maybe that's the point. Maybe God doesn't give us new lives, just new contexts for the old ones. The same hands that killed can heal. The same mind that calculates murder can calculate salvation. It's the choice that matters, not the capability."
Sister Marguerite wanted to believe that. Wanted to think that her six years of service had transformed her into someone fundamentally different, someone who chose peace from strength rather than from fear of her own nature. But she'd seen her reflection in the window tonight — the smile she'd given the sheriff, the absolute certainty in her voice. That hadn't been Sister Marguerite. That had been the Ghost, never buried, just waiting.
"Tomorrow morning," she said, steering back to safer ground. "When Cole and I scout the shaft. If something goes wrong—"
"It won't."
"If it does," she pressed on, "you need to take the maps and run. Get them to Santa Fe, to the territorial governor. Don't try to hold the mission, don't try to fight. Just go."
Father Brennan's expression went flat. "You know I won't do that."
"I know. But I'm asking anyway."
"Because you think you're going to die tomorrow."
"Because I think one of us might. And if it's me, I need to know the rest of you won't throw your lives away trying to avenge it." She met his eyes directly. "Promise me. If I don't come back, you take everyone and you run. Live to fight another day, get the evidence to someone who can actually stop this. Don't make my death meaningless by following me into it."
Father Brennan was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he said, "I'll do what serves the mission. What protects the people here. But I won't promise to run. Not from this, not from them. We're past that now."
It wasn't the answer she wanted, but it was the honest one. Sister Marguerite nodded, accepting it. Outside, she could hear Cole and Lyle moving through the mission, their voices low as they discussed firing positions and watch rotations. Professional sounds. Competent sounds. Maybe they had a chance after all.
"Get some rest," she said again. "We'll need you sharp tomorrow."
Father Brennan stood, hesitated. "Elena. Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever you have to do—" He paused, searching for words. "You're still a good person. The violence doesn't erase that. It never did."
"You don't know what I've done."
"I know enough. And I'm telling you that redemption isn't about becoming someone without blood on their hands. It's about what you do with those hands afterward." He smiled, sad and slight. "We're both trying to atone for the same sin — being too good at killing. But maybe the penance isn't to never kill again. Maybe it's to only kill when it protects people who can't protect themselves."
He left before she could respond, his footsteps fading down the corridor toward the infirmary. Sister Marguerite sat alone in the refectory, surrounded by maps and candles and the weight of tomorrow's violence. Her rosary was still in her pocket — she'd retrieved it from the courtyard dust along with her wimple. She pulled it out now, let the beads run through her fingers.
Six years of prayer. Six years of penance. And here she was, planning a raid like she'd never stopped being the Cimarron Ghost.
Maybe I haven't, she thought. Maybe that's the point.
The candles burned lower. Eventually, she heard the bell tower door open and close as Cole took his position. Heard Lyle settling in along the western wall, the soft scrape of rifle barrel against stone. The mission was as secure as they could make it with what they had. Now it was just a matter of waiting for dawn, waiting for whatever came next.
Sister Marguerite folded David's map carefully, tucked it inside her habit along with the rosary. Then she extinguished the candles one by one, leaving only darkness and the distant stars visible through the high windows. She made her way to her small cell — bare stone, narrow cot, crucifix on the wall. The same room she'd occupied for six years, praying every night for peace she'd never quite found.
She didn't bother praying tonight. Instead, she lay down fully clothed, her eyes open in the darkness, and let her mind drift through old memories. Tucson. Tombstone. The Garrett brothers and their particular brand of brutality. Virgil Kane's surprised expression when her bullet took him between the eyes. The long ride south afterward, running from herself as much as from any pursuit.
And then this place. San Marcos Mission, with its quiet routines and simple needs. Father Brennan's unspoken understanding. The children she'd taught to read, the sick she'd tended, the small acts of service that were supposed to add up to something resembling salvation.
Maybe they had. Maybe that's what made tomorrow possible — six years of being someone worth defending, so that when the time came to defend it, she'd remember why violence mattered. Not for its own sake, but for what it protected.
I'm still the Ghost, she thought, staring at the ceiling. But maybe that's all right. Maybe the Ghost can serve God too, in her own way.
She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her, dreamless and deep.
He nodded, face pale but steady. Whatever fear he felt, he was managing it. Sister Marguerite counted down silently, then broke from cover, Cole right behind her.
The world compressed into motion and sound. Her boots hit hard-packed earth, each stride eating distance toward the ridgeline. Gunfire erupted from multiple positions — the crack of rifles, the deeper boom of a shotgun. Bullets sang past, too close, one tugging at her habit's sleeve. She didn't slow, didn't look back, just ran with the desperate focus of someone who'd survived worse and knew that hesitation meant death.
Cole grunted beside her but kept moving. They hit the slope and scrambled upward, hands and feet both, rocks skittering loose beneath them. The ridgeline was right there, fifteen feet, ten, five—
They crested it together and dropped behind the natural breastwork of stone just as a concentrated volley tore into the rocks where they'd been standing. Sister Marguerite's heart hammered, her breath coming fast, but her hands were steady as she rose slightly and returned fire. Three quick shots, spaced and deliberate. One man down in the arroyo, another diving for cover, the rest pulling back to reassess.
"You're hit," she said, not looking at Cole but hearing the change in his breathing.
"Grazed. Left shoulder." He was already binding it with a strip torn from his shirt, his movements efficient despite the pain. "Doesn't matter. How many did you count?"
"Seven visible when we were scouting. At least three more joined from inside the tents. Call it ten, maybe twelve total." She ejected her spent casings, reloaded from the belt. "But only four or five are pressing us. The rest are either wounded, cautious, or—"
"Circling," Cole finished. "Yeah. I see them. Two breaking east, probably trying to get above us."
Sister Marguerite shifted position, found a firing slot between two rocks that gave her a view of the eastern approach. The sun was higher now, turning the desert into a furnace. Sweat ran down her back beneath the habit, stinging in small cuts she hadn't noticed receiving. She could taste copper and dust.
And then Dutch Corrigan's voice carried across the distance, amplified by the rock formations: "Elena Reyes! I know it's you up there! Recognized your movement, the way you run! Thought you were dead, but here you are, playing nun!"
Cole glanced at her sharply. "He knows you."
"Old business." Sister Marguerite kept her eyes on the approach routes, tracking movement. "From before."
"What kind of old business gets a man tracking you for six years?"
"The permanent kind." She sighted along the Peacemaker's barrel, waiting for a clear shot. "I killed his employer. He took it personally."
Dutch called out again: "You cost me everything, Elena! The Garretts paid good, and you put Virgil in the ground! Spent six years looking for you, and now here you are, bleeding out in the desert like you deserve!"
"He sounds motivated," Cole observed dryly.
"He is." Sister Marguerite's voice was flat, emotionless. The coldness was settling in now, the same detachment she'd felt in every gunfight before she'd tried to leave this life behind. It made everything simpler — no fear, no hesitation, just geometry and timing and the willingness to do what came next. "Dutch doesn't quit. He'll chase us back to the mission, burn it down, kill everyone inside just to get to me. Unless—"
"Unless you kill him first."
"Yes."
Cole was quiet for a moment. Then: "So this is who you were. The Cimarron Ghost. The woman who made grown men cross the street rather than share a sidewalk with her."
"This is who I am," Sister Marguerite corrected. "The habit didn't change that. It just gave me somewhere to hide." She saw movement, fired, heard a yelp of pain as someone fell back. "You having second thoughts about our partnership?"
"Little late for that." Cole shifted, returned fire at targets she couldn't see from her angle. "But when we get back to the mission — if we get back — I'm going to need the whole story. Because right now I'm following someone I don't really know into a fight I don't fully understand."
"Fair enough." Sister Marguerite dropped two more men with careful shots, watching the rest scatter. They were being cautious now, having learned that rushing this position meant dying. Good. Caution meant time, and time meant Father Brennan could prepare, could get people to safety, could maybe even evacuate if it came to that.
But Dutch wouldn't stay cautious forever. He wanted her too badly.
As if summoning him by thought, she saw him then — moving between rocks on the eastern approach, using cover expertly, his revolver held ready. He was taking his time, working closer, and the two men she'd seen circling earlier were somewhere above and behind. They were being boxed in.
"We need to move," she said. "Now. Before they close the trap."
"Where?" Cole gestured at the terrain. "We're on the high ground. Leaving means exposing ourselves."
"Staying means dying." Sister Marguerite pointed south and east, toward a deeper system of arroyos that would give them a covered route most of the way back to the mission. "That way. We go fast, stay ahead of them, and hope we can reach the walls before they catch us in the open."
"That's not much of a plan."
"It's the plan we have." She fired twice more, keeping heads down, then grabbed Cole's arm. "Go. I'll cover."
He went without argument, sliding down the back slope of the ridgeline. Sister Marguerite waited three heartbeats, then followed, firing as she moved. The Peacemaker bucked in her hand, familiar and terrible, each shot a small murder she'd have to confess if she lived long enough to care.
They hit the arroyo system running, the walls closing in on either side. Behind them, shouts rose as Dutch realized they were moving. Sister Marguerite didn't look back, just ran, her lungs burning, the gun heavy in her hand. Ahead, maybe a quarter mile distant, she could see the mission's bell tower rising above the desert scrub.
Almost home. Almost safe.
Then Cole stumbled, caught himself, kept moving but slower now. The shoulder wound was worse than he'd admitted, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage. Sister Marguerite grabbed his arm, half-supporting him, and they lurched forward together as gunfire echoed behind them and the sun beat down merciless and bright.
The mission walls were close now. Two hundred yards. One hundred. She could see Lyle in the bell tower, his rifle tracking their approach. Could see Father Brennan opening the postern gate, waving them in. Almost there. Almost—
A bullet cracked past her ear, so close she felt the displacement. Dutch, firing from the ridgeline they'd abandoned, his shots frighteningly accurate even at this range. Sister Marguerite shoved Cole toward the gate, turned, and fired back. Once. Twice. Three times. Saw Dutch duck behind cover, bought herself seconds.
Then she was through the gate and Father Brennan was slamming it shut, dropping the bar across, and Cole was collapsing against the wall with Lyle scrambling down to help him. Sister Marguerite stood in the courtyard, breathing hard, the Peacemaker still smoking in her hand.
"They're coming," she said. "All of them. And they're not going to stop until we're all dead."
"Coming," Sister Marguerite confirmed. "Soon. Get to the guest quarters, stay away from windows. If shooting starts, get on the floor and stay there until someone comes for you."
"I can help. I can—"
"You can stay alive," Sister Marguerite said, not unkindly. "That's help enough. We're fighting for something worth protecting, Mrs. Carlisle. Don't make us regret it by dying needlessly."
Catherine looked like she wanted to argue, but something in Sister Marguerite's tone—or perhaps her face—stopped her. She nodded once, sharply, and retreated toward the guest quarters.
The infirmary was quiet, sunlight slanting through high windows. The Morales children slept in their cots, their breathing easier now that they'd been given clean water and supportive care. Tom Alvarez lay in the far bed, his torso wrapped in bandages, his face gray with pain but his eyes alert.
"Sister," he said as she approached. His voice was weak but urgent. "I need to tell you something. About the deed. About why they really want this land."
Sister Marguerite pulled a stool close to his bedside, sat down. Father Brennan stood nearby, listening. "Tell me," she said simply.
Tom's hand fumbled beneath his pillow, pulled out a folded piece of paper—old, yellowed, the edges torn. "Found this in my father's things after he died. Never understood what it meant until the surveyors started coming around, asking about water rights." He handed it to her. "Read it. The last paragraph especially."
Sister Marguerite unfolded the document carefully. It was a letter, written in Spanish, dated 1781. The handwriting was elegant, formal, the kind used in official correspondence. She read slowly, translating the archaic phrasing, and felt her blood go cold.
The letter was from the Spanish colonial governor to the Franciscan mission at San Marcos, granting them—in perpetuity—not just the land and water rights, but also mineral rights to everything beneath the aquifer. Gold, silver, copper, anything discovered in the cavern systems that held the underground reservoir.
But it was the final paragraph that made her hands go still:
Furthermore, should any deposits of strategic value be discovered within said caverns, the Crown reserves the right of first refusal on all extracted materials, with the mission serving as custodian and administrator of such resources in trust for the Spanish Empire and its successors in perpetuity.
"Successors in perpetuity," Father Brennan breathed beside her. "That means—"
"Mexico," Sister Marguerite said slowly. "When Mexico won independence from Spain, they inherited these obligations. And when the United States took this territory from Mexico—"
"The federal government inherited them," Father Brennan finished. His face had gone pale. "The mission doesn't just own the water rights. It holds the mineral rights in trust for the United States government. The consortium can't just buy this land and extract what they want. They'd have to go through federal courts, federal claims, federal oversight."
"Which would expose everything," Sister Marguerite said. The pieces were clicking together now, forming a picture even uglier than she'd imagined. "They'd have to disclose what they found, prove their claim, deal with territorial authorities and maybe even federal marshals. That could take years, cost millions, and they might not even win."
"So instead they poison the aquifer, drive everyone away, and hope the deed gets lost in the chaos," Father Brennan said. "Then they buy the land for nothing, claim they discovered the water source through their own survey work, and extract it without anyone knowing about the original grant."
Tom nodded weakly from his bed. "My father worked for the mission forty years ago, helped catalog the archives when Father Sebastian was still alive. He found that letter, made a copy, kept it hidden. Told me before he died that someone would come looking for it someday. That I should give it to whoever was trying to protect the mission." He coughed, winced. "I didn't believe him. Thought he was just old and confused. But then the surveyors came, and the water went bad, and—"
"And you realized he was right," Sister Marguerite said gently. She folded the letter carefully, slipped it inside her habit next to David's maps. "Tom, does anyone else know about this? Did you tell the sheriff, or the surveyors, or—"
"No one. Just you." His eyes were fierce despite his weakness. "My father said they'd kill for it. Anyone who knew. And he was right about that too, wasn't he? They shot me, they poisoned the children—" His voice broke. "Sister, you have to stop them. You have to make sure this gets to someone who can use it."
Sister Marguerite stood, the weight of the letter like lead against her chest. This changed everything. They weren't just defending a mission and its people anymore. They were protecting evidence that could expose a conspiracy reaching into territorial politics, maybe even federal. The consortium would kill everyone here, burn the mission to ash, and salt the earth rather than let this letter reach Santa Fe.
"We will," she said, though she wasn't sure how. "Rest now. We'll—"
The bell tower rang out—three sharp clangs, Lyle's signal for immediate danger. Sister Marguerite and Father Brennan were moving before the sound faded, running back through the courtyard toward the walls.
But when they reached the gate, what they saw stopped them cold.
A single rider approached under a white flag—an old cavalry jacket tied to a rifle barrel. The man was young, maybe twenty, his face nervous but determined. He stopped fifty yards from the gate and called out:
"Message from Dutch Corrigan! He wants to parley! Says he'll let everyone else go free if Sister Marguerite comes out alone! You got one hour to decide!"
The rider turned and galloped back toward the mining camp, leaving only dust and silence behind.
Sister Marguerite stood at the gate, her hand resting on the Peacemaker's grip, and felt the trap closing around her. Dutch didn't want the letter—he didn't even know it existed. He just wanted her. Wanted to finish what had started six years ago in Tucson, restore his reputation, prove that the Cimarron Ghost could be killed after all.
And if she refused, he'd come through these walls with fire and bullets, and everyone inside would die.
Father Brennan touched her shoulder gently. "Elena. We'll find another way. We'll—"
"There isn't another way," she said quietly. "Not one that keeps everyone alive."
She looked back at the mission—at the infirmary with its patients, the chapel with its quiet sanctity, the courtyard where she'd spent six years trying to become someone better. All of it would burn if she didn't walk out that gate.
But tucked inside her habit were two maps and a letter that could bring down a conspiracy, expose murderers, and save dozens of lives beyond these walls. If she died carrying those documents, they'd die with her. If she surrendered, Dutch would search her, find them, destroy them.
She needed a third option. Something Dutch wouldn't expect. Something that would get the evidence to safety while keeping the mission's defenders alive long enough to matter.
Sister Marguerite turned to Father Brennan, her mind already racing through possibilities, calculating odds, planning three moves ahead the way she used to when survival meant thinking faster than the men trying to kill you.
"Get everyone together," she said. "I have an idea. But you're not going to like it."
"When you hear the bell ring twice," Sister Marguerite said, "that's your signal. You go out the southern gate, stay low, and ride. Don't wait to see what happens. Don't second-guess. Just go."
Catherine gathered the reins, her knuckles white. "Sister Marguerite—Elena—thank you. For everything. For believing I could do this."
"Thank me by succeeding." Sister Marguerite stepped back, watched Catherine walk the mare toward the southern gate where Lyle was already removing the bar. Then she turned to Father Brennan. "You have your positions ready?"
"Cole's on the western wall, I'll take the eastern approach. We've stacked crates for cover, positioned water buckets in case of fire. It's not perfect, but—"
"It's enough." Sister Marguerite pulled the Peacemaker, checked the cylinder by habit, then holstered it again. The derringer was already tucked into her sleeve, a final surprise if things went completely wrong. "Father, when this is over—if I don't come back—"
"Don't," Father Brennan said sharply. "Don't start making peace with dying. You go out there planning to survive, you hear me? Planning to walk back through that gate and deal with the consequences and the guilt and all of it, because that's what living means."
"I know what living means." Sister Marguerite's voice was quiet. "I've been doing it for six years. But if this is where it ends—if Dutch is faster or luckier or just better than I remember—then you need to know that these years mattered. That trying to be better mattered, even if I'm about to throw it all away."
Father Brennan's jaw tightened, but he nodded. "It mattered. You mattered. You still do." He reached out, gripped her shoulder. "Now go prove you're more dangerous than he remembers."
Sister Marguerite walked through the courtyard toward the main gate, her boots raising small clouds of dust with each step. The mission felt different now—not the sanctuary it had been, but a fortification. A place where violence would happen and blood would spill and the careful peace she'd built would shatter like glass.
Lyle was already in the bell tower, his rifle positioned, his face pale but determined. Cole stood at the western wall despite his wounded shoulder, his own rifle cradled ready. And somewhere behind the infirmary wall, Tom Alvarez lay recovering from a bullet meant to silence him, while the Morales children slept fitfully, their small bodies fighting poison that men had deliberately introduced into their water.
All of it—the mission, the people, the fragile hope that goodness could survive in a territory built on violence—depended on what happened in the next hour.
Sister Marguerite reached the gate, placed her hand on the rough timber. Father Brennan stood beside her, ready to open it on her signal.
"Two bells for Catherine," she said. "Then thirty seconds before Lyle starts shooting. That should give me enough time to position myself."
"And if Dutch doesn't honor the parley? If he just shoots you the moment you step out?"
"Then Lyle kills him, and you hold these walls until Catherine brings help." Sister Marguerite smiled, though there was no humor in it. "But he won't. Dutch wants this too badly. He's been hunting me for six years, Father. He's not going to end it with a quick bullet. He's going to want me to know I lost."
"That's what you're counting on? His ego?"
"I'm counting on knowing him better than he knows me." Sister Marguerite adjusted her habit, made sure the Peacemaker was accessible but concealed. "Dutch thinks I'm the same woman I was in Tucson. Fast, dangerous, but predictable. He has no idea what six years of discipline has taught me. What patience feels like when you're not running from town to town. What it means to fight for something beyond survival."
Father Brennan studied her face, seeing things she didn't say. "You're going to kill him."
"Yes."
"Not wound him, not disable him. Kill him."
"Yes." Sister Marguerite met his eyes. "Because anything less means he comes back. Means he keeps hunting. Means everyone here stays in danger until one of us is dead. So I'm making sure it's him."
"God have mercy on your soul."
"He's had six years to do that," Sister Marguerite said. "Now it's time to see if He was paying attention."
She nodded. Father Brennan lifted the bar, pushed the gate open. Desert heat rolled in, carrying the smell of sage and dust and the distant promise of violence. Sister Marguerite stepped through, her habit billowing slightly in the hot wind, and began walking toward the mining camp half a mile distant.
Behind her, Father Brennan counted to ten, then rang the bell twice. The sound carried clear and bright across the desert. Somewhere beyond the southern wall, Catherine was riding toward safety and Santa Fe, carrying the evidence that could end this.
Sister Marguerite walked steadily, her hands visible and empty, her pace neither hurried nor hesitant. The sun was lower now, painting the desert in shades of copper and amber, and ahead she could see figures moving in the mining camp. Dutch and his men, preparing for the parley that would end with blood one way or another.
The Peacemaker pressed against her hip beneath the habit, familiar and patient. The derringer in her sleeve was a cold weight against her forearm. And somewhere deep inside, past the prayers and penance and six years of trying to be someone different, the Cimarron Ghost stirred and opened its eyes.
Sister Marguerite kept walking, her shadow stretching long behind her, and wondered if redemption was something you earned or something you simply chose, moment by moment, even when the choosing felt like damnation.
The mining camp grew closer. She could see Dutch now, standing beside the shaft entrance, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable at this distance. Waiting for her. Waiting to finish what had started six years ago in Tucson when she'd killed his brother and vanished into legend.
She was fifty yards out when he raised his hand, signaling his men to hold position. Forty yards when she saw the cruel smile spread across his face. Thirty yards when she felt time begin to compress the way it always did before violence, everything slowing and sharpening until each breath felt like ceremony.
Twenty yards. Close enough to see his eyes. Close enough to know that whatever happened next would define everything she'd tried to become.
Sister Marguerite stopped walking, stood perfectly still in the desert heat, and waited for Dutch Corrigan to speak first.
"I'm not the reason for anything." Sister Marguerite took a step forward, closing the distance slightly. "You chose this. You chose to hunt me instead of letting it go. You chose to work for murderers. You chose to poison innocent people. Those are your choices, Dutch. Not mine."
"And you chose to hide behind God and prayer instead of facing what you are." Dutch matched her step, his voice dropping lower, more dangerous. "You think wearing that habit makes you different? You think six years of playing saint erases what you did? You're a killer, Elena. Same as me. Same as Virgil. The only difference is you're a hypocrite about it."
"Maybe." Sister Marguerite felt the truth of it settle in her chest, heavy and undeniable. "But at least I tried to be something else. What have you tried to be, Dutch? Besides angry?"
The slap came fast—not a punch, but an open-handed strike meant to humiliate rather than injure. Sister Marguerite's head snapped to the side, pain flaring along her cheekbone, but she didn't fall. Didn't flinch. Just turned her face back to him slowly, her expression still calm, still controlled.
"That supposed to make me afraid?" she asked quietly.
Dutch grabbed her by the throat, his grip iron-hard, lifting her onto her toes. His face was inches from hers, his breath hot and rank. "I'm going to make you beg, Elena. I'm going to hurt you in ways that make you wish Virgil had killed you six years ago. And when you're broken and bleeding and begging for death, I'm going to tell you about every person I had to hurt, every line I had to cross, every piece of my soul I had to sell just to get this moment. Then I'm going to put a bullet in your gut and watch you die slow."
Sister Marguerite's vision was starting to gray at the edges, but she forced words out through the crushing grip: "You—talk—too much—"
She drove her knee up hard into his groin, felt the impact shudder through him. Dutch's grip loosened just enough for her to wrench free, stumbling back, gasping. His men were already moving, hands dropping to weapons, but Dutch held up a hand to stop them.
"No," he rasped, bent slightly from the blow but still standing. "She's mine. Anyone who interferes answers to me."
Sister Marguerite straightened, her hand drifting toward her hip where the Peacemaker waited beneath the habit. Her throat burned, each breath scraped raw, but her mind was clear. Sharp. The way it always got before killing.
"You want revenge, Dutch? Then take it. Draw your gun and let's finish this the way it should have been finished six years ago. Fast and clean, no speeches, no torture. Just you and me and whoever's faster."
"Where's the justice in that?" Dutch straightened, his hand resting on his gun but not drawing yet. "Where's the payment for six years of my life spent hunting you? Where's the—"
The bell tower shot rang out, sharp and clear across the distance. One of the riflemen on the rocks jerked backward, his weapon falling, his body tumbling after it. Before the echo faded, a second shot cracked and the other rifleman dropped.
Lyle. Right on schedule.
Dutch's head whipped around, confusion and rage warring on his face as he tried to process what was happening. His men scattered, diving for cover, shouting questions and warnings. And in that moment of chaos, Sister Marguerite moved.
She didn't draw the Peacemaker—not yet. Instead she lunged forward, closing the distance to Dutch before he could fully turn back to her. Her hand came up from her sleeve, the derringer small and deadly in her palm, and she pressed it against his ribs.
"Your brother drew first," she said, her voice cold and empty. "You won't even get that chance."
She pulled the trigger twice, point-blank, the small gun's reports lost in the chaos of Lyle's continued rifle fire. Dutch's eyes went wide with shock and something that might have been understanding. He tried to speak, blood bubbling at his lips, but nothing came out except a wet, rattling gasp.
Sister Marguerite stepped back, let him fall. He hit the ground hard, still alive but dying, his hands scrabbling weakly at the wounds she'd put in him. She should have felt something—triumph, regret, vindication—but there was only the familiar emptiness that came after killing. The void where emotion should be.
Around her, Dutch's men were still scrambling, trying to organize a response while Lyle's shots kept them pinned. She could run now, make for the mission while they were confused and leaderless. That would be the smart play.
But smart wouldn't end this. Smart wouldn't stop them from regrouping and attacking the mission. Smart wouldn't protect the people she'd sworn to defend.
Sister Marguerite dropped the derringer, drew the Peacemaker, and started shooting.
The first man went down clutching his shoulder. The second took a bullet in the leg and collapsed screaming. She wasn't trying to kill them all—just disable, scatter, make them understand that staying here meant dying. The Peacemaker bucked in her hand, familiar and terrible, and each shot was precise, calculated, designed to wound and terrify rather than murder.
One of Dutch's men—young, maybe twenty, with fear written across his face—threw down his weapon and ran. Another followed. Then a third. The remaining four tried to return fire, but Lyle's rifle kept them honest, and Sister Marguerite moved between cover points with practiced efficiency, making herself a difficult target.
She dropped behind a stack of equipment crates, ejected spent casings, reloaded. Her hands were steady despite the adrenaline, despite the voice in her head that sounded like Father Brennan asking if this was really necessary, if there wasn't another way.
There wasn't. There never had been.
She rose, fired twice more, and watched the last of Dutch's courage break. The four remaining men fled toward the horses, mounting and riding hard toward the horizon. She let them go, her gun tracking their retreat but not firing. They were done. Broken. No longer a threat.
Sister Marguerite walked back to where Dutch lay in the dust, still breathing but barely. His eyes found hers, hatred and pain and something else—maybe respect, maybe just resignation.
"Told you," he whispered, blood staining his teeth. "Told you you're a killer. Just like me."
"I know what I am," Sister Marguerite said quietly. She knelt beside him, not to comfort but to witness. "But I kill for different reasons now. That has to count for something."
Dutch's laugh was a wet, gurgling sound. "Doesn't matter. Dead is dead. And we're both damned."
"Probably." Sister Marguerite stood, looked down at the man who'd spent six years hunting her, who'd poisoned children and murdered innocents just for a chance at revenge. "But at least I'm trying to do better. You never even tried."
She turned away as his breathing rattled to a stop, walked back through the mining camp toward the mission. Behind her, Lyle's rifle had gone silent. The desert was quiet except for wind and her own footsteps and the sound of her heart beating steady and sure.
Sister Marguerite didn't look back.
"Catherine," Sister Marguerite said, her mind racing. "We sent someone to Santa Fe. She's carrying evidence—"
"She won't make it." Pierce looked genuinely pained. "They have people watching the roads. A woman traveling alone, carrying documents—she'll be stopped before she reaches the marshal's office. I'm sorry. But that's the reality."
The papers felt heavy in Sister Marguerite's hands, heavier than they should. All their fighting, all the blood and violence and desperate choices, and the consortium had simply filed paperwork. Killed them with ink and official seals and a corrupt judge's signature.
"Father Brennan," she called out, her voice carefully controlled. "I need you."
The priest appeared moments later, took one look at her face and understood something had gone terribly wrong. She handed him the papers without a word, watched his expression darken as he read.
"Forty-eight hours," he said finally. "They're giving us forty-eight hours."
"And then they come with territorial marshals, federal authority, and the full weight of the law." Sister Marguerite's voice was flat. "They'll evict us, seize the property, and there won't be anything we can do about it. Fighting back would make us criminals."
"You could leave," Pierce said. The words came out rushed, almost desperate. "Take the children, the sick man, everyone. Just go. Find another mission, another place. They want the land, not you. If you're gone when the deadline hits—"
"They win." Father Brennan's voice was quiet but absolute. "They poison our water, kill our people, and drive us from land that's been protected for two hundred years. And we just... let them."
"You stay, you die." Pierce's professional mask was completely gone now, replaced by something that might have been genuine concern or might just have been a man trying to convince himself he wasn't complicit in murder. "The eviction order gives them legal cover to use force. They'll bring twenty men, thirty. You can't fight that. Not here, not with what you have."
Sister Marguerite looked at Father Brennan, saw her own exhaustion reflected in his face. They'd fought so hard, killed and bled and tried to protect something good. And it hadn't mattered. The consortium had simply gone around their defenses, used the law as a weapon sharper than any gun.
"Get out," she said to Pierce. "Take your papers and your guilt and get out of my mission."
"Sister, I'm trying to—"
"Help?" The word came out sharp as broken glass. "You want to help? Go back to whoever sent you and tell them we're not leaving. Tell them they can bring their marshals and their court orders and all the legal authority they want. We'll be here. And if they try to take this place by force, legal or not, we'll make them pay for every inch."
Pierce's face went pale. "That's suicide. You understand that, don't you? Fighting federal marshals makes you outlaws. Criminals. Everything you've tried to protect—"
"Is already gone." Father Brennan's voice was hollow. "The moment they filed those papers, the moment a judge signed away our rights without investigation. We're not protecting a legal claim anymore. We're protecting people who have nowhere else to go."
Sister Marguerite walked to the infirmary door, held it open. "Leave. Now. Before I forget you're just a messenger."
Pierce hesitated, looked like he wanted to say something else, then thought better of it. He walked past her into the courtyard, his steps quick and uncertain. Sister Marguerite followed him to the gate, watched Lyle open it, saw the government man mount his horse with hands that still trembled.
"They'll come at dawn," Pierce said, looking back one last time. "Day after tomorrow. With the legal deadline expired, they'll have authority to clear the property by any means necessary. That's... that's all I can tell you. I'm sorry."
Then he was gone, riding back toward the territorial road, leaving behind only dust and the papers that condemned them.
Sister Marguerite stood at the gate long after he'd disappeared, feeling the weight of those forty-eight hours settle over everything. Behind her, she could hear Tom Alvarez coughing—worse now, the infection spreading despite their best efforts. The Morales children struggling to breathe. Lyle on the wall, young and scared and trying to be brave. Cole with his wounded shoulder. Father Brennan with his faith cracking under the weight of impossible choices.
And her. The Cimarron Ghost, the killer in a nun's habit, standing at the gate of a mission that was already lost.
Father Brennan appeared beside her. "What do we do?"
Sister Marguerite thought about Catherine, riding south with evidence that would never reach its destination. About the consortium's men, preparing for a final assault with federal authority behind them. About the children in the infirmary who would die if they were moved and die if they stayed.
"We fortify," she said finally. "We prepare. And when they come—legal authority or not—we make them understand that some things are worth dying for."
"That's not a plan, Elena. That's martyrdom."
"Maybe." Sister Marguerite touched the Peacemaker at her hip. "Or maybe it's the only thing left that means anything. We can't win through law. We can't win through evidence. So we win by making them pay such a high price that the next time they think about poisoning wells and killing children, they remember what happened at San Marcos Mission."
The sun climbed higher, burning away the morning cool. Forty-eight hours. Two days until the consortium came with marshals and court orders and the full weight of territorial authority. Two days to prepare for a fight they couldn't win.
But Sister Marguerite had been the Cimarron Ghost once. Had faced impossible odds before. And if this was how it ended—protecting something good against people who'd weaponized the law itself—then at least it meant something.
At least it was a choice she made, not one forced on her by men in suits with papers and seals.
"Gather everyone," she said to Father Brennan. "It's time they understood what's coming."
Father Brennan stepped into their path. His rifle came up smooth and steady, the barrel finding Rawley's chest. "Stand down."
"You're a priest." Rawley's voice dripped contempt. "You won't shoot."
"I'm also a killer who took vows to protect the innocent. Test me."
For a heartbeat, the world held its breath. Then Rawley smiled—cold and certain—and squeezed his trigger.
The rifle crack was deafening in the enclosed courtyard. Father Brennan staggered, red blooming across his left shoulder, but his own weapon never wavered. His return shot took Rawley in the chest, punching through the marshal's badge and the authority it represented. The young man dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
The two marshals with him froze, their rifles half-raised, suddenly confronting the reality that badges didn't stop bullets.
"Drop them," Father Brennan said, his voice steady despite the blood soaking his sleeve. "Drop them and walk away."
They dropped. They walked. They stumbled back through the shattered gate and into the desert sun, leaving Rawley's body behind.
Sister Marguerite fired again—another leg shot, another marshal down but not dead. She wasn't trying to kill them. Not yet. She was making them understand the cost, making them pay for every foot of ground with blood and pain and the knowledge that their orders had led them here.
A bullet whined past her ear. She tracked the shooter—older marshal, steady hands, firing from behind cover near the gate. She put a round through the wall beside his head. Stone chips exploded. He ducked back, reconsidering his position.
"Cease fire!" Bennett's voice roared across the courtyard. "Goddamn it, cease fire!"
The shooting stopped. Not all at once—a few last scattered shots, men too committed to violence to hear the order—but gradually the silence returned. Gun smoke drifted in lazy coils. The smell of cordite mixed with dust and blood.
Bennett rode through the gate, his gray gelding picking its way through debris and bodies. His face was gray, his jaw clenched so tight Sister Marguerite could see the muscle jumping beneath his weathered skin. He looked at Rawley's corpse. Looked at his wounded men. Looked at the priest standing in front of the infirmary with blood running down his arm and absolute resolve in his eyes.
"This is done," Bennett said. His voice carried the weight of something breaking inside him. "We're standing down."
"Sir—" One of his men started.
"I said we're done!" Bennett's roar silenced the protest. He swung down from his saddle, walked to where Sister Marguerite stood behind the fountain. Stopped ten feet away, hands visible and empty. "My daughter died from poisoned water. Seven years ago, in Wyoming Territory. Mining consortium contaminated the local wells, and by the time anyone proved it, half the town was sick. Sarah was five years old."
Sister Marguerite lowered her Peacemaker but didn't holster it. "I'm sorry."
"I spent two years trying to find someone to hold accountable. Lawyers, territorial officials, even the Army—nobody would touch it. Too much money involved. Too many powerful people." Bennett's face was carved from stone. "I told myself I'd never let it happen again. That I'd be the kind of lawman who protected people instead of property. And here I am, enforcing an eviction order for the same kind of bastards who killed my daughter."
"You were following orders," Father Brennan said. Blood dripped from his fingertips but his voice remained steady. "That doesn't make you innocent, but it doesn't make you them either."
"Orders." Bennett spat the word. "Rawley followed orders. Look where it got him." He turned to his remaining men—seventeen now, some wounded, all watching their commander with expressions ranging from confusion to relief. "We're pulling back. Anyone wants to file a complaint about my decision can take it up with the territorial marshal. But I'm not killing children to enforce a corrupt judge's fraudulent order."
"They'll come for you," Sister Marguerite said. "The consortium. They'll have your badge for this."
"Let them try." Bennett's smile was bitter. "I've got seventeen witnesses who'll testify we were fired on first—which is true—and that I made a tactical decision to prevent further casualties. By the time anyone untangles the bureaucracy, maybe your evidence reaches someone who matters."
He walked back to his horse, swung into the saddle with the stiffness of a man carrying more than just age. "You've got forty-eight hours. Maybe more if I file my report slowly. Use them to get your people out, get your evidence somewhere safe, and disappear before someone sends marshals who won't have a crisis of conscience."
Sister Marguerite watched him gather his men, organize the wounded, prepare to retreat. She should feel relief. Victory, even. They'd survived. Bennett had chosen conscience over orders.
But Rawley's body still lay in the courtyard, his blood soaking into mission dust. Father Brennan was wounded. Cole was reloading with hands that trembled slightly. Lyle descended from the bell tower looking ten years older than he'd been thirty minutes ago.
They'd won. And the cost of winning felt like drowning.
"Elena." Father Brennan's voice pulled her back. He was leaning against the infirmary wall, his face pale. "We need to move. Bennett bought us time, but he's right—the consortium won't stop. They'll send someone worse."
She nodded. Holstered her Peacemaker. Crossed to where the priest stood bleeding and alive and still choosing to protect rather than flee.
"Can you ride?" she asked.
"I can do what needs doing." He smiled—wan but genuine. "Same as you."
Sister Marguerite looked at the shattered gate, the blood-soaked courtyard, the mission that had been sanctuary and was now something else entirely. They'd defended it. They'd survived. But survival wasn't salvation, and the Ghost wearing a nun's habit knew the difference.
"Then we gather everyone," she said. "And we run."
Elena took the paper, scanning the dense legal language that weaponized bureaucracy against people who couldn't afford lawyers. The pattern was familiar. Same tactics the consortium had used at San Marcos, just a different target.
"What do they want us to do?" she asked.
"They want someone to stand with them when the mining outfit brings in enforcers to remove anyone who interferes with their operation." Lyle met her eyes. "They heard about San Marcos. About a nun and a priest who held off federal marshals. Word travels, even out here."
"We didn't hold them off. We survived long enough for one man's conscience to crack."
"You survived. That's more than most people manage." Lyle gestured toward the settlement below. "These people can't afford to run. They've got nowhere to go. They need someone who knows how to fight and isn't afraid to."
Elena looked at the paper again, at the legal language that made theft sound legitimate. She thought about Bennett's face when he'd seen Rawley's body, about Father Brennan's steady hand holding a rifle, about children dying from poisoned water while men in suits calculated profit margins.
"I'm not a hero," she said quietly. "I'm a killer who spent six years pretending to be something better. All I did was remember what I was."
"Maybe." Lyle took the paper back, folded it carefully. "Or maybe you became someone who kills for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones. Seems like an improvement to me."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that there was no redemption in violence, that every bullet she fired pushed her further from the person she'd tried to become at San Marcos. But standing on this ridge, looking at another community facing the same predatory corruption, she understood something Father Brennan had been trying to tell her.
Redemption wasn't about becoming sinless. It was about choosing, over and over, to use your skills for something beyond yourself.
"Tell them I'll talk to the mining outfit," Elena said. "See if they're willing to negotiate."
"And if they're not?"
"Then I'll make them understand the cost of forcing the issue."
Lyle smiled—small and knowing and almost sad. "That's what they're hoping you'll say."
They rode down into Verde Springs as twilight deepened into true dark. The settlement was smaller than San Marcos, poorer, the kind of place that existed because people had nowhere better to go and stubbornness enough to stay anyway. Children watched them pass with wide eyes. Women stood in doorways, expressions caught between hope and the fear of hoping. Men gathered near what passed for a town square, their faces weathered by sun and hardship and the exhausting work of survival.
The town council consisted of five people—three men, two women, all past fifty and carrying the weight of watching their community slowly die. They met in the church, a structure barely larger than a shed, with a cross made from scrap lumber nailed above the door.
Elena listened to their story. Heard the pattern she'd heard before—legal claims that contradicted established rights, bureaucratic delays that favored money over justice, threats that escalated from words to violence. The mining outfit planned to bring in hired guns within the week. Once those guns arrived, resistance would mean bloodshed, and bloodshed would give the territorial authorities excuse to intervene on the mining outfit's behalf.
It was San Marcos again. And again. And again. An endless repetition of the same predatory logic that treated people as obstacles to profit.
"What do you need from us?" Elena asked when they'd finished.
The oldest council member—a woman named Rosa whose hands were gnarled from decades of farm work—studied her with eyes that had seen too much to be easily fooled. "We need someone who isn't afraid. Someone who knows how to stand when standing seems impossible. We heard what happened at San Marcos. How you held off federal marshals. How a priest shot a man to protect children. We need that kind of courage."
"That courage got people killed."
"Not fighting gets people killed too." Rosa's voice was soft but unyielding. "Just slower. Quieter. In ways that don't make the newspapers but hurt just as much."
Elena looked at Lyle, who'd positioned himself near the door with the casual alertness of someone who'd learned to watch for danger. She thought about Father Brennan riding east with the wounded and the children, carrying evidence that might or might not reach someone who cared. She thought about Catherine, who'd ridden into danger rather than accept safety through silence.
She thought about the mission, empty now, its walls holding memories of violence and grace and the impossible choice between them.
"I'll talk to the mining outfit," she said finally. "Give them a chance to walk away. After that—" She touched the Peacemaker at her hip. "After that, they'll understand that some places are worth defending."
Rosa nodded slowly. "And you? What do you get out of this?"
Elena smiled—cold and knowing and carved from six years of failed redemption. "I get to be exactly what I am. Turns out that's enough."
They left the church as full dark settled over Verde Springs. Stars emerged overhead, brilliant and indifferent. Somewhere to the east, Father Brennan was probably tending wounds and offering prayers to a God who might or might not be listening. Somewhere in Santa Fe, Catherine was fighting with words and documents instead of bullets. And here, on this ridge above another doomed settlement, Elena stood ready to do what she'd always done best.
The difference was the choosing. The difference was knowing that violence in service of protection wasn't the same as violence in service of nothing at all.
The Ghost had returned. But this time, she knew exactly who she was haunting.
And the men who preyed on the defenseless were about to learn that some legends came back for a reason.