He sat on the back porch with his snakeskin boots perched atop the old wooden railing that trimmed it. He watched the mountains out West, the way the clouds lumbered though the peaks and the day's last light set the horizon ablaze. He sipped at his beer and took a long swallow and breathed deep of the fresh Texas air. The only sound in the world was the wind whispering across all that red earth, and it was quiet enough to fall asleep to. He leaned back in his chair and tipped the wide brim of his hat down to shade his eyes.

His lids were just getting heavy when a trio of noises jerked him back awake. Feet scuffling dirt, the creak of a floorboard, weight layering itself beside him in an empty chair. He peaked from the shade of his hat at the nothingness beside him, studying it. His good hand slid under his poncho and gripped his revolver. His thumb played at the hammer as he watched the ghost that wasn't there. The wind had ceased blowing from that direction.

McCree nodded and sat back and spat. He kept his hold on the polished grips of his revolver. The next sip of his beer was joyless. It was all of a sudden far too bitter.

"Well," he began with a sigh, "Ain't this the part where you're s'pposed to say somethin' about how you've been here all along?"

The ghost didn't answer. McCree sat and watched the emptiness. Something cold snapped in his ear, something electronic, and then pieces of the ghost were assembling themselves. Square after square formed up, shedding the chameleon's camouflage, conjuring the person inside.

The process had started and stopped just as quick and then the ghost was gone and that hacker of equal parts notoriety and myth sat beside him in the flesh. Copper skin, violet eyeshadow, eyebrows shaped too perfect not to be drawn on. Her hair shaved down to nothing but stubbled patterns on one side, a heavy cascade of dark locks on the other. Her coat was purple leather and it creaked in the elbow when she lifted a gloved hand and waved to him. Five sharp instruments jabbed the air where her fingertips should've been.

"Hola, McCree."

Muh-Cree. That was how she said it. Like it was two words instead of one. He eyed her. He spat.

"You don't look surprised to see me."

"Why should I?" He tipped a swig of beer down his gullet and faced the sunset again. "Can't stay hidden forever. I knew somebody'd be lookin' for me. When you have a talent for killing like mine, darlin', someone's always lookin'."

"It's a nice place. Homey. Yours?"

"I rent."

She nodded. Her eyes peered carefully into the shadowed nook of his poncho where his hand still laid.

"You wouldn't pull a gun on little old me, would you McCree? I heard you're a vaquero. A cowboy, as you say."

"Yeah? Where'd you hear that?"

"In your voice and in your hat and in your poncho and in your boots. That's who told me."

He spat.

"Are you here alone, McCree?"

"You know I am. You wouldn't have pulled yourself out of that little stealth camo of yours if you hadn't done the place over once or twice."

"True."

"Then why'd you ask?"

"I wanted to see if you'd lie. You didn't. Good for you."

"What's your name?"

"You know who I am."

"I know you call yourself 'Sombra'. And I also know that ain't no real name. If you're 'Sombra', I guess that'd make me 'Doc Holliday'."

"Who?"

"Never mind."

"My name isn't important, McCree. I need to know who you're working for at the moment. Let's start there."

"Who am I working for? Well, guy's about six feet tall, brown hair, helluva shot with a revolver. He thinks too little and talks too much and he's a real asshole in the morning before he's had his coffee. Goes by the name of 'Jesse McCree'. Or maybe it's 'Muh-Cree'. Not sure, I've heard it said that way before."

She smiled at that. It seemed sincere enough. "Ah, yes. Self-employed. You're the vigilante, correct? Mercenario?"

He tipped his hat.

"That's good. We don't want anyone to come looking for you."

Beneath his poncho, his thumb reeled back on the hammer of his gun.

"Relax, vaquero. I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to kidnap you. And I'm not exactly alone."

Sombra snatched his beer from the railing and emptied the contents into the dirt beyond the porch. She tossed it up in the air over the backyard. The little bottle sailed up and pinned to the pale blue sky and hung suspended at its apex. It shattered and pieces of glass were still raining to the yard by the time the sound of the sniper rifle's shot caught up. McCree narrowed his gaze into the hills up North. Somewhere in those pockets of endless shadows must've been the spider.

"Talon, then," he said and spat deliberately. "I was wonderin' on whose buck you were sent out here on. You're with the spider. No one else could've made that shot."

"Not even you?"

"Well, maybe me. But I'm pretty damn sure I wasn't the one who took it. Now what in the hell does Talon want with me?"

"They want you indisposed. They want you all bundled up and stashed away when your friends in Overwatch, inevitably, come knocking. In short, McCree, they don't want to be looking down the barrel of that infamous gun of yours. You said it yourself. You're a vigilante. A mercenary. Well, a mercenary is a product, and they want your particular product off the market for awhile."

"You keep sayin' 'they' like you ain't one of 'em."

A grin curled her shapely lips. "I'm not. I'm more like you, McCree. I go where I'm needed."

"For the right price?"

"For whatever gets me closer to truth."

A breath of wind sent a tumbleweed rolling down the dirt path beside the house. It rolled on leaving a long trailing shadow to the east, and above it the sky was warming down to a nice mauve shade of twilight that signaled the coming dusk. McCree stretched his back and his long legs and eyed the little bits of broken glass littering his yard that shimmered under the day's final glow like constellations.

"You owe me a beer," he said.

Sombra unfolded herself from the chair and drew up beside him with her hands on her hips. "Maybe I'll steal you down to Mexico and show you what a real beer tastes like sometime, hermano."

"Well, I'd reckon I'd appreciate that much kindly, hermana."

They held one another's eyes as the world grew black around them.

"So how is this going to happen? You gonna stuff me in a sack? Throw a net over my head? Jab me with a tranquilizer?"

"My instructions were to throw you in a trunk locked up in a pair of handcuffs. But I figured you're a cowboy. You'd want the real thing." She fished into a satchel at her hip and drew a long length of white cotton rope.

McCree watched it dangle before his eyes. "You know, usually a fella would have to pay to get a lady pretty as you to tie him up."

"For being so charming and sweet, I'll do you for free, McCree. Now throw that gun you've been fondling since I sat down into the dirt and get up."

He could feel Widowmaker's well-trained eye on him across all those hundreds of yards to the North, daring him to make a move. He did not oblige her. He tossed his gun as Sombra instructed, stood up, and allowed himself to be spun around and his hands to be snatched up and drawn together behind him at the small of his back. Sombra bound him tightly, wrapping and cinching his wrists till he couldn't move them at all. She took him by the elbow and dragged him off the porch. His boots nearly tangled and spilled him down till he caught his balance by leaning into his captor's shoulder. She steered him around the side of the house and out front where a sleek little two-seater was parked against the curb. A wave of her gloved hand with its dagger-tipped fingers unlocked and opened the trunk as they drew near.

"You know, darlin', you could just sit me up front so we could better get to know one another."

"Just shut up for once, McCree. Actually, that reminds me, darling." She retrieved a bandana from her satchel and pulled it taught between her fists, snapping it twice crisply. Her grin told him what it was for.

"Is a gag really necessary?"

"With a mouth like yours? Absolutely."

She tied it around his lower face, cleaving the center between his lips and teeth so that he was forced to bite down on it and shut up. She knotted it and stepped before him to admire his silenced visage.

"Comfy?"

"Mmmnf…"

"Perfect."

She laid a hand on his shoulder and shoved. He went stumbling over the edge of the car's backside and spilled into the trunk. Sombra was generous enough to help him stuff his legs in behind him, and when he was laid down in a tight ball wedged between the narrow walls, she waved goodbye and slammed the lid shut.

When it opened again twenty minutes later, McCree felt as if he'd been stashed in an oven. The day's last heat simmered through the thin walls of the trunk and had started to cook him. His undershirt and jeans clung to his sweaty skin and his poncho wrangled around his neck as if it were the hand of the devil himself reaching up to strangle him. Graciously, Sombra dipped herself into the trunk and fetched him up under the arms and dragged him out. He planted his booted feet in the dirt and reveled in the cool night air breezing across them as they stood, captor and captive, beneath the shadows of the northern hills.

"Sorry, cowboy," she said, wrestling the poncho from around his neck and dabbing his brow with it to clear his eyes. She tossed it back in the trunk and closed the lid.

He looked at her face painted silver under the moonlight, the shapes of her lips and her cheekbones. The half of her head with all her hair billowed like a flag at attention. Her eyes were two dark pools watching back. When she moved it was with a supple grace that highlighted her curvy figure pressed tight against her form-fitting attire. McCree made fists behind his back. His restraints had never felt so tight.

She took him by the elbow and led him off. Their destination loomed overhead in an aperture curved out of a steep rise of rocky hill. There in a gaping maw overlooking the valley, a long one-story cabin sat dormant in the darkness, oblong windows curtained over and faintly aglow with dull orange light. A wooden staircase had been erected in twin sets, leading first straight up and then around a bend to the cabin itself. McCree set his feet on the first of the stairs and braced himself for the long climb with Sombra's hand gently gripped at his forearm to keep him under control.

After the ascent he was taken inside breathless. Sombra set the electronic locks of the door behind them with another wave of her gloved hand and then took him through an empty parlor and into a smaller bedroom. There he was seated in a wooden chair beside the bed and the woman bound him more securely, his ankles to the chair legs and his torso wrapped to its backing. She towered over him admiring her work again. Her finger danced playfully beneath his chin till he reared his head back.

"You're a handsome man in all that bondage, McCree." She took his hat off and tossed it to the bed like a frisbee. "Hope you're comfortable, amigo."

He eyed her, writhing against his ropes to test their hold. Their hold, as it turned out, was pretty damned firm. His gag bit sharply into the corner of his lips.

"Mmn hnf mmhhm mmm."

"What was that, cowboy?"

"Mmh hmmn mmmnnn…"

She grinned.

The bedroom had a second door nestled between the southern windows. Sombra sauntered to it and threw it back on its hinges. The lamplight from inside layered a rectangle of soft orange light on a terraced balcony beyond. It revealed only part of the sniper, but it was enough to confirm her identity. Her long legs and high-heeled feet came exposed in the light and McCree watched closely as it climbed a bit higher and etched the definition of a shapely behind leaned over the railing. Sombra's legs planted beside Widowmaker's and their shadowed voices drifted faintly inside.

"Any witnesses?"

"Of course not."

"He's secured?"

"Bound and gagged. How much more secured do you want him?"

"I have to leave tonight."

"Oh?"

"The fly is on the move. The spider follows."

"And what am I supposed to do?"

A moment of quiet.

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Grounded then. Is that the best use of my talents?"

"I have my orders. You have yours."

"Si, amiga… it would certainly seem that way."

The sniper's feet clicked and clacked down the balcony in their high-heels, returning the killer to that great endless black sea of the night world beyond. Sombra's legs lingered in the light a moment as the other woman departed and the sounds of her retreat were lost in the high shrill cry of the hill's wind. When Sombra returned to the room, her hands were planted firmly atop her hips and her teeth worked at her lower lip fastidiously. The lapis jewels that were her eyes settled on McCree.

"I need a shower. Can you be a good little cowboy and sit there quietly?"

He nodded.

"Muy bien, amigo. Mucho apreciado."

She moved past him and ran her hand over his head to let her fingers trail lines back through his unkempt hair. She disappeared outside the door and left McCree alone. He sat stil awhile, meditating on all that'd happened. He tested his binds again. A pull here, a twist there. The rope bit his skin and reminded him he wasn't going anywhere. He worked his jaw against his gag.

Sombra came back somewhere around thirty minutes later. She'd shed her stealthy clothing and gear since he'd seen her last and sauntered into the room in dark purple panties and a pair of flip-flops and nothing else. Her hair was tied up in a white towel nesting atop her head. Her bare breasts swayed with each step, dark brown nipples crowning either one. Her skin was smooth copper still damp from her shower. It glistened in the soft touch of the lamplight.

McCree swallowed down a throat gone to sandpaper and fidgeted in his binds. They seemed to tighten up on him all at once. His pants felt two size too small. He couldn't not watch her.

She went to the bed and slipped out of her flip-flops to crawl barefoot onto the mattress. She sat cross-legged up beside the pillows and reached for the nightstand where a bottle of water and a wrapped granola bar waited. She peeled the wrapper back and bit down and chewed thoughtfully. She chased it with a long swallow of water. Her throat pulsed as she drank, her breasts heaving every-so-slightly with each gulp. McCree's breath was shallow in his chest as he stared.

Sombra finished half the granola bar before folding the wrapper over the center and setting it back on the nightstand. A last drink of water and the bottle joined it. Then she sat dabbing crumbs from her lips and licking them from her fingers. She stretched her legs out long in front of her and fanned her toes and ran her hands against her thighs. She sat back and watched him watching her.

"Pervertido," she accosted him with a smile.

"Mmmnf." He was grateful to have something to bite down on.

She retrieved her bottle of water again and scooted onto the edge of bed. There she leaned forward to grab hold of his chair and scooted him closer. When she'd finished, he was between her legs, facing directly into her. His eyes moved from her face to her breasts to her belly and to her legs, where all that brown skin of her thighs was funneling his vision down to a direct and amorous point. She worked his gag out of his mouth long enough to give him a few swallows of water but had him muzzled tight again before he could talk.

"There. That should cool you off, McCree."

"Hmmf."

"Silencio."

She fetched his hat from the bed and yanked it down over his head, tipping the brim down deep across his eyes to keep him from staring at her any further.

"Buenas noches, vaquero."

The bedsprings creaked and the little bit of light he could spy from under his hat was snuffed out and the room was swallowed up in darkness. After a bit, his eyes adjusted and he could see the silver streaks coming in off the moonlit windows throwing lines across the bed. He tilted his head back to get a last look at her. She'd covered up in a thin sheet by then, but at the top of the bed her untoweled hair splashed around her head sunk in its pillow and the sharp blades of her bare shoulders angled prettily away from her back. At the other end a long bare leg had poked sensuously out from under the covers and lay like a haunch of seasoned meat ready to be devoured, the light brown sole of her naked foot shone like a spotlight against the silver kiss of the moon.

McCree dropped his chin to his chest, eager to be rid of the sight of her. Captured was one thing, bound up and gagged another. But to be tortured with the sight of a naked beauty sprawled before him like some celestial painting gifted down to the mortals was just too much. It was just too damned much.

He closed his eyes and let sleep find him. His last thoughts were of Sombra's breasts, of how they might feel cupped in the palms of his hands.