When the Courier brought Jeannie May to the front of Dinky, Boone almost thought twice about pulling the trigger. The proprietor of the Dino Dee-lite Motel was usually a nice woman, perhaps a bit sensitive and snappish to the traveler that was critical about the shortcomings of Novac, but hardly the type to sell a wife and mother to a society of ruthless slavers for a few caps. The Courier had shuffled Jeannie May out of the motel, made up some excuse to get the old woman to the front of the dinosaur, and had donned Boone's red beret, but still he hesitated to pull the trigger. But the Courier stood resolutely by the outcropping of rocks, her face calm as she stared up into the darkness of the sniper's nest, and had even left her Brotherhood scribe companion somewhere out of sight to reduce distraction. Jeannie May squinted towards the dinosaur, looked around on the ground, tried to figure out why the stranger had brought her out here. The Courier stood patiently, capped with Boone's beret. He pulled the trigger.
When the Courier met back up with him in the dinosaur's mouth, she was once again joined by the pretty scribe with the kind eyes and wispy smile. The Courier handed Boone his beret and a holodisk while the scribe chattered about the incriminating receipt found among Jeannie May's possessions. Boone carefully turned over the holodisk in his hand while the scribe recited the message that was on it, detailed how she and the Courier had to pick a safe to get to it, but her enthusiastic diatribe was nothing but muffled static in his brain as he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He had put down the dog that sold his wife and unborn child, and he hoped he had given them some semblance of peace in the afterlife, but now he was unsure how to proceed. In the time between Carla's demise and Boone's retribution his sole driving purpose was to find the perpetrator and make them pay. And now that he had, in no small part thanks to the Courier's interference, he still felt unsatisfied. Perhaps he would have preferred a more intimate confrontation with Jeannie May, to let her know that he found out about her terrible secret, to see the terror in her eyes just before her put a bullet in her brain. He had hoped it would bring him peace, but instead he felt just as empty and conflicted as before.
His own swirling cloud of dark emotions pushed aside, he came back to the conversation a little, noting that the Brotherhood girl was still going on about the nuances of Jeannie May's treachery and how the Courier had come to unearth it. The girl liked to talk, Boone noted. The Courier herself was leaning against the flaking plaster wall of the sniper's nest, watching her companion recount the tale. A woman of few words, the Courier, though obviously a woman of action and careful planning as evidenced by the holodisk still clutched in Boone's fist. He was suddenly overcome with a rush of gratitude for the woman, who had brought to him his wife's true killer. Left to his own devices, Boone knew his personal suspicions would have eventually led him to seek revenge against Manny for Carla's disappearance, and he was not sure how the heaviness of another innocent life lost by his own hand would have affected him. He was glad that he had trusted the Courier with this, that she was more patient and clever than he was, that she didn't buy into incriminating anecdotes and lazy hunches. It was this wash of relief that had him nodding as the scribe suggested he leave his post in Novac to travel.
"You could come with us," the Courier said, the first words he'd heard out of her since he handed his beret to her three days ago. The scribe exclaimed excitedly and agreed, enthusiastically explaining their current goal of finding a damning piece of technology to rouse her Brotherhood fellows into action. The girl really liked to talk, Boone noted again with added exasperation. Boone declined the invitation; he knew three was a crowd, especially in the Mojave Wasteland. Traveling the wastes in a group larger than a duo was asking to be set upon by every Fiend raiding party and Powder Ganger encampment in the area; even if they were all careful and quiet, they'd still have three sets of feet kicking up dust, three packs clanking and shifting with gear and loot, three breaths echoing off of abandoned buildings and canyon walls. The scribe looked a little crestfallen, but the Courier simply nodded and promised to ask again later before turning back into the gift shop with her Brotherhood friend in tow. A few minutes later he saw them through the scope of his rifle, following the road past Dinky. The pair side-stepped the corpse of Jeannie May and gave him a little wave before heading down the broken pavement away from Novac.
Boone watched them for a few seconds before returning to his nightly scouting duty. It was mere minutes of sitting in the dark, claustrophobic dinosaur mouth before he felt the familiar drifting of his mind as it turned to darker thoughts, as it was wont to do during the idle hours of his shift. He thought of Carla, and Bitter Springs, the usual ghosts of his regret cropping up but now punctuated by the image of Jeannie May. He conjured up a thousand different scenarios of how Jeannie May helped plan the Legion's heist, how he should've been more attentive, how he could've stopped it. His grip tightened on his rifle and he wished for a moment that he too was walking away from Novac, that three was not too many people to travel the Mojave.