A/N: Another new chapter without weeks in between updates, yay! I was originally going to show their flight to Sumner, then the story decided to go this way instead and this is what resulted. I hope you enjoy it. As always, entertainment only, I own nothing but my OC.

Fort Sumner, New Mexico

Bay dismounted and left his horse at the hitch rail, then made his way to a small cantina. He stepped inside and looked around, not that he was actually expecting to see them. There was a reason Rudabaugh had told him to go to Fort Sumner, and now he understood. His thoughts went to the journal buried in his saddlebags. After reading that. And after Juarez.

"Help you?"

"Yeah." He made his way to the bar and leaned against it. "I need to speak to Deluvina Maxwell." The man's eyebrows rose and he chewed furiously on his unlit cigar.

"About what?"

"Her kids," he said evenly and waited. The man eyed him for a long moment, then stabbed a finger in the air.

"Wait here." The stranger stomped out from behind the bar and left the cantina. Bay turned around, putting his back to the wall just in case the fellow returned with a shotgun. The doors swung open a few minutes later and the fellow pointed him out to the plump woman at his side. Her dark eyes scrutinized Bay like a wanted poster. He pushed off the bar and made his way over, making sure to remove his hat before he reached her.

"Ma'am."

"What do you want?" Her voice was sharp, but the protective note rang loud and clear. "I am unmarried, I have no children, nor do I have time for games." She turned to go.

"Wait." One dark eyebrow winged up and she folded her arms over her chest.

"Wait for what?"

"I don't mean them any harm, I swear." He used two fingers to pluck his Colt from its holster, then handed her the weapon. "Show her that, and tell her Firestone wants to talk. Please." He had to know …. The woman glanced at the man beside her who shrugged and scratched his head.

"Damned if I know what to do." He stole a quick glance around. "He ain't Garrett," the fellow said almost like a reminder.

"I have eyes, Beaver," Deluvina said tartly.

"It's a matter of life and death," Bay added. "Theirs," he finished softly. Deluvina's eyes widened; her teeth worried her bottom lip.

"Come with me," she all but spit at him, then whirled around and darted outside quicker than he would have thought possible. He followed her through the shadowy side streets until she stopped at a small house near the peach orchard and knocked on the door.

"Quien es?"

"Deluvina." The door opened and she disappeared inside, leaving Bay alone. He inched closer and pressed his ear to the door, but the voices were too soft to make out words. The back of his neck itched and he glanced over his shoulder, but saw only shadows. He'd bet that Beaver fellow was hiding nearby, keeping an eye on the Maxwell woman. Bay threw up his hand in a wave, just because he could, and kept waiting, an internal clock ticking closer to its end.

The door opened and Deluvina ushered him inside, giving him his first real look at the last of the Lincoln County Regulators. An Indian stood silently next to the fireplace, his hands playing with a giant knife that gleamed in the firelight. There was a bed pushed up against the far wall, cradling a young man buried in blankets. Icy blue eyes met his and Bay suppressed a shudder. Then she moved, and he forget everyone else.

Jessica Dolan rose from her chair beside the bed, the firelight tangling in her hair and reflecting from cold green eyes that made the Kid's seem friendly by comparison, giving her the aura of the bandit queen the papers called her. Until he looked closer.

The blood-stained, patched pants … the loosened braid … the pistol clutched tight in her hand … a face aged too soon ….

A girl barely out of her teens, reduced to a hunted animal, all because she made the wrong enemies.

"What do you want?" Her voice was diamond hard now, but he'd bet it flowed like silk when she turned on the charm. If she ever did.

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why? You come here alone and –"

"Why did you choose this," he clarified. "Eighteen or not, you could have taken over after Murphy and your father died, you could have had it all and instead you're –"

"Hunted? Vilified? Marked for death?" she spit. "Their choices were not mine. They murdered an innocent man because he was keeping them from the power they wanted. I changed sides the day they laid John Tunstall in his grave and I'll never look back."

"Cost you a lot," he remarked, and her face darkened.

"Almost everything," she admitted. "The Regulators are all I have left." And damn few of them, he knew.

"What are you after?" the Kid choked out, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"The truth." The three of them traded glances. "At the start, I was no better than Garrett, out to make a name for myself, but now?" He shook his head. "I was there when they made that traitor a sheriff, and I was there in Juarez, and …." He swallowed hard. "I have to change sides."

"You're a bounty hunter," the Indian remarked. "And there is money on all of our heads."

"None of you earned that." Bay slung his hat to the floor. "It was slapped there by a corrupt ring of thieves. They all know the governor pardoned you and their answer was to pay for cold-blooded murder. There's nothing legal about this."

"A little late, don't you think?" Jessica hadn't softened an inch. "There isn't a thing you or anyone can do to help us now."

"You could run." She laughed harshly without a shred of amusement.

"Where, Firestone? They massacred a town down in Mexico, you really think they'd let us flee to California? Pat Garrett would follow us to Hell if it made him famous." A tremor shook her frame and she rubbed at her forehead with the hand not holding the pistol – his pistol, he noted. "The bastard said he'd turn back at the border," she whispered almost too low to hear, but he caught it, and his stomach soured. Garrett had made a deal with them? It would explain his insistence that they wouldn't return, explain, too, the look of pained betrayal in the Kid's eyes when she mentioned Garrett.

And the look on Garrett's face when Wallace reclaimed his badge and gave it to Poe. It made too much sense to be a lie, even the lack of mention in their story could be construed as protecting the sheriff.

"I'll go to the papers and tell them what happened in Juarez. Give me your side of the story, and I'll tell that, too. If the world knew the truth –"

"You've seen the papers, all they print is whatever the Ring tells them. Hell, you believed them."

"And as soon as I discovered the truth –"

"You what?" The Kid rasped. "Shot at Jessie? Killed Dave? Shot up Juarez?"

"I put a bullet in the man who would have killed her as you were fleeing. I saw the Ring for what it is, and I can't follow that. Anymore than you could follow Murphy." Jessica sat down and touched the Kid's hand. Their eyes met and an entire conversation seemed to flow between them without a word or gesture he could see.

"Chavez?" She didn't even turn her head.

"You know what I have seen." Her shoulders sagged and she swallowed hard. Haunted green eyes stared into the flames and Bay wished he knew what she saw. Juarez? The siege at McSween's? Blazer's Mill? Or just riding across the desert surrounded by friends now dead? Her shoulders shook and she bent down, tugging something from her boot.

Without a word, Chavez crossed the room and took it from her hand, bringing it to him. Bay unfolded the papers and his eyes widened. "If you're playing us and destroy those, there are two more copies out there the Ring can't stop from coming to light." She was still staring into the fire. "Nothing will save us, but if the truth gets out, maybe someday they'll know the Lincoln County Regulators for what we really were." She turned then, an eerie reflection dancing in her eyes, and a chill shot down his spine. "We wanted justice for a good man who was murdered because he wouldn't bow to the Santa Fe Ring. I heard Murphy and my father talking about it and I knew in that moment that Murphy would always win, that my father wasn't the man he used to be, and I thought if I took a stand, he'd come to his senses."

"But he didn't."

"He put a price on my head, called me a whore, and would have seen me dead had Billy not killed him. After the siege at McSween's, there wasn't a road that led anywhere for us. Because we were indicted for killing Brady, Wallace's amnesty didn't apply to us. All I had left at that point was an empty heart and Billy." Jessica sighed heavily. "Ask anything you want, it doesn't matter anymore."

"Who killed Brady?"

"I did," Billy rasped. "And I've never regretted it."

"Did you intend to keep your end of the deal?" He held up the pardons and for a split second, he thought she might shoot him if the look in her eyes was anything to judge by.

"If you have to ask that, you didn't learn a thing." She rose to her feet and he took an instinctive step back. "Get out." What was truly frightening was the fact her voice didn't raise at all. Cold, controlled – some might say ruthless – and sly as a desert fox. She'd had to be just to survive the last two years. From what he'd gathered, he was looking at the only reason the Kid wasn't buried six feet deep. How could loyalty in the face of annihilation run so deep and true?

"I'm sorry. It just … you ran to Mexico …"

"They would have killed us if we stayed," Chavez spoke up. "It was the only way they might be able to live long enough to keep their promise." Jessica spit on the floor and stomped to the fireplace, her hands resting on the rough mantle. The urge to hold her rose up inside; he squelched it just as fast. That for sure would get him shot, if not by her, by the Kid. Maybe even Chavez. "Gata."

"I know." She turned around, one arm braced on the mantle, the other hand on her hip, his pistol still clutched in her fingers. "Anything else, bounty hunter?"

"Do you love him?" Chavez muffled a snort and the Kid cackled, the sound becoming a pained, gasping cough that had her shooting a worried look over her shoulder.

"I'm not gonna keel over, Jess."

"God, it always comes back to that. Do people really think I only sided with the Regulators because I wanted to sleep – or was already sleeping, depending on who you ask – with Billy? Good Lord, do I look like that kind of a woman? If the idiots who wrote those blasted articles spent even five minutes around this arrogant, reckless, immature, little rodent, they'd never ask that because they'd want to shoot him as much I did."

"To be fair, he did want to shoot you," Chavez noted, tongue-in-cheek. She scoffed and stabbed a finger at Bay. Which meant she pointed his pistol at him. He fought the urge to hit the floor.

"That article about the two of us and Jane Greathouse? Rubbish. Same to anything that said I was involved with him before Tunstall's murder. One of his talents is getting us into trouble, luckily for his ass another was getting us back out of it, usually through a stupid, reckless plan that almost nobody would attempt."

"Like being tossed out of an attic in a trunk?"

"I said if he got us out of there, I'd follow him anywhere. I'm not exactly sure when things changed from friendship to something more, but they did." Those green eyes met his. "He's one of the last people in the world I trust with my life and yes, I love him, Firestone. If you tell that to the papers, make sure you get it right. We're not outlaw lovers on the run, we're just scrambling to survive." She scoffed under her breath. "Bandit king and queen of the Southwest, my ass." She lowered her hand – and his pistol – and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Was Rudabaugh a Regulator?"

"No," the three of them insisted as one.

"What happened to Scurlock, the boy, and the other fellow who rode with you?"

"Tommy's dead, the other fellow we haven't seen since Juarez, and Doc got away. And that's all you need to know about that."

"Fair enough. There anything else you want corrected?" he asked softly. Jessica shook her head.

"It doesn't matter anymore. Garrett's coming and if we lose, once we're all dead, the Ring will say whatever they want to so they justify their killing." She looked up and held out his pistol which he carefully retrieved. "If it comes to that, don't let us die in vain." It was a dismissal if he'd ever heard one, and as much of a plea as she would allow herself to make. Bay nodded once and tucked the pardons carefully into his coat pocket.

"If we never meet again –"

"We'll see you on the other side," she finished softly. Bay stooped to collect his hat and left, closing the door on the sight of Jessica returning to the chair beside the bed and taking the Kid's hand in hers. He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and hurried down the street to his waiting horse.

"You fancy yourself in love with her, no?" Came the lilting voice of Deluvina Maxwell. Bay stopped and turned around, finding a knowing smile on her face. She advanced. "You saw the real woman inside the stories and she has captured your imagination."

"You're crazy." He yanked the reins from the hitch rail and mounted up, finding the woman looking up at him with raised eyebrows.

"I do not think so. Why else would you come here?"

"To get the truth so I can destroy the Ring," he retorted. "Finish what they started." Deluvina smiled like a woman with a secret.

"I found the journal, there." She nodded at his saddlebags. "You already have the complete truth, and everything you would need to make a name for yourself. There is only one reason you came to Fort Sumner and we both know what that is." Their gazes locked for a moment before Bay tore himself free and wheeled his horse, riding away without a word.