Cass and I spent a day wandering around Vegas before heading back to Steve's. Do some catch-up, let her get accustomed to her new hardware. She was getting a quick handle on her riot-gun though. It was 12 rather than 20 gauge, so it kicked harder. Plus, it was magazine fed, and semi-auto, so she had to watch her ride-up. If I ever found a way to get a stock for it, I'd get her one, it would at least help with that.

After knocking the rust off for a few hours, we made tracks back to Steve. He was surprisingly happy to see I was in a better mood. Or maybe he was just happy I had Cass to keep me from getting killed now. Hard to say. In either case, he gave me the next bounty, and sent me on my way. This time however, things were a bit different, kind of like how I'd been asked to investigate in the past. Only less guess work, and more grunt work. A guy by the name of Dallas Courtright had decided to set-up shop in Westside. By set-up shop, I mean appoint himself as Sheriff and bring order to the area.

And by 'order', I mean he was basically running roughshod over everyone.

Courtright was a regulator of the western variety, out of NCR. Basically, making him no different from a gangster-enforcer wannabe. Cass, Steve, and me had already had words on it in the past, so I had a decent idea of what the guy was like.

Westside was normally good about handling guys like that, but the timing couldn't have been worse. Or perhaps Courtright knew an opportunity when he saw one. The people hadn't had time to recover from when they'd been attacked by Katil before Courtright steamrolled his way in. He hadn't been giving them a chance to find a way to recover properly, but hadn't otherwise harmed them. He was behaving more as a hindrance than a threat. Though given he was openly referring to himself as a regulator, that was something liable to change given the wrong circumstances. Out of desperation, they put up a bounty for him with Steve. Though they clarified that they didn't care how he was dealt with, they just wanted him out of their hair.

For once, killing didn't have to be on the table.

So, I didn't.

I threatened him for sure, but I didn't kill him. Got him to run the hell away and save his own sorry hide. For the better anyway. Westside would've eventually gotten their feet back under them anyway, then dealt with him as they saw fit. What I did was a mercy by comparison.

And it left me in a good mood.

Once done, Cass and me started back to Steve's.

I couldn't help but have a spring in my step, to be honest. I was feeling a lot better than I had been.

"Well, don't you seem tickled pink." Cass mused.

"Can't help it, I feel better." I said "Honestly, I'm glad we got to handle one that way finally."

Cass smirked "Meant a lot?"

"After all the crap of the past few weeks? Yeah." I nodded "Courtright's bound to get in over his head at some point. At the very least though, it won't be our problem when he does."

Cass nodded "Suppose so… So, what next?"

"Dunno." I shrugged "But, frankly, I almost don't mind that."

Cass inclined her head my way. "You think it's gonna start changing?"

"Probably not." I answered "But… isn't it a good sign? For once, we didn't have to kill anyone, and no one got killed either."

Cass nodded "Maybe."

"It's not all gonna be sunshine and rainbows." I said "But I can live with that. With you guys at my back, I almost feel like we don't have anything to worry about… almost."

"… The Judge?" Cass asked.

I nodded "Him."

I'd brought Cass up to speed about the asshole that'd apparently been tailing us. Or had people tailing us, at least. Now that I had an idea of what the problem was, we could work to addressing it. Steve even said that the guy was moving into the Mojave. As bad of news as that was, it at least simplified things for us. If he kept pushing, the three of us would push back harder. Of that much, I was sure.

That didn't keep me from worrying though.

Someone had been following us, and we'd never been able to actually catch them in the act. Meaning that at any moment they might decide to give us a nasty surprise.

But even that thought didn't put much of a damper on me. Bad as things might be, at the moment, they were looking up.

"What're we going to do about him?" Cass asked.

"No clue." I said "Steve hates the bastard with a burning passion, and I'm disinclined to argue. But we don't know where he is, and even if we did, I don't have a clue how Steve would want to tackle it. Besides the obvious, of course."

We continued down the road, passing by Primm. Steve's shack wasn't much further, just outside the settlement's limits. It was past noon, and the sun was starting back down to the horizon. Sunset wouldn't be for a few hours, but the daylight was burning down. The heat beginning to mount with it, things were only going to be getting hotter until the sun went down.

We started up the hill to the shack.

"How bad you think it'll be, when we finally get to him?" I asked.

"If it's anything like what we've been told?" Cass asked "Pretty shit. The Judge doesn't seem like someone who'd have it any other way…" Then she smirked "But, if I really make the difference you say, then maybe it won't be so bad."

"… Yeah." I agreed "As long as I've got you and Steve, I think we'll be alright."

We crested the hill and walked up to the door of the shack. I twisted the knob, walked inside, and-

My heart lurched to a stop. I froze in the doorway of the shack.

"What's wrong?" Cass asked, trying to look past me

On instinct, I dipped around the corner of the door, grabbing Cass and leading her in with me. I slammed the door shut immediately, blocking line of sight between us and the outside world.

Cass looked around the room. The distress in her eyes speaking more than a thousand words. But she summarized them pretty well. "Oh fuck."

Steve's office was destroyed, ransacked. Like someone had decided the place needed redecorating with a 12 gauge. The filing cabinets were shot to hell, shredded papers and reports littering the floor. The furnishings of the room were all overturned. The shelves, side tables, chairs, even Steve's desk at the far end of the room. Many of them sported bullet holes as well. Most of the damage didn't even look as though it'd be done for any tactical reason, just spite. Of special note was the coffee maker, laying on the ground in a dozen pieces.

Smeared in the rust of dried blood. What was likely once a pool of it was beside the shattered remnants of the coffeemaker. Cracked, flaking, and leading in a drag mark towards the door we now stood beside. There was more blood throughout the room. Spatters and splatters of it dotting the floor and spraying the furnishings.

A large swath of it across the painting on the far wall.

My eyes darted around the room. Scanning the room for anybody waiting to spring the trap we'd walked into. Should've done it before dragging Cass inside, but better late than never.

After a beat, and a lack of gunfire and screaming, I took it safe to assume we'd missed the trap.

"… Think we're clear for the moment." I said, good humor gone from my voice. I motioned to the corner near the door. "Watch the door?"

Cass nodded silently, moving to the corner. She pulled her shotgun around and locked it at hip level.

I started across the room, carefully walking over the furniture now strewn about the place. There wasn't much point, but I didn't want to disturb anything at the moment. Just because nobody had jumped us the moment we opened the door, didn't keep them from leaving behind a mine or grenade. At the opposite of the room, behind Steve's desk, was the painting. The angels still pursuing the man into the night, torch burning and swords sharp. But it had been defaced. A swatch of dried crimson smeered over the white clad, torchbearing angel, stretching down and obscuring the man. A knife now pierced the painting, being used to hold a letter in place.

I made sure it was rigged with anything, then pulled the knife free. Letting it drop to the floor as I took the note. Barring the hole stabbed through the center of it, the note read as such:

Dear 'Six'

Randall and Associates is finished. Your employer is dead. Javier will be with you shortly.

Sincerely, Judge Richter

As if on cue, the door to the shack blew open.

I whipped around to face it, hand instinctively going for the pistol at my hip. It stopped just short of touching the grip. Even if I could've drawn it in that moment, I wasn't faster than a twitchy trigger finger.

In the doorway stood a man. Wrapped in a shabby, worn-out gambler suit, and a 12-gauge hunting shotgun parallel to his hips, pointed my way. He looked like someone who didn't get much time to rest, or spend time indoors. He was covered with dust and grit, and his suit was torn and ripped in place. Like he'd be treating them more like traveling clothes than, well, a suit. As he began to step into the shack, I began to get a better look of his face. He was hispanic, of some descent, his brown hair slicked back in greasy tendrils. Bare dustings of facial hair on his chin, beneath a pointed mouth. His nose was small, but wide and pronounced between dead, watery hazel eyes.

When he spoke, his voice was a dull croaking basso.

"You found the note. Good." his voice rattled.

My eyes drifted back to the note in my hand momentarily, then back up. "I guess that makes you Javier then."

The dirty facsimile of a smile stretched across his lips, and he took a few steps into the room. Eyes not leaving me. "Do you know why I'm here?"

I resisted the urge to let my eyes dart to Cass, and kept my focus on Javier. Keeping my tone even and cool. "I'd have to guess business. Seeing as you're here on behalf of the Judge."

Javier's head twitched in the barest flicker of a nod, fake smile still stretching his lips. "You would be correct. I'm here to make you an offer."

"Which is?" I asked, watching as Cass began creeping closer to Javier in the periphery of my vision.

There was a faint click from Javier's shotgun. The switching of a safety. "You leave the Mojave, right now. In return, you will be forgotten."

"Meaning you won't have people coming after me and mine anymore?" I asked.

Another flicker of his head. "Correct, you would stand to gain everything for it… however, we can settle our accounts now, if you would prefer?"

I let the question hang in the air for the moment. I had no intention of making a run for it. I got the sense Javier knew that. More than anything, it was to buy time to let Cass do whatever she was planning to do.

And given the state we'd found the office in, I had a question to ask.

"What'd you do to Randall?" I asked "You make him this offer?"

Javier's fake smile gained a slightly more real, cruel edge to it. "No, this offer was for you alone. My employer and Mr. Randall had unfinished business, he sent me to resolve it".

I avoided making any sudden moves for my pistol. But there was a churning pit in my gut that told me, whatever he was about to say, I didn't want to hear it.

I could feel my face pulling up in a scowl. "Where is he?" I growled.

"Buried out in the desert." Javier croaked "Accounts settled."

I felt my stomach drop out onto the floor. "Bullshit." I growled.

Javier shook his head lightly, a hand rising up to his neck. He reached into his shirt, withdrawing a key on a string. He tugged it free, and tossed it over to me. It clattered to the ground in front of me, as I resisted the urge to catch it.

"That's the key to the safe in the wall over there." Javier sneered, inclining his head toward the wall "Go on, open it."

I looked at Javier for a moment, then down to the key. Not having much choice, I complied, bending down and picking up the old piece of notched brass. I righted myself, and turned towards the wall to the right of the desk, facing toward the door. There was a locked safe built into the wall. If I'd been of the mind at the time, I might have wondered how secure it was, given how thin the walls of the shack were. It turned to look at Javier as I moved towards the safe. He wasn't in any rush to shoot me, I couldn't tell if that was because he wanted me to make sure the safe wasn't booby trapped or not. I didn't trust the veracity of his offer any more than I trusted the croupiers of the Strip's casinos.

I slid the key into the safe's override slot and twisted. The tumblers immediately clicked into position as the lock released. I twisted the handle, and the safe swung open easily.

Which meant this key was from Steve.

I felt something cold roll its way down my spine. That hollow pit in my stomach swallowing everything that got too close for its own good.

The only thing it couldn't touch was the feeling knotting itself in my chest.

I turned back towards Javier. My first and only desire in that moment was to draw bead on him and put a bullet through his head. His shotgun was the only thing keeping that from happening.

"You killed Steve?" I asked again, voice cold enough to freeze the whole of Lake Mead.

"I am a man of my word." Javier sneered.

"Well then, aren't you just a good little courier?" I asked, a fire building in my chest "You made sure he signed for the package, right? Lot of people out there taking shit that doesn't belong to them."

Javier said nothing, and his face gave nothing away.

"Your silence is enough of an answer." I said, barely keeping the anger out of my voice.

"Your choice." Javier said, angling his shotgun "Quickly."

He shouldn't have even bothered.

"I'll tell you what, you've got a great sales pitch." I said, breathing getting deeper as I tried to keep calm "You know what to offer, you know how to leverage, and you certainly know how to persuade someone to seal a deal." I said, inclining my head towards him "But you missed one really important part of it. You don't know your target audience."

Javier's eye crinkled in confusion.

They went wide as dinner plates as Cass put her shotgun to the back of his head.

"Also, the five-point room scan." I growled.

Before Javier even had a second to react, Cass pulled the trigger. The back two-thirds of his head erupting in a fountain of gore and shattered bone. The blast from the barrel deafening in the close spaces of the shack, viscera spraying the ceiling. The buckshot shredding a ragged hole through the scrap metal roof, painted and patterned with gray matter and blood.

Javier stayed upright for a moment longer, frozen almost. Then he went limp, and collapsed to the floor in a heap. His shotgun clattering to the floor beside him.

Cass scowled down at Javier's headless corpse, before turning to look at me. For a moment, I could see her eyes filled with anger. As she looked at me though, the anger melted away, replaced by something more sorrowful.

The anger didn't leave me as easily as it did her though.

"He was lying… right?" Cass asked, not sounding at all hopeful.

"I don't think he was." I said, trying to push the growl out of my voice. I turned back towards the safe. If he had Steve's key to it, then there was only one way he could've gotten it. "... Guess there's only one way to find out now."

I reached out and opened the safe the rest of the way. Even if Steve wasn't dead, the damage was done. At least with opening it, we might find some insight.

The safe was mostly empty. there were some worthwhile documents to be sure. Just none that were of any help to me. Mostly paperwork, receipts for processed bounties, bills, the kinds of paperwork I'd expect from a place like the Crimson Caravans. There were some more minor, personalized papers, notes and journals from the looks of it.

There was also an old revolver being used as a paper weight, alongside three boxes of hollow pointed .44 magnum.

Sitting on a letter addressed to me.

That cold feeling rolled back down my spine as I pulled the letter out, showing it to Cass.

Her face fell. "Shit."

I unfolded the letter and began reading it.

Dear Six,

If you're reading this, then I'm probably dead or kidnapped. I haven't been forthright about recent developments in the business, because I never wanted to get you mixed up in my bullshit, kid.

Nonetheless, here we are. While you were out chasing bounties, I was asking around about Judge Richter. Been doing so since you brought evidence that he was watching you. I've been uncovering all manner of bad shit in the process, trying to figure out where he is and what he's up to. It appeared the rumors about him moving into the Mojave were true, He's set up a firm of his own: Richter and Associates. Truth is, they've actually come calling at my door a time or two now, I just made sure to deal with them. But it's a losing game, it's only a matter of time before Richter sends Javier Sugar after me. If you haven't met him yet, he's Richter's top hitman. Watch out for him, if he think's you're alone, he's more likely to try and jump you. If you're reading this, it probably means he's already knocked me off. Hope I'm being paranoid, rather be paranoid and wasting ink and paper.

Truth is, things are a lot worse off than either of us thought. There's no real telling when things are gonna start unravelling, and I can't put it all down in words here, wouldn't put to justice what you'd need to know. Was hoping I could tell you in person, try to get you up to speed before it happens. Bad things are coming kid, and if I could've faced it down with you, I'd have done it with a smile on my face. You and those friends of yours are the best partners I've had in a long time. It's been an honor working with you. Though I'd never admit that to your face.

There's not much here for you, but it's yours. The shack and its contents, including everything in this safe. There should be a couple hundred caps in it, should something happen. Future payment for processed bounties, ready in advance. Can't swear to it, since I don't know if you'll ever read this anyway.

But something I can swear to: you're gonna find my old .44 on top of this letter. Along with some .44 hollow points. This was the gun I bought back when I first started hunting Marko. Though I never got the chance to use it for that reason, I dubbed it 'Sweet Revenge' in anticipation. A bit silly, but naming your gun is always silly, and at least I called it for what it was supposed to be. It don't look like any .44 you're probably familiar with, for good reason, it was made a long time ago. Longer than even before the war. Might very well be the last of its make.

Might be a bit presumptuous of a last request, but if you're really reading this, and I'm dead, I gotta ask. If it ain't too much trouble, christen 'Sweet Revenge' by using it to avenge me. I'd be tickled pink if you did. I couldn't suss-up what hole the Judge was hiding in, but I found out his liason in the slave trade, asshole by the name of Cormac, hangs around Fiend territory. Was known to deal with Violet, before someone put her down.

One last thing (which I guess makes this the real last request), If you ever get the chance I want you to find Marko and kill him for me. I know the trail went cold, and I know the odds of finding him are slim, but I gotta ask all the same. That bastard took everything from me, and countless others too. The Judge is business, always has been. If he'd kept you and yours out of this mess, I wouldn't have given two shits what he did until the bounty came up. But Marko is personal, and you know how much. The day he winds up on the ground, having died as horrible a death as he ever gave, my soul will be at peace. If there's anything after this, and I get to see my 'Becca again, I'll try to put in a good word for you. 'Till then, you best believe I will be haunting your ass every chance I get. You're all I got now.

It was a privilege to work with you, kid. Remember: Justice is truth in action. Let that guide you in the coming days.

Sincerely,

Steven Randall

P.S. If you ever come across a Marshal named Cooper, give him my regards.

"..."

I folded the letter back up, and held it in front of me, gripping it with both hands. A part of me not wanting to believe what I'd read. Another part trying to believe it was a fake. It'd be an impressive fake if it was.

"What's it say?" Cass asked, after a long moment.

"It's… an explanation, from Steve." I said, turning to look at her "He wrote it in case something happened. Javier wasn't lying."

Cass's face fell. That sorrowful look swelling in her eyes. It didn't leave as her face hardened. "Bull."

The only thing I could think to do in that moment was hold the letter out to Cass. She took it from me and began to read it over.

I hadn't known Steve for all that long. But in the time, I had, despite our differences, I'd come to see him as a friend. Given half a chance, I'd have gladly called him a companion. I wanted to believe that maybe Cass or Boone saw it that way too.

I turned away from Cass, let her process it her way. My attention was needed elsewhere.

As I reached into the safe, there was a pang in my chest. A gnawing, needful thing that wanted me to mull over everything. Cross examine every decision that'd led up to this moment, try to see where I'd fucked up. Try to figure out how I could fix it. Try to convince myself Steve wasn't gone, that it wasn't too late.

I gripped the revolver and drew it from the safe. The grip was an earthy brown wood, and the metal an oxide blue. Not quite the same as the Red wood and blackened steel found on other .44s in the Mojave. But its condition was peerless, not a scratch to be had on it, especially given its purported age. It was not of a design common to the Mojave either. Most .44s could be traced back to designs from a pre-war manufacturer. Steve's revolver, now mine by inheritance, made no claims beyond some minor stamping. My knowledge of firearms history was lacking, but I was fairly certain the .44 in my hands was made by Remington. The presence of a loading arm under the barrel told me it was likely originally made to fire black powder. But at some point, someone had taken the time to lovingly convert it to fire cartridges, swing out cylinder and all. It was steeped in that old make though. Brass trigger guard, notched hammer, the loading lever, the cylinder even looked like an original that someone had bored through.

Somewhere out there, a weapons antiquarian was crying.

My thumb pressed the cylinder release, and I let the crane swing out. I eyed the cylinder, then gave it a test spin. It revolved as clean and smooth as pre-war glass.

I felt the pang in my chest turn to a burning, biting sensation. Chased by a hammering heart beat and the tensing, furious rush of blood throughout my being. Like some great dam that'd just barely kept from breaking, finally gave up the ghost. What followed after it, drowning out ration and reason, and looking to do the same to everything else downstream.

I pulled the ammo from the safe, and began arranging it about my person. Sliding the brass into the cylinder.

My eyes drifted back to Cass. Her stoney face clashing with pained, misty red eyes. As they found their way to me, I snapped the cylinder shut. My mind went calmly, dangerously still and silent.

"I've figured out what we're doing next, Cass." I said, voice calm, anger burning bright, in time to the slow, thudding hammer falls of my heart.