Chapter 24: Unholy

I paid my tab and stumbled out into the blinding desert sun and rested my back against the wall, the heat a welcome jackhammer against my skull. I had to find Maddie, had to know if she was still alive, if this was just another layer of her elaborate game.

I stumbled away from the saloon, the sun beating down like a judgment. The burner phone in my pocket felt dead, useless. She wouldn't send a message now. If she were alive, she was already moving, already playing the next move in her game, and I was left behind, a pawn discarded on a blood-soaked board.

"Damn it," I growled, the single word ripped from my raw throat.

I had to find her. I had to know if she was alive. I hated myself for wanting to know. I hated that what happened in that mine meant something to me. I hated that she had come to mean something to me, even after how she used me. I am a fucking fool, but I still need to know.

Every shadow seemed to lengthen, twist into a lurking threat. The town, once a collection of quaint facades, now felt like a giant, gaping black hole, ready to swallow me whole. My choices were stark: run and live to be hunted another day, or find her. A part of me, the one that still believed in lines and justice, screamed to cut my losses. But the image of her face, defiant even as the tunnel collapsed, the lingering scent of her on my skin from that desperate night, tethered me to this desolate place. I had watched her face as the tunnel collapsed and heard the shots. She was injured, and she was alone. I could leave, but I was not a man who left the injured behind.

My instincts, long dormant, finally roared to life, and at a pivotal time, too. Brody's patrol car had been parked outside the saloon, but his gaze had swept past the entrance, lingered on the windows. He knew the building was connected to her network, yet he hadn't breached it. Why? The question spun in my head, an insidious worm. He had wanted me to see him, to hear his veiled warning. He had wanted me out of the game, or at least out of her orbit. I will let him think that I am leaving, done with her, and done with this corrupt town. My gaze swept the saloon's dark windows, a silent promise in my eyes: this wasn't over. I walked away, but my mind was already racing, recalculating every angle.

I skirted the main street, sticking to the dusty alleys, my eyes scanning for anything out of place. No hidden surveillance cameras here, just the occasional stray dog, thin and wary, like everything else in Calico. The afternoon sun baked the brick and cracked the earth, making the air shimmer. I imagined the Mongols moving, a slow, methodical sweep. They wouldn't rush, not now. They had me cornered, a rat in a maze, and they knew it.

My gaze fell on the old mission church at the edge of town, its bell tower a skeletal finger pointing to a sky too vast to care. It was the only building that felt entirely disconnected from Calico's seedy underbelly, a relic of a simpler, more naive time. A quiet place. A desperate place. Brody hadn't bothered with it. It was too obvious. Which made it perfect.

I moved towards it, keeping to the deeper shadows of the few trees that dared to grow in this unforgiving soil. The main doors were ajar, a sliver of darkness inviting me in. Inside, the air was cool, smelling of dust, old wood, and something else—a faint, metallic, animalic scent that made the hair on my arms stand up. Not a good scent, not a holy one.