Chapter 7: Ask the Roses
The whiskey in Cass’s glass was the color of dirty river water. She swirled it once, letting the liquid climb the sides, and watched the room without seeming to.
Six. She’d counted six.
Two by the door were professionals. They wore their dust like a uniform, their gear neat, their eyes doing the same slow sweep as hers. They’d marked her the moment she’d walked in, her hat dripping red clay from the storm that had chased her into Copper Ridge. Competition. Not a problem unless they got in her way.
Three at a corner table were the opposite. Loud, drunk, their voices slurry with cheap rotgut and big dreams. They were tossing a wanted poster of Ezra between them, pointing at the sketched face, arguing over the best way to spend money they didn’t have. Amateurs. Potentially more dangerous because of it. A drunk with a gun was about as predictable as a rattlesnake in a saddlebag.
The sixth was the woman.
She sat alone at the far end of the bar, her back to the wall. A long rifle lay across her knees, a cloth moving in slow, methodical strokes along its barrel. She hadn’t looked up, not when Cass entered, not when the drunkards bellowed. She just cleaned. Her hair was pulled back in a severe braid, her hands steady. Cass kept her in her periphery. A woman cleaning a weapon in a place like this wasn’t just passing time.
The bartender, a man with a face like a melted candle, slid a second glass toward her. The amber liquid sloshed. He didn’t meet her eye, just wiped a damp circle on the wood with his rag and moved away.
Underneath the glass, a square of paper, folded tight.
Cass palmed it without looking, brought the fresh whiskey to her lips, and took a slow drink. The burn was familiar. She unfolded the paper under the cover of the bar’s edge.
Two lines, scrawled in a hand she didn’t recognize.
He’s not at the assay office anymore.
Ask the roses.
Assay office. Jess’s intel had been solid, then. Someone else was updating it. For a price, or for a different kind of favor. She memorized the words, let the paper fall into the ashtray next to her, and touched the end of her cigarette to it. It flared, a brief orange star, then crumbled into black flakes.
Ask the roses. Nonsense. Or code. In her experience, the difference was usually just who was paying.
She lifted her gaze, letting it travel the room again, looking for anything that didn’t belong. The sagging wanted posters, the fly-specked mirror, the shelves of bottles coated in fine red dust. Her eyes snagged on the woman with the rifle.
A small, dark shape was tattooed on the side of her neck, just above the collar of her duster. From this distance, through the haze, it was hard to make out.
Cass stood up. The movement was easy, casual. She dropped a coin on the bar, loud enough to draw the eye of the two professionals by the door. They tracked her as she ambled toward the rear, past the drunkards, like she was heading for the privy out back.
She wasn’t.
She altered her path by a single step, passing close behind the cleaning woman’s stool. Close enough to smell gun oil and sage. Close enough to see.
It was a rose. A single, thorny stem, wrapped around a blade. The ink was old, faded to blue-green.
Cass pushed through the back door into the alley. The wind hit her, carrying the smell of damp clay and horse shit. She leaned against the wall, the brick rough against her back, and lit a fresh cigarette.
Ask the roses.
The door creaked open behind her. Cass didn’t turn.
“You’re Vane,” a voice said. It was low, husky from disuse.
Cass exhaled smoke, watched it shred in the wind. “Tends to be the name on my posters, yeah.”
“Heard you were good.”
“Heard wrong. I’m efficient.”
The woman stepped into the alley, the rifle now slung over her shoulder. Up close, she was older than Cass had guessed, lines etched deep around her mouth and eyes. The rose tattoo stood out against her sun-leathered skin.
“Efficient gets you paid,” the woman said. “Good keeps you breathing. Ezra’s not a one-woman retrieval anymore. The paper’s open. Whole damn desert knows it.”
“And you’re what?” Cass asked, flicking ash. “The welcoming committee?”
“I’m the reason you got that note,” she said. Her eyes, a pale, washed-out gray, didn’t blink. “Bartender’s my cousin, Tommy. Seen three hunters come through already today. Two left chasing their tails toward the assay office. The third’s in a shallow grave north of here.”
Cass took a last drag, crushed the cigarette under her boot. “You bury him?”
“Didn’t have to. The snakes were doing a fine job when I passed.”
The information settled between them. Cass adjusted her hat, pulling the brim down against the rising wind. “The note said ‘ask the roses.’ I’m asking.”
The woman’s lips twitched. Not a smile. Something colder. “Rose Creek. Ghost town, sixty miles west. Was a mining settlement. Got a church with a busted stained glass window. Ezra’s holed up there, thinks it’s clever. It ain’t.”
“Why tell me?”
Cass watched the woman’s face, her own expression giving nothing away. The wind tugged at her hat brim, and a drop of cold rain found its way down her collar. “Seems like a prize you could take for yourself. Skip the middleman.”
"Tommy's also the one who patches up your little friend, Colt, when she gets curious in places she shouldn’t,” Rose said, her grey eyes unwavering.
The name, spoken so plainly in the grimy alley, hit Cass like a physical thing. Her posture didn’t change, but the air between them seemed to solidify. The soft glow from the saloon’s back window lit the fine lines of rain beginning to fall.
“That so,” Cass said, her voice flat.
“It is. Jess sends her notes through him when the postal riders get skittish. He recognized your description.” Rose shifted her rifle strap on her shoulder, a simple, practiced motion. “Saw you walk in, told me the name you are under her. Colt’s network.”
Cass let out a slow breath, the pieces clicking. Jess’s web was wider than she’d known. It was a vulnerability, and it sat uncomfortably in her gut. “So you’re doing a favor for a friend of a friend.”
“I’m cashing out,” Rose corrected. “The bounty on Ezra is what, twenty thousand? Worth killing for. Worth dying for, too. I was planning on the former.” She looked past Cass, down the dark alley. “Then my cousin points you out. Says, ‘That’s Vane. The one working under Colt.’ I’ve heard the stories. I’ve also heard what happens to people who go after what Cass Vane has already decided is hers.”
A thin smile touched Cass’s lips, but it held no warmth. “Sounds like you’re saving me some bullets.”
“I’m saving myself a world of trouble,” Rose said. “I’m good. Not that good. Not ‘throw down with you over a ghost-town preacher’ good.” She kicked a loose stone, sending it skittering into the darkness. “The game’s not worth the price if you’re at the table. So I’m folding.”
Cass absorbed this. It was a logic she respected: cold, clear, self-preserving. It rang true. “Fair enough.”
“When you see Jess. Tell her Rose says hello.” She paused, letting the name hang. “She’ll know. From the Blackstone job, a few years back.”
Cass gave a single, slow nod. She didn’t ask for details; Jess’s past was a ledger of its own. “I’ll pass it along.”
Rose nodded back, a transaction completed. “The church at Rose Creek. West wall is rotten. Easy in.” She started to turn, then stopped. “One more thing. Those two pros inside? They just got a wire. They know about the creek now, too. They’re leaving in ten minutes.”
She melted back toward the saloon door, leaving Cass alone in the alley with the spitting rain and a sixty-mile head start that had just shrunk to nothing.
Cass moved. Her boots were silent in the mud as she rounded the building toward the stables. The image of the two hunters—their neat gear, their assessing eyes—flashed in her mind. Professionals. They’d have good horses, maybe a rented auto if the roads allowed.
Her own mare, Maggie, stamped in the stall, scenting the change in her. Cass shoved the note about the rotten west wall deep into her pocket. She checked the cinch, her hands working fast and sure in the near-darkness. The stable smelled of hay and wet leather and animal warmth.
Ten minutes.
She led Maggie out the back, away from the saloon’s glow, and swung into the saddle. The rain was a steady whisper now, soaking into her duster. West. Sixty miles of hard ground, and now a race.
Cass tapped her heels, and Maggie surged forward into the swallowing dark. The only thought in her head was a map, a crumbling church, and the dull weight of the promise she’d have to keep. Tell her Rose says hello. The words were a stone in her pocket, another debt to carry across the desert.