A girl with fiery red hair, a Southern twang in her voice, and far too much cash to throw around.  It wasn’t the easiest trail to follow, but Danni was certainly recognizable – and she didn’t bother to change her name, either.  Slowly but surely, I hunted after her as she fled west.

When I finally found her, she was just on the east side of the Rocky mountains, making her way through the mining towns.  Always with her big .45 cannon ready, of course – that detail stuck out even more strongly than anything else.  No matter what the big, strong man in front of you might say, he remembers staring down the barrel of that gun.
Unfortunately, word travels fast.  Even before I arrived at Boulder City, in the Colorado Territory, I was catching rumors that a Priest was in the area, hunting this bank robber.

Always weird to hear a rumor about yourself.  Like a goose walking over your grave.

So when I arrived, I didn’t waste time staking out the girl’s next targets.  There weren’t many places in Boulder City to stay, and I picked the biggest hotel to start.

She was at the second-largest hotel, and was waiting for me in the lobby.

I didn’t have much warning.  I stepped into the lobby, caught the flash of bright red-orange, and threw myself behind a couch as the vase behind me exploded.  I landed, rolled, and came up with my revolver in hand as another round shredded through the back of the couch.

“You know, I always thought that Priests were so scary!” I heard the girl call out, her clear tone sounding almost… delighted?  “But you’re not so bad at all!”

I gritted my teeth to hold back a response and rolled again – but this time, I came out into the open, my gun leveled across the room.  And this time, it was Danni who had to duck back behind the wood of the concierge desk as I sent copper-jacketed lead flying her way.

“Give up!” I yelled to her, between shots.  I knew that the girl was ready to pop up as soon as I gave her the opportunity, so I maintained regular covering fire as I crept closer.  “You don’t have to go down like this!”

Sixth shot.  I was out.  I ducked down on the other side of the concierge desk, but didn’t pop open the empty gun yet.  I waited, guessing at what the girl would do next.  Sure enough, she jumped up a moment later, and I saw the tip of her barrel protrude out over the edge as she searched for my hiding spot.

I lashed up, striking out with the barrel of my own empty gun.  I was aiming blind, but I knew where she was standing – and my gun’s hot barrel smacked against her fingers, sending her own revolver skittering away across the floor.

Before the girl could do anything more than gasp, I was leaping up over the wooden barricade.  For a moment, I saw her eyes go wide as I bore down on her.  A second later, she was down on the ground beneath me.

Even as I threw myself down on her, I was amazed at how light the girl felt in my grip.  She was slim, a tiny little handful in my big arms as I pinned her and brought her down onto the ground on the other side of the desk.  I don’t know if it was her small size, but something made me twist slightly as we fell, making sure that my weight didn’t crush her as we hit the floor.

For a second, as we landed, the two of us were staring into each other’s eyes.  The girl’s big green irises were only a couple inches from mine.  Her eyes were wide, but her lips were pursed slightly, gently parted, as if she was about to kiss me.

Once again, I felt that strange little surge of emotion in the back of my mind, trying to tell me something that I didn’t understand.

And then we landed on the ground – and the girl brought her knee up between my legs.  With a crunch, my sight went red with sharp, piercing pain.

By the time I pried my eyes open again, desperately pulling myself back up, the girl had leapt off of me.  She was racing across the floor on her hands and knees, reaching her hand out.  I threw myself forward and grabbed onto her leg, trying to hold her back.

My fingers tightened around Danni’s ankle.  The girl tried to kick free, but couldn’t escape.

I pulled her back, towards where I could grab onto her – and she twisted around onto her back, bringing her hands back to aim her revolver down into my face.

I mentioned that no man, no matter how big and tough he claims to be, easily forgets the terror of staring straight into his death.  That’s true, even for me.  I stared into that yawning, gaping black barrel, knowing that the rest of my life was measured in fractions of a second.

“Sorry, Priest,” Danni said as she held the gun, her voice no longer filled with mirth.  “But it’s you or me – and I’m not ready to give up on life just yet.”

My eyes were on the barrel, but for just an instant, they darted up to her eyes.  There was a strange emotion in there.  Was it a look of regret?

I didn’t have any more time left.

Danni pulled the trigger.

To be continued . . . 

First, I knew the girl’s name.  Danni, she was called.  The girl had an accomplice, a boy waiting outside with a stolen car, and some of the bystanders heard him call out her name.

The name wouldn’t do me much good, however, now that I knew the second fact.

Danni had flown the coop.  She was nowhere to be found in Indiana.
I’d spent the last few days plumbing contacts far and wide, trying to get a bead on this girl.  The automobile stuck out, those weren’t exactly common around here.  When I heard that she was making her getaway in a car, I hoped that I’d be able to use that tip to locate her.

The next day, the car turned up abandoned in a ditch off one of the main roads.  My contact told me that the thing was shot to hell – broken rods, a bent axle, and the engine was basically slagged.  “Only good for scrap,” he confided in me.

Didn’t do me much good.  That just meant that Danni and her male driver had ditched the vehicle.  Danni probably just flagged down the next car or cart to come along, pointed that big .45 of hers at the driver, and continued merrily on her way.

For some reason, the thought of that little slip of a girl, her red hair flying out on the loose as she happily hijacked some poor sap’s vehicle, made me smile a bit.  It was probably just the ridiculousness of the image in my mind.

Shifting a little, trying to find a halfway comfortable position on the sharp and complaining bedsprings, I felt something poking into my leg.  I reached into my pocket, and my fingers closed on the offending object.

I drew out the small metallic object.  It was the pair of bullets, one from my gun, one from Danni’s gun.  I had tucked the fused mass into a pocket after the robbery, and had been carrying it around ever since.

I knew that I ought to throw it away.  Priests were trained to travel light, after all.  It served no purpose.

Yet staring at it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant something, that the two bullets colliding, a little miracle of physics, had some deeper implication for me.  I was not a religious man, but holding this bullet sent a little shiver down my spine.

After a minute, I tucked the little lump of copper and lead away.  Ignoring the prodding of a spring in the small of my back, I turned my attention back to the problem at hand.

But no matter how I turned around the question in my mind, there was no other answer.  I’d have to wait for Danni to strike again, hit another bank, to tell me where she was.

I wasn’t looking forward to telling my supervisor that I’d missed my chance to bring her down when I had the upper hand.

Still, there was something about the hunt, the chase, that always got my blood pumping.  I was a wolf, out on the hunt, stalking and tracking my prey.  I would be slow, deliberate – but I’d keep on coming, until Danni could run no further.

I didn’t know how long it would take, but I would catch her.

To be continued . . . 

I picked up the cup of tea, lifted it to my lips, and repressed a shudder as the foul liquid hit my tongue.  And they had the gall to charge for this?  I was half tempted to demand my money back.  Indiana wasn’t that far from New York, but the hicks out here had definitely lost something in translation.

Setting the cup firmly back down, I lifted up my newspaper again – but kept the top of the paper low enough so that I could glance over the top.  Across the street, the tall marble pillars of First National Bank were quiet.  There was no commotion, and the few morning customers seemed content to slowly climb the wide steps as they prepared to make their deposits and withdrawals.

I was here on a hunch.  Three banks had gone down, all in cities to the South – but drawing a line through those locations made an arrow that pointed straight to First National.

It had been three days since the last robbery.  This bank robber, some girl who had decided that the reward was worth the eventual cost, would likely strike any day now.

My hand briefly slipped beneath my long black jacket, checking the weight of the gun that hung just beneath my shoulder blade.

The girl’s cost would soon be paid.

I didn’t have much longer to wait.  Before the sun had reached its peak in the sky, the little snatches of conversation carried across the street in the breeze vanished.  In their place, I heard yells, shouts – and then a loud, echoing gunshot.

I was on my feet before the echo faded.  I vaulted the waist-high fence of the cafe, my newspaper falling away in the breeze as I reached beneath my coat for my gun.  I took the steps three at a time, dropping my shoulder down so that I could slam through the front doors of the bank.

Even as I burst in, my eyes flashed around, taking stock of the situation.  Priests are trained on situational awareness.  “The trigger is only as fast as the eye behind it,” my old instructor used to shout at us.

There wasn’t much to spot, however.  Most of the people in the bank, customers and clerks alike, were down on the floor, some with their hands up covering their heads.  Behind the counter, two young men, their eyes wide with terror, emptied out their drawers into a pair of sacks.

And standing on top of a leather-covered counter in the middle of the room, the bank robber watched as she held her gun at the ready.

Her appearance surprised me.  She was young, just a little slip of a girl, the picture of exuberant and overconfident youth.  She wore loose clothes that nonetheless were pulled tight around a fit figure, and the curves suggested beneath those garments said that this was no immature girl.  A black bandana covered most of her face, but it couldn’t hold back errant strands of

Of course, my entry made a considerable amount of noise as I burst in through the door.  Even as I brought my gun out from its holster beneath my jacket, the girl on the counter spun, her own gun coming up to point towards me.

For a moment, there was a flurry of motion as we both simultaneously fired and dodged.  Even as I pulled the trigger, I knew that my shot went wide as the girl vaulted down behind the counter.  Her shot also missed, although I felt the slight breeze as the round passed by only inches from my head.  Well, the girl wasn’t afraid to take a lethal shot.

I landed crouched on the balls of my feet, up against the counter’s heavy wooden bulk.  I knew that the girl was on the other side – I could hear her breathing.

“Give up!” I called out, trying to make my voice sound encouraging, harmless.  “Just put down your weapon, and you can get out of here alive!” I hoped that I sounded believable.

But my query was in vain.  “Why don’t you give up, instead?” the girl called back, her voice high and clear.  “Come on, I promise not to rough you up too much!”

And then she laughed, high and clear and fearless.

For just an instant, I considered it.  Unlike my own promise, the girl wasn’t likely to shoot me.  And if I could break her out of this stalemate, I had a good chance of wrestling her weapon away, disarming her.  I’d quickly come back out on top.

And what’s more… there was something about that laugh.  It was so utterly fearless, like nothing I’d heard before.

“Last chance!” the girl shouted, and I heard her shifting on the other side of the bench.  “Or are you gonna try some crazy Priest bravery?”

She moved again – but this time, it wasn’t just shifting on her feet.  I leapt around the side of the bench, but she was already up and sprinting towards the side door of the bank.  Her gun was pointed back behind her, towards me, but her face was turned towards the exit.

My gun was up, and even though my whole body was in motion and off balance, I still took the shot.

There was a high-pitched clink, like a piece of jewelry on a woman’s wrist.

At the sound, the girl turned back, glancing over her shoulder at me as her arm came up to push open the door.  For just an instant, my eyes locked on hers.  I had only the briefest impression of vivid green, sparkling and almost smiling.

And then she was gone.

Gravity returned an instant later, and I had to stumble forward to catch myself from falling.  Behind me, I could hear the clerks and customers slowly and nervously returning to their feet.  But I didn’t pay attention to them.

Instead, I stepped forward a couple of paces, and then bent forward to examine a small object on the floor.

My bullets were copper-jacketed, for extra penetrating power against a target with a metal vest.  The girl, however, was using cheaper rounds, composed only of lead.  Yet still, the two rounds had hit each other with enough power to flatten each other out into a disk, a sandwich of two colors.

I picked up the still-warm disk, two bullets fused together, and weighed it in my hand as I gazed out the door.  The girl would be long gone, I knew.  I’d have to resume the long hunt.

In my head, however, I felt a curious and novel sense of foreboding.  I stood on the precipice of something, I suddenly felt – although I couldn’t see what it might be.  I didn’t know what might come…

To be continued . . .

“She’s barely old enough to call herself an adult,” I said, my tone turning the words into a question.  “And the Organization wants to send a Priest after her?”

Across from me, my supervisor gave a shrug with one shoulder.  The man was infuriatingly good at that, I had noticed, and I already hated it.  I was still young, idealistic, and I believed deeply in the value of my work.  To see someone else treat our mission so callously bothered me at some small level.

“She’s a liability,” my supervisor (I refused to think of him as my boss) said, as if this explained everything.  “The girl’s come from nowhere, and she’s robbed nearly a dozen banks now.  A couple in Louisiana, but she quickly headed north, and the last few she’s hit have all been in Indiana.  So that’s where you’ll start.”

“She’s a bank robber?” I asked, returning my gaze back down to the sketches.  They were just rough pencil and charcoal, but the artist had managed to capture a glint in her eyes, a determined set to her jaw, that spoke volumes about the girl’s strength of character.

“And almost a killer,” my supervisor added.  “Girl carries a .45 – hell of a big gun for such a sweet little thing, but she knows how to use it.  Nearly blew the leg off one of the local cops when he tried to corner her.”

I raised my eyebrows.  The girl in the sketch didn’t look like a cold-blooded assassin.  “Just trying to arrest her?” I said in doubtful tones.

My supervisor winced, as if he’d been hoping to avoid clarifying.  “He might have decided to take a couple liberties with her,” he added.  “Small town cops tend to be… unreliable.”

Nice way of phrasing it, I thought to myself.  Better than saying that most of them are petty thugs with a power complex, not much better than the criminals they’re supposed to stop.  But I know when to be diplomatic, so I held my tongue.

“Anyway,” the man picked up, leaving behind the embarrassment of small town police, “we’ve been asked to step in by the banks, and they’re sending you.  Find this girl, put a stop to the robberies, and maybe see if you can recover any of the cash.”

“Capture is acceptable?” I asked, looking once more down at the girl’s picture.  She didn’t look like someone that the banks desired so desperately to be dead that they’d hire us.  The Organization did good work, but we didn’t come cheap.

My supervisor was shaking his head, however.  “They want this to be an example,” he told me.  “Put a bullet in her.”

I made sure that the man didn’t see my grimace as he stood up from my desk and walked away.

I knew, however, that despite my personal objections, the mission came first.  I had been a Priest for nearly a decade now, and my training taught me to overlook personal feelings.  Feelings, sentimentality, they were just distractions.  I trusted my gut, my training, and my Colt.  Whatever mistakes might have led this girl into a life of crime, they were already committed.  And now, with a Priest after her, she didn’t get another chance.

The Organization already had a train ticket paid for and ready to carry me out west, towards Indiana.  My packing consisted of grabbing my knapsack and slinging it over my shoulder, and then checking my weapons as I headed towards the door.

Priests traveled light.  We carried just enough to do the job assigned to us.

To be continued . . .