War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

No. From the dust and dirt, I unearthed Wren’s pistols.

Pilate had found some wood and started a great big fire. What Mama would’ve called a white man’s fire.

“The red man builds a fire to warm the red man,” I said.

Pilate caught the reference. “And a white man builds a fire to warm the entire world.”

“Or burn it to cinders more like.”

Pilate saw the pistols in my hand—Wren’s pistols, completely custom, cherrywood grips, double-stacked extended magazines giving me thirty hollow-point .45 caliber bullets with one in each chamber. Dutch had the same guns, only his had a D carved in the grips. I took the ammo and extra clips. I left his pistols in his grave. Sometimes things are just too ghostly for the living to deal with.

Wren’s version of the pistols didn’t have her initials. You know why? ’Cause God wanted us each to have a turn using them. Wren first, then me, then Sharlotte.

“No,” Pilate said. He knew what picking up the pistols meant.

I ignored him. “First my secrets. I’m going to find the hidden ARK research facility in the Juniper. I’m gonna get to Hoyt’s database, and I’m going to upload the cure for the Sterility Epidemic to an online account this Hindu reporter, Angela Chiddaram, gave me.”

“That’s a shitty secret,” Pilate said. “And if you tell me not to curse, I’m going to tell you to go jack yourself.”

“The ARK will have hidden their base well, but it explains why they have shielding and didn’t share it. ’Cause the last place on earth anyone would look for an ARK facility would be in the Juniper since supposedly electricity doesn’t work.”

Pilate still had his rosary in his hands. It was a beauty, wooden beads, and gold chains, and it came from Medjugorje in Eastern Europe, where the Virgin Mary showed up there to a bunch of kids.

He shook he head. “Jesus, Cavatica, we can’t lay siege to that place. And we don’t know where it is. It could be literally anywhere.”

“One man will know where it is, I’ll bet,” I said.

“Two, Cavatica. Tibbs Hoyt and his crappy clone son.”

“And President Jack. He’ll know. I can feel it. And he’s gonna be in Denver as a publicity stunt. I bet Hoyt asked him to do it. Which means they’re thick. You and I know that the rich and powerful eat dinner together every night. He’ll know.”

“Maybe,” Pilate said. “But we’d be walking into a war. And not just a little one. You have both the United States armed forces and the ARK’s private army in Denver fighting the Gammas and Nichola Nichols in her Stanleys.”

“Most likely,” I said. “And they’ll have to go up against Mavis Meetchum and her girls. She’s providing soldiers for the fight. A lot of Howerter’s former security joined up with her as well. Howerter has a different gambit he’s trying out, or so the media is saying. Regardless, the U.S. is taking land like they own it again. Mavis isn’t going to give up her property so easily.”

Pilate laughed. The night had come, and the bonfire blazed between us. Our faces glowed orange, red, yellow, then the colors would be lost to shadow as the flame danced. “Of course. President Jack abandons the Juniper, but now that things have turned ugly, he’s back to save the day. Ol’ President Jack, whom everyone loves enough to give him four terms as president. Sorry constitution, but it’s Jacky Kanton we’re talking about.”

“We’ll kidnap President Jack,” I said, “and we’ll make him tell us where the ARK’s Juniper facility is. And he will talk.”

“How can you be so sure?” Pilate asked.

“’Cause if he don’t, I’ll beat it out him.”

Pilate let his head fall back. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I really shouldn’t. Your mother wanted to run cattle across the Juniper. And now her daughter has an insane plan to kidnap one of the most famous men alive.”

“Her daughter. Your daughter.”

He let his head fall forward.

The fire snapped, and I was taken back to when I heard his confession around the fire, when I first took over the cattle drive and Sharlotte left to be on her own.

He’d told me his greatest shame. His greatest sin. And I was going to ask him to sin again. My last secret.

“Pilate,” I said, “I need you to teach me how to fight and how to kill. I need to be a soldier, and you’re good at turning normal people into soldiers.”

Pilate exploded. “How can you ask that of me? You think you can put on Wren’s poncho and pick up pistols and become her?”

Whatever I felt about what he said I didn’t show. Not that I knew what I was feeling. I kept my eyes on him and didn’t look away.

“I’m sure it was hard playing second fiddle to someone like Wren.” He took in a breath. “I was an only child, but following behind Wren, as she cut her way through the world, would’ve been tough. But you are better than that, Cavatica. You have your own ways, and they’ve served you well.”

It was all just words. Didn’t mean a thing, and I hadn’t really thought about trying to be like Wren. But convincing Pilate would be tough ’cause he was right—Wren captured the imagination of most everyone, but not me. I knew what was underneath that bravado. It was awful.

I wrote in my other books that Wren’s real name was Irene, but Mama had named her wrong. ’Cause Irene was a Wren, a girl who had to fly ’cause sitting still hurt too much. Sounds pretty, but the truth wasn’t. She couldn’t sit still ’cause of the wounds that bled through her even before she took to selling herself in Amarillo, before the circus sharpshooting, before Dutch Malhotra got his fangs in her.

And even while I stood there in front of the fire, I bled from those less-than-zero wounds inside me, and they hurt.

“I’m going to war, Pilate,” I said.

“Bullcrap.” He spit into the