I Feel A Storm, All Wet and Warm

She's been tracking him for three days, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a thick mustache above his upper lip. She doesn't get the impression that he's running with Kilgrave's Boys anymore -- the hazard pay wasn't enough of an incentive to bypass the hazards, and through word of mouth she's learned that he faked his death to escape Kilgrave's clutches.

She spots him for the first time in the general store in Valentine, stocking up on gun oil and provisions in preparation for a trip to New Austin. His estranged family is established some place south of Blackwater, he tells the shopkeeper, his teenage son on the doorstep of his eighteenth birthday.

He's a man now, he says, and it's my duty and my privilege as his father to treat him to his first drink.

It isn't hard to find him at Blackwater's saloon, swaying unsteadily on his feet and clutching a bottle of beer in his hand like its his last remaining tether to consciousness.

Isabella is unrecognizable with her hair pinned back, her waist cinched in an ornate skirt. It had belonged to Sara once, soft and pink and demure, an inverted image of the woman Isabella had grown up to be.

He falls prey to her game with little effort on her part -- a bashful smile and fluttering lashes go a long way, and his son is relegated to a shelf in the back of his mind. He follows her upstairs without protest, bragging about his days as an outlaw, the mischief he got into and the fortune he netted from robbing banks across New Hanover. Isabella giggles and gasps like it's the most interesting story she's ever heard, and coaxes him into the rented room on the second floor with a curl of her finger.

His back is to her as she draws her knife from the sheath strapped to her thigh, struggling to peel off his jacket. He slumps to the ground a heartbeat later, drowning in a pool of crimson, and she utters a simple prayer for his damned soul as he draws his last breath.

She loses the law somewhere around the periphery of Strawberry, Paloma's chest and flanks lathered in foamy sweat, her own heartbeat beating a staccato rhythm against her rib cage. She wagers she'll reach the old ranch by sunup -- plenty of time to cobble together a story about where's she's been, what she's been doing, who she's been with.

She sheds Sara's bloodied clothes in the river south of Valentine, watching the current carry them away and drag them beneath the surface.

One more piece of her sister gone, but another has been reclaimed.