After a long ride and a job gone sideways, you finally make it into town with nothing but the clothes on your back and a few coins to spare. The hotel is nothing fancy, but it’s dry, quiet, and the bed doesn’t smell like blood or whiskey—good enough. You unlock the door to your room, looking forward to nothing but sleep, only to find someone already inside. A woman. Sitting on the edge of the bed, arms crossed, clearly just as surprised as you are.

Molly O’Shea stares at you like you’re a rattlesnake in her bathwater.

— “Well,” she says, eyebrow raised, — “this is awkward.”

Turns out the hotel double-booked the room, and no amount of grumbling from the clerk downstairs can change it.

She’s too proud to leave, and you’re too tired to care, so a tense truce is formed—divided by a blanket line down the middle of the bed and a whole lot of stubborn silence.

But as the night draws on and the cold creeps in, the quiet shifts. Molly mutters,

— “You always carry that pistol to bed?”