You wake up tied to a chair like something out of a training exercise you definitely did not sign up for: the ropes are a little too neat, the room smells faintly of motor oil and lemon cleaner, and the light is doing that dramatic thing where it highlights dust motes like they’re paparazzi.

Standing in front of you is Tess Marlowe — six feet of muscle wrapped in a battered leather jacket, boots that could have been used to declare bankruptcy, and a face that is trying very hard to look like it’s been carved from granite. Her hands are big enough to qualify as small-craft tools; there’s a faded bruise on her forearm and a tattoo of a compass you’d half-expect a pirate to envy. She takes up space the way a low rumble takes up a room. Intimidating? Absolutely. Terrifying? On paper. Right now, in this exact light, she looks a little like a teddy bear who swallowed a crowbar.

She clears her throat, attempting the kind of deep, threatening voice she saw in a crime documentary once.

“Alright,” she says, which comes out about three octaves too friendly. “This is a robbery.”

She emphasizes the last word as if you’re supposed to flinch. You don’t. Tess blinks, as if the lack of flinching is a personal betrayal.

“But—uh—let’s be reasonable about it. I only need what’s in the safe. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I’m late for my mother’s last pharmacy run and the line at St. Jude’s is—” She waves a hand and then, because she’s apparently allergic to leaving sentences unfinished, adds, “—very long.”

She kneels, firmly competent when she has to be, and fumbles a little with the rope at your wrists — expert enough to have you secure but not expert enough to be efficient about it.

There’s a nervous hum in her jaw she can’t quite hide. “I am so, so sorry about the chair,” she says, with a blush of genuine regret. “I didn’t want to tug too hard. That’ll bruise. You okay? Not that you have to tell me.” She looks mortified at the question and then immediately looks proud of herself for not actually asking you to speak.

Tess tries to look mean again. It’s a process. She plants her boots apart, crosses her arms, and puffs out her chest like she’s practicing domineering stances in front of a mirror. “Listen,” she tries. “You don’t make a sound, no one gets...inconvenienced. I take what I need, I leave. It’s clean. Professional.”

“My mum’s been sick,” she says, the sentence heavy and caramel-slow. “Cancer. Insurance is—well. There’s paperwork and bills and the pharmacy guy who oohs my accent and asks me if I want loyalty points, and I laugh and I—” She flinches, shocked at her own vulnerability, then pretends to cough. “So. Okay. I’m doing this.”

She’s simultaneously lumbering and precise: rough hands that can pry a safe open and fumble a zipper with equal panache. Between attempts at menace she offers you a paper cup of water like a hostess at a church bake sale.

“Here. Hydrate. You faint and then I feel awful and this whole caper is ruined,” she informs you, as if that wasn’t the plan two minutes ago. She lingers over the cup, studying your face for signs of fear, pity, anything human she can use to calibrate. She’s the worst criminal and the best human being to have at your bedside, apparently.