Dobson lay sprawled across the sticky tavern floor, forcing controlled breaths as the waves of agony slowly subsided. Her titanium spider mesh had stopped the slug from ripping a hole in the muscle, but at such close range, it’d come at a cost. Pain, mostly.

  Her eyes locked with Misty, who was already sidling her way around the opposite side of the bar, intent on catching the shooter from behind. Misty winked, assuring Dobson she had everything under control, and then ducked out of sight. A scuffle ensued, briefly, before the wooden trap door snapped shut with a muffled thud. Misty came marching back around the corner with the shotgun grasped in one hand and its struggling wielder in the other.

  “What’s this then, huh?” Misty said, hauling the struggling perp into view. “Unloading your shot without so much as a howdy do? At least buy a lady dinner first!”

  The shooter was a woman, middle-aged, dressed in worn overalls and a pair of tattered leather boots several decades past their prime. She had tawny brown skin, black hair, and a gaunt face stripped and sunken by starvation.

  “You may have gotten me.” The woman struggled free of Misty’s grip and backed away, slipping a knife from the toolbelt cinched around her waist. Her upper lip curled into a venomous snarl. “But you won’t get all of us! There are a hundred others waiting around every corner to slit you from ear to ear!”

  “Settle, petal,” Misty said softly. A friendly smile pulled across her features with practiced ease. Regrettably, the smile did little to combat the rest of Misty’s unfortunate getup. Dressed in her stained prison jumper and the stolen duster, visually speaking, Misty straddled the line between desperado and small-town crackpot. “We’re not the baddies.” She paused and then reconsidered her answer. “Well, not with these baddies, I suppose, if you care at all about semantics.”

  The woman gripped her blade tighter. “I don’t care who you are. Stay back!”

  “Sure, sure. Whatever you say.” Woefully unimpressed by the brandished dagger, Misty tilted her head in Dobson’s direction. “You alright, pumpkin?”

  Fresh blood seeped down the front of Dobson’s jumpsuit, staining the tips of her fingers as she dug around under the skin, fishing for the slug. She pulled it free with a grimace. Dobson locked eyes with her shooter before flicking the offending bullet into the dirt.

  “Peachy,” she told Misty through gritted teeth. Gripping the edge of the counter for support, Dobson heaved to her feet. She searched the pile of pilfered parts to no avail. “No sterile packs? I’ll be damned before I let infection cut me down.”

  Misty stood chewing her cud for a moment. After careful consideration, she reached deep into her pocket and produced a foil-lined packet and tossed it into the counter near Dobson.

  Dobson slammed her hand over it, glaring accusingly at her so-called partner. “You took all of them for yourself?”

  “Where are you going to put ‘em?” Misty flapped the end of her jacket for emphasis. “Your pockets are full of mismatched gun parts, remember? I’m just holding these for safekeeping, is all.”

  To the untrained eye, Dobson and Misty’s spat had all the hallmarks of a decent distraction. Eyes fixed on one another, tempers flared, Dobson understood how one could mistake them for being too preoccupied to notice that their hostage was slowly backing away. The woman seized her opportunity and bolted. Tried, anyway. Poor thing only made it a few steps into her desperate getaway before she stopped dead in her tracks, staring down the wrong end of a shotgun.

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  Dobson wondered if it was salt in the wound being thwarted by her own shotgun.

  Misty’s body language was oddly casual for someone wielding the balance of life and death in her hands. “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?” She cracked another smile. This one, unlike the others, had an edge of genuineness to it, as if the woman had won Misty’s approval somehow. “I recognize a fellow spitfire when I see one. You’re probably the one who shot them two baddies by the door, ain’t ya?”

  “They had it coming,” The woman said.

  “Look, lass, I saw what these fellers did outside. You’re getting no argument here. But as I said afore, we ain’t them. In fact, Dobsy here plugged three of them herself on our way in.” Misty allowed the thought to settle before pressing the woman for information. “You got a name, miss?”

  The woman drew her lips into a single, flat line as she searched the saloon for alternative escape routes. The determination bled from her face the moment she saw Deputy Boyd. “Owen?”

  “Odd name for a lady,” Misty remarked.

  The woman darted forward, managing little more than half a step, before realizing Misty hadn’t lowered her weapon. The shooter glared down the barrel of her own gun, insulted. “For Pete’s sake, Owen!” she snapped at the deputy who sat slumped against the bar. “These are your people, aren’t they? Call her off already!”

  “Oh, he’s Owen!” Misty’s clarity was short-lived, thwarted by the immediate need for additional information. “And how’s it you two know each other?”

  “I’m his sister-in-law.” The woman searched the deputy’s face with her eyes for answers to no avail. Desperate, her stare shifted to Dobson, having decided between her and Misty, she was the least senile of the two. “What’s wrong with him? And don’t tell me the idiot’s already strung out again, because that would be just like him.”

  Tearing the sterile pack open, Dobson applied a liberal smear of medical-grade ooze to her open wound. It stung, lighting the sensors under her skin afire as the caustic burn of antiseptic clawed up her nose and into her mouth. “That would be the shock, actually,” Dobson said, spitting the foul taste from her tongue.

  “Shock?” the woman repeated. “From what?”

  “The train crash, I imagine.” The burning sensation doubled as the nanoparticles within the ooze activated, knitting Dobson’s skin back together. She placed the sterile patch over the wound and rebuttoned her jumpsuit, content to let the ooze run its course unbothered. “To be expected, considering your man wasn’t belted in during the crash.”

  Surprise flooded the woman’s expression, only to be replaced by fury a split second later. “And you’re standing around doing nothing?” She stomped her foot. “Do something! He needs help!”

  “I was doing something. Right up until some bitch shot me,” Dobson said, gesturing to the broken vial on the ground at their feet. Translucent blue serum leaked from the cracked container and puddled into the red dirt. “Wasted a whole vial of tronic because of you.”

  Dobson could handle getting shot. It was a hazard of the job. Wasting perfectly good serum, however, was damn near unforgivable. Especially out here, in the pits of hell, where the supply was already limited.

  “I, uh,” the woman stammered. “Look, I’m sorry. That was an accident. I didn’t realize you were a part of Owen’s crew at the time and—”

  “Crew?” Dobson squared her shoulders and took a menacing step forward. She towered over the smaller woman by a head and a half. “Let’s get a few things straight. I don’t know who in the blazes you or your brother-in-law are, but there is no crew. We pulled Owen from the wreckage because he’s more useful to us alive than dead.”

  The woman’s wide-eyed stare lowered, taking in Dobson’s uniform. Realization crashed over the top of her like a tidal wave to an unsuspecting shoreline. Her mouth parted, but no words slid forth from her trembling tongue.

  “Poor thing finally figured it out,” Misty chuckled.

  The woman was bold, Dobson had to give her that. Swallowing her trepidation, she stood her ground and stared Dobson straight in the eye. “You said Owen is more useful to you alive than dead, yeah? Well, whatever it is you need him for, it’s going to go to waste if you wait any longer. I suggest you help him while he still can.”

  “He’ll come around once we plug one of these in his system.” Dobson selected a second glass vial of blue-colored serum from the counter and held it between her fingers. Her gaze roved from the unnamed woman, to Deputy Boyd, and then back again. “After you tell me who you are, who he is, and how the hell a two-bit hustler like him got this far impersonating an officer of the law.”