From the window of the boarding house across the street, Mara Lynn was already watching him.

People in town called her the blonde lady, not because she was a lady but because nobody wanted to say out loud what she really was. She was thirty-something, beautiful in that way that is not born from innocence but from survival. Tall, blond hair always arranged carefully, a mouth that smiled before thinking, eyes that measured anything that could be bought, stolen, or convinced to change hands.

Her first husband died in the mine. The second died at the card table. The third didn’t die, he left. Mara always said she had bad luck with men. The truth was uglier. She had a good nose for weakness. Only sometimes you get mixed up with people who don’t have weakness. They have wounds. And a wound is a different animal.