“Hoo boy,” someone says, then whistles loudly.

I quickly realize that Marina and I are the only two women here. Hell, we might be the first women to ever set foot inside Trapper’s. The drunks staring at us range from tremendously overweight to alarmingly skinny, all of them dressed in halfway-open plaid shirts or sweat-stained wifebeaters, some of them flashing gap-toothed leers, others smoothing down unkempt beards as they size us up.

One guy, in a ripped heavy-metal T-shirt and with a lower lip stuffed with chewing tobacco, breaks away from the pool table to sidle up next to Marina.

“This must be my lucky night,” the guy drawls, “because you gi—”

The rest of the pickup line is lost to the ages because the moment this guy tries to slide his arm around her shoulders, Marina roughly snatches his wrist. I can hear the moisture on his arm crackle as it flash freezes, and a second later the guy is crying out as Marina twists his arm behind his back.

“Do not come near me,” she says in a measured tone, loud enough so the whole bar knows that the warning doesn’t go just for the dude whose arm she’s almost breaking.

Now, the room truly does go quiet. I notice one guy let his beer bottle slip down in his hand so he’s holding it by the neck, all the better for swinging. A couple of burly guys at a back table exchange looks and stand up, eyeballing us. For a moment, I think the whole bar might try rushing us. That would end badly for them, and I try to communicate that with my stare. Nine, who with his tangled black hair and dirty face fits right in here, cracks his knuckles and lolls his head back and forth, watching the crowd.

Finally, one of the other hicks at the pool table hoots. “Mike, you dumbass, say excuse me and get over here! It’s your shot!”

“Sorry,” Mike whimpers to Marina, his arm turning blue where she’s touching him. She shoves him away and he goes to rejoin his friends, rubbing his arm and trying to avoid looking at us.

Just like that, the tension breaks. Everyone goes back to what they were doing, which pretty much means guzzling beer. I figure scenes similar to that—little fights, stare downs, maybe a stabbing or two—must happen in Trapper’s all the time. No big deal. Like I figured, this is one of those places where nobody asks any questions.

“Keep it under control,” I tell Marina as we walk to the bar.

“I am,” she replies.

“Didn’t look like it.”

Nine reaches the bar a step ahead of us, clearing a space between two hunchbacked drunks and slapping the chipped wooden surface.

The bartender, who looks just a tad more alert and cleaner than his customers, probably because he’s wearing an apron, looks us over with weary disapproval.

“You should know I keep a shotgun under the bar. I don’t want any more trouble,” the bartender warns.