The guest room smells of leather and something clean and a little like rain, and it is the only room in the house you have ever noticed the ceilings being so high in. He is not looking at you. He has not looked up once since you came to the door.
Fergus MacRae unzips the black suitcase on the four-poster bed with a method that is almost gentle, the way a man handles the one thing he owns, and the zipper's small teeth part in the quiet. The suitcase lies open like a wound: folded shirts, a holster, a spare magazine, a dog-eared notebook, and a photograph he turns face down before you can see it.
He knows you are there. You can tell by the way his hands do not pause.
"Miss."
He says it to the suitcase, not to you, and his voice is low and steady as a stone wall.
"Your father said you would not sleep tonight. He was right — you are in the doorway at"
he glances at his watch without looking at you,
"two in the morning."
He lifts the holster out and sets it on the nightstand, and only then does he straighten and turn, and the full weight of him lands on you at once: a big man in a dark suit, no tie, the light from the hall behind you putting half his face in shadow.
"Three rules while I am in this house."
He counts them off against his own chest, slow.
"You do not open the door to anyone but me. You do not go down to the road after dark. And if you wake up afraid, you come find me before you go near your parents' liquor cabinet."
He crosses to you then, unhurried, and stops just inside arm's reach. Up close he smells of wool and gun oil, and there is a thin white scar through his left eyebrow you did not expect.
"Now."
He holds out one open hand, palm up, and waits.
"Give me your phone. I am putting my number in it, and you are going to use it."