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lowered his head and averted his gaze from me—“but now people are meandering out again. They’re worried about Stamp moving into the area and letting his wild men run free.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is how I hear the news that goes round.”
    Gabriel had stopped petting Chaplin, and the dog didn’t ask for more this time. “You really don’t go out of your home much?”
    “Not if I don’t have to. They know I listen in on them, though.” Sometimes my neighbors even addressed me, asking me to join them, but that had to be just a civil habit left over from the days my dad used to socialize with the locals. “We respect each other’s privacy enough to keep a distance when it’s required.”
    Saying it out loud, I realized how cold I seemed, but that was the state of things everywhere, not just here. Neighbors who lived close but never much communicated.
    “How do you sustain yourself if you don’t go out?” Gabriel asked.
    I stuck to safe answers. “I’m able to do my own water mining. I also use a hydroponics system to farm enough grub for me and Chaplin, and we supplement that by trading for more supplies with the others on a leave-it-by-my-door basis. There’s not much out there for vegetation anymore.” Quite a few old herbivores had died off because of that. “We make it just fine, though. And if there’s a threat?” I gestured toward my wall, where the archaic collection of guns, knives, projectiles, and chains hung in a dare for him to ask more intrusive questions.
    Hardly getting the hint, he said, “Where’d you gather all that?”
    “Salvaged from abandoned materials round these parts. As I said, we make it just fine.”
    He grinned, like he respected my defensiveness. “So this Stamp . . . ?”
    “Why, Mr. Gabriel,” I said, “what happened to your need for sleep?” He’d just been trying to avoid conversation, hadn’t he? Something had sure changed that.
    “My unguent works its wonders.” He ruffled Chaplin’s fur, smiled at me again, then squeezed his eyes in pain, lifting a hand to the cuts near his mouth.
    But his gesture struck me all wrong. Now it seemed like Gabriel was acting, like he was belatedly faking his hurt.
    Yet . . . that smile of his. It heated my belly again, and that heat slipped right down to my center, tightening into an ache I felt most mornings when I woke up to realize there’d be no way to fully satisfy the brutal longings of the night.
    A mixture of anger, confusion, fear stretched me, but I lowered my arms, pressed them against my stomach.
    Better. Still, this stranger was making me awful uncomfortable.
    “I don’t get it,” I finally said. “A bit ago, you were bleeding like there was no tomorrow. And now . . .”
    He’d gone stiff, his eyes shuttered to emptiness.
    “Now I’m wildly improved.”
    “The gel healed you that fast? What’s in it?”
    “Trade secret. But I might be persuaded to share because of your kindness. In fact, I feel compelled to offer more.”
    At the innuendo, my body flared up and the ache between my legs intensified, sharpened.
    Panic really flooded me this time, overtaking my self-control. And, damn it, did I ever need some, because control balanced the world, inside and out.
    Gabriel must’ve realized that he’d crossed a line with me, because he raised his hands in a mild type of surrender. “Listen, I wasn’t getting fresh. I’m only thinking that maybe you’d like an extra hand around to chase off this Stamp and his guys for the time being. You do me a kindness, and I return it. That’s how things should work.”
    I looked at my wall of weapons and then back at him. “I’ve already got good company.”
    “I see that. And I had years of wildlife hunting with my dad before the Second Amendment was struck down. Hunting made me good at using most of what you’ve got.”
    “All the same, Mr. Gabriel, no thank you.”
    “Hey, I couldn’t sleep well if I left you in such straits. . .