Archive of Our Own

PROLOGUE

“You go dig coal in that mine, boy, it’ll kill you,” Arlo had warned. It hadn’t been a kind warning, born of a desire to not see his only child buried alive under a mountain of stone, or choking to death on coal dust. It had been a warning with an I told you so already baked in, a warning Arlo had only voiced so that if it did kill Raylan the warning would be the last thought running through his head. 

At least, that was how Raylan had heard it. Frances was always saying he didn’t give Arlo enough credit, that not everything had to lead to a fight. Raylan would have liked to believe it, but he knew better. He knew that Arlo sort of hoped the mine would kill him, the same way it had killed Arlo’s father, because then Arlo would be proven right. Better to break a man’s legs for a living than let a man who’d never even seen Harlan pay you to breathe in poison until your lungs gave out. 

So Raylan dug coal. Damn near forgot what the sun looked like, what a human face looked like when it wasn’t covered by a bandana and smeared with sweat and coal dust. Drank beer with Boyd Crowder after a shift sometimes, because there were few men who wouldn’t serve alcohol to Arlo Givens’s son, fewer still who would refuse to give it to one of Bo Crowder’s boys, and none at all who had the balls to refuse them both, no matter how young they were. 

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” Boyd said, his tone a little fascinated, a little deadpan, and not at all amused, “that we’re old enough to go crawling around in that grave, but not old enough to drink?” 

Boyd always took forever to finish his drink, always picking up his glass or his bottle and spinning it between his fingers, holding it up to whatever light there was and watching the liquid change color, watching the glass throw the light back against the walls or the grass or whoever’s car they’d taken. He’d sip on it slowly all night, only to suddenly knock it all back at once when he decided he wanted to refill his glass or head home. 

Raylan drank with Boyd because they were the same age, because they were paired up in the mine a lot, because they’d gone to high school together. That Boyd found funny, Raylan's excuses. He never said why, but he didn’t need to. They drank together because they weren't supposed to. There was no avoiding each other, not in a town as small as Harlan, but there’d always been those hints, from Bo and Arlo both, that they shouldn’t cross each other's paths more than they had to. They had their competing enterprises, after all, were always cutting into one another’s supply lines, and Arlo had been raised by a preacher who believed all things supernatural should be put to the torch and everyone knew - though nobody said - that the Crowders were werewolves. 

Raylan didn’t scare easy, and he always enjoyed pushing the line with Arlo. Boyd barely seemed to notice the line was there. His daddy may have rolled his eyes, may have said he didn’t approve, but Bo was willing to let his children run as wild as they pleased, and if that meant Boyd swapped stories with Raylan Givens sometimes, well, he’d just better not share any secrets. They weren’t friends, didn’t send each other invitations to their birthday parties or anything, but they'd bummed cigarettes off each other under the bleachers while cutting class, bitched about their fathers as much as they dared, complained that there was no reason to teach anything but coal in Harlan. 

“Following in your daddy’s footsteps after graduation?” Boyd had asked one day senior year, the two of them huddled close enough to breathe each other’s smoke because the bleachers weren’t exactly the most weatherproof protection and it was raining something fierce.

“Hell no.” Raylan took a deep breath in, blew it out just as forcefully. “I’m going to the mine.” That was all there was in Harlan - the family business and the mine. 

“No kidding,” Boyd said, watching Raylan while Raylan watched the rain. “Me too.” 

And so they’d dug coal together. Raylan never asked why Boyd hadn’t followed in his daddy’s footsteps, seeing as how Boyd had been good enough not to do any prying of his own. He wondered if Bo Crowder had warned his son that the mine would be the death of him. He’d watch Boyd climb up ahead to lay his charges and wonder, with a little more worry than he’d like, if Arlo was about to be proven right. 

It’ll kill you, Arlo had said, and Raylan knew it wanted to. Every time the rocks shifted, every time a cloud of dust rose through the air, Raylan knew the mine wanted them out. Wanted them dead. 

“You keep calling it a grave,” Raylan said, watching Boyd’s hand where he was spinning his beer bottle. “You think you’ll die down there?” 

Boyd’s hand didn’t falter, but his gaze moved to Raylan’s face. “None of us know where we’re gonna die, Raylan.” 

Raylan rolled his eyes. “I said think, not know.” 

Boyd shrugged, took a long drink. “Think you will?” 

“My daddy thinks I will.” He said it flippantly. Boyd never seemed to buy his flippant tone, but he never pushed on it either, which was good enough. Boyd didn’t need to hear about how Arlo probably hoped his son would stop coming back from that mine one day. 

“I didn’t ask you what your daddy thought, Raylan.” 

Raylan drained his beer. “Maybe. Rather die down there than on Arlo’s payroll.” 

Boyd handed Raylan a new beer. It had gotten warm, sitting outside for so long, but it was still alcohol, so it was good enough. “What do you think’ll get you? The air or the rocks?”

“My grandfather died from the air. I’d rather go from the rocks.” 

“You won’t,” Boyd said, voice a notch softer than Raylan was used to, and when Raylan looked at him Boyd was watching him with that unsettling, unblinking stare he so often employed. “I’m in charge of when the rocks come down. You won’t die by my hand, Raylan Givens.” 

That was a heavy thing to say, so Raylan smiled at him, pretending it was light. “Don’t let your daddy hear you say that.”

Boyd didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. But he didn’t say anything else, which was good enough. 

It’ll kill you, Raylan thought, in a voice that was mostly Arlo’s and a little his own when the mine started shaking. Shaking wasn’t new, the mine was always shuddering and groaning, like a rattlesnake's warning, but this one… Raylan knew it was different, even as he looked around at his fellow miners, even as he found Boyd and saw that little bit of alarm brighten his eyes. 

Someone shouted, an alarm squeaked through the mine’s faulty PA system. Everyone was moving, running for the exit, shoving past each other like they were animals in a stampede, not co-workers, not brothers-in-arms in the belly of this beast. 

Everyone but Boyd. Boyd was frozen, eyes on the ceiling where dust and small rocks were shaking loose, where much bigger rocks would start falling any second. 

I’m in charge of when the rocks come down, Boyd had said, and Raylan, with a jolt of clarity like a lightning bolt, realized he couldn’t quite comprehend how the mine might be coming down without him having laid a charge. 

The smart thing, Raylan knew, was to follow the mob, bolt for the surface, and pray to a God he didn’t much trust. But smart didn’t get any farther than his head. His feet leapt the wrong way, his hand found Boyd’s, and he yanked, jerking the other man away from the wall, into the passage proper. “Come on!” Raylan shouted, and the sound of his voice seemed to break through where the garbled warning and the panicked yells hadn’t. Boyd met his eyes for an alarmed moment, like he hadn’t realized Raylan was there, and then they were moving. 

The mine had never felt friendly, but now it was hostile. Bits of the ceiling rained down as they ran, Boyd tripping a little as he tried to keep up, the rocks nipping at their heels like they were being hunted. The passages narrowed like a constricting throat, grew darker as one lantern after another was snuffed out, and Raylan and Boyd were the only people in existence, trying to outpace the being working to fill in their grave. 

It’ll kill you, Arlo had said, and Raylan gritted his teeth against it, against the idea of having Arlo’s voice be the last thing he thought of before he died. 

There was not, he realized, much else for him to think of. His mother, his Aunt Helen, Arlo had long since drowned out anything they had to say, or else they couldn’t say anything that wasn’t about him - Try to cut your father some slack, Raylan. He’s trying his best, Raylan. I think the two of you could work things out if you would just both make the effort, Raylan. 

The mine was going to kill him and he’d let Arlo chase him into it. 

Boyd’s hand jerked in his and Raylan tightened his grip reflexively, pulling Boyd back to him hard enough to hurt his shoulder, Boyd stumbling forward with a fresh, bloody gash in his pant leg from where a rock had tried to pull him down. 

Raylan’s hand was starting to ache and he wasn’t sure if it was from how hard he was holding Boyd’s hand or from how hard Boyd was holding his. He made a bad turn, clipped himself against a wall, nearly went down, but Boyd still had his hand, had his other one around Raylan’s shoulder now, and he hauled Raylan back upright and they kept running.

They escaped, stumbled into the dusty sunlight, and had just enough time to breathe in a few desperate gulps of fresh air before the mine entrance crumbled in on itself with an angry sound. 

The silence that followed was the most deafening Raylan had ever heard, and he’d been subject to more than a few, after Arlo’s drunken tirades finished and the man had passed out on the couch or face first onto the bed. 

You go dig coal in that mine, boy, it’ll kill you, Arlo had warned, and Raylan never could stand for Arlo to be right about anything. 

No one had died in the collapse, and it was less than a week before the mine was open again and everyone was returning to that gaping maw of an entrance like nothing had ever happened. 

Everyone but Raylan. 

Boyd found him an hour after his shift should have started and tossed Raylan a beer that was just starting to sweat as he invited himself to join Raylan on the hood of his truck. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Raylan?”

“Aren’t you?” 

But Boyd just looked at him, unsettling, unblinking, and waited, so Raylan shrugged one shoulder and said, “I’m not dying in that mine, Boyd. I’m not getting buried down there.” 

Boyd took a sip of his own beer - Raylan had never known another man to sip at beer the way Boyd did - and said, “Sound choice. What now? If you won’t go work for your daddy.” 

“I won’t.”

“So what now?” 

Raylan considered not answering. Considered telling Boyd it was none of his business. Considered lying. But he remembered the jerk of Boyd’s hand in his, remembered that they hadn’t let go until after the rumbling had stopped, after they were sure it was over. That, he supposed, was worth something. Worth a portion of the truth, if not the entirety of it.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “Not ‘till I’m gone. Arlo’ll try to kill me for it.” Everyone would try to kill him for it, even Boyd himself, but he’d keep that truth close to his chest for as long as he could. 

Boyd was a hard man to read, but there was a heavy seriousness in his eyes, a slight shift to his shoulders that spoke in place of a promise. 

“I’m joining law enforcement. I got a good offer. Paid training. Good healthcare. I’ve been stashing my cash away from Arlo for years, and my Aunt Helen gave me some of hers. I’ve got enough to make it. I’m out of here Friday, while Arlo’s busy drinking.” And he didn’t tell Boyd which kind of law enforcement, didn’t tell him that he had given in to the family business after all, that he was going to collect a paycheck terrorizing Boyd’s kind. 

Boyd stared at him. “You’re right,” he said, after a few long moments of silence. “Your daddy would try and kill you for that. My daddy’d kill me for that too.” 

“Good thing you’re not coming with me then, huh?” Raylan asked. 

And Boyd couldn’t come with him, of course he couldn’t, but a part of Raylan was still disappointed when Boyd gave a single, slow nod, never breaking eye contact. “Good thing,” he said softly. 

“You don’t have to die in that mine either,” Raylan said, though he didn’t know what other choices Boyd might have.

“I won’t. My daddy ain’t so rough as yours. I can go work for him.” 

“Family business,” Raylan said. 

“Family business,” Boyd agreed, and they clinked their bottles together. 

The next time he saw Boyd was on Friday, waiting leaned up against his car on the side of the road, just a few miles from the Harlan county line. 

Raylan slowed, thinking for a moment of just driving past, an absurd fear seizing him that he might lose his nerve if he stopped to say goodbye. 

Boyd Crowder wasn’t his friend, not really, but he was the closest thing Raylan had, and Raylan was sort of betraying him, and that was all worth something. 

So Raylan pulled over. 

“Need something, Boyd?” 

Boyd approached slowly, eyes fixed on Raylan like a dog unsure if it was going to be fed or kicked. “Wanted to talk to you before you left town.” 

Raylan shrugged, gesturing around them. “Well, you caught me.” 

Boyd didn’t move. Or speak. Raylan raised an eyebrow. “Were you going to talk, Boyd?” 

“Wanted to ask for… What do the cops call it? Immunity?” 

A surprised laugh burst out of Raylan. “Immunity? For what?” 

“For what I’d like to talk to you about.” 

“You ain’t makin’ any sense, Boyd.” 

“Immunity means no consequences, right? It never gets brought up again?” 

Raylan nodded, still smiling a little. “You want to tell me something and have me pretend I never heard it once you’re done?” 

“That’s about the size of it.” 

“Well, I think we'd normally need some lawyers around to make it official, but how’s about we do a gentleman’s handshake on it and call it a day?” 

“That’s good enough for me,” Boyd said. “I’d trust your word over any lawyer’s.” 

They shook on it. “Alright, then. What’d you want to talk to me about that I’ll never mention again?” 

“It ain’t really talking, actually,” Boyd said, coming closer, still moving slow and careful. “More something I want to do.” 

“You ain’t here to kill me for one of our daddies, are you?” Raylan smiled as he said it. He and Boyd weren’t friends, but Boyd wasn’t the backstabbing type. Bowman Crowder, sure. Any of the Crowder boys, really. But not Boyd. Not against the man who’d just pulled him out of a crumbling mineshaft. You won’t die by my hand, Raylan Givens. 

“No,” Boyd said. “Think they’d rather I was though.” 

He stopped a few inches closer than Raylan would have expected, looking in his eyes like he was searching for something. 

Raylan waited, confused, nerves starting to mount that maybe Boyd had learned where he was going, maybe Raylan had misjudged Boyd, maybe he was the type to stab a man through the heart even though they’d never had a fight, even though the man had just-

Boyd moved fast, when he finally moved. Clapped his hands around the back of Raylan’s neck and tugged him forward. Raylan’s hands shot up to Boyd’s arms, tightened around his wrists, were halfway to jerking Boyd to the ground before his brain managed to register what Boyd was doing with his mouth. 

Raylan froze, fingers still clenched on Boyd’s forearms, suddenly stuck fast on the thought that Boyd Crowder was a shockingly good kisser. Shocking because Boyd had not, as far as Raylan knew, done much kissing during school. Not many girls around worth kissing, fewer still that he wouldn’t have had to fight his brothers for. 

But he was a good kisser, and Raylan was finding out firsthand because Boyd Crowder was kissing him. 

It took him another few seconds to realize that his mouth was kissing back. He faltered for a moment, wondering if he wanted it to be, and as his brain froze on the concept of kissing a boy and kissing a Crowder and leaving town and traitor his mouth went right back to business. 

Boyd was the one to break it, as abruptly as he’d started it. He pulled back, dropped his hands away, and Raylan’s fingers had long since given up trying to hold onto him and let him go without protest. 

“Been thinking about that for a while,” Boyd said. “Just wanted to try it while I still had a chance. And while I had immunity.” 

And he walked away, got into his car, drove back to Harlan while Raylan stood on the side of the road trying to make sense of what had just happened. 

Raylan got back in his truck, realized his legs were shaking, gripped the steering wheel a little harder than he needed to. There was an ashy taste in his mouth, his head shouting traitor at him again and again and again. Immunity, Boyd had said. 

Immunity for both of them. No consequences. He wouldn’t tell anyone that Boyd liked girls less than he should, wouldn’t punch Boyd across the jaw for daring to kiss him. He wouldn’t admit to where he was going. And he wouldn’t think about it again. Wouldn’t ask himself if he liked it, wouldn’t ask himself what that meant for who he was, if it meant he should still leave town. 

He wouldn’t die in that mine. He wouldn’t let the Bennets come hunting him down. He wouldn’t work for Arlo. He wouldn’t drive back to Harlan and try to figure out if that kiss had meant anything. 

Raylan turned the key in the ignition and the truck huffed to life. He smoothed out the map on the dashboard, the route to Washington, D.C. highlighted in green. 

He put thoughts of werewolves with broad, trouble-making grins from his mind and didn’t give Harlan county so much as a look back in the rearview mirror.

CHAPTER ONE

Raylan knew there would be consequences for killing Tommy Bucks. The cartel couldn’t let someone flout their authority like that. They’d come after him, or they’d use their friends in high places to lean on Raylan’s superiors until he was out of a job or run out of town. Maybe both. 

But Raylan thought of Tommy Bucks and saw red. Thought of his casual smile, his easy tone as he said, "You're sure, Marshall? You're sure? Mind if I have our farmer friend confirm it for me?" and he just got angrier and angrier, wanted to give him a beating to make Arlo cringe. 

Really, if anyone was interested in asking his opinion, Raylan thought he was showing incredible restraint in having given Bucks a twenty-four hour warning. 

But Bucks wasn't taking his chance and it took all of Raylan’s self control to walk up to him in his stupid Miami beach-view club and not just open fire into the crowd. 

"Airport's a good forty-five from here," he told Bucks, in lieu of any proper greeting, "but I figure you'll be all right if you leave in the next two minutes."

Bucks wiped his mouth with his napkin, not bothering to give Raylan the dignity of holding eye contact. “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, my friend, but you gave me until two-fifteen, right?”

“Yep. Now you’ve got two minutes.” 

Bucks looked out over the water. “You know, I’ve been coming here ever since I was a kid, ever since this was nothing but old Jews and old Cubans. And to tell you the truth, I love it here. I really do. I loved it then, and I love it now.” He shook his head, looked back at Raylan. “So I’m not gonna leave. So, have a meal with me, okay? You hungry?” 

Raylan’s frown deepened, the rage in his gut coiling tighter and tighter. His jaw ached from how tightly he was clenching it.

Bucks seemed to recognize the ‘no’ in his expression, but not the warning. “I swear, you pass up, these are the best crab cakes in town. I swear to God. Much better than that crap we were eating in Managua. Remember that? I don’t know if that was Mexican, Puerto Rican, I don’t know what it was, but it was crap. Remember? I hated it.”

“I didn’t mind it,” Raylan said coolly, trying not to let his rage simmer over as Bucks acted like they’d gone on some vacation together, had shared meals and jokes and overall good times. “I had some pork dish I quite liked. One minute.”

Bucks furrowed his brow. “A second ago you said two minutes. What’s going on here?”

“Time flies, huh?”  

Bucks laughed. “You’re a character.” He shook his head. “I was telling my friends this morning how yesterday you come to me and-” He chuckled again, deepened his voice, put on a bad Kentucky accent. “You don’t get out of town in twenty-four hours, I’m gonna shoot you on sight!” He looked at Raylan, still acting like they were a couple of buddies shooting the shit. “Come on, what is that? They thought it was a joke, they started laughing.” 

“You tell them about the man you killed? The way you did it? ‘Cause I found nothing funny in that.” 

“Maybe I should’ve killed you, huh?” Bucks said, like that, too, was a joke. “Maybe I made a mistake.”

Raylan gave a humorless, thin smile. “We all have regrets.” 

Bucks’s amusement finally dropped, annoyance taking over. “Cut me a little slack here, okay? Does nothing count that I let you live?”

“No. I’m giving you the same consideration right now. You can get up and go. Thirty seconds.” 

Bucks was watching him, more leery now, but not quite afraid yet. “So what are you gonna do? In front of all these people, you’re gonna pull out a gun and you’re gonna shoot an unarmed man?” 

“You’re unarmed, huh?” 

Bucks opened his jacket. “Hey, you got eyes. You see a piece on me?” 

Raylan didn’t. He knew there was one, knew it like he knew the sky was blue and two and two made four. He didn’t address either fact though, just said, “Twenty seconds.” 

Bucks rolled his eyes. “Okay.” 

They sat in silence, Raylan mentally ticking down the clock. “Ten.” 

Bucks was really getting annoyed now. “You know what? Seriously? You come in here, interrupt my meal, you won’t eat with me. This is bullshit.”

Raylan just watched him. 

“This is supreme bullshit.” 

The seconds ticked down. They stared at each other. 

And as the clock ran out, Tommy Bucks grabbed his gun from underneath the table, just as Raylan had known he would. 

Raylan could get his gun out of its holster as fast as any lead in a western film. He’d learned young, mimicking those very leads that he used to watch on Helen’s TV, using a plastic gun and a holster from a Halloween costume. He’d shown off the skill to Boyd Crowder with a real gun, the two of them shooting rats and soda cans off fence posts. 

So Tommy Bucks was only just getting his gun into the air when Raylan’s cleared the table and fired. 

It wasn’t a clean kill, not the way Raylan liked to do it, where it was one quick punch to the heart and game over. Raylan was moving too quick for that, and Bucks hardly deserved the mercy of a quick death anyway. 

He fired two more times, just to be sure. People survived gut shots all the time, and Bucks wasn’t leaving this table alive, not if Raylan had anything to say about it. He’d call it adrenaline, when they asked. I feared for my life, Dan, really. I mean, I’ve seen him kill before, haven’t I?

In truth, Raylan didn’t think he’d ever felt so calm. There was screaming behind him, the resort’s guests fleeing for the safety of anywhere Raylan wasn’t, but Raylan didn’t take his gaze off Bucks. His expression had gone from angry to startled to frightened, and that last was frozen on his face, where it would stay until rigor mortis had passed and he just looked dead. 

Good, Raylan thought vindictively. Be frightened. I hope your fear follows you to hell. I hope every one of your victims is waiting to greet you on your way down and they each get to see you wearing the same look of terror they died with, the same one you mocked them for having. 

Raylan set his gun on the table in plain sight. Took out his badge and put it down next to the gun, star up so it would be obvious to whoever arrived on the scene first that he was the marshall, not the mobster. 

The world felt strange. Like everything around him was holding its breath, waiting for what would happen next. Raylan felt changed, though he couldn’t put his finger on why. He’d killed before, though admittedly never with so much satisfaction. 

But it didn’t matter. Tommy Bucks was dead, so maybe he’d be able to sleep again. 

He called in to dispatch. He waited for the first responders, allowed himself to be led off to the side by several nervous looking patrol cops, each glancing at him when they thought he wasn’t looking, like they expected to be next. 

“Your self-defense plea would look better if you bothered to look scared,” a smooth voice said. 

Raylan hadn’t seen Horatio approach. Didn’t know why he was here now; this wasn’t his jurisdiction. But any law enforcement officer in Miami could tell you - Lieutenant Horatio Caine went where he wanted, never mind jurisdiction or protocol. And you never saw him coming. 

“I’m a marshal,” Raylan said easily. “I’ve been trained to hide my emotions.” 

Horatio was an impossible man to read, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, a smile on his mouth that could have been amused or angry or ironic. He had always liked Raylan though, had refused, on more than one occasion, to cooperate with the marshals until Raylan was assigned the case. For his own part, Raylan had never found the man as intimidating as his co-workers did. Certainly, the man commanded an impressive amount of respect, could undoubtedly have held any rank in any department, but Raylan didn’t understand why so many people seemed to take one look at Horatio and roll over to show him their bellies. 

Maybe that was why Horatio liked him. One man who didn’t keep his tail between his legs to another. 

“I imagine,” Horatio said, “that we won’t be seeing much of each other after this.” 

“Oh?” 

Horatio made a small huffing noise that carried the idea of a laugh. “They’ll transfer you out of Florida. Even if they decide you were justified, they’ll want you away from Gio before this turns into a war.” 

“He pulled first,” Raylan said, watching where they had stopped taking pictures and were beginning to put Bucks in a body bag. “I was justified.” 

“Keep saying that,” Horatio advised. “Is it true you threatened him?”

He said it casually, like he was asking Raylan for the time. Raylan raised an eyebrow. “How’d you hear about that?” 

Horatio’s mouth twitched. “You’ll want a better answer than that, when the investigators ask.” He turned away from watching the medical examiner, pulled off his sunglasses, and met Raylan’s eyes. 

A shiver of unease went through Raylan and he thought he might be catching his first glimpse of why people got so nervous around Horatio. His blue eyes were sharp, piercing, and Raylan felt like a piece of evidence under a microscope, like he had a secret Horatio wanted, and he was going to give it up whether he wanted to or not. 

“Any regrets?” Horatio asked. 

For a moment, regrets Raylan hadn’t touched in decades swam to the surface, before he got himself back under control, reminded himself that he and Horatio were talking about Tommy Bucks being a dead man. “No.” 

Horatio smiled, put his sunglasses back on. “Not about our Mr. Bucks, at any rate.”

Raylan raised a hand to fiddle with his hat, ran his fingers along the brim. It was a reassuring feeling, grounding, and the unease Horatio had inexplicably set in him faded away. 

“I hope it stays that way,” Horatio said. “You’re on a new path now, Raylan. Too late to change it.” 

Raylan shot him a quizzical look. Sure, Horatio might be right about them sending him away from Miami, but he’d still be a marshal. He’d been a marshal in Georgia, then Texas, then Utah, and now Florida. The most that ever changed was the weather. “You know something I don’t, Horatio?” 

Horatio’s smile was as inscrutable as ever. “Maybe reflect some on those other regrets, if you have some free time.” 

Before Raylan could get annoyed enough to demand that Horatio explain what the hell he was talking about, a new voice - this one well and truly pissed off - broke in, announcing Dan’s presence; “The fuck, Raylan?!” 

Raylan glanced over at his boss, who looked badly in need of a drink already, and then back at Horatio, mouth already open to ask if Horatio had any thoughts about the scene - but Horatio was gone. 

Raylan frowned, glanced around, but there was no sign of the lieutenant. Which didn’t make any sense, because Raylan was between where he’d been and the elevator leading off the roof, and there wasn’t anywhere else to go. It was a rooftop pool. It wasn’t a place a man could disappear into. 

But Horatio Caine was gone, like magic, and Raylan couldn’t think about it, because Dan had charged up to him, a hundred reprimands already rolling off his tongue, demanding to know what the hell he’d been thinking, “You know we’re not allowed to shoot people on sight anymore, right?” and Raylan had to put at least a token effort into looking repentant. 

Maybe Horatio had just meant he’d regret it once all the paperwork hit.

Killing Tommy Bucks had put an odd sort of calmness into Raylan. Not peace, but rather a still, righteous sort of anger. He had been right, had been justified, the world was a better place without Tommy Bucks in it, and the only thing Raylan was uncertain about was why everyone was so determined to punish him for it. 

“I thought that went well,” he remarked, following at Dan’s heels as they left the investigative hearing. 

He could see that Dan wanted to hit him, just a little bit. “Really? You thought it went well?” Dan shook his head and sighed. “I’m going to reassign you.” 

Raylan sighed. Well, he had known there would be consequences. “Prison transport?” The crap punishment detail for marshals in every office Raylan had ever worked out of. 

“No. I’m getting you out of dodge. You can’t stay in Florida.” 

Raylan had expected that too, had his few belongings half packed already. 

“They need manpower in the eastern district of Kentucky.” 

Raylan stared for a moment, certain that he must have heard wrong, that surely no god was cruel enough to have that be his only option. “Kentucky? No, no, Dan. I grew up in Kentucky. I don’t want to go back there.” That was an understatement, the ultimate understatement. He’d take prison detail and a pay cut every day of the week rather than go back to Kentucky.

Dan did not appear sympathetic and Raylan wished he’d taken Horatio’s advice and looked a little guiltier, a little more frightened, while giving his statements. “Well, then, we have a problem, because you don’t want to go back to Kentucky, and you cannot, under any circumstances, stay here. Got any other skills?” When Raylan didn’t respond right away Dan rolled his eyes and said, "I talked to the Chief Marshall there, said you two taught firearms together at Glynco? Art Mullen?"

Raylan winced, though he manged to keep most of the expression off his face, hidden in a nod. He and Art had done more than teach together. It had been Art who had gotten him into the marshals, seen the way Raylan was fighting against his superiors in S.I.C. with all he had. Art had probably saved his life, if Raylan was being honest with himself. 

Didn't mean Raylan wanted to see him again. If anything, he was ashamed to. Didn't want to see anyone who had any idea what he'd done for that farce of a protection agency. 

That ship was sailing though, if he was being sent back to Kentucky. Arlo had found out years ago and drunk tongues were loose ones - all of Harlan would know. The Bennets would know, and the Crowders would know, and Raylan would stay in Lexington and hope that twenty years and a career change was considered sufficient restitution. 

Not that anyone would approve of him being a marshal either, but at least it was better.

But at the end of the day, Dan was right about Raylan’s lack of choices. It was Kentucky, or it was nothing.

Boyd Crowder didn’t do a lot of thinking because he never seemed to think the right way. He’d been a little off for as long as anyone could remember, as far back as when his first word had been ‘with’ followed by ‘alacrity.’ He’d been four, almost five, and they’d been debating if he was going to be starting kindergarten that year since something clearly had to be wrong with him. And then Bowman had shattered a window after shifting into his wolf form inside the house and the boys had been working to clean up the evidence before Bo saw, and he’d walked in just in time to hear his previously mute son choose the strangest possible way to tell his brothers to hurry up. 

It had gotten them out of trouble, at least. Bo had been too busy laughing at Boyd’s unexpected vocabulary to remember that the boys were up to something they shouldn’t have been. 

It wasn’t a unique experience. Boyd got in trouble at school less than he ought to have, because no one was ever prepared for his shockingly eloquent justifications. Teachers were stunned to go from Dewey’s spelling to Boyd’s. He’d refuse to do his homework and then ace the next day’s test as though to spite the teacher’s assumptions. 

He’d never thought much about why he did things like that. It was just the way he did things. No point in looking too hard at it. But that odd, off putting nature was what had brought Raylan Givens to him. 

They’d known of each other, of course. Everyone in Harlan knew everyone else, and their fathers worked together or against each other, or whatever it was that was happening in the higher circles of Harlan’s criminal life. But they’d never talked. 

They hadn't really talked that day either. Raylan had dived under the bleachers where Boyd had been hiding out for the last hour, smoking cigarettes that he didn’t really have an interest in - all his older brothers smoked so Boyd smoked, and what else was he gonna do while skipping class? Boyd watched as Raylan checked to see if he’d been followed, glanced around, saw Boyd with a jolt. He watched Raylan’s expression as the other boy decided he wasn’t likely to be exposed, and then Boyd offered Raylan the carton of cigarettes. 

He didn’t know if Raylan Givens smoked, but offering seemed the polite thing to do. Raylan took one, lit it with a match from a battered box crammed in one pocket. 

“Thanks,” Raylan grunted, voice low, attention still outside of the bleachers, watching for whoever or whatever he was hiding from. 

But Boyd was struck dumb by the word. He didn’t know why, and he wasn’t one for thinking about it, but that simple, casual word, delivered like it didn’t matter, lit a fire somewhere in Boyd’s gut, where a fire wasn’t supposed to be. Or at least not somewhere a boy was meant to be lighting them. Particularly not the Givens boy.

He didn’t tell anyone, of course. He was odd, not stupid. But he kept a keen awareness of Raylan Givens always in the back of his mind. Raylan cut class when he didn’t like the book they were reading in English, when he was bored by the topic in history, and he hardly ever went to his shop class because the teacher was a friend of Raylan’s daddy. Boyd cut class first, met Raylan under the bleachers like it was a coincidence, and wondered if it was true that Bowman met girls under the bleachers to kiss them. 

He wondered if Raylan Givens ever kissed girls under the bleachers. 

He didn’t think about why he was wondering. 

He had no plans for his future - there was no future in Harlan, just the now and whether or not you were enjoying it - so when Raylan said he was going to the mine Boyd decided that sounded as good as anything, even though the wolf half of him protested so long in the dark in those narrow tunnels. After the collapse, Bo protested Boyd returning, but Boyd would have, if Raylan did. Did return, in fact, for about twenty minutes before he realized Raylan wasn’t coming in. 

He jumped to pull me out, Boyd thought, instead of running straight for the exit. 

He didn’t think about what that meant, or about how he’d known, while they were running, that he’d stay down there and be buried, rather than leave Raylan behind.

He could have left Raylan behind. Could have shifted into his wolf form and left Raylan in the dust. But he hadn’t. Wouldn’t have. He didn’t think about that.

It hadn’t happened. Why think about it? 

But he didn’t follow Raylan out of Harlan. Law enforcement, he’d thought, really, Raylan? 

He’d understood it though. Raylan’s daddy was a lot meaner than Bo Crowder was. That’s how you know a real coward, boys, Bo had said one night over dinner, a real loser. Beats his own kid. Have I ever put my hands on any of you? Of course not. You don’t beat your own children.

Raylan had never said his daddy beat him, but everyone knew. Frances had most of the bruises in the family, but the older Raylan got the more he sported. 

So of course Raylan fled Harlan, fled to the skirts of law enforcement, where even Arlo Givens wouldn’t follow. It had been a real blow to Arlo, that, everyone laughing about him being so bad a father that his only kid had gone to the police. No greater disappointment, Bo had laughed, barely able to stay sitting up in his chair. Let’s see Arlo get over that embarrassment. 

Boyd hadn’t thought about if Raylan was a disappointment to his father, because it made him think of Raylan leaving, which made him think of stopping Raylan on the way out of town. 

And he could only think of that when he was alone at night, when there was no chance of anyone but God - and what did God care? - knowing that he was replaying that kiss over and over, thinking about how Raylan had kissed him back but hadn’t said anything, hadn’t come back to Harlan. 

Boyd hadn’t expected him to. Raylan didn’t change his mind about things. He wasn’t going to stay in Harlan any more than Boyd was going to leave. 

It had been a good kiss though. A kiss that seemed to block out everyone else. People would point out a pretty girl in a bar and Boyd would think Bet her hair wouldn’t shine in the mine lanterns the way Raylan’s did. Bowman would buy him a night with a hooker for his birthday - Bowman wasn’t a creative present giver - and it would be fine but she wouldn't kiss the way Raylan had. 

But then the story had changed, a whisper that had changed to a roar in the time it took to blink. Raylan Givens joined the S.I.C. 

Everyone had been angry. Sure, they hadn’t liked Raylan, hadn’t considered him one of them, but they had certain rules of honor in Harlan county, and Raylan had shattered this one. 

“Who the fuck does he think he is?” Johnny had asked to no one in particular. “I dare him to come back around here, trying to put us in our place. I’ll teach him a lesson.”

Boyd had gotten in a bar fight that night, but the anger had felt far away. Closer to home was betrayal, sad and heavy. You think we’re that terrible, Raylan? I knew we weren’t friends, but I thought I could trust you. I thought you were better than that. Better than the people who sell werewolves as slave labor, cut into witches’ brains and try to sever their souls. 

And that might have been hypocritical of him - he didn’t think about it - because a few months later there were whispers of an experimental branch of the army, putting the gifts of werewolves to use for the good of the country and Boyd had an itch he couldn’t scratch and Devil was ready and willing to try it out too, and so they had. Had fought and killed people they didn’t know in a desert they didn’t know and got screamed at for it every step of the way, until most of the unit was killed and Boyd was almost relieved because it meant they got sent home.

He should have known better than to try it. The army was just law enforcement in a different suit. You couldn’t trust either, and they didn’t even cut you a decent paycheck for it. So Boyd stopped paying his taxes and laughed in the arresting officer’s face when it came time to pay. They hadn’t caught him helping Bo run his drugs, but stop paying them the money they wouldn’t give him or his brother and they showed up real quick. 

Prison was terrible, stifling, oppressive, and Boyd got so fed up with how stupid everyone was that some days he wanted to shove an ice pick through his own ears. He’d started an argument instead, unable to listen to the half-baked sermons on how only white people were meant to have any power any longer. He’d rolled his eyes and the man giving the speech had noticed and tried to pick a fight about it. “I could give that speech ten times better without even reading your dumb book.”

The man had challenged him to prove it and he had. And that was it. He hadn’t meant to end up in charge of a group of Nazis - ‘Patriots’ they insisted - didn’t even realize he was until Bowman pointed out how dad was gonna be proud, sounding annoyed and bitter about it. Wasn't Boyd's fault Bowman had given up being charming. Boyd was a natural leader. Just how it was. Wasn’t Boyd’s fault even Devil and Dewey preferred following Boyd’s lead over Bowman’s, even though Boyd was the baby brother, and a scrawny little albino to boot. 

Being in charge wasn’t all that great though. Better than taking orders, to be sure - Boyd had had plenty of that in the army, no one was ever going to be telling him what to do ever again, not if they wanted to live - but it got old, having to hold their hands any time they wanted to take a trip to the grocery store. 

Things were simple, which meant they were boring. Blow up a building, rob a bank. Blow up another building, get a payoff. Don’t rev the engine just yet, let the cops get close so they can give you an adrenaline rush to get you through giving another speech about taking what’s yours, because apparently his people needed it reexplained every two weeks, because their memories couldn’t seem to last longer than that. 

And then there was Jared. Boyd was about sick and fucking tired of Jared. 

Boyd had made himself significant enough in the Patriot Movement that sometimes some other speech giver would send him a guy who needed to avoid the cops in his own state. Boyd didn’t much like being expected to make new friends, really didn’t like people who showed up eager to prove how smart they were when they inevitably weren’t. 

Jared grinned at him across the car, a cocksure grin that said give him a few months and he’d be gunning for Boyd’s position on the top of the heap. Boyd had no intention of giving him the chance. 

“Well, Boyd, what do you think?” 

Boyd looked up at the skeleton of a building and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Well, Jared, I think it sucks.” One nice thing about skinheads; Boyd never had to worry about being polite. 

“What? Why?” Jared looked hurt enough to almost make Boyd smile. 

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Boyd told him, hopping back into the car and motioning for Jared to start the engine, “wanting to go after a federal building under construction, but, you see, we’d need us a whole box of Emulex to bring that down, and that’s if you got cuts in the steel.” Boyd had to bite his tongue a little to refrain from rubbing the duh in Jared’s face. Why did the man think they made buildings out of steel to begin with? It wasn’t because the stuff went down like wet tissue paper. “All we got is a rocket launcher. And impressive as that is, all its gonna do is shake some shit around.” All true, technically, and Boyd could really only be bothered with one target tonight anyway, but even if they’d had a truck of Emulex and the sexiest target ever seen by man Boyd would have shot it down. He wasn’t giving Jared the satisfaction of being impressed. 

He could have won Jared over, he thought as he directed Jared to drive into a seedier part of Lexington, tone pitched just so, making sure it sounded like he was making things up as he went along. He could win just about anybody over, when he put his mind to it. But he didn’t want to. Jared wasn’t impressive enough for him to need to. 

So Boyd just let his mouth run his usual bullshit - talking about crackers and ‘the jungle’ and how things sure had changed, hadn’t they, didn’t it seem like the damn world was ending - and directed Jared to the little brick church Devil’s buddies had offered them a hefty chunk of change to take out. He’d get his explosion and his money and deal with Jared once he didn’t need the man’s wheels anymore. 

Jared stared crying protests as soon as he realized what Boyd was aiming for but Boyd wasn’t listening. This was what made sitting in a car with Jared for hours on end worth it. This was worth as much as the promised cash and maybe more. This was what made him feel alive. 

Boyd prepped the rocket launcher with ease, hefted it onto his shoulder as Jared continued to whine that there were people in the streets, that they’d ID his car. Should have swapped out your plates then, huh, Jared? Boyd thought. Guess you’re not all that smart after all. 

He lined up his shot, grinning, sucked in a breath and hollered “Fire in the hole!” down the street. 

He could be loud when he wanted to be. He’d learned that having four older brothers, working in the mine, serving in the army. 

The idiots outside the church heard but didn’t move, just stared down the street at him, a herd of deer in the headlights. 

Boyd gave them a three second count to get it together before he fired, forgetting about them as he watched the trail of the RPG. The first fire hit and Boyd watched as it found something flammable, then something else, catching and catching until the bricks were crumbling down like old London Bridge and there was a fire in every window. 

Boyd could happily have stood there and watched the church burn itself out. But he was a professional, an experienced man who hadn’t much enjoyed prison and didn’t much want to go back. He gave himself ten seconds to revel in his destruction and then leapt back into the passenger seat, tossing his rocket launcher into the back. 

“With alacrity, Jared,” he ordered, a little breathless, watching the fire in the rearview mirror as Jared gunned it, feeling a heavy pang of loss when they turned and lost sight of it. 

Raylan met Art Mullen in a bar his first day back in Lexington. “I’d like to reacquaint myself with you before I put you in the field,” Art had said, and it was reasonable enough. Raylan wanted to know where they stood himself. 

Well, really what Raylan wanted was to get back on the plane he’d just left, have it take him anywhere that wasn’t here. A dozen times he’d thought about quitting and taking his chances. His savings were decent - not enough to live the rest of his life on but enough that he could try to find some other option. Something that wasn’t returning to Kentucky. 

Got any other skills?  

No, he didn’t. He could shoot a gun and chase a fugitive and did a decent job of putting a mystery together. There wasn’t much of a market for skills like that. The things he couldn’t do made for a much longer list - he couldn’t spell, couldn’t keep his car under the speed limit, couldn’t do math, couldn’t maintain a relationship, either romantic or platonic. 

So he was in Kentucky, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, rubbing the brim of his hat every few minutes to ground himself because one of his other unmarketable skills was never letting anyone see when he was rattled. He walked into the bar Art had directed him to, found the man already ordering drinks, and gave his most charming devil may care smile. 

Art grinned back, straightened up and offered Raylan a hand to shake. “Good to see you again, Raylan.” 

“Good to see you, Art.” And it was. Much as Raylan didn’t like remembering the circumstances of his and Art’s meeting, the man had always been good to him. Knew when to joke and when to be a hardass. He’d been a good instructor, and Raylan thought it likely that he’d be an equally good boss. 

“Glad we could see each other in a more casual setting before we start throwing all the introductions at you,” Art said, handing Raylan a glass of bourbon and picking up his own.  “I imagine you’ll be finding us to be something of a comedown from the Miami office. We’ve got to share the building with every judge and lawyer in Lexington, for starters.” 

Raylan smiled. That was Kentucky all right. Three hours from Harlan, but when Raylan had been a boy it had been the closest ‘real’ city to them, the place you went for any truly important business. And then Raylan had left Kentucky, been to places like Miami and Los Angeles and New York City and sure, Lexington was technically a city, but it was no sprawling metropolis. 

Raylan thought skyscrapers were hideous, a testament to bigger not always being better, but god was he missing them right now. “Well, you’ll be there. That’ll be an improvement.” 

“Oh, you’re a kissass now? That’ll be great, I’m tired of listening to Tim’s backtalk.” Art gave Raylan a onceover. “You know, you look just the same as you did at Glynco. Same coat, same boots. The hat’s new though.” 

“The boots are newer than the hat, actually,” Raylan said, a more genuine smile making it onto his mouth now. He’d been a country boy hick when he’d left Harlan and he’d embraced it, dared anyone to look at his boots and make fun of his accent. The hat had completed the ensemble, even though Raylan had once thought men in cowboy hats who didn’t ride horses were just pretenders. It was his hat, it fit like it was made for him, and it looked right in the mirror, somehow. 

Art rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Look like it’s been through the ringer with you.” 

“You could say that.” 

“You were working fugitives down in Miami, right?” 

Raylan nodded, hoping he wasn’t about to get sent to Kentucky and assigned prison transport. 

“In our office, everybody does everything,” Art said. “Don’t have the manpower for divisions.Fugitives, witness relocation, judicial protection, forfeitures, prison transport…” He shook his head. “Boy, every office I ever worked in, prisoner transport was the shit detail. The chief always used it as punishment. But here, we all do it.” 

“Even you?” Raylan asked, eyebrow raised, suspecting he already knew the answer. 

“Oh, hell no,” Art said with a laugh. “I’m the Chief.”

They both laughed, sipping on their bourbon, and then Art’s face went serious and he gave Raylan a long look. “Tell me about the shooting.” 

“It was justified.” Art didn’t look convinced. Raylan held eye contact, trying to look confident without looking like he was issuing a challenge. “You concerned about me coming down here, Art?” 

“It’s a small office, Raylan. I’m concerned when we switch brands of coffee.”

“I’ll try not to give anyone indigestion,” Raylan promised. 

Art snorted. “You’re from Harlan, aren’t you?” 

Raylan took a long drink, wondering for a moment if he could pretend Art had his information wrong. If maybe he could ignore Harlan’s shadow in his past long enough for it to just fade away. “Unfortunately,” he said. 

Art gave him a prompting look. 

Raylan shrugged. “You know it’s got a song about how much of a pit it is, right?” You’ll never leave Harlan alive, the song said, and Raylan had nearly broken his radio the first time he’d heard it, he’d been in such a hurry to get it to stop. 

And now Harlan was just a few hundred miles south, like some great beast lying in wait and Raylan could feel it breathing down his neck. 

“No fond memories of the homefront, huh?” 

“None,” Raylan said, and refused to let his mind drift to board games at Helen’s dining room table or to sitting on the hood of a car, drinking beer and watching the sun set, Boyd Crowder beside him. 

“Reason I ask,” Art went on, and Raylan was glad they weren’t just trying to make small talk about it, “is the U.S. attorney is trying to build this case against this guy in Harlan. He’s about the same age as you and with it being such a small town I wondered if you might know him. Boyd Crowder?” 

Raylan felt the name like a knife, like Boyd’s teeth in his chest. Calloused hands were on his neck, chapped lips on his mouth, a howling laughter in his ears. 

“My god, Art, any other shit you want to dump on me tonight?” Raylan drained his bourbon and gestured for the bartender to get him another. Anything with alcohol in it would do, anything that made him stop seeing Boyd’s grin in the lamplight of the mines, teeth shining against the coal dust smudged across his face. 

“So you do know him?”

“Yeah, I know him.” We dragged each other out of a crumbling mineshaft once. We traded cigarettes and drinks and, once, he kissed me like I mattered more than everyone else on Earth put together. “Yeah, Boyd and I dug coal together when we were nineteen.”

“What was he like?” 

And what could Raylan say that made sense, that didn’t say anything about all the things he hadn’t let himself think about since driving out of town? “He was a powder man. He’d crawl down a hole with his case of Emulex 520, come out stringing wire, call out ‘Fire in the hole!’ to clear the shaft.” Raylan took another drink, trying not to remember the glee in Boyd’s voice as he howled his warning. “She’d blow and we’d go back in, dig out the pieces. We weren’t what you’d call buddies, but you work a deep mine with a man, you look out for each other.” He remembered their hands clasped together, hard enough to hurt. I leapt to pull him out instead of running for the exit.  

They hadn’t been friends, him and Boyd. Hadn’t known each other well enough for that. Had hung out because their fathers had told them not to and because they worked in the same mine and were the same age. But they’d kept each other alive in that mine and that meant something. 

Or it had, once, and it couldn’t anymore because a federal marshal was asking questions about Boyd and was now pulling out a file, flipping it open to show Raylan a rap sheet and a psych profile. 

“Well,” Art said, “after he quit the mine, he joined the army. Not sure what he was doing over there; it’s got ‘Classified’ stamped all over it. But when he came back he quit paying his taxes. Claimed to be a sovereign citizen. So they sent him down to Alderson.” 

Raylan took another drink, remembered Boyd telling him once, “Think I’d rather get my leg in a bear trap than go to prison. Wolves ain’t meant to be locked up like that.”

Did the people building this case know Boyd was a werewolf? He should ask. That was Raylan’s job, give them all the information he had so they could use it against Boyd to stop him doing whatever he was doing. 

He didn’t say anything. 

“That’s where he got involved with the Patriot Movement,” Art continued, oblivious to Raylan’s internal crisis, “and their white supremacy bullshit. Got to making horseshit bombs. They’ll come into a town like Somerset and they’ll blow up a car, then go rob a bank while the cops are busy.” 

“Saw that in a Steve McQueen movie,” Raylan said with a smile, except he hadn’t. He’d heard it, recited line by line and movement by movement, Boyd acting out every character at once under the bleachers the day after he’d seen it, eyes wild, Raylan occasionally reaching out to tug Boyd one way or another as he almost cracked his skull open on the underside of the stairs. 

Raylan flipped through Boyd’s file, stopped at his mugshot.

“Did he change much?” Art asked. 

The man in the photo glowered at him, eyes tinged red in a way that could have been the flash of the camera. “Other than the fact that he’s now a racist asshole?” Raylan asked. Grief was welling up his throat, cousin to the grief that had gripped him when he’d gotten the invitation to the wedding of Helen McKinley and Arlo Givens. You never left Harlan alive, and it did worse things than death to you if you weren’t careful. “He’s lost some hair, but that’s about it.” 

Raylan flipped the file shut, handed it back to Art. “Thanks for the drink. Wish I could help out more with Boyd, but he and I weren’t exactly writing each other postcards.” 

Art nodded. “Still, he might be a little more willing to talk to a marshal he knows than a marshal he doesn’t.” 

“Just tell me if you want me to go rattle his cage,” Raylan said, praying Boyd would have a come to Jesus moment and never hit Raylan’s radar again. “Think I’m gonna head back to my hotel. Sleep off the jetlag. It was good to see you.” 

He and Art clasped hands again, Art saying he’d see him in the morning for his first shift. 

Raylan went hunting for a liquor store. 

Boyd could make the list of why he didn’t want Jared around as long as anyone wanted. He was shifty, like maybe he’d gone CI. He didn’t know the first thing about taking down a building, despite always being the first to suggest blowing something up. He was too easy to coax into a fight and not easy enough to coax back down again. He kept pestering Boyd to turn him into a werewolf, suggesting being a werewolf was half the reason he’d picked to join Boyd’s group specifically, and the more he asked the less Boyd wanted to do it. It was supposed to be special , turning others. Jared didn’t even have the barest level of respect for the ritual, or for Boyd’s authority, or for having a few hundred pounds of snarling teeth in front of him. 

But really he just bothered Boyd and it wasn’t like he was going to have to justify his reasonings to the International Panel of Skinheads. 

So Boyd tossed his bazooka into the river, watched it drift away on the current - it wouldn’t do to have it snag on a rock somewhere - and turned back to the car where Jared was rubbing his head and chewing his lip, still worrying about some witness reeling off his plates. 

Boyd had less tolerance for cowards than he did idiots. At least Dewey had given him some resistance to the latter. 

Boyd climbed over the console into the backseat, busying his hands with the bazooka strap, looking productive. Not that it mattered much. Rattled by their adventure, Jared seemed perfectly willing to let Boyd be in charge now, not even bothering to ask if Boyd wanted him to start driving home, not asking why Boyd was sitting behind him. 

Even Dewey knew to keep a close eye on a man sitting behind you in a car. 

“How come you didn’t want to blow up that church?” Boyd asked. 

“I told you,” Jared said, voice a little sulky, not so cocksure and challenging as it had been, “I didn’t want them to ID my car.” 

“Ah.” Boyd gave an exaggerated, thoughtful nod that Jared didn’t see because he was busy staring at his steering wheel. “See, I got to thinking that maybe you had an aversion to hurting people.” 

Jared laughed. “Hell, no.” But Boyd could see Jared’s reflection in the side mirror and there was a look in his eyes like maybe he was thinking it too. Like maybe he hadn’t liked Boyd’s smile while the church went up. 

“I also got to thinking that a building under construction just might be the kind of innocuous target-” Boyd cut off, remembering who he was talking to. “Do you know what that means? Innocuous? That means harmless. It might just be the kind of harmless target that the Federal Bureau of Imperialism might be willing to sacrifice in order to get somebody deep in the movement.” 

Jared twisted around at last, proper offense in his eyes. “You think I’m a snitch?” 

The greatest insult one man could offer another. Boyd’s daddy had taught him that long ago, had always respected the boys when they’d refused to turn on one another after causing trouble, even when he punished them for it. It was a good thing Boyd was already planning on killing Jared, because that wasn’t the sort of accusation a relationship could recover from. 

“All I know is, you don’t have any tattoos. You keep rubbing that head like you’re afraid the hair’s not gonna grow back.” Too scared of commitment for a haircut? Too scared of pain for a tattoo? And you think you’re worthy of being a werewolf? The only thing you’re worthy of, Jared, is one of my bullets through your skull. 

“You think I’m a snitch ‘cause I rub my head?” Jared looked like he didn’t know if he wanted to shout or laugh. 

Boyd leaned back, put his hands up. The very picture of innocuous. “I mean, you understand where I’m coming from, right?” We’re just two good ol’ boys figuring out where we stand with each other Jared. You stupid enough to think you don’t have to be afraid of me? “I mean, you come out here from Oklahoma, full of piss and vinegar, talking about how you were tired of spray-painting synagogues, saying you want to blow some shit up-”

“Hey!” Jared twisted in his seat to look Boyd in the eye, anger and hurt in his eyes. “You don’t believe me, you check it out! Why don’t you call Oklahoma?” 

Coward. Prove who you are yourself. Don’t have some yokel in Oklahoma reassure me. I don’t know him from Adam, and I sure as shit don’t care what he thinks of you. “We are. Devil’s doing it as we speak.” 

Jared turned back to the road, relaxing into his seat, reassured. “Good. You’ll see, Boyd. I ain’t no snitch.” 

Boyd believed him. A snitch wouldn’t have relaxed at the prospect of his story being prodded at, no matter how sure he was of his cover. If he called Devil he’d probably have gotten a call back from Oklahoma, and he’d tell Boyd that Jared checked out, was perfectly trustworthy. 

Unfortunately, all that meant was that Jared wouldn’t see the bullet coming. Some people thought that was better. Maybe Jared was one of them. 

“We’ll see,” Boyd agreed, and he drew his gun and shot Jared in the back of his head. 

Raylan, a little haggard from a bad night’s sleep and a touch hungover, had seen a lot of dead bodies in his time, and his first hadn’t even been during his days in law enforcement. But seeing Jared Hale slumped over his steering wheel, his brains splattered over his windshield, was different. Raylan had never seen a body before and thought I knew the man who did this. He looked at the perfect hole at the base of Jared’s skull and thought Boyd went from stealing answer keys for his brothers to shooting men execution style.

He didn’t want to believe it was Boyd. Wanted Art’s tenuous connection to stay tenuous. Wanted to think there had been some mixup and the man who led a group of Nazi commandos was someone entirely different from the boy who had once waited on the side of the road and asked Raylan for immunity. 

But they drove back to Lexington, up to a church that was nothing but rubble and ashy timbers, and a marshal Art introduced as Tim Gutterson told them that the man who had fired the bazooka had shouted something first. 

Raylan closed his eyes. “What did he say?” He thought he knew, and the grief that had gripped him last night was settling into his chest like it meant to stay.

Tim laughed. “One heard ‘Liars and hos’. Another said ‘Time to go.’ And my personal favorite - ‘Heidy, heidy, ho.’” 

“Maybe we should put an APB out on Cab Calloway,” Raylan said, but his heart wasn’t in the joke. 

The other marshal - Rachel Brooks - snorted and said, “The preacher heard ‘Fire in the hole’.” 

Raylan made knowing eye contact with Art, trusted to his poker face to hide the way that had been the final twist of the knife. This is where you landed, Boyd? Blowing up churches and executing men at point blank range? 

Raylan barely heard himself helping with the investigation. He had a lot of experience under his belt, could charm a man in his sleep, could say all the right words in all the right places. 

But he let his new co-workers do most of it, and if anyone had asked he could have said it was because they were younger or because they’d been in Kentucky longer or whatever else would make someone lose interest in him. He’d been in Kentucky fewer than forty-eight hours and he wanted to go back to Miami so badly it hurt. Wanted to go anywhere, anywhere, even back to Nicaragua, anywhere where his past would stay behind him, where Boyd Crowder was forever a nineteen-year-old, stuck at that awkward stage between boy and man, raising an eyebrow at the bartender who’d asked to see his ID. 

Fire in the hole! Raylan could hear it like he’d been on the street last night, like it had happened right outside the bar where he and Art had been drinking. 

This is what Helen saved you from, he thought, and he shoved it away because he didn’t want to think about his Aunt Helen any more than he wanted to think about Boyd. 

He’s just another criminal, he told himself as he joined in the discussion about the best way to track Boyd down. Just some Nazi, skinhead fuck. Boyd Crowder - his Boyd Crowder - was twenty years dead, just like his Aunt Helen. New people were walking around with aged, lined versions of their faces, spouting hate and rolling their eyes. This was some other Crowder, a bad apple from a whole barrel of rotten ones, and Raylan would help put him away as he’d help put away so many criminals before, and he’d leave his Boyd Crowder forever driving away from that two lane road that led out of Harlan. 

You never left Harlan alive, and sometimes it did worse than kill you.  

Boyd didn’t need werewolf senses, or even brotherly intuition, to know when it was Dewey skidding up the driveway. He’d get himself worked up about something and come screeching up to the trailer, not easing off the gas until it was time to slam on the brake, and God forbid anyone had left anything anywhere near Dewey’s parking spot, because it would be all over the lawn a minute later. 

Boyd listened to the car door open, shut, a curse, the door bang a few more times. He could hear the eyeroll in Devil’s voice when he said, “Idiot.” 

“He’s your twin,” Boyd said, not looking up from his crossword. 

The trailer door banged open, bouncing off the wall hard enough that it nearly hit Dewey in the face as he bounded inside. “Boyd!” 

“What’s the matter?” Boyd asked, not bothering to keep the boredom out of his voice. Dewey never heard tone anyway. “They out of Velveeta?” 

Normally mocking Dewey was met with confusion, but he didn’t even seem to hear it today. “Bowman’s been shot!” 

Boyd looked up at last. Devil sat up a little on the couch. “Where?” 

“In his house.” 

Boyd rolled his eyes upward, offering a brief prayer for strength. “No, dumbass. Where on his body? ”

“I don’t know.” Dewey looked baffled at the idea that he might have asked. 

“Well, is it serious?” Get to the point, Dewey. Is Bowman going to be wanting us to rally the troops to come back him up in whatever dumbass scheme he got in over his head with?

“Oh yeah,” Dewey said. “He’s dead.” 

A few seconds ticked by, waiting for Dewey to explain the joke. 

And then Devil was on his feet, yelling at Dewey about how that was no way to deliver news. Dewey was yelling back that he’d like to see how Devil would tell people, and what were they supposed to do about Ava?

“What about Ava?” Devil demanded. 

“Well, she’s who shot him!” 

Which got Devil shouting again and Boyd slipped past his brothers and out of the trailer to have a cigarette.

The two big guys who’d come from Nebraska a year ago were still chopping wood, giggling like schoolgirls at the possibility of losing fingers. The rest of Boyd’s commandos were still scattered about, drinking beers and smoking cigarettes. Dewey’s car door was still hanging open. And Bowman was dead.

He didn’t know what to call the feeling that had dropped through him at the words he’s dead. It wasn’t grief. It had been a long time since Boyd had needed to feel grief, but it was an easy emotion to recognize, turbulent and overwhelming, leaving him in wolf form and howling until he thought his throat would tear. 

Wasn’t rage either. Boyd didn’t need to wring out any more details to guess that Ava had gotten fed up with being Bowman’s punching bag. That could only have ever ended one way - with one of them putting the other in the grave. Hadn’t Johnny even warned Bowman once that Ava was going to get sick of his shit sooner or later, and he’d best hope she just divorced him? 

It was just an odd, hollow thud where an emotion ought to have been. His older brother was dead. And that was… something.

Boyd supposed he ought to call Johnny, not have Dewey break the news like that twice. 

He didn’t know what to expect from Johnny. Bowman had always been something of a jerk, had become a real ass after high school, had become insufferable once he’d accepted that he was destined to dig coal and do crime and stay trapped in Harlan until his heart gave out. None of them had spoken to him much beyond necessary after Bo had made clear that he was a bit of a disappointment five years ago. But he was still their brother, was still one of the two oldest Crowder boys and he was still dead and that was still their problem. 

Boyd took a long drag on his cigarette, shaking his head. It was a shame it hadn’t been some sort of bar fight or turf war. That’d have been easier. Now they were going to have to decide what to do about Ava - Bo would be expecting them to kill her but Boyd didn’t much like the idea - and they’d have to figure out funeral arrangements, and Bowman’s money was Ava’s now and she probably wasn’t going to much care about how he went in the ground, so they’d have to fork up the money-

Johnny’s problem. Johnny was the one with a real, civilized job. He was the one who paid his taxes, for the most part. He was the oldest now and Bowman was his twin and he could deal with it. 

“Hello?” 

Boyd blew out another puff of cigarette smoke, pressing his phone hard against his ear so he could hear his brother over the static that haunted every call in Harlan county. “Johnny.” 

“Boyd? The hell you want?” 

“Nice to hear from you too.” 

“You don’t call for small talk, Boyd.” 

“No, I don’t.” Another breath. He had to give Dewey some credit - there really wasn’t any other way to say it other than, “Bowman’s dead.” 

There was a pause, the exact same pause that had just come in the trailer. “He’s dead,” Johnny repeated. 

“Yeah. Don’t know details. Dewey just told us.” 

Johnny sighed, making the line crackle. “Was it Ava?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.” 

“Yeah.” 

Johnny sighed again, more annoyed sounding this time, obviously wanting Boyd to know that he had better things to do with his day. “I’ll get hold of the sheriff, see what we need to do.” 

They hung up without further discussion, no mention of Bo and what he’d want. Someone would call the prison eventually, have the warden pass on the word. And Bo had less than a year left on his time anyway. The Crowders with their freedom had other concerns. 

Boyd would have to do something. Bo would expect him to, and so would his commandos. It was the law of the land. Someone did something to your family you had to fire back, even if it was your sister-in-law and your shithead of a brother had been asking for it. To do otherwise would get people thinking you were soft, and that was inviting them to stage a mutiny, which would give Boyd even more headaches then he already had. 

The trailer door banged open again and Devil and Dewey came tumbling out in a snarl of fur and limbs and teeth. The commandos scattered away from them and then circled back, forming a loose circle to watch, shouting jeers and encouragements, elbowing each other and placing bets on the victor, most of them betting it would be Devil. Devil’s burnt red fur gleamed in the sun, making him by far the more impressive of the two. Dewey’s wolf form always looked vaguely like the printer paper had gotten crooked while he’d been coming out. And Devil was, well, Devil. More intimidating than Dewey in just about every way, no matter how hard Dewey tried to keep up.

Boyd rolled his eyes and leaned against the side of the trailer, finishing his cigarette, watching the brawl. Devil and Dewey wouldn’t do each other any real damage; they never did. This was a fight to blow off some steam, nothing more.

A few of the commandos had shifted, barking and bouncing up and down on their front paws. One got a little too excited, knocked into the one beside him, and then there were two brawls going on in the front yard. 

That was a problem. Boyd gave a long, loud whistle. Devil and Dewey stopped on a dime, and the few men still in human form snapped around to attention, but the other wolves kept going. 

Boyd shoved himself off the wall and dropped to all fours. He didn’t much like shifting while the sun was up, the brightness inevitably bothering his eyes until he had a migraine that wouldn’t fade no matter which form he was in. But a fight, however pointless, between this bunch had to be cutoff early, or Boyd wouldn’t get them back for a week. 

[Enough!] 

Boyd was smaller than any of his commandos, but he more than made up for it by being unsettling. He had white fur that practically glowed in the moonlight, and became almost painful to look at in the sun. His eyes burned blood red. And being the youngest Crowder and growing up in Harlan and having worked in a mine meant he knew how to make himself heard. 

The commandos who were fighting dropped and rolled to show their bellies. The ones who had just been watching pressed themselves against the ground, ears flat to their skulls. All of them watched him, but only sideways - wolf or human form, they were all reluctant to make eye contact with him. 

Boyd tossed his head toward the two people still in their human forms, their understood signal to shift too, because Boyd had something to say.

You don’t even know what you’re fighting about, you morons, Boyd thought as he stalked toward them, hackles and tail raised, teeth bared. [I need you boys focused,] he told them, his tone firm but friendly, encouraging. [Devil, Dewey, and me just got some bad news. Our brother’s been killed.]

[Who did it?] someone - Jerry or Gary or something, Boyd thought his name was - asked. 

[We’ll tear ‘im apart!] another said, and then he promptly cringed away, remembering that he might still be in trouble for fighting. 

[Now, boys, you know this is family business,] Boyd drawled, settling to sit by Devil and Dewey, the only two not showing any fear of him. [But because it’s family business, we may be a bit busier than usual in the upcoming days. You boys may have to step up to the plate, help make sure that everything that needs doing gets done. Can we rely on you for that, or is our little organization going to need some restructuring?]

[We’ve got you, boss!] 

[Yeah, you can count on us!]

A few tails dared wag, and Boyd thumped his once to suggest that maybe he was just a little bit fond of them. Maybe he appreciated that reassurance. 

Whatever kept them in line while he reassessed their situation. Bowman, for all his obnoxiousness, had handled a lot of their paperwork and money laundering, and that wasn’t the sort of position you could post a listing for in the Harlan newspaper. 

[Thank you, fellas. I appreciate that.] Boyd stood, shook himself, and shifted back to human, hiding his relief as he did so. The sun was far more forgiving toward his human eyes than his wolf ones. The others followed his lead. “Now, we have that bank to take care of this afternoon. I don’t plan on cancelling that, so go get your gear. Dewey, I want you to head into town and go pick up Ava.” 

“Pick up Ava?” Dewey repeated. 

“Bring her here. I’d like to have a word with our dear sister-in-law in her grieved state.”

Dewey nodded. “Okay.” 

“Gently, Dewey. I see no call for you to drag her here by her hair. She gives you too much trouble, I can go down there and talk to her myself this evening.” 

Dewey nodded, though Boyd could see in his face that he was determined to convince Ava to come, rather than admit to failure. 

Whether or not he’d have any success Boyd didn’t dare guess at. Dewey’s track record wasn’t great. But Boyd would concern himself with that later. He just needed to get eyes on Ava, decide what his family honor required of him. 

Goddamn Bowman. Even in death, he was nothing but a headache.

It had been Bowman himself who’d told Ava how to kill him. He’d been bragging about his gun collection, his hunting prowess, about how none of his baby brothers could ever hope to outdo him. He’d wanted Ava to stroke his ego and she’d obliged, remarking on how amazing it was that something even she could pick up with ease could kill something as big and dense as an elk. 

Bowman had laughed, throwing his head back just the way his daddy did, and said, “I know, right?” He gave an affectionate, exuberant pat to one of the rifles. “This one packs enough punch it could even kill me.” 

It never occurred to him that Ava might someday put that to the test, which was fair enough because it was another two and a half years before she did. Bowman protected her, after all. Better one man than all of Harlan, better all of Harlan than some government lab. At least Harlan knew, in their own We-Don’t-Talk-About-That way, that magic was real and that it favored the hollers of Kentucky. At least they kept their business to themselves, didn’t go involving federal agents and government bigshots just because something seemed a little abnormal. 

Ava wondered, sometimes, how much of that was small town country pride and how much was because the Bennets were witches and the Crowders were werewolves and just about everyone else had something special jumping around in their veins. 

It didn’t matter though. Harlan protected itself and Bowman protected Ava. He was even a catch, sometimes. Better looking than any of his brothers. Funnier than them too, liked to make Ava laugh like it was a competition, liked to kick his brothers under the table when they tried to tell a joke and inform them that Ava’s sense of humor’s just more cultured than yours. And smarter than Dewey, at least, though that wasn’t a high bar. Maybe smarter than Devil and Johnny too. Possibly not so smart as Boyd, but Ava didn’t think she’d much like living with someone who had Boyd’s type of brains knocking around between their ears. 

Bowman bought her presents for her birthday and Christmas and sometimes just because, even if he wasn’t real great at picking out things she’d like. Had a good track record for remembering their anniversary, was always polite to Ava’s parents, before they’d made the mistake of trying to swerve around a deer one night before Ava was even old enough to order her own alcohol. And Bowman had been good then too, had taken care of most of the gritty details of funeral planning, had smiled with those sharp teeth to make sure they got a good deal on the caskets. He was always quick to knock out the lights of anyone who pawed at her, who stared at her a little too long, who made her glance back over her shoulder on her way to the bathroom. 

So the first few times the belt came out Ava told herself it was an anomaly. The next few times, it was unfortunate, but not too high a price to pay. And then it just became so much background noise, because humans can get used to anything after a time, even things they shouldn’t. Sometimes Bowman was angry, and sometimes there was a reason for it and sometimes there wasn’t. Sometimes Ava shouted back and sometimes she rolled over and let him get it out of his system. 

And even at his worst she was still a succubus in Harlan, Kentucky, and Bowman was still a tough enough guy to make sure he was the only person who touched her. That was worth something. That was enough. 

Until she made a comment about Boyd’s creepy, unending staring - a comment not so different from a hundred she’d heard Johnny make - and Bowman smashed her head into the stove hard enough that for a second she really thought he’d kill her. 

She stood up, cleaned her own blood off the floor, and thought, through a haze of pain and swelling, that she wasn’t going to let him beat her to death one day, not even giving her the dignity of needing to shift to do it. 

Bowman had made it clear that leaving wasn’t an option, that he wouldn’t be so forgiving as he’d been the first time she’d packed her things and moved out. There would be nowhere to hide, not with no family, few friends, and a hard-to-control magical ability turning the heads of damn near every human being that had passed puberty. 

And she didn’t want to leave anyway, because the house, carved up with sigils and charms, did as much to protect her as Bowman himself. 

So she went to the cabinet where Bowman kept his guns, found the one he’d said could kill him, and started making plans for a good last supper. 

It had been a while since she’d last fired a gun and the kick startled her, but at four feet with a gun that size, it hadn’t much mattered. Bowman’s chest blew open and he went to the ground with cartoonish speed. Ava stepped closer on shaky legs and fired again, thinking werewolves probably couldn’t heal that quick, but not wanting to take chances. 

She didn’t call the sheriff until Bowman had started to cool and she was sure he wouldn’t be getting back up again, no matter how many shocks they gave his heart. 

Maybe Sheriff Hunter didn’t take her to jail because he was worried about how the other prisoners would treat a pretty girl like her. Maybe he was hoping a pretty girl like her would feel grateful and get to liking him. Maybe it was just because he had so much hate for the Crowder family and she’d taken another one out of the gene pool. 

She didn’t much care. She was just glad to spend the night alone in her bed, even if she didn’t manage much sleep. Calling in to work to say ‘I killed my husband last night and I don’t think I could focus’ was a unique experience. So was figuring out what could get blood out of the chair and the carpet and off the wall. And so was opening the front door to see, of all people, Raylan Givens. 

Ava had always liked Raylan. He had laser focus on everything; baseball, school rivalries, mystery issues that made him look angry enough to chew glass and got all the girls around school gossipping about what might be going on under the hood. Ava thought he was as cute as the next girl, but the big thing had been that that focus had kept him from having much awareness around the edges to pay attention to her. Ava had chased him, and not many boys had had the spine to try to step in between, even if Raylan had barely seemed to notice Ava’s attentions. 

And then Raylan had left town, breaking many a heart in the process, and Ava had found Bowman Crowder to keep the other boys away, and she’d heard joined the S.I.C. and thrown up in revulsion and terror. Anything, anything, anything was better than being near an S.I.C. agent. Supernatural Investigations and Containment and everyone who knew anything knew that containment was the only part that mattered. 

Ava had put Raylan Givens out of her mind and decided she’d dodged a bullet. Hearing he’d grown into a U.S. Marshall didn’t do much to change her mind on that front.

But Raylan appeared on the other side of the screen door, looking damn good for forty, a white Stetson cocked on his head like he’d escaped a movie set, a silver star on his hip, and Ava couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of him. 

“Raylan Givens,” she greeted, smiling despite herself. There had been something comforting, safe, about him when he’d been a teenager, and it was still there, even though Ava knew better now. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe it was just because he wasn’t Bowman, and right now that was all it took. Maybe the goose egg still throbbing under her hair was clouding her judgment. 

Raylan gave her a polite, sheepish smile. “You remember me.”

“You’re a hard man to forget.” They were talking through the screen, Ava resting one hand on the handle, the other hand ready to slam the heavier wooden door shut in his face if she needed to. Bowman had paid some witch from Bennet county to come out and press sigils into the house, things that would flare up at her command, no magic necessary on her part. They may not keep Raylan out forever, but they’d give her plenty enough time to get the rifle she’d killed Bowman with. 

She’d named it Lambert, after the singer she’d been listening to while she steeled her nerves to pull the trigger, and she hadn’t let it out of her sight since Sheriff Hunter had said she could keep it. 

“I heard you joined the S.I.C.” she said, blunter than it was safe to be, especially to any man with a badge. 

Raylan dipped his head, a dark cloud flicking over his face for a moment. “A mistake,” he said. “Got out of it as quick as I could.” 

“Not here on their behalf then?”

“Not if my life depended on it,” Raylan promised. 

Ava pushed the screen door open for him. “Come on in then. You here about Bowman?” 

“I heard you gave him a pretty final ending to your union.” 

Ava laughed at the phrasing. “He didn’t give me a lot of choice. I told him I wanted a divorce. He said, ‘you file, and you’ll never be seen again.’” She led Raylan down the hall to the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

“Only if you promise not to tell. I’m not supposed to drink on the clock.” 

“They don’t know how to blow off steam in the marshals, huh?” 

“I guess not.” Raylan took off his hat as he came inside, like a proper Kentucky gentleman. “You don’t appear to be much of a grieving widow, if you don’t mind my saying.” 

Ava snorted as she pulled down the whiskey bottle. “Been a long time since I’ve seen the man I’d have grieved.” 

“Which man was that?” 

“The one who was sure of himself, who said he’d never work in a goddamn coal mine.” Oh, how he’d bragged about that, about how Boyd had tried the mines, tried the army, but big brother Bowman would be the family success story. “It was always one more year ‘till he got into the University of Kentucky, and then he’d be going pro. He wouldn’t mind the Cowboys.” She smiled at Raylan but it turned sour in her mouth, that memory of a man who’d been sweet and charming and full of the future. 

She wondered if Raylan remembered some of that version of Bowman too, because when he smiled back it looked a little sad. 

Ava returned her attention to playing hostess. “What do you want in your drink?” 

“Just ice.” Raylan was lingering in the entryway of the kitchen, several feet away, always meeting her eyes when she glanced over at him. No standing a little too close, no letting his eyes drift a few inches south. Ava poured his drink and handed it to him, their fingers brushing against each other for a moment, and Ava’s breath caught as she glimpsed something silhouetting him. Just a flash and then it was gone, Raylan seemingly none the wiser, but Ava was non-human enough to know the flicker of a glamour when she saw it. 

So. Raylan Givens was another supernatural. Hardly a surprise, with an aunt who was a witch, being from Harlan where magic ran thick and deep. S.I.C. had been a mistake indeed, and he was damn lucky to have escaped them. 

She hadn’t glimpsed past the glamour long enough to guess at his species though, and it would be rude to ask, despite her sudden burning curiosity. 

“When did Bowman turn nasty?” Raylan asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.” He added the last in a hurry, like he hadn’t realized until he asked that it wasn’t really any of his business. 

Ava shrugged, pouring Dr. Pepper into her own glass. “When he realized he was never getting out of Harlan. It was my fault, he said. My fault he had to dig coal. My fault that I had a miscarriage after he beat me with his belt and he didn’t have a son to take hunting with him and his creepy brothers.” She took a longer drink than was necessary and dumped some more whiskey into the glass. 

How long had it been since she’d talked to someone who wasn’t Bowman, a coworker, or a customer anyway? How long since anyone had addressed Bowman and her bruises head-on? How long since she’d been allowed to be angry, or scared, or anything but demure, polite, perfect little Ava ? 

She took another drink. “But as lovely as it is to see you, Raylan, I don’t see how my shooting my husband is any business of the marshals.”

Raylan tipped his head in polite agreement. “Actually, I’m here to talk about your brother-in-law.” 

Ava rolled her eyes. “Which one, and what has he done this time?” 

The door banged open before Raylan could answer and Ava jumped, moving towards where Lambert was leaned up against the wall. Raylan was in front of her, moving to the front door, setting his drink down and moving his hat to his left hand so his right could rest on the butt of his gun. 

And coming in the door was one of the previously mentioned brothers-in-law. Dewey, to be exact, tripping over his own feet like he hadn’t been in the house a hundred times and had forgotten where the step was. 

His eyes found Raylan before he spotted Ava and he froze in obvious bewilderment. “Who in the hell are you, the undertaker?” 

Raylan put his hat on. “I might be undertaking a situation here.” 

There was that flicker again, the idea that there was something more to Raylan than Ava could see with just her eyes. A supernatural sending up a warning that he was a threat to be reckoned with. 

Dewey, unsurprisingly, didn’t seem to notice, just tilted his head up, trying to look impressive himself. 

“It’s Dewey, right?” Raylan asked. He glanced over at Ava. “One of the Crowder boys.” 

Dewey tilted his chin up a little more, enough to make him start looking ridiculous and Ava had to stifle a giggle when she realized he was trying to make up for the way Raylan was nearly half a foot taller than him. “Yeah. Who the hell are you?” 

“They still call you Dewey Crow?” Raylan asked. “Or did you grow out of that?” 

Dewey frowned, face flushing. “What’s it to you?” 

“They still call him that,” Ava answered. “His brothers never let him forget it.” Dewey had never been winning academic awards, had given up on learning to spell his last name four letters in, and that was still stuck to him now, forty years later. 

“Shut the hell-” Dewey started.

“No need to get defensive,” Raylan said easily. His tone was light, but Ava didn’t miss that his hand was still on his gun. “Just taking a walk down memory lane. You buy that necklace, Dewey, or did you poach the gator and yank the teeth out?” 

Dewey always had been easy to distract and he straightened up pridefully. “I shot her and ate her tail. Who are you?”

“Raylan Givens.” Raylan tapped the star on his belt. “Deputy United States Marshal. You remember me? I dug coal with your little brother, long time ago.” 

Dewey’s face was blank. 

“What are you doing here, Dewey Crow?” Raylan asked. 

“I came to take Ava someplace,” Dewey said, as though he’d just remembered. “Come on, Ava.” He took a step toward her. Raylan put a hand on his chest. 

“Let me tell you something,” Raylan said, like he and Dewey were having a chat about football scores. “You don’t walk into a person’s house unless you’re invited. So what you better do is go on outside and knock on the door. And then Ava will let you know if she wants to see you. And if she does, she’ll let you in. And if she doesn’t, you’ll be on your way.” 

Dewey stared at him. Ava had watched the Crowders nudge their family hierarchy around enough times to know that he was sizing Raylan up. “All right,” he agreed. “I’m gonna go out. And then I’m coming back in.” 

He walked out the door. 

“What are-” Ava began. 

“Stay inside a minute,” Raylan said, and followed Dewey out the door.

Ava picked up Lambert and moved to the dining room window, standing on the stain Bowman had left, watching the men. Dewey had pulled a gun out of the trunk of the car and was fumbling to load it as he strode back toward the house. Raylan walked out to meet him like he didn’t have a care in the world. 

“Dewey, you better hold on there a sec while I explain something to you.” Raylan didn’t sound the least bit impressed. No one was ever really impressed by Dewey, but Ava would have expected a bit more of a reaction to the gun pointed at his chest. Raylan didn’t even have a hand on his own anymore. “I want you to understand,” Raylan went on, all polite and casual, “I don’t pull my sidearm unless I’m gonna shoot to kill. That’s its purpose, right? To kill? So that’s how I use it. I want you to think about that before you act and it’s too late.” 

“Jesus Christ, I got a scattergun pointed right at you,” Dewey said, and Ava knew him well enough to hear a faint tremble in his voice. 

“Can you rack in a load before I put a hole through you?” Raylan asked, sounding genuine, as though he really wanted to know what Dewey thought. 

Ten full seconds ticked by. Dewey didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Finally, Raylan did, striding forward. Ava gasped, tightening her grip on her rifle, but Dewey still didn’t react, not even as Raylan snatched the gun out of his hands and threw Dewey into the front seat of his car. 

“Where’d you want to take Ava?” Raylan asked, the politeness gone from his tone. 

“Man, I don’t understand you.”

“Boyd want to see her?” 

“It’s none of your business.” 

“Well, I want to see Boyd. Like I said, he and I dug coal together. Drank beer. We were pretty good buddies, once upon a time. He ever tell you that? I’d like to catch up. You see him, you tell him I’m back in Harlan.” Raylan unloaded the scattergun and tossed it through the car window into Dewey’s passenger seat. “And, just because you’re my old buddy’s big brother, I’ll give you some advice. Give up this Nazi bullshit, go back down to Florida, and keep poaching gators. It’s safer.” He patted the windowsill. “Remember, Raylan Givens. I’m sure Boyd remembers me.” 

And with that Raylan turned and came back to the house. Dewey sat in his car for a few stunned seconds, and then drove away. Ava could feel his embarrassment all the way down the road. 

“Impressive,” she said when Raylan came back in.

He chuckled. “Dewey wasn’t all that impressive twenty years ago, and I’ve seen far worse since.” 

“Thank you for chasing him off.” 

Raylan nodded. “So, back to the matter at hand?” 

“Boyd the brother-in-law you wanted to talk about?” 

“That’s right.” Raylan returned to the kitchen, picked up his drink, and took his hat off again. “We’re investigating him for a bombing up in Lexington. But he doesn’t have a registered address. I don’t suppose you know where to find him?” 

Ava gestured out the front window. “You don’t think Dewey will pass on your invitation?” 

“The Boyd Crowder I knew never liked meeting on other people’s terms.” 

“Sounds about right. He and Bowman about drove each other crazy. Especially since Dewey and Devil prefer Boyd’s company to Bowman’s.” 

“I imagine that won’t stop Boyd from avenging his brother.” 

“Probably not.” Ava had considered the same, but the threat didn’t feel real, somehow. Shock, probably. Some part of her not registering that Bowman was well and truly dead and she had lost her best piece of armor. 

Good riddance to him, even if the other Crowders did come seeking revenge. 

“We can protect you,” Raylan said. “The marshals.” 

“I don’t much like the idea of being babysat, Raylan.” Raylan might have grown up into a pretty decent man, but Ava doubted his coworkers would be so willing to keep their eyes on her face. “But if you’re looking for Boyd, I do know where you can find him.”

The bank robbery went off without a hitch, despite Devil’s nerves, chewing on his nails and all but begging Boyd not to bait the security guard, and Boyd was in high spirits when he returned to their base of operations. Dewey was there already, visibly sulking, with no Ava in sight. 

“Ava gave you trouble, did she?” Boyd asked, laughing a little. 

“She had company,” Dewey said. “I had to run him off, and Ava took off while I did.” 

“Company?” Boyd repeated. “What kind of company?” 

“Some U.S. Marshal.” Dewey gave Boyd a look that was almost accusing, like Boyd had somehow tricked him into running into a marshal. “Said he knew you. Said you were buddies.” 

Devil and one of their commandos were still close enough to hear - everyone else had run off to celebrate their most recent criminal triumph with all the booze they could find - and looked at Boyd in obvious bafflement.  

Boyd frowned. There was a lot funny about Dewey’s story, not the least of it being that no federal agent was going to be chased anywhere by Dewey . What would federals want with Ava, and what federal would claim to-

Boyd’s heart skipped a beat, seized up for a moment. He did know one marshal, didn’t he? Frances Givens had said something to someone about Raylan becoming a marshal years ago, a rumor that had spread through the town like a wildfire, and Frances had been sporting a fresh black eye the next time anyone had seen her. Boyd had quietly watched for Raylan in the news after that, had found him there a few times. The last time had been just a week ago, telling him that Raylan was in Florida, gunning down cartel thugs.

Raylan Givens would never come back to Kentucky, he told himself firmly, much less Harlan. He’d hated it here. And he wouldn’t be looking for Boyd, if he did come back. “This marshal tell you his name?” he drawled, making sure he looked bored and skeptical. 

“Raylan Givens.” 

Boyd closed his eyes. Felt a phantom mouth on his and wondered if the decades since had made him imagine the kiss as better than it was. Wondered if Raylan liked being a marshal, if he liked going to all the places they sent him to. 

He had come back. Boyd didn’t know why and in that moment he didn’t much care - Raylan Givens had returned and was looking for him . So what if he was looking for him to arrest him or shoot him or whatever else? He was back. 

No one noticed Boyd’s reaction, because Devil had promptly moved to Dewey and smacked him upside his head. “You know Raylan Givens, idiot. We all do.” 

Dewey scowled, rubbing his head. “I didn’t recognize him.” 

“That’s ‘cause you’re too stupid to breathe.” 

“Alright, alright,” Boyd said, gesturing to both of his brothers to stand down. “The marshals probably think they can get me to talk if they send someone I know; nevermind that it’s been twenty years since Raylan and I last saw each other.” Would the memory of that last meeting make Raylan more or less friendly to him? Did Raylan even bother remembering it? “You just let me deal with him,” Boyd told his men, “if he comes around here.” 

And he did come around, just a few hours later, climbing out of a town car, a white cowboy hat on his head like he was supposed to be in the movies, sitting atop an impossibly white horse. 

The fire that Raylan had lit in Boyd’s gut so long ago came roaring back to life. There was hearing about Raylan and there was seeing Raylan, sporting that new old cowboy hat and smiling that same smile, the one that hid whether he was happy or not but still made him shine like the glow of the lanterns in the depths of Myrtle Creek Mine. 

Boyd strode out of the church their trailers were camped around, arms flung wide. “Look at you! A suit, a necktie.” Raylan wouldn’t have been caught dead in a suit twenty years ago, was always in flannels and jeans, kept himself neat, but never half so professional. “Looking good. Looking like a lawman.” 

Boyd offered a hug and Raylan took it and Boyd could have stayed there for the rest of his damn life. He felt like a teenager again, felt like he’d come back to life after an eternity of being so bored he could cry. 

Boyd looked up at the hat and glanced up the church steps at Devil, who had followed him down despite Boyd saying there was no need. “Now see, this is how you wear a hat, all casual. Not down on your goddamned ears like you do.” 

Devil made a face at him, unimpressed. Boyd turned his attention back to Raylan. “I heard you called on Ava. Dewey said he had to run you off.” 

Raylan looked at him like they had a secret - which of course they did - and asked, “You believe that?”

“Not if you say it ain’t so.” I’d trust your word over any lawyer’s. It had been twenty years and Raylan was certain to have changed, was sporting that badge like he was born with it on his hip, but Boyd couldn’t imagine Raylan Givens as a liar. And even when a man was your enemy, there was something to be said for an enemy you could trust. 

Devil, who never could read a room, interrupted, saying, “Shit, I’ll take care of him.” 

Raylan didn’t even twitch. He’d always known a threat when he saw one. He knew Devil wasn’t going to do anything. 

Boyd waved Devil off, sent him to fetch him and Raylan some moonshine. I’ve made it too, Raylan. May not be driving a fancy towncar, but people listen when I talk, even those arrogant bastard brothers of mine. “He just got his release,” he told Raylan, jerking his head after Devil, “so he’s feeling a little itchy.”

Raylan laughed. “I can tell.” 

Boyd realized he was smiling, full and unironic, and how long had it been since he’d done that? Over a man he hadn’t seen in two decades and who was probably here to make use of those handcuffs on his belt. 

Boyd found that he didn’t much care as he led Raylan inside, up the stairs to the church he’d made his base of operations. Raylan was back. 

They toasted to old times and Boyd watched as Raylan coughed on his moonshine. “You been gone too long,” he told his old friend, laughing at Raylan’s expression. It was like they were young men again, fresh out of high school and swapping their fathers’ illicit alcohol to see who really made it stronger, daring each other to jump over to Bennet county and get their hands on some of Mags Bennet’s apple pie. “So, what was life like in Florida?” 

If Raylan thought it odd that Boyd knew where he’d been stationed most recently he gave no sign of it, but Raylan had always been a damn good poker player. “Just as advertised,” he answered, in that easy, low tone that meant he wasn’t interested in having a real conversation about this, “sunny and hot.”

Boyd put the jar of moonshine back in the fridge. “You know, I just don’t think I could take me a place so flat.” He gave Raylan an appraising look, trying to remember that this was an opponent, that Raylan had not come just to chat, however wonderful that would have been. Boyd needed to get the measure of Raylan, and it was impossible to get the measure of a man if you kept him in a good mood. 

So Boyd changed the topic to the one subject he was certain would still be a sore point, even all these years later. “You been to see your daddy yet?” 

“No. Not yet.” Raylan’s expression switched to a calm, neutral one and Boyd had to look away for a moment to keep himself from rushing to bring back the smile. This was an enemy. 

“He was quite the wild man back in his day, wasn’t he? What was that scam he had going back in the early nineties?” You’d left by then, Raylan, remember that? Left in nineteen-eighty-nine, only called your mama on her birthday. “Stealing mining machinery, selling it to the Colombians, getting paid in cocaine? You remember that?” Boyd had heard all about it when he and Devil had returned from Kuwait, Bo first complaining about it, then seeing an opportunity in the contacts Arlo was unwittingly bringing in. 

“Guess I was gone by then,” Raylan said, tone flat. Boyd took a seat on one of the church pews and Raylan followed suit, watching him more closely now. There was a line of steel in his eyes now, one Boyd had always known could be there - no one could have thought otherwise, not after what happened with Dickie Bennet - but had never been so clear. Raylan wasn’t just made of steel now, he knew it. 

This is an enemy, Boyd reminded himself. This is a threat. 

But even as they poked at each other they were speaking like they’d seen each other a week ago, not twenty years, like they’d been best friends back then, not two men who only spoke after a shift at work. The odd, strong connection Boyd had always felt between them had flared back into life like it was nothing. 

“How’s your daddy?” Raylan asked. 

Boyd smiled but it wasn’t genuine this time. This was the police smile. The don’t ask me questions you know the answer to, don’t think you can catch me in a lie smile. “I suspect you know how my daddy is, Raylan.”

Raylan gave him a long look, then a small nod, admitting it, something that could have been an apology for the prod in his expression. 

This was an enemy, but Boyd so badly wanted to believe that it was only Raylan responding to the mention of Arlo, that Raylan hadn’t come looking to catch himself a commando.

“Those days are all long gone now,” Boyd said, and a pang in his heart told him he didn’t just mean the crime days of Arlo Givens. “Everything’s changed. Even the mine has changed. No more following a seam underground. Cheaper to take the tops off mountains and let the slag run down and ruin the creeks.” Boyd had hated the mines, but it was a goddamn tragedy what they’d turned into. What they were turning Harlan into. They’d been Harlan’s lifeblood, once, and now they were killing it. 

Raylan didn’t react, like he didn’t even remember those days, following the seam, digging out pieces of coal, coming out of the mines to the last flash of the sunset. 

“You remember the picket lines, don’t you, Raylan? Courts backing the company scabs and gun thugs. Whose side you think the government’s always been on, Raylan? Us, or the people with money?” His voice came out a little sharper than he’d expected it to and Raylan looked at him, eyebrow raised. 

Don’t tell me you buy into their bullshit, Raylan Givens. Don’t tell me you really did leave town and think you were on the side of the righteous, that you were protecting the little man. 

Old anger jumped in Boyd’s chest. Raylan had joined S.I.C., was a marshal now, was part of the system that was strangling Harlan under its boot. 

And here he was, drinking Boyd’s moonshine and making small talk. 

“Well?” Boyd asked. 

Raylan only shrugged. He didn’t want to have this conversation, and he damn well wasn’t going to. 

And Boyd wasn’t going to let him use his pretty face to pretend like he wasn’t one of those very scabs. “Well, it’s the people with money, Raylan.” He looked into Raylan’s face, reminding himself that this was an enemy and finding it a little easier to believe this time, thought of the badge on Raylan’s hip and everything it represented. 

Well, Raylan, how about this for kicking the hornets nest? “Who do you think controls that money?” And Boyd knew this speech by heart, didn’t need to go tailoring it for Raylan. “Who do you think wants to mongrelize the world?” 

“Who?” Raylan asked, and his tone was patronizing, just letting Boyd go. 

Do you even remember me as anything more than a name on a page, Raylan? Is that why you brought up my daddy, because you don’t remember? Am I just any other criminal to you?

“The Jews,” Boyd told him, and he sat back and waited for the reaction. 

Raylan finally twisted to look at him fully, cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Boyd, do you even know any Jews?” 

Boyd grinned. He had Raylan’s attention now, nevermind what kind of attention it was. Attention was all that mattered. It wasn’t about agreeing or being friends, wasn’t about knowing Jews or reading the Bible - it was about a common enemy, a common threat, a rallying cry. It was about holding Raylan’s attention by any means necessary. 

Boyd began to tell him about his work recruiting skins, giving him the same spiel he gave all his commandos, albeit with less zeal. But it worked, kept Raylan transfixed, no longer looking around the room - he’d been looking for Boyd’s men, Boyd realized. Expecting Boyd to have someone put a round in his back. I told you you’d never die by my hand, Raylan Givens, did you think I said that lightly?

“You’re serious?” Raylan asked when Boyd finished. 

“Read your Bible as interpreted by experts.” Boyd couldn’t help but grin because he always found that funny, that no one would ever say who those experts were. 

Raylan laughed and God the man had no right looking that beautiful when he was on the other side of the law, when Boyd was going to have to get him out of the way, one way or another, when Raylan had used their days digging coal to get an audience and now wouldn’t talk about the boys they’d used to be. “You know, Boyd, I think you just use the Bible to do whatever the hell you like.” 

“And what do you think I like, Raylan?” Boyd asked, watching Raylan closely. You remember me well enough to answer that? I’m not like you, Raylan, I didn’t change any. 

“You like to get money and blow shit up.” It was the most sure Raylan had sounded this whole conversation and Boyd couldn’t help but smile at it. He did like getting money and blowing shit up. 

He also liked getting to talk to someone as smart as he was, someone who looked at him a little annoyed and a little amused and saw straight to the heart of the matter, liked that a lot more than he wanted to.

“I know about Devil’s record selling dope,” Raylan went on, “And I am willing to bet that you blew up that church in Lexington, not because it was black, but because it was a dope store. Ten-to-one says you got paid to do it by some other dope dealer around who didn’t like the idea of that preacher getting a free pass from the police.” 

Boyd almost wanted Raylan to go back to staying quiet because Boyd couldn’t remember the last time someone had so effortlessly seen through his bullshit and it was delightful. It was challenging and exhilarating and Boyd was so pleased by it that he almost admitted to blowing up the church just so he could properly hand Raylan his win.

“Win-win for you, wasn’t it, Boyd? Not only did you get to blow something to smithereens, you got money.” 

Win-win-win, Boyd thought despite himself. Brought you down here to see me too.

Enemy. Threat. A worthy enemy, a threat that warranted his full attention, both of which were things to be grateful for, but Boyd couldn’t go having Raylan take a wrecking ball to the life he’d built for himself. And Boyd was feeling a bit more settled, had shaken off the worst of the delight of seeing Raylan again. He met Raylan’s eyes dead-on, steady, and saw his own steel reflected in Raylan’s eyes. 

Now we’re getting to the heart of it. Now we’re getting to why you’re here, now we’re getting to how those days in the mines don’t mean anything after all these years, now we’re getting to how our lives are a bad western movie and this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. 

“You aren’t mental,” Raylan said, no doubt in his voice. “I know you’re not stupid enough to belive that mud people story.” 

Boyd felt a muscle jump in his jaw, felt his eyes burn just a little red, clenched his fists and felt that his nails were a little sharper than normal. You think you know me? You think you can just remember the things about me that suit you? Remember how I'm smart, forget I'm one of those werewolves the SIC told you to hate? Won’t even do me the decency of remembering everything? Just pick and choose the truths you want, Raylan, they taught you real good when they gave you that badge and gun and put Uncle Sam’s collar on your neck. 

Boyd had always known how to twist a knife, and Raylan was easy to read, even all these years later. “You think you know me?” Boyd asked, catching Raylan’s gaze and holding it. If you do remember that kiss I bet you don’t know what to think of it. Bet you’re too scared to wonder about it . And Boyd wasn’t going to think about how he never wondered about it either. “Well, I know you , Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens. I know you like to shoot bad people. I heard about that gun thug you shot in that hotel in Miami.” 

And he had the upper hand now, watched Raylan’s face crumple back into a little bit of shame, like a boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “You heard about that.” 

“Oh yeah. We have TVs down here now, Raylan.” What’s the matter, Raylan? Don’t like when the tables turn? Boyd pressed the knife in deeper, twisted it a little harder. Raylan’s weak spot had always been visible from space, and he’d already confirmed it hadn’t changed, hadn’t he? “At any point, when you were looking at that gun thug, did you see your daddy’s face?” At any point when you were killing supernaturals for the S.I.C., did you see mine? But Boyd wasn’t brave enough to go asking that last one, not yet. 

And they were done playing around. Raylan’s smile before must have been genuine, because the one he was giving now most certainly wasn’t. “The reason I’m here, we’re having a little line-up tomorrow at the courthouse.” He was showing as many teeth as a werewolf and his eyes were cold. “We got a witness, saw a man with a bazooka blow up a church. Now, I would appreciate it if you’d be in that line-up.”

“I bet you would.”  

Raylan put his hat back on, reached for his jacket. “Show up, or we’ll come get you.” 

Boyd watched him for a moment, and then words burst out of him, like they couldn’t be controlled. “Let me ask you a question,” He wasn’t sure why he was still poking the tiger, now that Raylan had lost interest in continuing their reunion, but he was unable to stop. He spread his arms, an invitation, cocked his chin up, a challenge. “Would you shoot me, if you got the chance?” 

He didn’t know what answer he wanted. You won’t die by my hand, Raylan Givens. I’d trust your word over any lawyer’s. Had their paths split so far that the man who’d once run with him out of the mouth of a crumbling mine would put a round in his heart? 

“You make me pull, I’ll put you down,” Raylan said, which wasn’t quite an answer. Yes, but Raylan, would you want to? Would you wish it had gone differently? I knew you wouldn’t come back to Harlan, but did you ever think about it? Did you ever wonder if that kiss could have been a beginning, instead of a goodbye?

Raylan strode out of the church and Boyd drained the jar of moonshine. 

Raylan had lost sleep over a lot of things. Arlo, his mother, his Aunt Helen, the lost dog that had ran away from him next to the highway, never to be seen again. He’d even lost sleep over Boyd Crowder and his mouth a few times, back when he’d been nineteen and fresh out of Harlan, feeling lonely and every inch a hick. 

He hadn’t expected to lose sleep over Boyd now, at forty years old, in a hotel room because he was too stubborn to go apartment hunting. 

“We dug coal together,” he’d told Art, and had hoped his face didn’t show him thinking about their drinking sessions, their smoke breaks, the way Boyd had looked at him in those seconds before the kiss. Hoped Art couldn’t see the way Raylan’s memories had come up like a tsunami and threatened to pulverize him. 

But good god, Boyd had really learned to go for the jugular in the last two decades. Or maybe he’d always been good at that and had just never aimed it at Raylan. 

Raylan wished Boyd had opened with it, or that he had rolled up and started a fight about Boyd needing to leave his sister-in-law be, about the Patriot Movement, about Dewey, about the church bombing. But instead Boyd had come out grinning, arms open, and Raylan had been… 

Well, he’d been happy to see him. They hadn’t been buddies, but Boyd had made Raylan feel seen . He wasn’t Arlo Givens’s boy, he wasn’t the best looking boy in school, he wasn’t Harlan High’s best batter. Boyd had never made him feel like anyone but Raylan Givens, for better or worse. 

Today it had been worse. Did you see your daddy’s face? He hadn’t, hadn’t seen anyone but Tommy Bucks, but he knew what Boyd meant. He knew Boyd was right . He liked to catch bad guys - and maybe even to kill them sometimes - because his daddy was a bad guy. 

And now Boyd had him all worked up and confused, thinking about things he hadn’t thought about in twenty years. Things like if it was acceptable for him to be wearing this badge when it was so deeply rooted in how he wanted to screw over one criminal in particular. Things like what kind of person did he like kissing. 

He’d put that kiss out of his mind once he’d joined the marshals. Once he wasn’t watching people argue about how it was all right to commit atrocities against supernaturals, once he didn’t have to see werewolves who’d lost their minds to the experiments. He’d stopped imagining it was someone he knew collared up in front of him, had gotten his feet under him at Glynco, and he’d put Boyd Crowder and the rest of Harlan behind him. 

He’d been damn good at avoiding thinking about anything involving his days before the marshals. No S.I.C., no Harlan. He’d played things safe and normal and simple and when his relationships inevitably fell apart he said it was because his first love was his job. And that was a really nice excuse, right up until his most complicated kiss showed up in his path and now he was a racist and a criminal and was probably planning to shoot his sister-in-law in the head sooner rather than later, but Raylan couldn’t think about anything other than Did it mean something back then? Does it mean anything now? If you didn’t feel something for me, why did you smile so wide at the sight of me? If you do feel something for me, why are you spewing that bullshit about Jews being the evil at the heart of society?  

And why the hell did Raylan care about any of it? Things had been simple in Miami, everyone drowned out in the sea of anonymity that came with big cities. Now he couldn’t turn a corner without finding someone he knew, and he was ashamed to look any of them in the eye. He wasn’t even sure what he was ashamed of, only that this wasn’t a place he was welcome. 

Even if those first few minutes, letting Boyd pour him a glass of moonshine, trying - and failing - to drink it without coughing, had felt like climbing out of the mine at the end of the day, trying to think up his best bullshit stories to give them something to laugh about. Even surrounded by swastikas and confederate flags, it had felt like Boyd and him had snuck in somewhere they weren't meant to be, and it had hurt more than it should have when Boyd had rubbed in that it was all his.

Raylan rolled over with more force than necessary, wondering if a few swigs of whiskey might make his mind stop whirring. He hoped that preacher identified Boyd tomorrow, so he could put Boyd in cuffs and behind bars and never think about him again. 

I know you, Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens. And the frightening thing about that was he wasn't sure if knew himself. 

The preacher did not identify Boyd. Raylan supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised - Boyd could be intimidating when he wanted to be, even Raylan could see that, even through the haze of nostalgia and having met far more frightening people over the years. And if the preacher knew Boyd was a werewolf? They shouldn’t have wasted their time. 

Boyd waited for Raylan to walk him out of the courthouse, smirking. Raylan let himself do it, telling himself it was an opportunity for a warning, or an interrogation. 

“Well,” Boyd said, a shit-eating grin on his face, “I did my part. I showed up.” 

“You liked the idea of walking past a room of law enforcement,” Raylan replied. “Especially since you knew that preacher didn’t have the balls to pick you.” 

Boyd only smiled wider. “It’s always good to see you, Raylan,” he lied. “Hey, you mind if I ask you a question?” 

“Something tells me you’ll ask regardless.” 

“You know that man you shot in Florida? Dewey spends a lot of time down there, has some friends he poaches gators with. His friend heard a rumor you gave that gun thug twenty-four hours to get out of town or you’d shoot him on sight. That true?” 

God, had everyone heard? “I gave him the option to leave Miami, he turned it down.” 

Boyd’s face went a little more serious, his eyes as unblinking as they’d ever been when they were kids, holding Raylan’s gaze. “What would you say if I made you the same offer? That you get out of Kentucky by tomorrow noon or I’m gonna come looking for you?”

Raylan had to smile, just a little. He should have known, as soon as he’d bought his hat, that his life was going to turn into a cheesy western film. “Now we’re talking.” 

Boyd held his gaze a few moments longer, making sure they understood each other, then nodded, just once, and strode out of the courthouse. 

Raylan gave a heavy sigh. He’d given in and had a shot of whiskey as a sleep aid the night before, and now he had a headache to go with being tired. Boyd’s smirk seemed to be burned into the backs of his eyelids, waiting for him every time he tried to rest. 

“Is this the glamorous life of the U.S. Marshals?” a voice asked, and Raylan looked up to see Ava standing on the landing of the courthouse stairs, a teasing smile on her face. 

Raylan managed a weary smile in return. “Ain’t no rest for the wicked, right? What are you doing here?”

Ava nodded her head up the stairs. “My lawyer’s talking to the judge. I am heading outside for a cigarette, because I’ve talked about blasting my husband’s chest open about as much as I can stand for one day. Want to join me?” 

“Sure. It’s my lunch break.” He wasn’t ready to go back up to the marshal’s office, to report to Art what Boyd had said. He threatened to kill me, Art, and you’re going to think of that as good news. A boy who once asked for immunity before he kissed me just told me he was going to kill me, and all it will mean to you is that we can put him away.  

Raylan pushed thoughts of Boyd from his mind with great difficulty, following Ava outside and guiding her around the corner where her cigarette smoke wouldn’t bother anyone. 

“No one cares in Harlan,” she said as she lit up, looking around. “Hell, I’d be allowed to smoke while doing ladies’ hair if we weren’t worried about the hairspray gettin’ excited.” 

“Make the day more exciting for the fire department,” Raylan pointed out. 

Ava laughed. “Well, someone ought to be getting some excitement out in Harlan. I swear, sometimes I think the Crowder clan just picks fights for the thrill of it.” 

“Sounds like Boyd,” Raylan said. “I don’t know the others well, but I’ll believe it of them too.” 

“You find him yesterday?” 

“I did.” 

“Get what you want from him?” 

Not even close. “We wanted him to come up here and stand in a line-up. You’re lucky, you just missed him.” 

Ava wrinkled her nose. “I gather from your face that he didn’t get picked?” 

“No. He’s good at what he does, I have to give him that.” 

Ava took a long drag from her cigarette, let the smoke finish billowing out of her mouth before she asked, “Were you really buddies back in the day, you and Boyd? Or did you just say that to make Dewey think twice about shooting you?” 

“We dug coal together. Feels like a damn lifetime ago now.” 

“Well, it ought to. You’ve lived a few lives since then, haven’t you, Raylan?” 

Raylan looked at her for a moment, then looked away, out across the street, as he realized what she meant. “Helen told me the whole town had heard.” 

“And then some. You’re lucky you were well out of reach by then. Some folks were fit to go hunting you down for that. Can’t say I’d have disagreed with them.” 

“Can’t say I would have either.” 

“So why do it?” 

“Didn’t see that I had a lot of options.” Raylan shook his head. “I’d expect you to know, Ava. When your life’s on the line, your morals don’t seem to matter much.” 

“You left S.I.C. eventually.” 

Raylan nodded. “Can’t stay in survival mode forever. And some of the things I saw while I was there… I think I could put down a murderer a day for the rest of my life and not balance out the things I saw and didn’t stop.” 

Raylan had spent about six years dating a woman in Utah, Winona, who had been the first - and to date only - person he’d told about S.I.C. without them already knowing. When he’d told her how he’d just watched as they strapped a witch to a cold metal bed and stripped his familiar away, the man howling in an emotion so far past terror as to surpass classification, she had laid a hand on his arm and squeezed, told him it was all right, that he shouldn’t be blaming himself for things he couldn’t help.

Ava did not put a hand on his arm. She watched him, smoking her cigarette. “You leave on your own?” she asked. “Or did they fire you?” 

“Depends on who you ask. I’d been bucking at them awhile. Worked a case with the marshals. My job was to keep them from realizing - or at least from saying - that it was anything but some crazy guy with a knife. The marshal in charge noticed I was sabotaging them. Got me to tell him why. The guy got away, Art put in a request to have me transferred to the marshals, and S.I.C. was all too happy to let me go.”

“And now you’re back here.” 

“And now I’m back here.”

“You after Boyd ‘cause he’s a criminal? Or ‘cause he’s a werewolf?”

I haven’t even made sure Art knows he’s a werewolf. “Because he’s a criminal, Ava. If there’s one thing S.I.C. drilled into my head, it’s that there’s nothing criminal about having a couple superpowers.” 

“I don’t imagine that’s what they were trying to teach.” 

“Well, I never claimed to be an ace student.” 

Ava snorted. “No, I remember half the school making fun of you after the spelling bee.” 

Raylan rolled his eyes. “I hate small towns. I tell you that yet?”

“Well, it’s good to know it isn’t personal to Harlan.” 

“You’re not telling me you like Harlan?” 

Ava shrugged. “It ain’t much. But it’s my home.”

“You aren’t planning on leaving then? Getting away from the memories of Bowman? If you don’t go to jail, that is?” 

She shook her head. “My lawyer’s working out details with the judge, but it’s looking like I’ll get off with probation if I plead to manslaughter. I wouldn’t care if I did go to prison though. It was worth it. Bowman’s had that shot coming a long time. And that house is just as much mine as his. He couldn’t chase me out of it while he was alive, I’ll be damned if I let his memory do it.” 

Raylan would have been more concerned about the neighbors, in Ava’s shoes. Small towns talked, and judged, and circled like coyotes around anything that dared to show weakness. To say nothing of the Crowders themselves, who would go seeking revenge for their pride, at least. 

He’d meant to tell Boyd to stay away from Ava. It had slipped his mind somehow. It didn’t really matter, he told himself, it wasn’t as though Boyd would listen, but the fact that Boyd had made him forget about it was concerning. The sooner he got Boyd behind bars, where Raylan wouldn’t have to think about him anymore, the better. 

And he needed to go upstairs and tell Art that Boyd had threatened to kill him. 

He stood with Ava for a quiet few minutes, trying to think of something else to ask. Any conversation topic that would keep him away from work for a few more minutes. 

He wanted to go back to Florida. Things had never been so fucking complicated in Florida. 

“You should come by for dinner sometime,” Ava said suddenly. 

Raylan looked at her, surprised. “Me?” 

She rolled her eyes. “You see anyone else here, Raylan? Just as friends, mind you. But you’re a good conversationalist and you haven’t tried to look down my shirt once, which puts you well above most of my dinner guests. I make a mean fried chicken.” She beamed at him. 

Raylan was tempted. It had been a long time since he’d had a home-cooked meal. But- “You’re part of an ongoing investigation, Ava. It wouldn’t be appropriate.” 

She snorted. “What’s the difference between you having dinner with me and you keeping me company while I smoke?”

“Public opinion. Who’s going to believe that I’m driving three hours down to Harlan to have dinner with you for purely platonic reasons?” 

“Anyone who’s ever tried my chicken.”

That surprised a laugh out of Raylan. “Well, I’ll think about it, all right?” 

“You do that. I’m going to be feeding myself like a queen, now that Bowman isn’t around to make snide remarks on if I really need a second piece of pie.”

“Of course you do,” Raylan said. “Who’s ever done after one piece?” 

Ava beamed at him. She finished her cigarette, ground it out on the brick of the courthouse, and said, “Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to my lawyer. And I assume the marshals don’t pay you to hang around outside and make small talk.” 

“‘Fraid not,” Raylan admitted. Art would be wondering where he was by now. 

He walked Ava back inside and parted ways with her on the second floor. At the last moment he handed her his card, his cell phone number printed carefully on the back. “I want you to call me if Boyd - or anyone else - gives you any trouble, all right?”

Ava took it, though she looked amused at the idea. “And you’ll come screaming to the rescue from three hours away, will you?” 

“I’ll do my best.” 

She rolled her eyes. “What a hero. Alright, Raylan, I’ll keep that in mind. And you call me if you ever decide you want to do dinner.”

He dutifully took down her number and watched her walk away, lingering longer than necessary in the hall, trying to delay the inevitable. 

Boyd Crowder threatened to kill me.

Boyd felt more alive than he had in years. Thought you could trap me, did you, Raylan? Thought I was such a raw rookie I’d have gotten close enough for that preacher to get a good look at me? You think you’re that much smarter than me?

“The marshals will try to set a trap for me,” Boyd told his men, and he didn’t need to act to keep the fear off his face because there was no fear, only a frenetic excitement. Boyd had always loved playing with fire, and things were really burning now. “I’ll need you boys to distract them while I take care of our Deputy Givens.” Mine, he thought. My Deputy Givens. You boys ain’t worth the dirt on his shoes, he wouldn’t spare any one of you the time of day. 

He gave Devil and Dewey the safer job of tailing Raylan. The rest could deal with whatever team of bodyguards Raylan moved to hide behind. They might bag themselves a few marshals, which would only serve to heighten Boyd’s reputation, really get people thinking twice about messing with him. Or maybe they’d all get themselves killed and Boyd wouldn’t have to look at their dumb, sheep-like faces anymore. Either way, he’d win. Because he was after Raylan. And Raylan would come, he had no doubt about that. Spook Ava a little bit and Raylan would come running to the side of the beautiful damsel in distress, like he’d escaped his role as the hero in an old western. 

You’ll come to save her from the claws of the big, bad wolf, won’t you, Raylan? Boyd thought as he paced up and down the hall of the trailer, waiting for an update, waiting to be told it was time for the trap to spring. Nasty old Boyd, who grew up to be some common thug, picking on poor, helpless Ava. That’ll get your attention. And you won’t be able to leave when it suits you, no sir. You’ll leave when I say so. I’m in charge now, Raylan. You’ll see.

And then? Oh, he didn’t know. He couldn’t plan around Raylan. Not contrary, stubborn, I-play-baseball-because-my-daddy-prefers-football Raylan. That was the fun of it. He’d come whirling into Boyd’s trap, Boyd had no doubts about that, but then? Oh, then the fun would begin. Because Raylan would be trying to guess what was in Boyd’s head and Boyd would be trying to guess what was in Raylan’s and anything, anything, could happen then. Boyd loved a good surprise and no one had ever been so good at surprising him as Raylan. 

Maybe he’d shoot Raylan. Maybe Raylan would shoot him. Maybe they’d fire off together, like the end of a tragic cowboy film, and they’d both draw their last breaths at Bowman’s dining room table. 

And sure, Boyd was cheating a little by not giving Raylan his full twenty-four hours, but that was all part of the game. Part of the unpredictability of it all, part of keeping Raylan off-guard, part of keeping Raylan’s attention on him, where it should be, instead of all over the room like Boyd hardly warranted a glance. 

Besides, what if he gave Raylan that full twenty-four hours and Raylan took it? Where would Boyd be then? Bored out of his skull with an itch he couldn’t scratch, that was where. No, no, this was far better. 

Or it would be, if one of his men would hurry up and-

His phone finally rang and Boyd barely caught himself from answering it on the first buzz. ABCs, Boyd. Always Be Cool. You can’t let them know how worked up you are about this. Can’t let them know that you know you might be sending them to their deaths. They might figure it out then, and you’d get to see what cowards they really are. 

Boyd took a breath, counted to five, let the phone get to its third ring before he brought it to his ear. “Yeah?” 

It was Devil. “He’s at a motel with his friends.” 

“Well, are our friends ready to go?” 

“Yep. What do you want us to do now?” 

Boyd took a deep breath, taking himself in in the closet mirror. “Sit tight. I’ll give you the signal soon.” 

It was time to see his sister-in-law.

Cooking was a lot more fun when Ava wasn’t worrying if it’d all be properly hot when Bowman got home. More fun when she could taste test as she went without Bowman making snide comments about her not knowing how to follow a damn recipe. 

There was a knock at the door and she jumped a little, smiling despite herself. So Raylan had taken her offer after all. She’d thought he looked lonely. It took one to know one, after all. He’d probably have an excuse, of course, tell her he’d agreed because he wanted to ask her some more questions about Boyd, or he was worried Boyd was going to come hunting for her, and it was coincidence that she’d been making dinner-

She should have brought her rifle to the door. It wasn’t Raylan Givens standing there, the screen door already held open in his hand. It was Boyd Crowder, eyes bright and wild, half a grin on his face. “Hey, Ava. May I come in?” 

He waited for her to step back before coming over the threshold, a mockery of permission. It was one of the many things Ava couldn’t stand about Boyd, the way he’d make it look like you had control to any outside observer. She’d spent the better part of two decades watching him do it to Bowman, had bought it hook, line, and sinker until the first time she’d seen them fight and it had struck her that Boyd had never been anything less than perfectly in command. That in this one, solitary instance, Devil and Dewey had the right of it. Boyd was the Crowder worth following. 

Another thing she couldn’t stand about Boyd was that he never seemed to fucking blink, and she could never tell what he was looking at. He was doing it now, stepping into the house with a horrible focus on his face that Ava didn’t think was likely to work out well for her. “I had to go up to Lexington today,” Boyd said conversationally, looking around the house like he’d never seen it before. “I was invited to the courthouse.” 

Ava didn’t say anything to that. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t pointing out that ‘invitation’ wasn’t how she’d describe being ordered to stand in a lineup. 

“Saw you while I was there,” Boyd continued. “Thought about saying hello, but you looked occupied. Didn’t want to interrupt your conversation with Raylan.” 

“That’s mighty thoughtful of you, Boyd.” 

Boyd gestured at the stove. “You expecting him to come by for dinner?” 

“Just not used to cooking for one yet.” 

He gave her a come on, now look. “In that case, I think you should give Raylan a call. Tell him to hurry up and come help you eat it, huh?” 

Boyd wasn’t all that big of a guy, really. Only an inch taller than Ava herself, and far slighter than his father and brothers. But there was an effortless intimidation factor that rolled off him, warning that he didn’t like to be argued with, that his temper was kept on a fine trigger. And Ava had seen him in his wolf form exactly once, white foam around white teeth, surrounded by fur so white it hurt to look at. And those burning red eyes. It hadn’t mattered that Bowman towered a full two feet above his brother when in wolf form - it had been Boyd that had made Ava step back that day. 

She didn’t want to see that again. “Sure,” she said, forcing a smile. “Good idea.”

“Don’t tell him I’m here, all right? He and I are old friends. I’d like to surprise him.” 

Ava nodded. She found the card Raylan had given her and dialed the phone with shaky hands. “You’ll miss one hell of a dinner if you don’t hurry up,” she said instead of a hello when Raylan picked up. Her voice was trembling. 

Raylan was quiet on the other end for a long moment. Ava’s heart pounded in her ears. Then, “I’m on my way.” And the line clicked off. 

Ava hung up. 

“He on his way?” Boyd asked. 

“Yes.” 

Boyd grinned. “Well then. Need any help preparing dinner?”

And to her surprise, he did help. He hovered by her elbow and handed her things out of the fridge, laid out dishes on the table. Two places, one on each end. 

“Which end did Bowman prefer?” he asked, once the food was laid out. 

Ava nodded towards where the carpet and wall were still outlined with the stains from the blood and the bleach. It had been just forty-eight hours, she realized. Forty-eight hours since she’d shot her husband dead. It felt like it had been an eternity. It felt like it might have never happened at all, and Bowman would be home any minute. 

“What are you doing?” she asked Boyd. 

Boyd sat down in Bowman’s old chair, and if the stains bothered him his face gave no sign of it. “I’m going to have dinner with an old friend,” he told her, and pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans. He set it beside his plate like it was a hat or his cell phone. 

“There a reason you’re having this dinner in my house?” 

“Well, I didn’t think he was likely to come to mine.” 

“You don’t have a house, Boyd.” 

“Which would be a further complication, wouldn’t it, Ava?” 

He was in an alarmingly good mood. The half grin he’d been wearing when she’d opened the door was still present, his eyes still bright. Ava got the feeling that if she walked out of the room and stayed quiet for a few minutes he’d forget about her entirely. 

That wasn’t like Boyd at all. He’d always watched her with a laser focus, his eyes threatening to bore right through her. She’d always kept close to Bowman when Boyd was around, even when her husband was in a foul mood. At least she understood Bowman, could respond appropriately. Boyd? Boyd was the most threatening thing of all - an unknown. He didn’t drool over her the way Dewey did, didn’t give her the annoyed look Devil did when he felt the succubus magic at the edges of his awareness and wanted it to stop. He just watched. Ava had never wanted to be alone with him. Now she was alone with him, and she still didn’t much like it, but he wasn’t watching her. 

Boyd sat at the table, wound up and expectant. Ava lingered in the doorway between the dining room and the front hall, as far from Boyd as she could get before his attention would snap back to her and he’d order her close again. 

Raylan must have not been all the way up in Lexington, because it was only a little more than an hour after her phone call that he knocked on the door. 

Ava’s knees were shaky as she opened the door. She had been threatened and chased and jeered at and beaten, but Boyd’s strange, frozen smile was uncharted territory and she hated it. 

“Boyd’s here?” Raylan asked softly as soon as the door was open. 

Ava nodded. Raylan touched her arm lightly as he stepped inside, a quiet reassurance. Ava had joked about him racing down from Lexington to rescue her, but apparently that was exactly what he was going to do. He had a shotgun in one hand, though he didn’t have it up and ready to shoot. He was distinctly more tense and alert than he had been when dealing with Dewey the day before. 

“Glad you could join us, Raylan,” Boyd drawled, looking over from his dead brother’s seat. “Put down that shotgun, will you? It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you should bring into this dining room.” 

Raylan put down the shotgun. His jacket rode up for a moment and Ava caught sight of a handgun in a holster on his hip. Boyd’s hand was laid lightly on the handgun beside him, his gaze fixed on Raylan. 

“Ava,” Boyd ordered, eyes not moving from Raylan, “go watch TV or something.” 

She stepped down the hall, her head spinning. She was glad to be out of Boyd’s line out of sight, not in the middle of whatever the hell was going on in her dining room. She was also more than a little annoyed at being dismissed in her own house, by someone she didn’t even live with. But mostly she was bewildered. 

She’d been fought over before. Bowman had come close to killing a few men in the early days of their marriage, back when he’d still been willing to take her out to dinner or dancing. So she knew what that felt like, and she knew that wasn’t what was happening now. Whatever interest Boyd had had in her before, Raylan had eclipsed it. 

What had Raylan done to warrant such a reaction? To make Boyd elevate him to such a high threat level that he showed more interest in this one marshal than he ever had in his brother, his father, or the local sheriff? 

Ava lingered in the hall, listening to Boyd and Raylan talk. Well, mostly Boyd. His voice was fast, excited, not at all his usual slow, careful drawl. 

“Sit down, sit down, help yourself,” Boyd ordered, as though he and Raylan were having a perfectly normal dinner, not one he’d hijacked. “The gravy ain’t bad. I mean, it ain’t like your mama used to make it, but it never is, is it?” 

Raylan didn’t answer and Boyd kept talking, like he needed to fill the silence. She’d never heard him like this before. Boyd thought about his words, chewed on them. He talked because he wanted people to listen. He didn’t ramble on about dinner and gravy and Raylan’s shooting history. 

Ava slipped out of her shoes and padded down the hall to where she’d left her rifle. If Boyd’s attention was on Raylan, it’d make it that much easier to take care of him. And she knew the gun could handle werewolves. 

Two men in as many days. She wondered if the judge would be as forgiving the second time. Maybe having a marshal’s testimony on her side would help. 

It didn’t matter. There was a man sitting at her dining room table with a gun, and if he succeeded in using it on Raylan Ava had no doubt that he’d use it on her next, to take care of the witnesses. To say nothing of the fact that she’d killed his brother forty-eight hours ago. His brother who had been sitting in that very same chair, eating food she’d cooked that he hadn’t bothered to thank her for. 

“Your .45 is on the table, I have to pull,” Raylan was saying, voice low. “Is that how we do it?” 

“I appreciate that, Raylan. Yes, I do believe it is my call.” Boyd’s voice had dropped a few octaves, slowed down. “What’re you packing?” 

“You’ll pay to find that out.” 

“You’ve got ice cold water running through your veins.” Boyd sounded oddly delighted. “Well, should we just do us a shot of Jim Beam, just for old times’ sake?” His pace was picking up again, frenetic and wild. 

Ava stepped into the dining room, racking the rifle just as Boyd called for her. 

“Ava, get us a shot-” He stopped as he looked up and saw her. 

Ava’s heart stammered for a moment, her hands going clammy. This had been easier with Bowman. It was harder to muster up the same level of hate for Boyd. She didn’t know him well enough. And he was unsettling, in a way Bowman had never been. 

“You want to know what your brother said, when he looked up and saw me with his rifle?” she asked, trying to convince her hand to pull the trigger. Boyd was watching her with tight alertness, not the slack-jawed expression Bowman had worn in his last moments. 

“Honey,” Boyd said, tone casual but his gaze hard, “you only shoot people when they’re eating supper?” 

“He asked what the hell I was doing with it,” Ava said, remembering the way he’d talked with his mouth full and that had somehow been the last straw, had made pulling the trigger all the easier. “And I said, I’m gonna shoot you, dummy.” 

And then she’d pulled the trigger. 

She didn’t pull. The extra steel of hatred wasn’t present and the rifle seemed more threatening now. She thought of Bowman’s chest turning red, thought I’ll have to clean up the carpet again, and that shouldn’t have been an argument, shouldn’t have mattered, but Boyd was looking her right in the eye, asking if she had what it took to fire-

Boyd snatched up his gun. Ava pulled the trigger. Two shots rang through the dining room.

Ava’s shot went wide. Boyd never got one off. Raylan pulled and fired on instinct, the expertise of a man who had been asked to teach about firearms on more than one occasion. Time seemed to slow down, like Raylan could watch the bullet fly, right into the perfect bullseye that was Boyd’s heart.

Tommy Bucks wasn't the first person Raylan had shot. Not the first he'd killed either. One shooting was much like any other, except for some of the shouting of the marshals afterward.

But it felt different this time, when Boyd Crowder went crashing to the ground, red blooming over his shirt, covering the stupid, racist image on the front. He fell from his chair, landed on his back in the center of the stain his brother had left behind.

He was going to shoot Ava, Raylan told himself as he holstered his gun and moved to Boyd's side. He grew up to become a Nazi shithead, he was going to shoot Ava, and if Ava hadn't come in he was going to shoot me.  

He knelt by Boyd, barely registering Ava standing beside him, shaking. Boyd was wheezing for air and their eyes found each other.

"You did it," Boyd said. Raylan could hear a hundred different emotions in his voice and he wasn't sure if any of them were real. "You really did it. He did it."

"I told you I would," Raylan answered, and his voice sounded foreign. This wasn't the steady fading of adrenaline after a firefight, wasn't the grim resignation of a failed deescalation, wasn't the heavy satisfaction of knowing Tommy Bucks was done hurting people. This was just Boyd. Not even Boyd Crowder, son of one of Harlan’s best criminals, racist asshole and murderer. He was just… 

They hadn't been friends, Raylan and Boyd. But they had been something, or at least the potential of something, and it was ridiculous to mourn something he hadn't had in twenty years but Raylan was mourning. He wanted to grab Boyd, who was going paler by the second, shake him, demand to know how he’d ended up like this when you’re so much smarter than this Boyd, you’re too smart to believe those conspiracy theories, you’re too smart to throw your life away blowing up churches and killing Ava when you know damn well Bowman pushed her to it. 

He had wondered, once or twice, on sleepless, lonely nights, what might have happened if he’d gone back to Harlan after all. If Boyd would have kissed him again. If anything could have laid down that road other than a lot of heartbreak. He’d comforted himself with the certainty that no, it would have been heartbreak and pain and humiliation and nothing else. 

But now, Boyd's blood soaking through the knees of his pants, Boyd dying in the same place where his brother had died two nights ago, Raylan found himself wondering in the other direction. What if he had found his words before Boyd drove away, had offered to tell SIC to shove it and take Boyd with him? He had been justified in putting a bullet in Boyd’s chest, had had no choice but to put him down, but had there ever been a chance? If he could reach twenty years into the past, could he keep Boyd Crowder breathing? 

He thought of the light in Boyd’s eyes when they’d seen each other, the way Boyd had laughed when he’d choked on his moonshine. 

“I’m sorry,” Raylan said, his voice soft, choked. His vision was starting to blur. “I’m sorry.” 

He didn’t think Boyd could hear him anymore. His gasping had slowed, had turned to rattling breaths. His eyes were beginning to glass over. 

Raylan’s hand was on Boyd’s chest, pressed against the wound, and Raylan wasn’t sure when he’d decided to try and help, rather than sit and wait while the closest thing he’d had to a friend in Harlan died in front of him. He looked at the blood welling up between his fingers and thought, I didn’t have to hit his heart. Why didn’t I aim a few inches left, hit center mass, put him down and keep him breathing?

Guns were meant to kill, so that was how Raylan used them. Trying to patch someone up when you were the one to put a hole in them seemed like adding insult to injury, so Raylan didn’t do it. 

Until today. Because today, even though it had been in defense of someone else, even though Raylan knew - though he couldn’t prove it - that Boyd had at least one kill under his belt, even though Boyd was easy to write-off as someone the world would be better off without, Raylan didn’t want to watch him die. 

“Why’d you say you’re sorry?” Ava asked as Raylan pulled off his jacket, folded it up and pressed it to Boyd’s chest. She was holding the wall like she might fall down without it. 

Raylan looked at Boyd’s face again. He was still breathing but just barely, fading fast. Raylan pushed down, knowing it was probably too late, trying not to think of a crumbling mine shaft, of a hand in his, both of them pushing and pulling the other forward each time they stumbled. You won’t die by my hand, Raylan Givens.

“We dug coal together.” 

Boyd didn’t realize it until he felt the kick in his chest, but he hadn’t really thought Raylan would shoot him. There had been no reason to doubt. Boyd had given him plenty of reasons, what with threatening Ava and sending the boys after the marshals and telling Raylan he’d best get out of town, or else. And it wasn’t as though Raylan had never killed before. And he’d said he would, and Raylan had always been a man of his word. 

But Boyd had still wondered if he’d do it. Even as his back hit the floor and knocked the wind out of him, he wondered if Raylan would have pulled to save his own life, or if he’d only done it to save Ava’s. 

Boyd had laughed, the first time he’d heard You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive on the radio. Because it was true, wasn’t it? Harlan ate its people alive and spat them out and they were buried in their own backyards, because you didn’t leave Harlan dead either. But now he was dying, gasping for air in the same spot his brother had died, and everything was spinning out before him. 

Bo would be out of prison in a few months and he would come looking for Ava, to avenge Bowman. Once he’d killed her he’d go looking for Raylan, to avenge Boyd. And he’d find him easily, because Raylan would be looking for Bo, to avenge Ava. If Raylan killed Bo, Johnny would take up the Crowder family duty and try to kill Raylan. And if he failed - which he probably would, Johnny wasn’t a quick draw - then Devil would step up, and then Dewey, and then who knew who else, because you always had to avenge your family, even if they had it coming, even if you barely knew their name, and the Crowder clan was a large one.

And if Bo killed Raylan, it’d be no better. The marshals would come looking to find justice for their own, and killing law enforcement meant the death penalty, so Bo wouldn’t go quiet. Boyd could see the bloodbath in his mind’s eye, death on top of death on top of death, a Harlan county gang war. Harlan had blood soaked down to the bottom of its mines, maybe deeper than that, and they were going to soak it deeper still, all because Bowman couldn’t own up to his own failures. 

But Boyd had no room to talk, did he? He had set this off, with no care paid to how many people he'd get killed. He'd only wanted Raylan and to hell with everyone else. To hell with Ava, with Devil, with Dewey, the marshals. He'd wanted an end to his and Raylan’s story. 

"I'm sorry," Boyd heard, the sound just at the edge of his consciousness, the voice so soft and sad he barely recognized it. 

Raylan. 

Boyd was back on the side of the road, a bundle of nerves in his chest, not sure until the moment he did it that he would have the nerve to kiss Raylan Givens. He could feel Raylan’s hands on his wrists, Raylan’s pulse hammering under his fingers. He could feel the swoop in his heart as he realized Raylan was kissing him back, the following drop as he realized it still couldn’t mean anything. 

Because Raylan had still left. He’d been braver than Boyd, willing to chance what was waiting outside of Harlan without the steady structure of the army, the comforting safety net of family. 

I’m sorry . Was Raylan still saying it, or was Boyd just hearing things now? There was a dim awareness of a burning in his chest, but all Boyd could think of was driving away, watching Raylan in the rearview mirror instead of looking at the road. How long had he stood there that day? 

Did you ever think about following me, Raylan?  

Had Boyd ever thought about following him? 

Of course not. Raylan had been too brave, Boyd too cautious. He’d used up all his bravery on the kiss. I’m sorry. And now who was apologizing? To who? For what? For a bullet Boyd had asked for? For a kiss that had been perfect? 

I know that you’re too smart to believe that mud people story. 

Boyd tried to open his eyes - when had he closed them - suddenly desperate to see Raylan one last time. To tell him… 

Boyd’s chest gave a painful wrench, like he’d just been kicked by a horse. His eyes were open again, but he still couldn’t see. Everything was too bright, too painful, full of a white light that didn’t make any sense, because Bowman was always hungover and made sure the lights were always warm and a little bit dim. 

Raylan’s shape slowly filtered in through the light, like a blurry picture being resolved. There was his hat - which he looked so good in, why hadn’t he gotten a hat sooner, he looked like he’d been born to wear it - and there was his face, etched into Boyd’s memory with no concern given to the twenty years he’d been gone for. 

Boyd stopped breathing, a danger signal shooting to his brain and being ignored. Who needed to breathe? What was breathing when Raylan Givens was standing over him, barely visible through the glow coming off his wings? 

They were glorious things, the same shade of metallic gray as the gun Raylan had just used to put a round of metal through his chest. They were bat wings, but looked soft, silky, like Boyd could slide his fingers along them forever. 

As though Raylan would let him. 

Boyd gasped in a breath he wasn’t sure he wanted to take and it hurt, hurt worse than the bullet had. Above him, Raylan’s new wings spread out until they covered the whole world, and then Boyd was falling, Raylan getting farther and farther away until all Boyd could see was the glow of those gray wings, and then he couldn’t even see that anymore. 

You like to get money and blow shit up. 

It had been funny when Raylan had said it in the church. It wasn’t so funny now. Was that all there was to him, when all was said and done? Violence and greed? And to think, Boyd had so much contempt for Jared and his ilk, them and their dull causes. But Boyd was no better. No he was worse, because he knew better. He’d read the Bible, he knew those ‘experts’ were full of shit, knew there was nothing in there about mud people, knew it wasn’t supposed to be used as a bludgeon against those lower down on the food chain. 

His mother had read the Bible to him, sometimes. Had taken him to church until it had become clear that his boredom was going to lead him to doing something he’d regret if she didn’t let him off the hook. 

She and his father had both believed in letting their children do pretty much whatever they wanted, but she’d have been disappointed to hear him misquoting the Book so badly. 

And Raylan. Raylan. Raylan had never been religious when they had been young, not beyond the prayers for safety every miner offered up, but now…

Boyd thought of those wings and the memory of them was enough to send him dropping into unconsciousness at last. 

Boyd was having strange dreams. 

Some were simple memories, seeing Raylan sitting across the table from him, watching his face as Boyd fell from his chair, a bullet in his chest. It played in slow motion, giving Boyd ample time to take in the brightness of Raylan’s eyes, the grim set of his jaw. 

He didn’t want to shoot you, but you made him. No one to blame but yourself.  

But Boyd couldn’t seem to feel guilty, not even with the pain roaring in his chest. That was distant, affecting his physical body. He was only barely tethered to it. He knew it was hurting, but it didn’t matter. Someone else would take care of that. 

Sometimes he dreamed of Raylan’s wings, the way they’d splayed out behind him. He could stare at those wings for hours, days, for the rest of his life. They were beautiful in a way the English language wasn’t prepared for. Beautiful in a way that hurt, that made Boyd think he wouldn’t mind if he woke up blind, because then he’d never have to see anything but his memories of them. 

Other dreams were strange, and he couldn’t quite tell if he was awake for them or not. 

“Not many people get to see an angel and live to remember it,” a voice said. The voice’s owner had been wavering in and out of existence for Boyd since Ava’s dining room, though it hadn’t shown much interest in speaking for most of it. It had only watched him, white eyes in a white face, black eyes in a black face, shadows on light making a shape that he could only barely render into a person. 

It didn’t need to be a person. He thought that at another time, with another version of himself, he might need it to be human. But it wasn’t, and it didn’t matter, and if it wanted to be a shifting prism of light and shadow and the idea of feathered wings, why, that was its business. 

“You should be grateful to your friend,” the voice said. Boyd wasn’t sure that it was speaking English, wasn’t sure it was speaking at all. That mattered about as much as its form. “Miracles aren’t given out often.” 

Raylan. Friend was a terrible word for him, too small, too simple, not encompassing all the things that filled Boyd’s head and chest at the thought of the man. Raylan, Raylan, Raylan.  

Raylan had not given him a miracle. Raylan was the miracle. Raylan, returned to him after all these years. 

The whole world seemed to have slotted into place, all the pieces just where they belonged, however discordant they might look to a casual observer. Boyd had brushed up against some great knowledge, some of it too much for him to take in, but it was real, and it had woken up something inside him, something that had been silent and dead for so long Boyd had forgotten its existence. 

The black and white being seemed to shake itself and when it settled it looked more human than before. It was more unsettling now, the skin it hadn’t had a minute ago seeming to crawl as though alive. “You’ll live, Boyd Crowder. It’s your choice, ultimately, but I recommend you not waste that.”

Boyd gasped, eyes coming open to terrible, fluorescent light, harsh and ugly after the light of Raylan and the black and white angel. 

But he was alive, in a prison infirmary bed, and the world made sense in a way it hadn’t since his age had been in the single digits and he had believed parents and older siblings held all the answers of the universe. 

The nurse asked how he was feeling. Boyd barely heard her. “If it’s allowed,” he asked politely, his voice cracking a bit with thirst he didn’t feel, “may I have a Bible?”