"Raylan, I'm in just as much of a hurry as you are, but we're going too fast. If we crash, we're both gonna die," Rachel said from the passenger seat. She had a death grip on the door handle and was keeping her eyes staring pointedly ahead.

Raylan didn't ease off the pedal one bit. "Then I guess it's a good thing I'm not planning on crashing."

Rachel set her jaw, but wisely didn't say anything else. Seemed she knew better than to try to talk to Raylan when he was like this.

Raylan, for his part, couldn't help it. Last he'd heard from Tim, he was on the lamb from three armed guys that Raylan knew personally to be stark-raving lunatic hillbillies. Needless to say, the situation was not ideal.

The next few minutes passed without conversation between the two of them, Raylan keeping his eyes on the road while the steering wheel suffered beneath the force of his white-knuckled grip, and Rachel talking to someone on the phone.

It got pretty heated towards the end of the call, and when she was done, Raylan prompted, "Who's that you're reading the riot act?"

"A deputy down at the Bennett County station."

That got Raylan's attention. He glanced at her briefly, a question in his eyes.

"Eyes on the road," Rachel reminded him, and when Raylan did as she asked, she answered his unspoken question. "They checked the house. There's three bodies—"

Raylan's heart skipped a beat.

"Bart Maddox, found in the basement, throat slit. George Reaver, found next to the kitchen with a knife in his neck, and William Reaver, found in the living room on the couch. He was wet, so they assumed he'd been brought in from outside."

"How'd he die?"

"Gunshot wound to the head. I think it's safe to assume—"

"That it's Tim's handy work," Raylan finished for her. "What about Tim? Any signs of him?"

"They didn't find him or Eleanor Higgins, but they're searching the area now. There's a lot of woods around he could be in, and with the other three Reavers presumably in the area, they're having to be careful." She rubbed her face. "Raylan, there's something you should know…Bart Maddox isn't the only body they found in the basement."

"I thought you said there were only three bodies."

"There were only three bodies that were still bodies. In the basement they found…what do you call it when they stuff the dead animals?"

Raylan glanced over at her, eyebrow raised. "Taxidermy?"

She nodded, pursing her lips. "They found taxidermy…."

"Rachel, I hate to break it to you, but you'd be hard pressed to find a house in Harlan or Bennett that doesn't have taxidermy."

"They were people, Raylan. Taxidermy…people."

"You mean…?"

"They were stuffed. And mounted." Her face was set grimly, and Raylan's bore a similar expression. The thought of it….

"Shit." Raylan fidgeted with his hat irately. He'd known the Reavers were bad news, but this… "You mean to tell me Tim's stuck with a bunch of psychopathic man-hunters that keep stuffed people…in their cellar…."

"It gets worse."

"How the hell's it get worse than that?" On second thought, that probably wasn't a good question to be asking.

"All of Tim's belongings have been recovered…his dog tags, his gun….They were all in a drawer. They found some chairs in the living room…it looked like two people had been tied up. They found Tim's badge next to some barbed wire…there was blood there, and blood on the phone in the hall. It looks like they got loose, and Tim used the phone to call you, but after that, I don't know."

He could tell by the sound of Rachel's voice that there was something she hadn't said. Something she was building up to, maybe, or something she just didn't want to say. She needed to say it, though; he needed to know. "What does that mean for Tim?"

Rachel frowned, her brows pulling down unhappily. "It means…more likely than not, he's hurt."

Raylan cursed, dropping his head to the wheel irately. When he straightened, he slammed his palm into the wheel.

"It could just be a couple of cuts," Rachel said. "They didn't find anything to make them think that it was really bad, I just thought you should know."

He didn't know why the hell she thought that. "He said he was fine," Raylan said through gritted teeth. He'd known it…he'd heard it in Tim's voice. But now there was someone else saying it, and that made it real. Too real.

A hand settled on his shoulder, and he glanced over at Rachel. She was watching him with sympathy and worry in her eyes. "We'll find him, Raylan. He's gonna be okay."

Raylan didn't reply, and if the car sped up a little, Rachel didn't say.

Less than an hour later, Raylan was pulling to a stop in what passed as the Reaver's driveway. It was already full up with squad cars, and as he got out of the car, he was met in an instant by none other than Doyle Bennett.

"Raylan Givens," said the man, an honest-to-god smile on his face as he held out a hand to shake Raylan's.

Raylan walked up past the hand, so close the brim of his hat nearly touched Doyle's head. "I expect you're smiling 'cause you found Deputy Gutterson, 'cause otherwise I'm gonna have to ask you to wipe it off your face 'fore I do."

Doyle pretended to be taken aback. "There's no call to be rude, Raylan."

"I'm gonna take that as a 'no.'"

"Take it how you want, Raylan. We've got some guys out looking for your deputy, but it's some big woods out there, and we ain't got but ten guys handy."

"Where've you looked?"

Doyle raised his eyebrows nonchalantly, waving vaguely behind his head. "Back 'round there. Got three parties of three out, combing the area."

"All that way?"

"Yep."

"Then that ain't combing." Raylan pushed past Doyle, walking up to where he saw a couple of guys next to the house. It was the cellar, and the doors were open with a canopy pulled over it to keep the rain out. The smell was nearly enough to knock him off his feet, but he didn't blame 'em for standing under the tarp; he could hardly hear himself think over the rain and the wind, and it was still just before dawn so it was cold and damn hard to see. His Marshal-issue rain slicker'd kept most of it off his shoulders, and his hat kept his head dry, but the wind wet his face, and water dripped off the brim. Thinking Tim was out in this…Christ, it wasn't bad enough he was being chased around by these nut jobs.

He pushed the thought from his mind. He didn't have time to think about it; he needed to find where Tim had gotten off to. He got to thinking about that…and then he got to looking. The cellar doors…there was a tire iron through the handles, and holes in it looking like it'd been shot to hell.

"You find something?" Rachel asked. She'd come up behind him, standing under the tent.

He didn't respond immediately, moving to get a closer look at the cellar door. He had to cover his nose as he did, and once he got right up next to the cellar, he turned around so that his back was to it and he was looking out at the woods.

"Someone broke out this way," Raylan said, turning back around to the cellar door and pointing to each observation in turn. "The hole in the center here…the lock's been blown off. All the holes otherwise look like they were shooting at someone, and the tire-iron got put on to lock them in. Someone came running through here in a hurry that didn't want to be followed. If I were a betting man, I'd say it was Tim."

"Okay, but what does that do for us."

"Gives us a starting point. Road's that way, too. Tim's too smart to take the gravel; it's the first place they'd look. If I know him, and I'd like to think I do, he'll have gone that way." And he was going to follow him.

He grabbed Rachel by the top of the arm. "Go talk to Doyle. Tell him get a couple of his boys back in, send them where I just showed you. Get them combing the area."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna go find my sniper."