When Kate walked out of the school for the evening, there was a live body under a cowboy hat perched on the hood of her truck. She stopped halfway there and just stood until Raylan looked up.

"What?" they asked simultaneously, and then Kate started laughing.

"I haven't been back THAT long, Raylan!" Wow we synched up fast, she thought.

"Long enough to stir up a nest though, girl."

Kate cocked her head and pulled the truck door open, throwing her bag inside and climbing up on the hood next to her former partner in crime. He looked off into the middle distance while she did so. She snorted.

"Huh?" He turned quick.

"You. You're such a friggin' drama queen."

And for once in his life, Raylan did not argue. "It is what it is, Kate."

She settled onto the hood. "Explain yourself, Mr. Givens. How come we're sitting out here in plain view of the world and Harlan County if you've got a warning for me?"

"Because I got a point to make, is all."

"So this is all staging?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny." He turned the narrow edge of his eye toward her, and she chuckled. He took his hat off and scratched along the base of his neck.

"Kate…Kate listen. I been thinkin' about what happened the other evening with Johnny, and it worries me."

"How come?"

"Because I know you. And I know what you're thinkin' and I know what Johnny's probably thinkin' and I don't think that it's a good thing."

Kate shook her head. "Raylan, we just had this discussion last week. A slight variation, but we DID just have this discussion."

"Dog to its vomit. Right."

"You didn't believe me, did you?"

"Nope. Not about Johnny, anyhow."

She frowned. "You really think I'm that easy to blow over?"

He turned and looked her straight in the face. "I don't know, Kate. Are ya? You've been gone a real long time and you don't know what kinda fire's burning back here at home. You don't and that's a fact, Kate. You can't just step back in like you know all the moves and everything's fine, cause you DON'T and it's NOT."

It left her flatfooted. She just sat, quiet, for a good minute and a half before she began to speak. Raylan didn't move. He knew enough to wait her out.

"Okay. So….I really hoped…when I came back home…that there would be some folks that had faith in my good sense. That there would be somebody that knew that I had my head on my shoulders. And I thought...Raylan, I thought you knew that. I thought you really did know that."

He sighed. "I….I know, Katie. I know you've got sense."

"No you don't. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.'

"Well you were cryin' to Winona about that dirtbag the other evening…."

She rolled her eyes. "Raylan. I am a woman. I get upset when I see people I care about in less than ideal conditions. And I sometimes CRY about it. That is normal."

"Kate. Just…..alright. Listen. Tim Gutterson saw you and Winona out the other night and he looked you up the other day at work and I caught him. He's a damn snoop, but the boss saw it, and Art's one of them people that remembers the names and faces and histories of folks he met three decades ago just because he can and now you're on his radar and you're thinkin' about nosin' around Johnny Crowder, don't tell me you aren't cause I see it in your face, and you're gonna be on his radar in an even BIGGER way if you line up with the Crowders again."

Kate snickered. "You realize they refer to those things as run-on sentences."

"I'm serious, Kate. You don't want that kind of recognition. You don't want to give anybody any kind of reason to suspect you."

"Well why's he suspect me now?" She was getting confused, and she wished that Raylan would stop fussing and just get to the poin!

Raylan did the patented Raylan Givens sigh and looked up. "Cause I mentioned that I grew up with ya."

Kate took in the fact, let it settle, and then she started to laugh. Long and hard.

"So in OTHER words. The reason you took the time out of your busy schedule and came down here and park your ass on the hood of my truck is that you're sorry that I'm guilty by association?"

"Uh…"

"Guilty, Raylan! I'd rather be guilty for growin' up with the folks I grew up with than anything else in the world! Y'all MADE my childhood! And there isn't a thing I'd go back and replace…."

Raylan laughed, half at himself. "Except for whatever it was that happened out on Barton's Ridge?"

She paused midsentence and raised a finger. "Except for that. Maybe."

"Only maybe?"

"Only maybe. It was kinda fun."

"What happened?"

"Nope. Not tellin'."

Bickering led to a desire for ice cream, which led to walk down to the Tastey-Freeze, which led to a conversation about why it wasn't smart to eat ice cream outside when the temperature was threatening fifty and the realization that neither of them really cared. By the time they parted ways, Kate felt like she'd had roughly twenty years pulled off of her shoulders. She'd just spent the afternoon with her very own best-friend-lovin' frog catchin' snake-thowin' turtle-eatin' Raylan Givens.

0ooooooo0000000ooooo0000

Winona laughed into the phone. "He really ate a mud turtle?"

Raylan looked up from his paperwork and crinkled his forehead.

"Well," Kate chuckled, "we all did. Chopped the things head and feet off, threw it in the pot, and then peeled off the bottom half of the shell. We had pair of salt and pepper shakers and just kinda passed the shell around with them and ate it with our fingers." She laughed. "That was the BEST camping trip EVER. We ate like royalty and did literally NOTHIN'. For a whole WEEK."

Winona shook her head. The only reason she'd been left out of this particular extravaganza was because she'd had the flu, and had cried the entire week while Kate and the boys were gone."

"It was you and Raylan and…who all?"

"Me, Raylan, Boyd, Johnny, and Everett Miller, I think. We were flippin' twelve years old. Twelve years old, can you believe that? Out in the river bottom all by ourselves except for when we made supply runs back up the mountain."

Raylan had heard that last scrap of the statement and he shook his head. "We weren't all by ourselves either. Aunt Helen was down there every other night just checkin' on us."

"Kate, did you hear him?"

"Yeah….How come she never came into the fire?"

Raylan laughed out loud. "Cause I told her NOT to!"

Kate laughed with them, and finally, after about five minutes more of Raylan third-partying, Winona finally just put the phone on speaker and threw it down on top of Raylan's paperwork. The conversation took its twists and turns for another hour or so, and then the phone started beeping and Kate excused herself:

"School night!"

"Seeya later, Kate."

"You too, Raylan."

"Hey, when are we going to Lexington again?"

"Well, what about going to see Fast Five?" she asked, and Winona squeaked.

"Ooo, Vin Diesel!"

They hung up giggling, and Raylan made a snide comment about not ever letting his woman watch any of the Fast and Furious series all by herself ever again.

0ooooooo00000000ooooo0000

Kate got up from the kitchen table and padded across the cracked linoleum. She was going to have to get that replaced at some point or another, but she just didn't have the funds yet. Besides that, the floor underneath was still good.

She looked back over her shoulder at Monte, a sleepy blue ball on the rug at the kitchen sink. "Hey little man. You wanna go outside?"

The puppy was instantly awake and by the door, his little blue butt wagging the rest of him in excitement. Kate glanced up at the clock as she propped the screen open. It was 11:43PM.

Kate watched him skitter across the wide porch and then freeze of a sudden at the edge of the steps. The only time a puppy growl is threatening is if the puppy never growls without cause. Monte was growling with all of his 10-week-old lungs and the hair on his little back stood straight up. He began to bark with every fierceness he could muster, and it was all Kate could do to catch him before he flung himself off the steps and out of the porch light.

"Wait a minute, buddy!" She scooped him up, and then a quiet chuckle chilled her right down to the bones in her bare heels. Her stomach flopped.

Boyd Crowder stepped up into the sick yellow circle thrown by the bare bulb, his hands deep in his pockets and a smile like she never remembered seeing on his face. He looked like a crocodile. He looked infinitely darker than he had before.

"That's quite the watchdog you've got there, Kate."

She bit back on the second scream and glared. "Boyd Crowder if you intend to call on me you can damn well knock on the door. Or leave it til mornin'! How long have you been out here?"

"Oh, about an hour or so. I didn't wish to interrupt your conversation with Raylan and Winona."

The hair on the back of her neck rose like Monte's. The puppy still growled in her arms. "Get your fool ass in this house. And make whatever you have to say quick, because I am going to bed in about fifteen minutes." She turned on her heel and opened the door. "Cummon."

Boyd came up the steps quietly, stepped calmly through the door and took a seat unbidden at her kitchen table.

Monte went in his crate for the night, where he planted himself as close to the door as he could get and continued to growl in the back of his throat. Kate remembered very clearly then what Raylan had said earlier. First about Boyd's interesting cuts of cloth, and then about being out of rhythm with the dance. She gritted her teeth, pushed one mug across the table at Boyd and hopped up on the counter. Her cutlery block was within easy reach. She had a mug of hot liquid in her hand. She was about as ready for this as she was going to get.