The state troopers, four of them, watched Raylan and his crew slip on Kevlar vests, which they wore underneath their U.S. marshal jackets, and watched them check their sidearms. Raylan told the offim"›old thecers he didn’t expect Angel would resist, but you never knew for sure. He said, “You hear gunfire come runnin, all right?”

One of the troopers said, “You want, we’ll bust in the door for you.”

“You’re dyin to,” Raylan said. “I thought I’d stop by the desk and get a key.”

The troopers got a kick out of this marshal, at one time a coal miner from Harlan County but sounded like a lawman, his attitude about his job. This morning they watched him enter a fugitive felon’s motel room without drawing his gun.

There wasn’t a sound but the hum of air-conditioning. Sunlight from the windows lay on the king-size bed, unmade but thrown together, the spread pulled up over bedding and pillows. Raylan turned to Rachel and nodded to the bed. Now he stepped over to the bathroom door, not closed all the way, listened and then shoved it open.

Angel Arenas’s head rested against the curved end of the bathtub, his hair floating in water that came past his chin, his eyes closed, his body stretched out naked in a tub filled close to the brim with bits of ice in water turning pink.

Raylan said, “Angel…?” Got no response and kneeled at the tub to feel Angel’s throat for a pulse. “He’s freezing to death but still breathing.”

Behind him he heard Rachel say, “Raylan, the bed’s full of blood. Like he was killin chickens in there.” And heard her say, “Oh my God,” sucking in her breath as she saw Angel.

Raylan turned the knob to let the water run out, lowering it around Angel, his belly becoming an island in the tub of ice water, blood showing in two places on the island.