“I don’t,” Raylan says. “Riona and I met through Dante Gallo.”

That doesn’t help. Dean isn’t the biggest fan of Dante. They’ve met twice before—after which Dante said, “Yeah, he’s nice. Bit high on himself.” And Dean said, “Do you usually stay friends with your clients after you get them acquitted of murder?”

“Do you, ah, work with Dante?” Dean asks with a note of nervousness.

“We were in the military together,” Raylan replies.

“Oh,” Dean says, sounding relieved. “I considered enlisting, way back when. So I could get med school paid for.”

“Hm,” Raylan says blandly. “You don’t say.”

“I couldn’t be a soldier, though. All that toilet scrubbing and ‘drop and give me twenty’ shit. Guess I don’t like following orders,” Dean says, with a laugh.

I look over at Raylan, to see how he’ll respond to that nice little piece of condescension.

Raylan just grins, his teeth white against his dark stubble and his tanned skin. “Guess you’d rather be the general in your operating room, huh?” he says.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dean says, smiling back at him. He doesn’t seem to notice the glint in Raylan’s eyes, which isn’t entirely friendly.

“ ‘Course, if you fuck up at your job, the worst you’re gonna do is kill some granny on your table,” Raylan says casually. “You don’t have to worry about watching all your colleagues, the anesthesiologists and nurses and other doctors, get captured and tortured and have their heads cut off. Or get blown to pieces right next to you. You don’t have to worry about dying yourself.”

“No . . . ” Dean says, smile fading. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“I guess that’s why in the military, we start small with scrubbing toilets,” Raylan says. “Then we move up to making our beds. Then we proceed through drills and training, and practice missions, before we ever head out in the field. It’s incremental progress. You get to know your brothers, and they get to know you. And nobody is promoted to a leadership position when they’re too arrogant to follow instructions themselves. Because that’s how it works when the whole team’s life is on the line. Nobody’s gonna serve under some shithead they don’t even like, let alone respect.”

Raylan is smiling pleasantly the whole time he’s speaking. He keeps that same friendly southern drawl. But somehow I become aware of his large, strong hands folded on the tabletop. And the width of his shoulders, under that flannel shirt.

Dean seems to become cognizant of the same thing—that Raylan is a trained soldier. Not to mention a good two or three inches taller than Dean.

Dean swallows hard. “Right,” he mutters. “We should probably order. The kitchen can be slow here . . . ”

“What should I get?” Raylan asks me, not bothering with the heavy leather menu and its array of choices spelled out in fancy scrolled print.

“Do you like steak?” I say.

“ ‘Course I do. What’s not to like?”