hill from the Cherokee Rose. Even though Chad had been a boy—and, at twelve, I’d written off the opposite sex as pretty much useless—I’d been predisposed to like him. His family situation had distracted most of Maryville from their ongoing gossip about ours. Our mother was merely a runaway and a thief, who’d abandoned her children in a crack house in Los Angeles. Chad’s father had murdered his wife, attempted to slash his son’s throat and then had claimed that God had told him to do it.
The wound on Chad’s cheek was ragged and deep. I pulled an antiseptic pad from my emergency pack and began gently washing blood and bits of debris away from it.
“It doesn’t look as if you’ll need stitches,” I said when the cheek was clean.
“Oh, good,” he said, self-mockery evident in his voice. “I was real worried that another scar would ruin my ruggedly handsome good looks.”
“It’d take a heck of a lot more than that,” I muttered, contradicting him as I always did, knowing that when he looked in the mirror all he saw was a face with a scar. And maybe felt again, just for a heartbeat, the hatred that had put it there.
But, as he always did, he shrugged.
Stupid man, I thought. Why can’t he see that despite the scarring along his jaw, or maybe because of it, he was utterly desirable?
Too desirable.
At almost nineteen, when he’d joined the military and gone away to fight in the Middle East, he hadn’t been at all desirable. At least, not as far as I’d been concerned. I’d watched him grow from a scrawny, carrot-topped boy to a rangy acne-prone adolescent male. I missed him only because he was my best buddy and the boy next door, never anticipating that a few years away would transform him into a six-foot-tall hunk with green eyes and copper hair. I hadn’t expected that old friendship would eventually evolve into new intimacy. Or that in a matter of months, our enthusiastic lust would abruptly transform itself into troublesome love. But that’s exactly what had happened.
Get over it, I told myself.
I looked away from his expressive eyes and back at his bloody cheek.
He did a good job of pretending that he didn’t feel anything when I smoothed a layer of antibiotic cream over the wound. Then, as gently as I could, I used several butterfly closures to pull together the edges along the deepest part of the wound.
He flinched.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“Doesn’t hurt,” he lied.
“Have I ever accused you of being accident prone?”
“Often,” he said, flashing me a smile.
Halfheartedly, I scolded him for moving as I grinned back. It was an old joke and a good memory. We’d met when he’d crashed in front of the Cherokee Rose while attempting a skateboard stunt involving empty wooden peach crates and a plywood ramp.
Chad’s expression grew serious, though he was careful not to frown.
“You and I have a jurisdictional issue to resolve,” he said. “Fact is, you’d need a surveyor to figure out whether we’re standing on county land or if this is still Maryville Township.”
I made a sound that was more acknowledgment than an answer as I concentrated on anchoring a square of gauze across his cheek with a final strip of tape. Then I used another antiseptic pad to wipe away the blood that had smeared across his face. Finally, I stepped back to survey my work.
“That should hold you for a while,” I said.
Chad slanted his green eyes in the direction of his cheek as his fingers sought the gauze pad and briefly explored that side of his face.
“Thanks,” he murmured “Now about jurisdiction…”
When I attended the statewide police training institute, I’d heard a lot of talk about interdepartmental politics and jurisdictional disputes. Boiled down to its testosterone-spiked essence, the unwritten rule was You Don’t Piss on My Turf; I Won’t Piss on Yours. But in southern Illinois—where a mile-long stretch of roadway might cross federal, state, county and local jurisdictions—cooperation between law-enforcement agencies was not only customary but essential. So there was no reason, besides the personal, that Chad and I shouldn’t work together.
“A shared investigation would keep you from screwing up,” I said.
“Might keep the rookie out of trouble, too,” he retorted.
A couple hours later, I headed for home.
Chapter 4
I lived on a three-acre tract that had been hewn from the forest. From those felled trees came the logs that built the original cabin. Over the years, plumbing had been brought indoors and electricity had been added.