Free Latimer's Law by Mel Sterling

the middle of the night. Doors don’t leave finger marks on your breasts.”
    Abby looked toward the river, dimpled and purling, glinting in the sun’s glare, eddies that spun downstream and faded, the expanding rings of a fish gulping an insect from the surface. She covered her mouth with her hand, drawing a shaky breath through her stuffy nose. Latimer didn’t stop her when she got to her feet and moved into the shade of the cypresses at the river’s edge.
    It was cooler there, with a moistness more pleasant than the sticky humidity of her own sweat in the sunny clearing of the campsite. Her head pounded with the heat and her tear-stuffed sinuses. The breath of the river moved over her skin, luring her closer. She toed off her sneakers and edged her sockless feet into the wet, buff-colored sand at its edge. A foot or two from the shore, she saw a fishing pole beneath the water, its tip bent and caught by a cypress root a few feet out. It must be Latimer’s—she didn’t see his near the camp stool, and he hadn’t brought it back to the picnic table. Abby moved forward two steps, the water rising to her ankles and wetting the slim legs of her jeans.
    It felt like heaven, cool and soft and better than iced tea on a hot day. She thought about wading even deeper, diving in and submerging her whole, overheated, exhausted body. She would let the current take her slowly downstream. The tannic water would wash away the salt of tears and sweat, leaching the heat from her shame. She could float wherever the river took her, for miles and days, through the chain of lakes, maybe even on to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, she rolled up the cuff of her sleeve and plunged her arm into the water to grasp the butt of the rod.
    She drew the rod from the water, immediately finding resistance at the far end, where the line had been snarled among the stumps and knees of cypresses and ti-ti shrubs, so she pressed the button on the reel to release the tension, and backed out of the water.
    Latimer, who had joined her on the shore, stood at the edge of the water and received the pole from her with a rueful smile. He used his pocketknife to clip the nylon line.
    “Sorry, again,” Abby said lamely.
    “Stuff happens.” Latimer shrugged and tilted the rod to empty the water from the reel’s spool. “But bruises like yours—that’s not the sort of stuff that should happen.”
    Tears welled and Abby jutted her chin out to stem the flow. “I really, really don’t want to talk about it.” She picked up her shoes, letting them dangle from two fingers hooked beneath their tongues. No sense trying to jam wet, sandy feet into them.
    “I get that, believe me.” Latimer followed her to the picnic table, where Abby opened the bottle of water and drank half of it. He closed the blade of the pocketknife and opened another, a screwdriver tip, and began removing the reel from the pole. “But I’m not letting go of the topic for long.” His blue gaze flicked up and trapped her. “You can have a break while you build a fire in that grill over there. I want a steak for dinner, since I’m not going to get a chance at a bass or bluegill.” His chin jerked toward the truck, where Mort the shepherd lay panting in the shade of the tailgate. “Sack of charcoal back there. Matches in the toolbox.”
    Abby stared at him, watching as a bead of sweat trickled slowly from his hairline to lose itself in the red, raised maze of his scar. He was disassembling the reel, using paper towels to dry its mechanisms. His hands were quick and deft, with long fingers. They were strong fingers, and gold hairs glittered at the knuckles and along the outer edge of his hands. She set what little she knew about him against the idea of those fingers curling into fists, and found she could not visualize Latimer doing something brutal out of sheer perversity. Unbidden, an image of Marsh’s fists came to mind, his strong, stocky fingers and muddy hazel eyes always ready to