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faster? The news segment about the photosensitive children hadn’t mentioned anything about that.
    Even the stab wounds in his eight-pack abs no longer bled. It was a little unsettling.
    Okay, majorly unsettling. It just didn’t seem natural. If his chest weren’t rising and falling with each breath, she would think he was dead.
    Sarah rinsed out the bowl and filled it with more witch hazel. Amid a great deal of unladylike grunting, she managed to roll Roland onto his side away from her so she could inspect his back.
    It, too, sported long, deep gashes and what appeared to be more stab wounds, all of which were encrusted with blood, dirt, grass, and weeds. And, like those in front, these wounds no longer bled.
    Sarah went to work, cleaning and doctoring them, starting at his wide, strong shoulders. His back was broad, muscular, naturally tanned like the rest of him. A long slash began where his neck met his right shoulder and sliced down toward his left armpit. It took the rest of her butterfly closures to secure it. Another looked as though the weapon that had carved it had glanced off his ribs down on his left side. A third slit his narrow waist on the right.
    It all seemed a little off.
    Didn’t most criminals sport guns now? Even petty criminals?
    She would think that whatever enemies Roland had acquired posing as an illegal arms dealer would have
shot
him, not attacked him with knives.
    Sarah mulled that one over for several minutes while she ministered to him.
    Maybe they hadn’t wanted to attract attention? Sound did tend to carry out here, echoing through the countryside.
    But there wasn’t much gun crime in this area. At least not compared to Houston, where she had been born and raised. She would think if someone heard a gunshot way out here, they would attribute it to hunters, target practice, a truck backfiring, or someone shooting off fireworks.
    Plus, there were always silencers.
    Sarah blushed as she bathed the dirt and blood from Roland’s lower body. He had the sexiest butt she had ever seen. While every guy she had dated in the past had
had
no butt, Roland’s was firm and muscular. And his legs …
    Like the rest of him, they were well-muscled and honed to perfection (that perfection broken by a cut where one of his attackers had tried to hamstring him).
    It felt decidedly intimate, touching him like this while he slept. She tended to be a little shy around men and had never taken sex as lightly as her peers. (Most of the women and girls she had known had treated sex like a recreational sport and were insanely unconcerned about disease.) Consequently, she had only had two lovers thus far, both of whom had been long-term relationships.
    Her first lover had been reed-thin. The second had been similarly thin when they had begun dating and a good fifty pounds overweight by the time their three-year relationship had fizzled out. Neither man, as far as she knew, had ever so much as touched a weight, let alone lifted one.
    Roland, on the other hand, was built like an Olympic athlete and, for just a moment (okay, maybe two or three … or four), made her wish he was uninjured and she was easy.
    Shaking her head, Sarah decided she had drooled over the poor guy long enough and set the damp cloth and bowl of witch hazel on the coffee table. The black material of the futon where he had lain was smeared with as much dirt,blood, and plant materials as his back had been. She had no idea how she was going to clean it later and, for now, did not want any of that sneaking back into his wounds.
    Rising, she strode to the narrow linen closet next to the bathroom and withdrew two white sheets. The first, she shook out, folded in half, and spread across every inch of the futon’s seat that Roland didn’t cover. Then she eased him onto his back and covered him with the second.
    Her work done, she stood, staring down at him for several minutes.
    He seemed at once a stranger and not a stranger to her. Strong yet