Lisa made incisions behind Ferris’s ears and across his crown. Using scalpel and fingers, she then teased off the scalp, working from the top toward the back of the skul , stopping periodical y to position the case label for photographs. As fragments were freed, LaManche and I observed, diagrammed, then gathered them into containers.

When we’d finished with the top and back of Ferris’s head, Lisa retracted the skin from his face, and LaManche and I repeated the procedure, examining, sketching, stepping back for pics. Slowly, we extracted the wreckage that had been Ferris’s maxil ary, zygomatic, nasal, and temporal bones.

By four what remained of Ferris’s face was back in position, and Y-shaped stitching held his bel y and chest. The photographer had five rol s of film.

LaManche had a ream of diagrams and notes. I had four tubs of bloody shards.

I was cleaning bone fragments when Ryan appeared in the corridor outside my lab. I watched his approach through the window above my sink.

Craggy face, eyes too blue for his own good.

Or mine.

Seeing me, Ryan pressed his palms and nose to the glass. I flicked water at him.

He pushed back and pointed at my door. I mouthed “open,” and waved him through, a goofy smile spreading across my face.

Okay. Maybe Ryan isn’t so bad for me.

But I had reached that opinion only recently.

For almost a decade Ryan and I had butted heads in an on-again, off-again nonrelationship. Up-down. Yes-no. Hot-cold.

Hot-hot.

I’ve been attracted to Ryan since the get-go, but there have been more obstacles to acting on that attraction than there were signers of the Declaration.

I believe in the separation of job from play. No watercooler romance for this señorita. No way.

Ryan works homicide. I work the morgue. Professional exclusion clause applies. Obstacle one.

Then there was Ryan himself. Everyone knew his bio. Born in Nova Scotia of Irish parents, young Andrew ended up on the wrong end of a biker’s shattered Budweiser bottle. Switching from the dark side, the boy signed on with the good guys and rose to the rank of lieutenant-detective with the provincial police. Grown-up Andrew is kind, intel igent, and strictly straight arrow where his work is concerned.

And widely known as the squad room Lothario. Stud muffin exclusion clause applies. Obstacle two.

But Ryan sweet-talked the loopholes, and, after years of resistance, I final y jumped through. Then obstacle three roared in with the Yule.

Lily. A nineteen-year-old daughter, complete with iPod, bel y ring, and Bahamian mother, a flesh-and-blood memento of Ryan’s long-ago ride with the Wild Ones.

Though mystified and somewhat daunted by the prospect, Ryan embraced the product of his past and made some decisions about his future. Last Christmas he’d committed to long-distance parenting. That same week he’d asked me to be his roomie.

Whoa, bucko. I gave that plan a veto.