A brisk gust of wind kicked up against the cruiser, rocking it.

"Damn. Must be a helluva storm coming."

Matt Branson turned up the heater and lowered the volume on the country music station he was listening to as he sat in the newest police cruiser the city of Legend, Tennessee owned. Nice vehicle, too. He did enjoy some perks with his job--since he was the only officer on the force to have actually graduated from college--even if he was sitting in bad weather at the edge of town trying to catch speeders. The other officers were more or less home-grown and on-the-spot trained, but they were good ol' boys and did one helluva job.

Besides, it was Legend, right? The city force was small but reliable enough to handle anything that Legend threw at them. A domestic or two, a kid gone awry, and of course, the speeders. Biggest trouble was the occasional tobacco smuggling, a few pot plants growing in the foothills, and once a homemade Meth lab run amok, but the county Sherriff's department and the regional ATF guys took over those, mostly. Legend was little more than a 21st century Mayberry, R.F.D.

He hoped he was a lot more than a modern-day Barney Fife.

He'd left town a year or so after high school--had pretty much fled with his head hanging and his heart on his sleeve, if he remembered it accurately--and in a few years had himself a degree in law enforcement from Eastern Kentucky University.

Damn proud of that, too. So was his Mama. Because of that degree, and the fact that he brought all that new-fangled knowledge back to his hometown of Legend, he was pretty much top dog cop in these parts. Well, not counting the Chief.

So here he was. Waiting.

Of course, it wasn't like he had horde of family members at home. He probably wouldn't even see his Mama until tomorrow evening at the Methodist Church candlelight service, and his sisters were all due to arrive very late Christmas Eve night with a passel of his nieces and nephews. They wanted to be home in Legend on Christmas morning, much to the chagrin of their husbands.

Other than that, there was no one.

Frowning, he shifted in his seat, pushed that thought out of his head, and glanced out the window. Lucky for him, the east end wasn't the busy end of town. At least he wasn't walking the downtown beat sniffing out shoplifters. Lit up like a roman candle for about three weeks, the town of Legend eagerly welcomed the shoppers and they came in droves. All that marketing about Legend had paid off the past year or so. He had to admit it brought some mighty strange folk out of the hollers.

So in a way, he was grateful not to be downtown. On the other hand, not a single car had ventured by in the last fifty-two minutes. The town council thought sitting out here was a wonderful idea. They needed revenue for the force, so they'd passed a new ordinance lowering the speed limit in both directions. The guys on the west side were pulling them over right and left. He could hear that on his radio. The action on the east, however, was, well, non-existent.

Bored, he watched as small ice crystals formed in little pellets on his windshield. He let them pile up on his wipers and then swished them away. That kept him busy for about three minutes. He breathed on the window next to him and drew funny pictures on the glass, then smeared them off with a leftover fast food napkin, leaving behind ghostly images. He upped the temperature and turned on the defroster to keep the fog down.

Should a speeder happen to venture by, it might be good if he could actually see out his window.

Finally, he reached under the seat, pulled out a piece of wood, and dug deep into his pocket for his whittling knife. Not eager to get shavings and wood chips all over his new cruiser, he laid the napkin out on the seat beside him and started to whittle.

There. Perhaps this wasn't so bad after all. He could sit here until the snow piled up and whittle, if he had to. Putting knife to wood was the one thing that kept him company for hours on end when he was at home--in his cave, as his sisters called it. He loved that cabin he'd built up on the mountains, though. Cave or not, it was his, and he had learned to be okay with how his life was turning out up there.

So okay, his social life sucked. He refused to call himself a hermit, although when not at work, he spent most of his time at home. Living a solitary life had both its advantages and disadvantages. Carving wood helped him keep his sanity.

Just didn't do a damn thing for keeping his bed warm at night.

His knife hand stilled on the wood and his head jerked up. A vehicle raced in from the east, popping over the hill. He reached to swipe away the fog from the driver's side window that failed to dissipate. The dark blue sedan whizzed by, and he quickly stashed his knife and wood under the seat.

"Hot damn."

Tucked back in the lane of the old Casey place, he pulled out from his hidey hole, and turned on his lights and siren.