Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

across her body, securing it with a click beside her hip.
     
    The pressure on her chest increased.
     
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    He leaned back. “There you go.”
     
    Her mouth was dry. She could not go anywhere. She was strapped in. Tied down. Trapped.
     
    He twisted in his seat to pull a similar belt over his own broad body, grunting as his knee connected with the steering wheel. A little of her panic leaked away.
     
    “You’ll like Donna. Dr. Tomah,” he added when Margred didn’t say anything. “She retired to the island about five years ago before she decided retirement wasn’t really her thing. Talked the town into building her a clinic, and now she handles pretty much everything that doesn’t require a trip to the hospital in Rockport.”
     
    She forced herself to listen as if his words held some clue to her dilemma. As if she cared. She didn’t. But there was something soothing, all the same, in his quiet manner and deep, easy voice.
     
    He was talking now about the council budget and a new X-ray machine, soft, meaningless words that filled the silence and washed over her like water. She leaned her aching head against the cool glass and stared out at the darkness rushing beyond her window.
     
    His voice stopped. The vehicle stopped.
     
    Margred roused to find him watching her. “Did you do that on purpose?”
     
    “Do what?” he asked, straight-faced.
     
    “Bore me to sleep?”
     
    Caleb smiled. She had the sense he was not a man who smiled often or easily. A trickle of warmth eased the ice in her belly. “All part of the job, ma’am.”
     
    She fingered his jacket over her shoulders. Studied the badge gleaming on his shirt pocket. “This is a job?”
     
    “Sometimes.” His gaze met hers. She felt it again, that curious melting in her stomach. “Sometimes it’s personal.”
     
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    It was personal now, Caleb thought. Whether he liked it or not.
     
    Maggie sat upright on a padded table, her shoulders straight and her eyes wide and blind. She had exchanged his bloodied handkerchief for a clinic cold pack and his jacket for a cheap paper gown. Even though he understood the need to reduce swelling and preserve whatever evidence remained, he wanted to wrap her, warm her, take care of her somehow.
     
    She hadn’t clung to him or cried. But when Donna Tomah had questioned Caleb’s presence in her examination room, Maggie had said flatly, “He is with me.”
     
    So now Caleb crowded the corner near the head of the table while the doctor sat at the foot. Despite his aching leg, he didn’t sit. He couldn’t sit. He’d pulled off the big reassuring act in the Jeep, but inside he was churning with the need for action, with pity and admiration and cold, deep rage.
     
    Motionless, he watched as Maggie checked little boxes on a medical form and handed the clipboard back to the doctor.
     
    Donna’s round face, unlined beneath her salt-and-pepper hair, creased in a frown. “You’ve left a lot of blanks.”
     
    Maggie’s hands twitched in the paper drape across her lap. “I did not know what to write.”
     
    Donna pursed her lips. “Last name? Age? Address?”
     
    Deliberately, Maggie loosed her grip on the drape and replaced the cold pack on her head. “I don’t remember.”
     
    Caleb stirred in his corner.
     
    “Did you lose consciousness?” Donna asked Maggie.
     
    Caleb answered for her. “Yes.”
     
    “How long?”
     
    Maggie hesitated.
     
    “She was out when I arrived at the scene. Say, at least five minutes.”
     
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    “Was this injury intentionally caused by another person?
     
    Maggie looked at Caleb.
     
    “You’re safe now,” he said gently. “You don’t have to protect him.”
     
    Her full lips pressed together. “I am not protecting anyone.
     
    “So, intentional injury?” the doctor asked.
     
    “I . . . think so.”
     
    “Somebody was standing over her when I got there,” Caleb volunteered. “He may have hit her with a stick. Plenty of firewood on the beach.”
     
    “Is that what happened?” Donna asked.
     
    Maggie shrugged. The paper gown shifted on her shoulders.
     
    “Do you remember arriving at the beach?” Caleb asked.
     
    A slight hesitation. Victims were often unreliable witnesses, too eager to please or afraid of reprisal. She could be unsure or in shock or struggling with the language. She could be confused.
     
    Or lying.
     
    “Not really,” she said.
     
    “Did you see anybody when you got there?” he persisted.
     
    “I