Sea witch, p.2
Sea Witch, page 2
“Screw that,” announced the nineteen-year-old owner of the Jeep. “I’m driving.”
“If I start giving Breathalyzer tests for OUIs, it’s going to be a long night,” Caleb said evenly. “Especially when I impound your vehicle.”
“You can’t do that,” Stowe said.
Caleb leveled a look at him.
“Come on, Robbie.” The other girl tugged his arm. “We can go to my place.”
Caleb watched them gather their gear and stumble across the sand.
“I can’t find my sweatshirt.”
“Who cares? It’s ugly.”
“You’re ugly.”
“Come on.”
Their voices drifted through the dusk. Caleb waited for them to make a move toward their cars, but something—his threat to tell their parents, maybe, or his shiny new shield or his checkpoint glare—had convinced them to abandon their vehicles for the night.
He dragged his hand over his forehead, dismayed to notice both were sweating.
That was okay.
He was okay.
He was fine, damn it.
He stood with the sound of the surf in his ears, breathing in the fresh salt air, until his skin cooled and his heartbeat slowed. When he couldn’t feel the twitch between his shoulder blades anymore, he hefted the cooler and lumbered to the Jeep. His knee shifted and adjusted to take his weight on the soft sand. He’d passed the 1.5-mile run required by the State of Maine to prove his fitness for duty. But that had been on a level track, not struggling to stabilize on uneven ground in the dark.
He stowed the evidence in back, slammed the hatch, and glanced toward the beach.
A woman shone at the water’s edge, wrapped in twilight and a towel. The sea foamed around her bare, pale feet. Her long, dark hair lifted in the breeze. Her face was pale and perfect as the moon.
For one second, the sight caught him like a wave smack in the chest, robbing him of speech. Of breath. Yearning rushed through his soul like the wind over the water, stirring him to the depths. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
Not okay. He throttled back his roaring imagination. She was just a kid. A girl. An underage girl in an oversize sweatshirt with—his gaze dipped again, briefly—a really nice rack.
And he was a cop. Time to think like a cop. Mystery Girl hadn’t been with the group around the fire. So where had she been hiding?
Caleb stomped back through the trees. The girl stood with her bare feet planted in the sand, watching him approach. At least he didn’t have to chase her.
He stopped a few yards away. “Your friends are gone. You missed them.”
She tilted her head, regarding him with large, dark, wide-set eyes. “They are not my friends.”
“Guess not,” he agreed. “Since they left without you.”
She smiled. Her lips were soft and full, her teeth white and slightly pointed. “I meant I do not know them. They are very…young, are they not?”
He narrowed his gaze on her face, mentally reassessing her age. Her skin was baby fine, smooth and well cared for. No makeup. No visible piercings or tattoos. Not even a tan.
“How old are you?”
Her smile broadened. “Older than I look.”
He resisted the urge to smile back. She could be over the legal drinking age—not jailbait, after all. Those eyes held a purely adult awareness, and her smile was knowing. But he’d pounded Portland’s pavements long enough to know the kind of trouble a cop invited giving a pretty woman a break. “Can I see your license, please?”
She blinked slowly. “My…”
“ID,” he snapped. “Do you have it?”
“Ah. No. I did not realize I would need any.”
He took in her damp hair, the towel tucked around her waist. If she’d come down to the beach to swim…Okay, nobody swam in May but fools or tourists. But even if she was simply taking a walk, her story made sense. “You staying near here?”
Her dark gaze traveled over him. She nodded. “Yes, I believe I will. Am,” she corrected.
He was sweating again, and not from nerves. His emotions had been on ice a long time, but he still recognized the slow burn of desire.
“Address?” he asked harshly.
“I don’t remember.” She smiled again, charmingly, looking him full in the eyes. “I only recently arrived.”
He refused to be charmed. But he couldn’t deny the tug of attraction, deep in his belly. “Name?”
“Margred.”
Mar-gred. Sounded foreign. He kind of liked it.
He raised his brows. “Just Margred?”
“Margaret, I think you would say.”
“Last name?”
She took a step closer, making everything under the sweatshirt sway. Hell-o, breasts. “Do you need one?”
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember being this distracted and turned on since he’d sat behind Susanna Colburn in seventh-grade English and spent most of second period with a hard-on. Something about her voice…Her eyes…It was weird.
“In case I need to get in touch with you,” he explained.
“That would be nice.”
He was staring at her mouth. Her wide, wet, full-lipped mouth. “What?”
“If you got in touch with me. I want you to touch me.”
He jerked himself back. “What?”
She looked surprised. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Yes.
“No.”
Fuck.
Caleb was frustrated, savagely disappointed with himself and with her. He knew plenty of women—badge bunnies—went for cops. Some figured sex would get them out of trouble or a ticket. Some were simply into uniforms or guns or handcuffs.
He hadn’t taken her for one of them.
“Oh.” She regarded him thoughtfully.
His stomach muscles tightened.
And then she smiled. “You are lying,” she said.
Yeah, he was.
He shrugged. “Just because I’m”—horny, hot, hard—“attracted doesn’t mean I have to act on it.”
She tilted her head. “Why not?”
He exhaled, a gust between a laugh and a groan. “For starters, I’m a cop.”
“Cops don’t have sex?”
He couldn’t believe they were having this discussion. “Not on duty.”
Which was mostly true. True for him anyway. He hadn’t seen any horizontal action since…God, since the last time he was home on leave, over eighteen months ago. His brief marriage hadn’t survived his first deployment, and nobody since had cared enough to be waiting when he got out.
“When are you not on duty?” she asked.
He shook his head. “What, you want a date?”
Even sarcasm didn’t throw this chick. “I would meet you again, yes. I am…attracted, too.”
She wanted him.
Not that it mattered.
He cleared his throat. “I’m never off duty. I’m the only cop on the island.”
“I don’t live on your island. I am only…” Again with the pause, like English was her second language or something. “Visiting,” she concluded with a smile.
Like fucking a tourist would be perfectly okay.
Well, wouldn’t it?
The thought popped unbidden into his head. It wasn’t like he was arresting her. He didn’t even suspect her of anything except wanting to have sex with him, and he wasn’t a big enough hypocrite to hold that against her.
But he didn’t understand this alleged attraction she felt. He felt.
And Caleb did not trust what he did not understand.
“Where are you staying?” he asked. “I’ll walk you home.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“That’s very kind of you. And quite unnecessary.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “You getting rid of me now?”
She smiled, her teeth white in the moonlight. “No.”
“So?”
She turned away, her footprints creating small, reflective pools in the sand. “So I will see you.”
He was oddly reluctant to let her go. “Where?”
“Around. On the beach. I walk on the beach in the evening.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “Come find me sometime…when you’re not on duty.”
2
THE FOUR O’CLOCK FERRY WHISTLE CUT THROUGH the bright air like an ambulance siren, piercing the quiet of Caleb’s office.
He set his coffee mug on the desk blotter with a steady hand.
Only six weeks, and the rising wail no longer made him tense and wait for the inevitable second explosion that took out civilians and rescuers alike. He’d grown up with that whistle; he’d ridden that ferry home from high school; and part of him, at least, accepted he was home. Slowly, the familiar sounds and rhythms of the island were settling into his consciousness, awakening reassuring echoes in his blood. The cry of the gulls, the tide’s ebb and flow, the lobster boats chugging out every morning, soothed him like a mother’s rocking.
Progress, he thought wryly. Maybe in another two months he’d be able to walk down the street without his jaw and neck clenching, without scanning the doorways and rooftops for snipers. Maybe he’d start sleeping through the nights again.
An image of Margret—Margaret—wavered in his mind, her cloudy dark hair, her round breasts under a loose sweatshirt. Come find me sometime…when you’re not on duty.
Okay, bad idea. After the mess he’d made of his marriage, Caleb knew better than to fall into another relationship based on loneliness and convenience.
But at least for those few minutes on the beach last night, he’d felt alive again.
A tap sounded on his door. Edith Paine, the town clerk, stuck her smooth gray bob into Caleb’s office. Edith had been running town hall since before the current building’s construction. She handled the town’s billing and permits, scheduled appointments for the mayor, and served as the island’s dispatcher during the day. Caleb never walked past her desk in the outer office without feeling like he ought to wipe his shoes first.
She sniffed. “Bruce Whittaker to see you.”
Edith hadn’t taken Whittaker’s complaint last night—after-hours calls to the police were bounced to Caleb’s cell phone. She wouldn’t like being out of the loop.
Or maybe, Caleb thought, she just didn’t like Whittaker.
“Thanks. Tell him to come in.”
“You’ll need to let him out,” she warned. “I get off at four.”
“Can’t miss Oprah,” Caleb joked.
Edith looked down her nose at him. “I have a four thirty kickboxing class at the community center.” Turning her head, she spoke over her shoulder. “You can go in now. He’s not doing anything.”
Nothing that couldn’t wait. Caleb tossed away a catalog advertising high-tech SWAT equipment and glanced up.
White male, six feet, wiry build, Bruce Whittaker wore his brown hair short and his shirt sleeves rolled. Caleb put his age in the mid-forties and his income considerably higher.
“Mr. Whittaker. What can I do for you?”
“You can do something about those trespassers on my beach.”
The point was public land, but the question wasn’t worth disputing.
Caleb raised his eyebrows. “They’re back?”
“They came back this morning to pick up their vehicles.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You should have arrested them.”
Caleb relaxed his hands on his desk blotter. “I wrote them up. And Stowe will have to appear in court.”
“I want to see him in jail,” Whittaker said.
Caleb nodded toward the steel and glass doorway that separated the chief’s office from the island’s two small holding cells. “We don’t have the space or the manpower for me to play Barney Fife. I lock somebody up, we’re both spending the night in jail. I don’t mind sleeping on a cot if somebody’s committed a serious crime. But I don’t give up my bed because some kid bought beer for his buddies.”
“They were trespassing,” Whittaker insisted. “My beach rights extend to the low water mark.”
Lawyer, Caleb thought.
“Within your property lines, yes,” he said. “These kids were just outside, on public beach.”
“They were still violating the law.”
“Yeah, they were,” Caleb agreed. “But I’d bet they won’t now they know you’ve got a nice view of the party. I can drive by the next couple of nights, see if they show up again.”
Or if she did. The woman. Margred.
Caleb shook his head. He’d already tried to track her down. Edith had never heard of her. Nobody at Island Realty had any record or recollection of a dark-haired Margaret, last name unknown. As chief of police, he had better things to do with his time than chase after some fantasy woman on the beach. But the lack of information about her aroused his professional curiosity.
Along with other things.
“Let me know if you see anyone,” Whittaker said. “You catch them lighting fires again, I’ll take care of them.”
“You let me take care of them,” Caleb said. “I’m not calling an open season on tourists or kids.”
“An uncontrolled burn could destroy the ecosystem of this island.”
The son of a lobsterman, Caleb understood how fragile the island’s environment was…and how shaky its economy. The islanders, the real islanders, depended on both the sea and tourism to survive. Something a newcomer like Whittaker would never understand.
He saw him out and began his evening swing through town.
A tumbled line of weathered gray shops and houses divided the hard, bright blue of the sky from the deeper, wilder blue of the sea. A half-dozen high school kids straggled up from the ferry, the boys in boots and flannel shirts, the girls in flip-flops and midriff-baring jeans. Gulls wheeled and cried after the boats in the harbor. Everything appeared clear, bright, and remote, like the view through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
Or a rifle scope.
Caleb drew a deep breath and started down the hill, past Sea View Bed-and-Breakfast and Wiley’s Market. The Barlow house was an art gallery now, the old Thompson cottage had been spruced up into a tourist center, but the narrow streets and struggling gardens hadn’t changed in fifteen years. In fifty.
This is what he needed, he told himself. A sense of community, a shot at stability. Here he could assemble the pieces of a normal life to make himself whole again.
But today the snug, square houses, the quiet harbor, felt as pretty and flat as one of those postcards in the gift shop. Dissatisfaction lodged in his chest like unexploded ordnance, heavy and deadly. For a moment he couldn’t breathe.
He forced himself along the uneven sidewalk, his gaze lingering between the buildings. Like insurgents were going to pop from behind the Lighthouse Gift Shop and start shooting.
Caleb kept walking. Positive coping actions, the shrink had counseled. Exercise. Work. Positive thinking.
Sex.
Which made him think again of the woman on the beach, her big, dark eyes, her wide, lush mouth. Her breasts.
Intimate relationships assist with relaxation and provide practical and emotional support, the Army doc had said.
Okay, so seeking out a foreign tourist with a thing for uniforms probably wasn’t what the shrink had in mind, but a guy had to start somewhere. At least when Caleb was with her, he hadn’t remembered Mosul. Hell, he’d barely remembered his name. And there had been an instant, gazing into those fathomless eyes, when he’d actually felt…more than desire.
Connection.
The well-lit windows and red awning of Antonia’s Ristorante (PIZZA! BAKERY! SUBS! the sign proclaimed) spilled a welcome onto the sidewalk. The bell jangled as Caleb pushed open the door.
Regina Barone was working behind the counter, wearing a wide, white apron and a slight, distracted frown, her dark hair strained back from her thin face.
At the sound of the bell, she looked up, the frown dissolving. “Hi, Cal.”
He smiled. “Reggie.”
They’d known each other forever. He remembered her as a skinny, abrasive, ambitious girl, desperate to get off the island and out from under her mother’s thumb. He’d heard she’d landed the job of sous chef in some fancy big-city restaurant, New York or Boston. She had a tattoo now, on her wrist, and a small gold crucifix around her neck.
But here she was, back on World’s End, working in the family restaurant. Here they both were.
Why didn’t he want sex with her?
Regina’s eight-year-old son, Nick, hunched in a red vinyl booth in the corner, scribbling.
“How’s the homework going?” Caleb asked.
Nick shrugged. He was a cute kid, with his mother’s thin build and expressive Italian eyes.
“Fractions,” Regina explained. “He hates them.”
Nick’s chin thrust out. “I don’t see why I have to learn them, that’s all. Not if I’m going to help Nonna in the restaurant.”
Regina’s mouth tightened.
“Got to learn your fractions,” Caleb said. “How else can you make a half-mushroom, half-pepperoni pizza?”
Regina threw him a grateful look. “That’s right,” she told Nick. “You work in the kitchen, you need fractions. Half a cup. Three quarters of a teaspoon.”
“I guess,” Nick said. He bent back over his homework.
Regina smiled at Caleb. “So, what can I do for you?”
Invitation lurked under her words, wary yet unmistakable. She was a good woman, with a great kid and just enough baggage to balance his load. He tried to summon something, a spark, a tug, and felt…numb.
“What have you got to go tonight?” he asked.
“Besides pizza?” Shrugging, Regina wiped her hands on her apron and nodded toward the refrigerator case. “Lobster roll, clam chowder, lemon garlic chicken, shrimp-and-tortellini salad.”
“Nice,” Caleb said. “Your mother know you’re catering to the yacht set now?”
Regina’s eyes cooled. “We talked about it. What’ll you have?”
Something there, Caleb thought. But unless the Barones took after each other with kitchen knives, it was none of his business. “How about two of the lobster rolls and the, uh…a double of salad.”
