Sea Witch (9 page)

memory? Before and after the event?”

“Why don’t you let me finish my examination before you make a

diagnosis.” The doctor glanced at the clipboard on her lap. “Are you on

any medications? Prescriptions, over-the-counter drugs?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“What about birth control?”

“No,” Maggie said.

A memory exploded in Caleb’s brain.

“
You could still get pregnant
,” he had warned her.

“
No
,” she’d said, and taken him in her mouth.

“There are things I can give you,” Donna said. “If we determine

pregnancy is a possibility.”

He snapped back to the present.

“It’s not,” Maggie said.

The doctor cleared her throat. “We find in about five percent of rape

cases—”

“I was not raped.”

Caleb’s instincts went on point. “You said you didn’t remember.

“I do not need to remember,” she said firmly. “I would know.”

He wanted to believe her.

Reason enough, in his experience, to doubt. She was naked and

unconscious when he found her. Anything could have been done to her.

His stomach pitched. Anything.

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She might not remember. Or she could be in denial.

“It’s easy enough to confirm,” he said.

A glint surfaced in those dark, deep eyes. “Easy for whom?”

He was silent.

Donna tapped her pen against the clipboard. “Just a few more

questions.”

Caleb kept his hands in his pockets and his gaze on Maggie’s face as

she answered the doctor’s questions in a low, clear voice that told them . .

. absolutely nothing.

She didn’t know.

She couldn’t remember.

She wouldn’t say.

“Date of last menstrual cycle?” Frustration tinged the doctor’s voice.

Caleb sympathized.

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you sexually active?”

A pause, while every muscle in his body tensed.

The doctor tried again. “Do you remember the last time you had

intercourse?”

She remembered . . . something. He saw it in her eyes.

“It’s all right,” he said in the even tone he used to soothe new

recruits. “No one is blaming or accusing you of anything. We just want to

find out what happened so we can take care of you.”

“The last time?” Donna prompted.

66

Maggie’s face was pale and collected. A tiny pulse beat beneath her

jaw. “Three weeks ago.”

Three weeks . . .

His chest was tight. “What about tonight?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What were you doing on the beach tonight?”

Maggie’s gaze collided with his, her eyes dark and unfathomable.

“Looking for you.”

67

Six

DONNA

GLANCED

FROM

MAGGIE

TO

CALEB,

SPECULATION sparkling in her eyes. “You two know each other?”

Maggie was silent.

Caleb didn’t blame her. Their relationship was none of the doctor’s

damn business. Or wouldn’t be under most circumstances. Too bad these

weren’t ordinary circumstances. Maggie was Donna’s patient. And Caleb

. . . Well, he was willing to tell the doctor whatever she needed to hear to

provide Maggie with the best possible care.

So, okay, he didn’t know Maggie’s last name or her favorite color,

her permanent address or her childhood pets. But they’d had sex on a

picnic table. Twice. That counted for something.

Know her?

“Yes,” he said.

“So . . .” Donna pursed her lips. “Any idea who I should list as the

responsible party?”

Victims Compensation would cover only part of the bill.

"Put my name,” Caleb said. “At least until we locate some family.”

As simply as that, he claimed her.

There would be winks, he knew, and nudges and teasing comments

when he patrolled the dock or dropped by Antonia’s for his morning cup

of coffee.

But as long as Maggie was tagged as the police chief’s girl, she

would be accepted and protected by the tight-knit island community. The

news might even give the son of a bitch who attacked her a few anxious

moments.

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Caleb hoped so.

“Well, then.” Donna set down her clipboard and smiled at Maggie.

“Let’s have a look at you.”

Maggie stiffened, but she allowed the doctor to palpate her skull and

shine a tiny penlight into her eyes.

Caleb caught himself leaning forward and settled back deliberately

in his corner. For months now, he’d been trying to feel a part of things.

Connected. Now he had to struggle for his professional detachment.

“Hmm,” Donna said.

Fuck detached.

“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked.

“Her pupils are enlarged.”

“Is that bad?”

Donna made another noncommittal noise. “They are responsive to

light. And the reaction is symmetric.” She flashed, peered, flashed again.

“It’s just . . . odd.”

Maggie blinked. “There is nothing wrong with my eyes.” “No

blurring?” Caleb asked. “No double vision?”

“No,” Maggie said.

Donna shot him an annoyed look.

He shut up, jamming his hands in his pockets, as the doctor

continued her examination. Mouth. Throat. Wrists. Arms. Breasts.

Thighs. Every part he had touched and taken and caressed . . . He looked

up at the stained acoustic tile on the ceiling. Forced himself to look back

at Maggie on the table.

The doctor had reached her feet. She spread her toes, as if checking

for needle marks, and paused.

Maggie pulled her foot away.

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Donna allowed that, making another note on the chart. “Good motor

responses. Now I want you to scoot to the end of the table and lie down.”

Caleb pulled in his lower abdomen, instinctively protecting his

crotch. He knew what was coming. Hell, he’d provided the rape kit from

his trunk.

Maggie looked at Caleb. “Why?”

He would rather have faced an alley full of blind windows than that

dark, wary gaze.

“I need to do a vaginal exam,” Donna explained.

“To assess your injuries,” Caleb said.

Like that made the violation of her body and her privacy all right.

“This is to help me?”

He wanted to believe that. Had to believe it.

“To help you,” he said evenly, “and to help me catch whoever did

this to you.”

Maggie tilted her head, keeping her gaze on his face. “You want

this?”

No, he didn’t. He didn’t want anybody touching her. Nobody but

him.

He fisted his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug before lowering obediently to the

table. The paper crinkled under her as she moved.

The rape kit was open on the counter, vials and slides in a neat row.

Caleb had never been in the room during a pelvic before. His ex-wife,

Sherilee, had never even discussed her appointments with him except to

complain. “
Men have it easy
,” she’d said. “
You have no idea
.”

She’d been right.

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He had worked rape cases in Portland, always waiting outside the

curtained cubical to take possession of the evidence and question the

victims. Not that he didn’t care about them. He did. But he’d never been

forced to witness this second assault on their bodies and their dignity, to

imagine how it must feel to lie on your back with your feet in metal

stirrups while some stranger sat between your open thighs.

Increasingly uncomfortable, he watched as Donna swabbed and

combed and probed. Maggie endured the exam in stoic silence, her eyes

veiled.

Maybe he should have taken her to the hospital on the mainland, he

thought now that it was too late. She was stabilized. There would have

been somebody, a trained nurse, a victims’ advocate, to comfort her. To

hold her hand. To do all the things he couldn’t do.

She inhaled sharply and grabbed his forearm.

Stunned, he stared at her grip on his arm, her slim, pale fingers, their

nails short and shining as shells on the beach. Her wrist was mottled

purple and red.

She had fought him, Caleb remembered. On the sand, writhing and

clawing under him. He
had
to hold her down.

Guilt burned under his breastbone.

Cautiously, he covered her small hand with his much larger one.

How could she bear for him to touch her? But she didn’t pull away.

With his thumb, he gently stroked her bruise over and over.

“All right now.” Donna turned from the sink holding the speculum.

“I want you to try to relax.”

Relax
? Caleb’s belly tightened again.
Jesus
.

Maggie took one look at the gleaming metal implement and bolted

upright on the table. “No.”

Hell, no
, he agreed silently.

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Which was stupid. He was thinking like a man—a man who cared

about her—instead of like a cop.

“Would you feel better if Chief Hunter left the room?” the doctor

asked.

“I would feel
better
”—Maggie bit the words out—“if
I
left.”

So would Caleb. Unfortunately, even if Maggie refused the pelvic,

they weren’t finished yet.

He turned to Donna. “How much more do you need?”

The doctor frowned. “We don’t have the equipment for a CT scan,

but I should take X-rays. She needs stitches, of course. I have to draw a

blood test for STDs and take more samples for the rape kit.”

Maggie snarled. “I was not raped.”

The possibility shook Caleb.

He reminded himself she could still be in shock. Or in denial. But

faced with her fierce certainty, he allowed himself to doubt. To hope. If

she wasn’t raped . . .

“What about her external injuries?” he asked Donna.

“Aside from the head wound?” Donna pursed her lips.

“Those abrasions on her wrists are certainly consistent with a

struggle.”

Caleb winced. Whatever she needed to hear to provide care, he

reminded himself.

“I had to restrain her,” he said.

The doctor’s eyes cooled. “So you bruised her wrists?”

“I bit him,” Maggie volunteered.

The temperature in the room dropped another twenty degrees.

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“I really think it would be best if I spoke to Miss—to Maggie alone,”

Donna said.

“Why?” Maggie demanded.

“The doctor wants to be sure I’m not the one who hit you,” Caleb

said in a carefully neutral voice.

“That is stupid,” Maggie said.

“No.” Caleb spoke slowly, his gaze never leaving the doctor’s. “It

makes good sense. We’ve admitted to a relationship. I bring you in here

injured, confused, with no recollection of your assailant. For all she

knows, I raped you myself.”

“Then she does not know you,” Maggie said.

Her warm conviction filled a hole in Caleb’s chest he hadn’t realized

was empty. Maybe he hadn’t imagined that moment of connection three

weeks ago.

He set his jaw. It couldn’t be allowed to matter. He had his job to do.

They both had their jobs to do.

“She’s trying to protect you,” he said.

Donna thawed slightly. “For what it’s worth, there are no bruises or

lacerations that would indicate rape. Of course, an internal exam might

reveal more.”

“But you don’t think so,” Caleb guessed.

The doctor shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. We both know

hunches don’t hold up in court.”

Maggie folded her arms across her breasts. “What about what I

think? Or is that also not allowed to matter?”

Caleb and Donna exchanged glances over her head. “She has the

right to revoke consent,” the doctor said.

Hell, he knew that.

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That didn’t mean he couldn’t intimidate her. Persuade her. He had

enough experience as a cop and as a man to coax an unwilling woman.

But to do so now, in the face of the doctor’s doubts and Maggie’s own

fierce certainty, seemed itself a kind of rape, an incursion of her body and

her self.

And for what? What was he trying to prove? That even though he’d

let the guy who did this get away, he could help her somehow after all?

Frustration gnawed his gut.

“Seal the rape kit and do—whatever you have to. Whatever’s

medically necessary,” he clarified, unsure if his decision made him a

good guy or just a bad cop. “Is there a lock on your refrigerator?”

The doctor nodded.

“Good. I’ll pick up the kit in the morning. I don’t want any questions

about chain of evidence.” If they even had any evidence, which he was

beginning to doubt.

“Photos?” Donna asked.

“I’ll take them before you stitch her up.”

Donna pursed her lips. “Is that all right with you?” she asked

Maggie.

She held herself as still as a deer in the woods, frozen on the point of

flight. “What if I said no?”