stronger. ‘I don’t want to know anything more about you, Officer King. You can keep your secrets to yourself.’
With that she rose, shook out her towel and strode off towards the cabin. She entered it only to find him two paces behind. She whirled on him. ‘Are you going to dog my every footstep?’
He stepped around her, seized a bottle of water from the fridge and grabbed the backpack from the table. ‘Help yourself to whatever you want, Ms Buckley.’ He waved a hand around the kitchen. ‘I’ll be down on the beach if you need anything.’
The ‘Ms Buckley’ stung, but she had no one to blame but herself.
She hitched up her chin. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice came out cold, polite and distant. If she’d had any energy to spare she’d have applauded her poise.
Without another word, he left.
She clenched her eyes shut. Letting her guard down around Mitch would be fatal. He might come across all caring and solicitous, but he didn’t trust her any more now than he had back then. That backpack being a case in point. He’d been very careful to take it with him. She’d bet her life it contained her cell phone. And his. Along with the car keys. He wasn’t giving her a chance to get her hands on any of them.
‘Regret? Yeah, right,’ she muttered. Mitch would say anything and do anything to get what he wanted. All in the line of duty, of course.
Well, one thing was for certain. He wasn’t getting her.
* * *
Tash had a shower.
She fully explored the inside of the cabin. It was well-stocked. She had to give Mitch credit for that. She didn’t find her cell phone. Not that she expected to.
She lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Despite all the sun and surf earlier, a nap eluded her. Her mind circled with questions and fears instead. What kind of trouble was Rick in? Was he safe? Who was behind the violence against those women? Did someone really want to hurt her? If so, why?
She leapt off the bed to browse the bookcase. She selected a book at random. Fifteen minutes later she threw it down with a growl. The one thing she didn’t need to read was a graphic police procedural.
Not that she was scared. Not out here.
Not with Mitch so close.
The thought whispered through her. She shook it away.
She made tea and drank it without tasting a single drop.
Finally she pulled on her tennis shoes, grabbed an apple and headed back down to the beach. Activity—that was what she needed. She wasn’t used to lazing around with nothing to do.
The minute Mitch saw her he snapped his cell phone shut with a curt, ‘I’ve got to go.’ He shoved it into the backpack.
He didn’t tell her who he’d been talking to.
She didn’t ask.
‘If it’s legal,’ she drawled, channelling icy politeness that bordered on incivility, ‘I was planning to go for a walk...just along the shoreline.’ She wanted to add ‘Alone’ but figured that’d be overkill.
‘Sure.’ He lay back on the sand and adjusted his cap over his eyes. ‘Beyond those rocks there—’ he waved to the left ‘—is a broad rock shelf. The rock pools are pretty at low tide.’
Right. Was it low tide now? ‘Thanks.’ Again—icy and uncivil. It had to be better than shouting at him, though, surely? With a shake of her head, she turned and stalked off.
For the next hour Tash lost herself in the strange wonder of the rock pools. She discovered brightly coloured anemones, tiny starfish, small crabs and little silver fish. She found brightly coloured pebbles, and bright green clumps of seaweed. She found fully contained worlds that seemed to be in perfect harmony.
She grimaced as a hermit crab pounced and devoured a tiny fish. It was a beautiful world, but a savage one too.
Still, with the sounds of the waves breaking on the reef, the cries of the seagulls and the tang of salt on the air mixing with the scents of the eucalypts and casuarinas onshore, it worked to ease some of the tension from her muscles.
Until the image of Mitch’s shuttered face rose up in her mind.
Had she really cut him off so pitilessly and walked away when he’d been about to reveal something that obviously meant a lot to him, some secret he’d never shared before? She slammed her hands to her hips. She glanced first one way then another before crouching back down.
‘What a cow!’ she murmured, scratching her hands back through her hair and knocking off her hat. She snatched it back up, settled it more firmly on her head. She was better off not knowing his secrets and he’d be better off not sharing them with her.
She thumped down to sit on hard rock. How were they going to get through three more days of this? Her mouth went dry. For heaven’s sake she’d nearly hit him. They couldn’t go on like this.
She forced steel to her legs and pushed back to her feet, startling the tiny fish in the rock pool. They flashed silver as they scattered to hide in the weed and overhangs. For heaven’s sake, it was eight years ago. Get over it!
She passed a hand over her eyes. She hadn’t spent the last eight years nursing her wound. But...seeing him when she’d least expected to had brought it all rushing back—the pain, the disillusion, the anger. Nothing good had come from any of it. All she’d been able to do was lash out in an effort to protect herself. Very adult of you, Tash.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. She stayed like that, motionless, for several long moments. Swallowing, she turned and headed back the way she’d come.
Mitch still lay on his back with his cap over his eyes. She set her shoulders and went to nudge him with a foot and then thought the better of it. ‘Are you asleep?’ she murmured instead. She said it quietly so he could ignore her if he wanted.
‘Nope.’
But he didn’t sit up.
She sat, but not too close. ‘I have a proposition for you.’
He still didn’t sit up. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. She refused to get passive aggressive. She refused to get up and stalk off. ‘The police want to question Rick, right?’
He hadn’t been moving before, but he stilled completely at her words. She stared at him and pursed her lips. Act like an adult. ‘I’d rather have this conversation face to face.’
* * *
Very slowly Mitch pushed up into a sitting position. What was she up to now? He settled his cap back onto his head. ‘You know we do.’
‘But you don’t have enough evidence to arrest him, do you? All of your so-called evidence is merely circumstantial.’
‘What are you getting at, Tash?’ He reached across and removed her sunglasses, dropping them to her lap. He wanted to see her eyes. He wanted to know if she was lying to him, if she was planning something stupid. Not that she was the easy-to-read girl she’d once been, but he’d become adept at reading people. You had to in this job.
Her face, however, gave nothing away. She merely blinked a couple of times while her eyes adjusted to the light.
‘If you think for one moment I’ll believe you mean to grass Rick up or set him up, then you can think again.’
She leaned back and stared down her nose at him. ‘I might consider you a treacherous snake in the grass but I never thought of you as stupid. Of course I’m not going to grass Rick up.’
She said it all so matter-of-factly and without rancour that it surprised a laugh out of him.
‘I know Rick isn’t responsible for these crimes you’re fingering him for.’
All of his mirth fled.