‘God knows.’ The policeman shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Seems Pete thought he heard shots down near your cove, Fern. He loves those dolphins nearly as much as you do-and he took off out of his bedroom window to investigate without telling his parents.
‘He reckoned he saw a man aiming out to sea-and he could see the dolphins. Pete yelled out and the man turned and fired. Hit him in the leg. He only just made it back home before collapsing through blood loss.’
‘But…Who’d want to shoot Pete…or shoot the dolphins?’
‘That’s what I want to know,’ the policeman said grimly. ‘I’m going down to the cove now. Good luck with Pete. Poor little blighter.’
It was a nasty piece of surgery.
Pete’s leg was a mass of shotgun pellets and each had to be carefully removed. Quinn worked swiftly and surely, tension etched deep on his face.
He hardly spoke to Fern-or to the nurses. Except for words of encouragement to the small boy as Fern’s anaesthetic took hold, he hardly spoke at all.
He seemed…He seemed angry. Angry to the point of explosion.
Why?
Was it the senselessness of what had happened? Six months ago, before Quinn came to the island, the chance of saving Pete’s life with a wound like this would have been minimal. As a haemophiliac Pete would simply have bled to death. Quinn was prepared now, though-obviously keeping stores of factor eight at hand for just such emergencies.
They worked on. Despite the undercurrents in the small theatre they worked with precision and skill.
Fern’s misery was put aside as she concentrated.
Most of her thoughts were of the job in hand-but Pete wasn’t so ill that other niggles couldn’t intrude.
Quinn had been gentleness itself with the injured Pete. Despite his tension, he’d managed to reassure the frightened child to the point where it was easy to anaesthetise
How could a man with so much gentleness in his soul treat Jessie the way he did?
Did he have a child of his own on the way? Was Jessie pregnant?
Was that why the marriage had to stay together?
Quinn glanced up and found Fern’s eyes on him and his eyes snapped in anger.
‘Blood pressure, Dr Rycroft?’ he growled, and Fern knew that he didn’t need to know.
He was under more pressure than Fern. There was something going on here that she didn’t understand in the least.
Finally, the last pellet lay in the kidney bowl, waiting, no doubt, to be taken proudly to school for show and tell. Quinn dressed the wound with care and grunted with satisfaction.
‘I reckon we have clotting already,’ he said. ‘Reverse, please, Dr Rycroft.’
Five minutes later Fern removed the endotracheal tube and watched Pete’s breathing revert to normal.
‘There’s no need for you to wait, Dr Gallagher,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ll finish.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
Geraldine was watching in the background. Fern fairly gritted her teeth.
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
Quinn shrugged. He didn’t move. As the little boy’s eyelids fluttered open and his breathing stabilised, Quinn motioned to the nurse.
‘Take him out to his mum now, Sister. He’ll be frightened when he wakes…’
‘Not Pete,’ Fern said solidly. She gripped Pete’s hand and held hard. ‘Awake, Pete? It’s over. We dug shotgun pellets out of your leg but you’re fine now.’
Pete’s eyes focused.
‘H-how many?’ he whispered and Fern raised her eyebrows in query at Quinn.
‘Eight.’ Quinn smiled, and it was the first smile that Fern had seen that night.
‘D-don’t throw them away,’ Pete ordered. Then he grabbed Fern’s hand. ‘Fern, the dolphins…’
‘Sergeant Russell’s gone to check now,’ Fern assured him, ‘but I wouldn’t mind betting they’ve had more sense than to get shot as well.’
‘Stupid, mindless idiot,’ Pete whispered, as his eyes closed again. ‘Stupid, mindless idiot…’
He drifted back into sleep and Quinn motioned to Geraldine to wheel him out.
‘I’m going, too,’ Fern said abruptly as the stretcher disappeared towards waiting parents. She hauled off her gloves, mask and gown. ‘Unless you need me for anything else, Dr Gallagher?’
‘I’ll always need you,’ Quinn said bleakly. ‘You know that, Fern.’
‘I don’t know anything of the kind,’ Fern whispered. She closed her eyes, pain washing through her in waves. Somehow she had to find the courage to walk out of this room-walk out of Quinn Gallagher’s life for ever.
She took a step forward and then another.
Quinn didn’t try to stop her.
His face was as bleak as winter.
CHAPTER TEN
FERN didn’t sleep.
This was her last night on the island.
What was she leaving?
Towards dawn she rose, pulled jeans and a blouse on over her swimming costume and made her way down to her cove.
There were traces of blood on the path where Pete had run the night before.
Stupid twit, she thought savagely. What sort of mindless idiot would shoot at dolphins and then turn the gun on a child when he was discovered?
If he was that stupid, surely Sergeant Russell would catch him. Whoever was responsible needed to be locked up fast.
She shed her jeans and walked steadily into the water, welcoming the cool surf on her tense body, and then swam strongly out to deep water. This would be her last swim…
Two hundred yards out she floated over on her back and looked back at the island.
Her home…
It wasn’t her home. She didn’t have a home. She’d never had one and she never would.
Quinn Gallagher was her home.
The errant thought crept into her mind, unbidden, and she blinked back tears. He said he loved her and the tone in his voice made her believe him. She’d never had love like that. Never.
‘I’ll always need you,’ he’d said.
But he needed Jess and he was married to Jess.
He was married to Fern’s friend, a girl who Fern couldn’t hurt if her life depended on it.
Maybe…maybe, in years to come, if he and Jess were divorced…
Oh, yes. After the baby-or whatever was holding them together…
Fat chance.
She closed her eyes again, drifting lazily in the currents, and only opened them when a black form nudged her side.
A dolphin…
‘Hi.’ Fern managed a smile. ‘Where’s your mate?’
She searched the water for the dolphin she had seen time and time again. The two normally swam as a pair.
She’d never seen just one.
‘I hope that clod last night didn’t do any damage,’ she whispered and then she drew in her breath.
Her searching eyes had caught something black. Something lying on the shore at the far end of the cove where the headland started to rise from the beach.
Maybe it was only a lump of seaweed.
Maybe not.
The lone dolphin nudged Fern again and then again, as if imparting an urgent message.
They weren’t stupid, these creatures.
Not as stupid as the cretin who’d been firing at them last night.
‘OK,’ she whispered to the dolphin, and Fern turned towards the beach. She put her head down and swam and the solitary dolphin followed her almost to shore.
It was the dolphin.
Of course it was the dolphin. As Fern neared the beach the mound on the sand focused into gleaming black. By the time she was wading through the shallows she could see its movement.
It was alive but stranded, thrashing uselessly on the dry sand.
‘Oh, no…’
Fern ran swiftly up the beach and squatted on the sand beside the stranded creature. Out to sea, its companion swam round in tight, anxious circles.
How on earth had it been beached?
The gun…
Of course it was the gun. A deep laceration ran through the flesh of the dolphin’s back, marring the gleaming body.
It had been shot. In pain and confusion it must have tried to escape the stinging hurt and ended up beached.