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But the Freemans were here! Her back straightened as she recalled seeing their distinctive, shiny green four-wheel drive roll off the ferry the previous day when she had walked over to the jetty to wave Ray off and pick up a mail-order package from the post-box at the store.
Although Nina didn’t know Dave Freeman particularly well herself—he was only an intermittent visitor to his bach—he was a long-time fishing buddy of Ray’s and she knew that he freely gave the older man advice on his arthritis. He was actually a psychiatrist, but shrinks were medical doctors in the first instance, weren’t they? Just because she had been stand-offish to him in the past was no reason to be reluctant to approach him now. While Shearwater Islanders were fiercely respectful of each other’s right to privacy—that was why the island was such a haven for social misfits—in a crisis their community spirit was invariably staunch.
She jumped up and found herself tethered to the couch by a hand that had shot out with surprising speed to fist in the saturated denim bagging around her knee.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Nowhere,’ she soothed, easing the bunched fabric out of his grasp, taken aback by the raw suspicion in his voice. ‘But I’ve just thought of someone who can give me some advice about that gash on your head.’ She raised her voice. ‘Zorro, come here!’
The little dog came trotting out of the kitchen, dragging the discarded soup bone that Nina had used to distract him from chewing on the stranger’s muddy shoes.
A faint, choking sound floated up from the couch. ‘You’re going to ask a dog for a medical opinion!’
His incredulous outrage sent a buzz of amusement humming through her veins, easing the pressure of her intense anxiety.
‘Unfortunately, he’s not licensed to practise.’ Nina removed the bone from the dog’s mouth and picked up the gnawed handle of an expensive fishing rod from the bookcase, holding it out for Zorro to sniff.
‘You know where you got this, don’t you, boy?’ she said encouragingly. ‘Dr Freeman—Dave—gave it to you after you kept stealing it off his back porch at Christmas. You take it along with you when Dave takes you and Ray out fishing on his boat, and he throws this in the water for you, doesn’t he?’
Nina was scribbling a brief line on a scrap of paper and taping it to the stumpy rod as she spoke. ‘You like playing fetch with Dave, don’t you?’ She mimed a throwing action and the terrier began to prance energetically. Nina crouched down and looked into the beady masked eyes as she placed the piece of rod firmly between his jaws. ‘I want you take this along to Dave’s place now. I want you to fetch—Dave! Understand?’
Zorro pricked up his ears, his whine mingling with a sleepy snort from the patient.
‘Of course he can’t understand—he’s a dog!’
Nina bristled in defence of her companion. ‘Zorro is extremely intelligent. He knows what I’m saying, don’t you, boy? You’re going to play fetch with Dave.’
The Jack Russell barked excitedly around the edges of the rod and took off at his customary velocity.
As his claws clicked across the kitchen floor, Nina remembered to call out, ‘Uh, Zorro, just don’t forget that the rod may not—’ There came a sharp rap and a pained whine, followed by a furious rattling and growling. ‘—fit crossways through the cat door.’ The fight sounds rose to a crescendo of frustrated snarls and Nina was about to dive to the rescue when there was a scraping pop and a series of muffled, triumphant yips diminishing into the distance.
‘Extremely intelligent, huh?’
Nina ran her hands through her wringing-wet hair, scooping it off her clammy neck. ‘He tends to leap before he looks sometimes, but even intelligent humans do that,’ she pointed out.
‘You really expect him to do it?’ he wondered.
Rather than following the upward movement of her arms, the blue eyes had drifted in the opposite direction. Nina looked down to see her drenched sweatshirt plastered to her uplifted breasts, shaping their modest fullness and explicitly revealing her lack of a bra. She hastily plucked the wrinkled fabric away from her unpleasantly chilled skin. ‘I know he will. Zorro’s very dedicated when he thinks he’s on a mission,’ she said more confidently than she actually felt. She wouldn’t relish going back out into the storm herself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to get into some dry clothes.’
