“Don’t fucking touch her.”
“Jazz,” Grace barked sharply. “She’s a doctor.” Jazz hesitated. “And she’s Reap’s girl,” Grace added firmly. “Let her do her thing.”
The grip vanished. I dropped beside Mamma Dot, fingers already searching carefully along her jaw and scalp while adrenaline surged hot through my veins.
“Mamma Dot?” I asked gently. “Can you hear me?”
“Course I can,” she grumbled thickly through swelling lips. “Takes more than one ugly Mackem to finish me off.”
And despite the blood and terror and bodies in the middle of the cottage, Grace laughed.
*****
By the time the tide went out, the cottage smelled of blood, antiseptic wipes and cold tea. Blue lights flooded the cottage with dance-floor style rhythm from police and ambulance crews who’d finally reached the island hours later. Jazz and Chase were long gone by then, vanished back across the mainland as soon as the tide allowed them.
Mamma Dot sat wrapped stubbornly in a blanket while two exhausted paramedics tried unsuccessfully to assess her properly.
“There’s nowt wrong with me,” she complained for the fifth time while one attempted to shine a torch into her eyes. “Stop fussing.”
“You’ve been pistol whipped,” the paramedic replied wearily.
“Aye, and he came off worse, didn’t he?”
Nearby, Grace calmly gave her statement to a detective while blood still stained the leg of her dungarees.
“They broke in,” she explained smoothly, like she was about to teach an art class instead of standing in a bloodstained cottage. “Disturbed our girls’ weekend. Very traumatic really. We were just about to work on shadow and depth with oils.”
The detective glanced sceptically towards the body already being wheeled from the cottage, up at Tori whose tattoos covering both arms and hands were a work of art themselves, and then back to Grace.
“And you defended yourself with a rolling pin?”
Grace smiled pleasantly. “Well, I wasn’t going to use the good cast iron pan, was I?”
The officer looked exhausted already.
One by one, the rest of us gave statements. Almost identical. Even Tori repeated the same version eventually after enough glaring from Heidi and Ciara.
Bikers broke in.
Grace defended us.
Mamma Dot helped.
That was all anyone knew.
The police didn’t believe a word of it. I’d seen the looks they passed between themselves countless times. But without witnesses willing to say otherwise, there wasn’t much they could do.
Eventually, the officers flipped their notepads closed. The older one took a last look around, scanning each of our faces before exhaling long and loud. As he passed me in the narrow hallway, his shoulder brushed lightly against mine. He paused just enough to speak quietly.
“Your dad spent thirty-odd years trying to put men like this behind bars, Dr Mercer.” His eyes flicked briefly towards the women gathered in the lounge before settling back on me. “Mind what side of the door you end up standing on.”
For a moment, I just looked at him. Then my eyes drifted past him towards the lounge. Towards Suzy curled beneath a blanket. Emmie holding Lily. Mamma Dot still arguing with aparamedic while Grace made tea for everyone, like we hadn’t nearly been killed an hour ago.
Towards family.
“I think,” I answered softly, “I’m exactly where I always should’ve been.” Something unreadable flickered across his face. “Thank you for your concern, Officer.”
Then I stepped past him and closed the door behind us.
