Free Give Yourself Away by Barbara Elsborg Page A

having to battle against the incoming tide. When they reached the far end of the cave, March clung to an overhang, waiting for the sea to drop. He watched the way the water surged and swirled, trying to identify the place that would lead to open sea and not a dead end and a rocky grave.
    “Hold your breath on three,” March said and the moment the water eddied before drawing back, he counted. “One, two, three.”
    On three, he pulled Caleb under and kicked hard. March felt his way out, hands following the line of the rock, wondering if he’d made a mistake and this wasn’t going to take them out. But he saw a light, knew it was the boat and tugged the guy up.
    Kev pulled Caleb to safety and unclipped him, and March hauled himself on board.
    “We’ll be having words,” Brian said, putting the boat into reverse.
    As Brian headed back to shore, Kev slipped Caleb into a life jacket, then wrapped him in a thermal blanket. The man’s face was white.
    “His name’s Caleb Jones,” March said.
    “Open your eyes, Caleb,” Kev said. “You need to stay awake. What happened?”
    “Fell.” Caleb’s teeth chattered. “Dropped into the cave. Used the light from my phone.”
    “It saved your life,” Kev said. “That and March.”
    Kev sheltered him as the boat reared up in the water and March found himself unable to take his gaze away from Caleb’s face. It was as if no one else in the boat existed. There was a translucent quality to Caleb’s skin that made him look as though he’d been hewn from alabaster. His dark hair was plastered to his head, his lips were bloodless and his eyes almost black in the dim light, but there was something about him that made him think Caleb had secrets too. Maybe they had that in common. More than that in common.
    Oh fuck. Get your head in gear. If he’d been on land, March would have walked away. Fast. As it was, he turned to look out to sea.
    Within minutes, Brian had the craft back onshore and Caleb had been passed into the hands of the paramedics.
    “When you’ve cleaned the boat, showered and changed, I want to speak to you,” Brian snapped.
    “Okay.”
    March helped Kev load the boat on the trailer so that it could be towed back to the lifeboat station.
    “You’re in trouble,” Kev said.
    “Looks like it.” March fastened the straps on his side.
    “What were you thinking?” Kev asked.
    “That I couldn’t let someone drown if there was a chance to save them.”
    While Kev chatted to the tractor driver, March walked up the beach. He frowned when he saw a guy wrapped in a foil blanket, who had to be the one they’d just rescued, getting into a taxi. There was no sign of the ambulance and a police car was pulling out of the car park. Why hadn’t they taken him to the hospital? He was on the verge of hypothermia, if not already there. He needed monitoring. But then what the hell did it have to do with him? Maybe the guy had lied and hadn’t fallen. Maybe he’d jumped and when he’d survived changed his mind. Maybe the secrets weren’t ones March needed to know.
    March hoped Brian would have calmed down by the time he walked into the office, but when he saw the guy’s scowl, he braced himself.
    “What the fuck were you thinking?” Brian barked.
    March leaned against the door. “About a guy dying.” Just didn’t happen to be that particular one, at least not when he’d thrown himself into the water.
    “You’ve been trained. You know the procedure. What you did was reckless. It endangered all of us.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Could you at least make the effort to sound sincere? Just because we had a good result doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. I have to write it up, March.”
    March shrugged.
    “We work as a team. You’re not a team player. We don’t even go on a call without authority. We do everything by the book.”
    “You wanted me to agree with you to try to get into the cave.”
    “True, but I didn’t want you to chuck yourself in the water