Free Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) by Dawn Lee McKenna

follow already, with your damn dimples and whatnot, but then you go get shot, and then you’re gonna be the damn liaison officer cause you wanna be with Maggie here?”
    “I didn’t get shot just to piss you off,” Wyatt said.
    “Whatever. All of a sudden you’re the…what…George Clooney of Franklin County”
    “George Clooney?” Wyatt asked, grinning.
    “Whoever. Some guy that makes it so nobody else can get a date.”
    “When was the last time you went on a date, Glenn?”
    “That’s my point. Now, pretty much all I got to look forward to is gator season, since I don’t feel like getting shot.”
    “Are you still on shift?” Wyatt asked pointedly.
    “More or less,” Glenn answered, and they watched him walk out of the office.
    Maggie looked over at Wyatt and smiled reassuringly. “Are you embarrassed?”
    “Why, because Glenn thinks I’m hot? No,” Wyatt answered. “But you’ve turned kind of watermelon-colored.”
    “The inside or the outside?” Maggie asked. “Cause I feel like it could go either way.”
    “I feel so proud when you make an honest effort to be witty,” Wyatt said. “What’s with the psychiatrist?”
    Maggie picked up the slip and looked at it. “A therapist I know in Panama City,” she said. “I want to ask her about the leaves.”
    “Yeah, somebody needs to dissect this guy’s crazy for us,” Wyatt said, standing and stretching his back. “I’m going to go expand our sexual assaults parameters, then I’m off to physical therapy.”
    “When are you going to be done with that?”
    “When one of us dies,” Wyatt said, walking out the door.

M aggie had drunk both cups of café con leche that she’d brought to work with her, so she was constrained to walk down the hall to the break room and pour a cup of coffee from what she considered the philistines’ machine.
    Once she brought it back to her desk, she picked up the message from Dr. Irene Callahan and dialed her private number.
    “This is Dr. Callahan,” a woman’s gentle voice said after the second ring.
    “Dr. Callahan, this is Maggie Redmond,” Maggie said.
    When the woman spoke again, there was a smile in her voice. “Hello, Maggie. How are you?”
    “I’m fine, thanks,” Maggie said. “How’ve you been?”
    “Very well, thank you,” Dr. Callahan answered. “I’m sorry we kept missing each other. How can I help you?”
    “I’m working a rape case, and there’s something here I haven’t dealt with before,” Maggie answered. “I’d like to ask you about it.”
    “Well, criminal psychology isn’t really my area, but I can try,” Dr. Callahan said.
    “Okay. Well, when we took her for her exam, the doctor treating her found that she was full of leaves,” Maggie said. “By that, I mean that he filled her…her vagina full of leaves.”
    The other woman was quiet for a moment. “Hm.”
    “Have you ever encountered anything like that?”
    “Well, of course, the use of foreign objects is very common in a sexual assault,” Dr. Callahan said.
    “But that’s not what it feels like,” Maggie said.
    “No. This isn’t something that would signify or stand in for normal penetration,” the doctor said quietly. Maggie could almost see her thinking.
    “No, and the leaves didn’t hurt her,” Maggie said. “If he was trying to punish or hurt her, wouldn’t he use something more appropriate?”
    “That’s what you would expect,” Dr. Callahan said. She sounded distracted.
    Maggie waited a moment, then grew impatient against her will. “It means something, and I feel like it doesn’t have anything to do with leaves. I feel like it’s about Zoe.”
    “Does she know her attacker?” Callahan asked.
    “She’s not sure, but she doesn’t think so,” Maggie said. “He was wearing a mask. So she might.”
    “If it was someone close to her, my guess would be that it was almost an apology,” Callahan said. “Actually that’s not the word I mean. An attempt to undo the