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‘Maybe you should ask your mother.’
‘My mother died in a car accident when I was seven and I never knew my dad. I got brought up by my gran.’
‘Oh…’ She caught his gaze for a moment, horrified that she’d been so insensitive. ‘Sorry…’
‘No worries. It’s ancient history.’ Zac was happy to keep the conversation going. ‘You got any siblings? Spring, maybe? Or Autumn?’
‘Nope.’
The word was a snap. She could offer personal information but he wasn’t welcome to ask for it.
Zac suppressed a sigh. Maybe he should have a word to the base manager about being assigned to a different shift on the rescue service.
The call coming in meant that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
‘Missing child,’ Comms relayed. ‘Six-year-old boy. Red tee shirt, blue shorts, bare feet. They think he’s been swept off rocks at St Leonard’s beach. Coastguard’s sending a boat and the police chopper’s on its way but you’re closest.’
A six-year-old boy.
How long would he last in the water? How frightened would he be?
He was close to the same age Zac had been when he’d lost his mother. Summer could only imagine how frightened he would have been. He would have had the same soft dark curls by then. And big brown eyes.
Heart-wrenching.
She didn’t want to feel sorry for Zac, any more than she wanted his charm to get under her skin.
Maybe this kid could swim. She’d been able to at least keep herself afloat by the time she was four but Monty was right—she had sea water in her veins and life had been all about the sun and sand and surf back then. Happy days.
They were circling above the cliffs and rocks surrounding one of the many bays on Auckland’s north shore now and she could see the knot of people anxiously staring at the sea. Others were climbing the rocks, staring down into the pools where a small body could wash up with the incoming tide. In the distance, as they circled again, she could see a coastguard boat leaving a foamy wake behind it as it sped out from the inner harbour.
Her heart was sinking. It was too hard to keep feeling optimistic that this search would have a happy ending.
And one glance at how pale Zac was looking, with that fierce frown of deep concern on his face, and it was too hard to keep believing that he was some kind of monster.
Round and round they went. Monty focused on keeping them low and moving slowly over a small area, his crew peering down, trying to spot the smallest sign of anything in the soft blue swells of water or the whiteness as they broke over rocks.
Emergency vehicles were gathering at a nearby park above the beach. A police car and then a fire engine. An ambulance…
‘What was that?’
‘Where?’
‘I think I caught a flash of something red.’
‘Where?’ Summer narrowed her eyes, willing something to show up on the water below. The coastguard boat was there now. And a civilian dinghy. Even someone on a paddleboard.
‘Not in the water. Up the cliff. Take us round again, Monty.’
Another slow circuit but Summer couldn’t see anything.
‘I swear I saw it. About halfway up, where that pohutukawa tree is coming out sideways.’
Monty stopped their circling and hovered. Took them in a bit closer. A bit lower.
‘There…’ Excitement made Zac’s voice reverberate in her helmet. ‘Two o’clock. There’s a bit of an overhang behind the trunk. There’s something there. Something red…’
They hovered where they were as the information was relayed to emergency crews on the ground. A fire truck got shifted and parked at the top of the cliff, facing backwards. Abseiling gear and a rope appeared and then someone was on their way down to check out the possible sighting. For an agonisingly long moment, the fire officer disappeared after climbing over the trunk and crawling beneath the overhang.
Summer held her breath.
He reappeared, backing out slowly so it took another couple of seconds to see that he held something in his arms. A small child, wearing a red T-shirt and shorts. And then he held up his hand and, despite the heavy gloves he was wearing, it was clear that he was giving a ‘thumbs-up’ signal that all was well.
The boy was not injured.
The relief was surprisingly overwhelming. It was instinctive to share that relief with someone, as if sharing would somehow confirm that what she was seeing was real. Maybe Zac felt the same way because their eyes met at precisely the same instant.
And, yes…her own relief was reflected there. Zac had probably dealt with the same kind of heart-breaking jobs she had in the past, where a child’s life had been lost. The kind of jobs you would choose never to repeat if it was within your power—something they both knew was too much to hope for. But this time they’d won. The boy’s family had won. Tragedy had been averted and it felt like a major triumph.
The momentary connection was impossible to dismiss. She and Zac felt exactly the same way and the depth of a bond that came from the kind of trauma that was part of what they did was not something everybody could share. Even amongst colleagues, the ability to distance yourself from feeling so strongly was very different. Summer still couldn’t breathe past the huge lump in her throat and she suspected that Zac was just the same.
But he wasn’t supposed to have an emotional connection to others like this, given what Summer knew about him. It was confusing. Not to be trusted.
The radio message telling the rescue crew to stand down broke the atmosphere. Monty’s delighted whoop as he turned away and swept them back towards base added a third person to the mix and suddenly it became purely professional again and not at all confusing.
‘How lucky was that?’ They could hear the grin in Monty’s voice. ‘The kid decided to go climbing instead of getting washed out to sea.’
‘Small boys can climb like spiders.’
‘Only going up, though. It’s when it’s time to go down that they realise they’re stuck.’
‘He must have been scared stiff,’ Summer put in. ‘Good thing there was the overhang to climb under.’
‘He probably knew he’d be in trouble. No wonder he decided it was safer to hide for a while.’
‘He won’t be in trouble.’ Zac’s voice was quiet. ‘Or not for long, anyway. I’d love to have seen his mum’s face when she gets to give him a hug.’
This time, Summer deliberately didn’t look at Zac but kept her gaze on the forest of masts in the yacht marina below. She didn’t want to see the recognition of what it was like to know you’d lost someone precious and what a miracle it would be to have them returned to you. Zac must have dreamed of such a miracle when he was the same age as that little boy in the red tee shirt. How long had it taken to understand that it was never going to happen?
She’d known instantly. Did that make it easier?
If she’d met his gaze, it might be a question that was impossible not to ask silently and maybe she didn’t want to know the answer because that might extend that connection she’d felt.
A connection that felt wrong.
Almost like a betrayal of some kind?
Life didn’t get much better than this.
A quiet, late summer evening on Takapuna beach, with a sun-kissed Rangitoto island as a backdrop to a calm blue sea. The long swim had been invigorating and it was still warm enough