The thought made Nick’s heart wrench so hard it must surely break.
‘Let’s try this another way,’ he said strongly, turning to the men who were coordinating the search parties. When the moon had gone behind clouds they’d called in all but the most experienced searchers until dawn. Now Nick looked again at Shanni, seeking confirmation in her eyes, but he knew he was right. ‘At dawn…let me go up. With Shanni. No one else.’
‘You’d be lost in minutes up there, sir,’ a coordinator told him, shaking his head. The head of the emergency services was hard and efficient, and the last thing he wanted was an extended search if the town’s magistrate got himself lost.
Nick thought this through. Of course they were right. He was city born and bred and, no matter how much he wanted it otherwise, he didn’t know the bush.
‘Then stay with us, but behind,’ Nick said. ‘Stay silent and let me call, without anyone else making a noise. It’s my guess he’ll be hiding. I should have thought this through before, but if he’ll come for anyone, he’ll come for me.’
The search coordinator looked at Shanni. He knew her. She was a local. One of them. ‘Is that right, ma’am?’
And Shanni was looking at Nick with eyes that were clear and steady. The terror had receded. Her mind was back in gear.
As Nick had thought-the parts were stronger than the whole. She’d gained strength with their love.
‘If Harry wants to be found by anyone, he wants to be found by Nick,’ she said, her own thoughts crystallising. ‘I think…I think Nick’s right. He’s Harry’s only chance. And, because Nick doesn’t know the bush, he’ll also be able to see the path Harry might take-not looking at the overall picture, like you and me, but at the logical way for a three- year-old. And, please, God, he just might do it.’
So, at dawn, the mass of searchers were held back-‘We’ll give you ’til noon, sir’-and one small group of experienced bushwalkers were equipped to the hilt to accompany them. But they let Nick decide the course.
‘I’m going straight up,’ Nick told them. ‘Bear with me. I’m a dope in the climbing department, but then so’s Harry. So every time there’s a decision I’m going to ask myself what Harry would have done. And I’m going to yell myself hoarse.’
He took Shanni’s hand in his hand and held it. Hard.
‘Ready, my love?’ The endearment slipped out unnoticed, but it was between them, anyway. Acknowledged for ever, whatever this day held. They were no longer two. They were a man and a woman made one, in need and in love.
‘I’m ready,’ she said. She gripped him as if she couldn’t bear to let go, and then she turned back to the searchers who had to stay behind but who were breaking their hearts to help.
‘We’ll bring him back.’
‘Please…’
‘Nick will do it.’ She looked at him, her eyes calm and clear and determined. ‘I know it. He loves Harry.’
And three hours and twenty minutes later, hoarse from calling and over five hundred yards, as the crow flies, straight up the mountain, Nick called for the thousandth time and thought he heard a faint response.
He stopped dead. The tension in Shanni’s hand was tangible-dear God, please…
The group behind them also stopped. They’d heard it, then. It wasn’t just him.
‘Harry!’ Nick’s voice echoed out around the mountainside and he and Shanni moved in the direction he thought the sound had come from. The rest of the group surged behind them, two of the searchers cutting a path but dropping back as soon as it was clear.
‘Harry, it’s Nick. Harry…’ He didn’t let Shanni go-not for a moment. ‘Harry, I’m here. Harry…’
And thirty seconds later they rounded an outcrop and stopped.
Harry was crouched motionless in the midst of a massive prickly grevillea that was three times as big as he was. The bush had been in the way of up. He’d tried to crawl over it, the thorns had stuck from all sides and he’d slipped through and was wedged fast.
‘Harry!’ With a great shout of joy, Nick released Shanni’s hand and clambered up, ignoring thorns, ignoring pain, reaching the tiny, battered and scratched little boy and gathering him to his heart as if he’d never let him go again.
As he never would.
And somehow Shanni reached them, too, and they were sitting in the middle of the dreadful thorns and clinging together-three and yet one-and Shanni was weeping and so was Nick, but they were together and Nick knew this was how it was going to be.
For ever.
‘I thought you lived here.’
The team had got them down from their mound of thorns but were standing back in joyous silence, savouring success and letting them be. Harry was so exhausted he was limp in Nick’s hold, but his arms still somehow clung. His eyes devoured him. ‘I thought you lived up here all by yourself. So I came.’
‘I don’t live here, Harry.’ Nick’s voice was a hoarse whisper-he could still hardly believe he had the child in his arms.
‘Not any more?’
‘No.’ Nick had his face in Harry’s hair, but his eyes, over Harry’s head, were watching Shanni. Watching the love on her face. The tears. The joy.
The destiny.
‘Then, where do you live?’ It was an exhausted whisper, but he was still desperate to know. And Nick knew why he was desperate. It was because Harry didn’t believe in happy endings. He needed to know in case he was torn away again and had to find his Nick.
So this time Nick knew what the answer had to be. The only answer.
‘I live with you,’ he said strongly, hugging him close. ‘From today, Harry. From today, I live with you. And with Shanni, if she’ll have me.’
‘Shanni…’ Harry twisted his face around to see and she was right there, all the love in the world shining from her eyes.
‘Wendy told you you needed a mummy and a daddy-right?’ Nick asked, and he looked at Shanni again and saw her watching Harry-with such a look-and his heart twisted with such love that he didn’t think he could bear it.
‘Mmm.’
‘How would you feel if that was Shanni and me? If we were your mummy and daddy.’
Harry stiffened in Nick’s hold. He pushed his head back and gazed into Nick’s face, searching. This little one had been told lies before.
‘You’d be my daddy?’
Heck, all he wanted was to burst into tears. Instead he made his voice gruff and deep and magistrate-like. Definite.
‘If you want me. That’s what I want. More than anything in the world.’
‘Why?’
There it was. The simple question-with the simple answer.
‘Because I love you,’ Nick said strongly, and his spare arm came out and held Shanni to him as well. She hugged him back-hugged both of them-her eyes glistening with tears and all the love she possessed shining in her face.
‘Because I love you and I love Shanni,’ he said. ‘I love you both with all my heart. And I figure…if I’m to come down from my mountain, what better reason could a man have than that-to come down for love?’
It was mid-afternoon.
Harry had been checked over medically, had been pronounced one very lucky young man; his scratches and bruises had been anointed; he’d been fed, cuddled, put to bed and cuddled some more until he’d fallen fast asleep from sheer exhaustion.
