His Secret Love-Child

She grabbed for him but the second wave of the speedboat’s wake hit, knocking her sideways.

Her hand just touched CJ-just touched, but couldn’t hold him. Her fingers closed on thin air and her son was gone.

Cal was in the radio room when the call came through. He’d been sitting with Albert until he’d drifted off to sleep. Longer. He’d sat and stared out the window until he’d lost track of time, until his mind had told him it was time to move forward.

Where to?

He still wasn’t sure. He needed to find Gina, he thought, and he went to find Charles first to tell him he needed the rest of the day off. But he walked in the door as the call came.

‘Crocodile Creek Rescue Response.’ Charles himself was taking the call. ‘Harry. What’s the problem?’

Harry. The local police sergeant. Maybe they’d found Lucky’s mother, Cal thought, and he sent a silent prayer that that was the case.

But it wasn’t good news. He watched Charles’s face and he knew this was trouble.

‘The chopper will be in the air in minutes,’ he snapped. ‘Hell, Harry, you know that river…’

But the line was already dead. Whatever was happening, Harry was moving fast.

Charles spun round. Then he saw Cal and his face froze.

‘You.’ And something about the way he said it…

‘What?’

Charles took a deep breath, regrouping. Or trying to regroup.

‘Harry’s just had a call,’ he told him. ‘From the northern reaches of Crocodile Creek. Faint call, just about out of range, from an American tourist who’s out with Bruce Hammond.’

With Bruce Hammond. The croc hunter who’d taken Gina and CJ out.

‘What?’ he asked, and his voice sounded disjointed. Strange. Like someone else was speaking, not him.

‘It might be nothing,’ Charles warned. ‘Harry can’t get back to them. No one’s answering.’

‘What?’

‘The boy’s been washed overboard,’ Charles said bleakly. ‘That’s all we know. CJ’s missing.’

It was a ten-minute flight but even so it was the longest flight Cal had ever known. Mike was at the controls. Cal was beside him, straining the machine to go faster, and Hamish was in the back.

‘Because I want a doctor there who’s not emotionally involved,’ Charles had said.

‘Don’t send me, then,’ Hamish had said. ‘I’m emotionally involved.’

‘Just go, the lot of you,’ Charles had snapped. ‘And bring CJ home.’

Charles was emotionally involved himself. CJ had been at the base for a whole two days and already he’d wriggled his way into everyone’s heart.

Bring CJ home. The words rang over and over in Cal’s head.

Home.

Home was here. Home was with him. He had to find him. He had to bring CJ back to Crocodile Creek. They needed to stay here. They needed…

It wasn’t working. The line he’d been using all this time to try and persuade Gina to stay was ringing hollow. CJ might well not need him at all.

His son might be dead.

The vision of the bereft Albert slammed back into his heart and stayed there.

You just grab it now, ’cos the pain will come regardless, but those moments…no one can take them away from you, ever. Me and my boy, that morning. It’ll stay with me for ever and it’s my gift and I’ll love him for life.

What had he had? Cal thought grimly. One bedtime. He’d read his son one story and now he was gone.

One story was never going to be enough. He wanted more. He wanted so much.

He needed his son.

He needed Gina.

He sat rigid in the helicopter with Mike staring grim-faced ahead, and Cal did his own staring ahead.

What a fool he’d been. What a stupid, hopeless, inadequate fool. So many people had tried to tell him, but he’d done it his way. He’d tried to make himself self-contained, but to do that…it was just plain dumb. He could share his life with Gina and with CJ and with Rudolph and whoever else came along, and he could love them to bits and he could let himself need them, and why not? Because whatever disaster happened in the future, he could never feel any worse than he did right now.

‘For God’s sake, how much longer?’ he exploded, and Mike glanced across with sympathy.

‘Five minutes, mate.’

‘And there’s no news.’ Why was the radio dead?

‘You know there’s transmission dead spots on this part of the river.’

‘Then they should move to where they can transmit.’

And move away from where CJ had fallen in? It was a dumb suggestion. Both of them knew it and Mike was kind enough not to say it.

‘I’ll kill him,’ Cal was saying, directing impotent fury at the absent Bruce. ‘To take my kid on that part of the river…’

‘It’s safe enough. They were in a high-sided boat.’

‘He should have roped him in.’

‘Yeah, I can see CJ agreeing to that,’ Mike retorted. ‘No one gets roped into tourist boats. There’s usually no need. How he fell…’

‘Can’t you make this machine go faster?’

‘We’re almost there,’ Mike told him, and the big chopper swooped down in a long, low dive. They’d reached the fork where the main tributary turned northwards. ‘We’re assuming they’re on the main branch. Let’s just keep our eyes peeled until we see them.’

There was no need for him to say it.

Three pairs of eyes were scouring every inch of the river.

With dread.

Gina heard the chopper first. She glanced over her shoulder and she could just make it out, low on the horizon and half-hidden by the canopy of the boat.

‘That’s the Rescue Response helicopter,’ she said, and everyone turned.

‘There must be another drama along here somewhere,’ Bruce muttered. He was sounding a bit shaken, as indeed they all were. ‘It’ll be that blasted boat, come to grief. They come here doing ten times the legal limit-they’ll have hit a log. They’ll be lucky if they haven’t killed themselves, the fools.’

‘Oh, no,’ Gina whispered, hugging CJ closer. His wet little body was dripping against her, making them both soggy, but she didn’t care. He was still tear-stained and shaking against her, but the worst of his sobs had died. ‘We don’t need any more drama.’

But the corpulent American in the back of the boat was suddenly looking uncomfortable.

‘We might…we might just have a problem here,’ he admitted.

‘What?’ Bruce raked his bare head and looked exasperated. His expedition to show Gina the river wasn’t going to plan. He hadn’t wanted to bring tourists but the Americans were wealthy and prepared to pay a premium if he took them today, so he’d thought he could include them. Now this had happened, and he’d like to be comforting Gina, but he still had to be a tour operator. And on top of everything else, he’d lost his favourite hat!

‘When the little guy fell overboard…’ the man said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, everyone was screaming and you guys were real busy trying to haul him in and then Marsha screamed about the crocodile and I saw it and I just… I just…’ He lifted his cellphone and looked sheepish. ‘I knew your emergency code here was 000 so I dialled it.’

‘You dialled the emergency services,’ Harry said slowly.