CHAPTER NINE
Leaving the Table
Pip
The jet ski reached the boat ramp precinct four minutes after Renz's call went out, and came back with nothing — no Delaney, no boat, just a report crackling through the radio that the whole ramp area was under half a metre of moving water now and closing fast, and whoever was down there was going to have to be found the hard way, on foot, before the water made foot impossible altogether.
Renz heard the report at his trestle table, headset pressed to one ear, the spreadsheet of names still open in front of him, ink starting to run where a wet sleeve had brushed across one corner of the page, and Pip watched something happen in his face that she had never once seen in four years of knowing him — watched the careful, contained, endlessly useful man who ran comms and remembered coffee orders and kept every emergency at exactly the professional distance his job required, watched that whole practised architecture crack straight down the middle, the way a dam doesn't fail gradually so much as hold, and hold, and hold, and then all at once not.
"I know that ramp," Renz said, to nobody in particular, standing up so fast his chair went over behind him with a clatter that turned three heads at nearby tables.
"I know exactly where the pontoon ties off, there's a gap in the fence line behind the boat shed nobody's checked because it's not on the official map — same problem as the Halloran place, the maps are wrong, they've been wrong all afternoon, I walked that fence line probably a hundred times checking on old Barry's boat shed for him, I know where every rotten post is—"
"Renz." Josie, cutting through the noise of the room, sharp, already moving toward him from the triage tables. "That's Marine Rescue's job. You run comms. That's the job Jax gave you."
"Jax gave me the job because he trusted me to do it," Renz said, already moving toward the door, already shrugging into a high-vis vest someone had left on a hook by the exit, his movements suddenly economical in a completely different register than his usual unhurried competence — faster, harder, a man who'd stopped negotiating with himself, "and right now the thing I actually know, better than anyone standing in this building, is the exact ground that man's standing on, because I've walked that fence line a hundred times, and nobody who's currently out looking for him has that map in their head.
I'm not running toward the water. I'm running toward the one gap in the fence that four different rescue services don't know exists. "
Pip was already grabbing her own jacket, adrenaline cutting clean through the cold that had settled into her bones an hour ago. "Then I'm coming."
"Pip—"
"You don't get to leave the table for the first time in your whole life and not let someone go with you," she said, flat, in exactly the voice he used to close a subject, and something about hearing her own closed-subject tone bounced back at her almost made her laugh, even now, even here, the strange dark humour that arrives in the exact centre of genuine fear. "Move."
They found Jax at the door before they reached it, radio already in hand, already three steps ahead of them the way he always seemed to be in a crisis, twelve years of running toward exactly this kind of decision meaning he'd clocked their intentions before either of them had finished announcing it.
"You know the ground," he said to Renz, not a question, a confirmation, the specific fast triage of a man who had about four seconds to decide whether to stop two of his crew from doing something dangerous or to arm them properly for it instead.
"Better than anyone else standing here."
"Then you're going, and you're going with a radio, and you're going with her—" a nod at Pip, no argument in it, no time for one, "—because two sets of eyes find a stranded man faster than one, and I want a channel open the whole way there.
You lose radio contact for more than ninety seconds, you're both turning around, understood?
I'm not losing two more people to a fence line nobody else knows exists. "
"Understood."
"Go." Jax was already turning away, already back on the radio to Marine Rescue, relaying the new information, coordinating the chopper's approach with a calm that belied the fact that he'd just sent two of his own crew out into water rising by the minute, and Renz caught, in the half-second before Jax's attention moved fully elsewhere, something in the older man's face that he recognised without quite having a word for — the particular cost of command, the weight of sending people you loved toward danger because it was the only way to save someone else you loved, a weight Jax carried on every fireground and never once let show past the flat efficient surface of his voice.
? ? ?
They went out the side door into weather that had gone from bad to genuinely dangerous in the time it took to cross the car park — rain coming sideways now, the wind carrying a wet salt roar off water that had no business being where it currently was, debris riding past on the current in the gutters, a child's inflatable ball, a broken deck chair, the small domestic wreckage of a caravan park coming apart — and the two of them half-ran, half-waded the three blocks down to the ramp precinct with the radio in Renz's hand crackling updates neither of them had time to fully process, Cal's voice occasionally cutting through, tight and professional, calling headings and windspeed to a pilot who was, by all accounts, doing an admirable job holding a chopper steady in conditions that would have grounded a less experienced crew entirely.
The fence line, when they reached it, was exactly where Renz had said it would be — a rusted gap behind the old boat shed, half-hidden by a stand of casuarinas that had grown up around it over twenty years of nobody bothering to fix a fence nobody used, the kind of forgotten local geography that lived only in the memory of someone who'd actually spent time there rather than in any official record — and beyond it, the ramp itself, now a moving brown sheet of water with debris riding fast across its surface, and past that, clinging to the top rail of the pontoon with the specific white-knuckled stillness of a man who had worked out, correctly, that moving was more dangerous than staying put: Delaney, soaked through, one shoe gone, his face a pale smear in the grey light.
A Marine Rescue volunteer materialised out of the rain a moment later, radio in hand, having heard Renz's earlier transmission and redirected on foot when the jet ski proved impossible to bring in closer.
"You found him," he said, breathless, relief plain in his voice.
"We had eyes on the main road but nobody knew this fence line existed. "
"Local knowledge," Renz said, already relaying the man's position back to Cal overhead. "You right to hold this position while we keep him talking? Chopper's inbound."
"Copy that. Good find, mate. Wouldn't have got here in time otherwise.
" The volunteer took up position a few metres along the fence, radio crackling with updates from three different services now converging on the same small patch of flooded ground, the specific beautiful chaos of an emergency response finally clicking into full coordination, every separate piece of the machine — Marine Rescue, the chopper, the two of them at the fence — suddenly moving as one.
"DELANEY," Renz bellowed over the wind, cupping both hands around his mouth, and the man's head came up, and something in his face went from terrified to merely desperate at the sight of another human being who might actually get him out of this.
"STAY WHERE YOU ARE, DON'T TRY TO SWIM IT, THE CURRENT'S TOO FAST—"
Above them, cutting suddenly through the rain, came the flat mechanical roar of the chopper — Cal's voice, tight and clear even through the storm, crackling over Renz's handheld.
"Shore comms, this is Air One, we've got you on thermal, male on the pontoon, we're coming in for a winch, need you clear of the immediate zone—"
"Copy, Air One," Renz said back, steady now, the panic of ten minutes ago folded back down into the same controlled competence he brought to everything, because whatever else was true of him, a job in front of him with a clear shape had always been the one thing that could settle his hands.
"We'll hold the fence line, keep him talking, keep him calm till you're overhead. "
Mia's voice came through next, clipped and precise, reading the water from above the way she'd read a flooded outback town two years back, the specific hard-won expertise of a woman who'd learned to trust nothing she couldn't see with her own eyes from altitude.
"Current's running north-east across the ramp, there's a submerged trailer about six metres off the pontoon's east side, tell him not to drift that way if he goes in the water at any point—"
Renz relayed it, shouting across the gap, and Delaney nodded, wide-eyed, gripping the rail with both hands now, knuckles pale even at this distance, and for one long, terrible moment his foot slipped on the wet decking of the pontoon, his whole body lurching sideways, and Pip's breath caught hard in her chest, a wordless sound escaping her before she could stop it — but he caught himself on the rail, both arms locking, and steadied, and the moment passed as quickly as it had arrived, though it left Pip's heart hammering as though the near-fall had happened to her own body rather than a stranger's fifty metres away.
"He's alright," Renz said, low, more to himself than to her, the words a kind of anchor. "He's alright, Pip. Just held on."