She made herself lower the bottle after a few restorative swallows and, buoyed by the wetness coursing into her body, she jogged lightly back through the beach sand and knelt to slide the bottle into the shade of Marc’s supply bag. As she did, she dislodged the other occupants. The satellite phone. First aid kit. A clutch of muesli and chocolate bars, a small hand-wound torch. The second container of water. And a—
Beth leapt back as if burned.
A large seventies-era silver hip flask tumbled out onto the sand. Ornate, neatly stoppered and probably his father’s before it was Marc’s, one of the few remembrances he might have of the man who had died when Marc was nine. The sort you kept whisky in, or vodka, or just about any liquor you didn’t care to advertise. Beth didn’t need to pick it up to know it was full of something bad. He wouldn’t have thrown it in the emergency pack for nothing.
She shoved it back into the bag and rose to her feet, shaking. She hadn’t worked this hard for two years to blow it now. She glanced at Marc to see if he’d noticed, but he was too busy gently rubbing the wet towel over the whale’s bulbous face to notice.
She’d finally hardened herself against facing her demons on every street corner in the city. Every billboard. Every radio commercial. To encounter liquor on a remote beach in the middle of nowhere. In front of Marc. What kind of a sick karmic joke was this?
She stumbled as her feet sank back into the loose shore sand and water rushed into the twin voids around her ankles. As she went down onto one knee, a wave came in and soaked her to her middle, her pale blue jeans staining instantly darker with salt water, the cold assault shocking her mind off the hip flask and what it held.
But her sunken perspective was how she noticed something else. The whale’s ventral fin was partly underwater, even after the wave washed back out. The one that had been high and dry a couple of hours ago when they’d arrived.
She scrambled to her feet, nearly falling across the whale in her haste.
‘Marc …’
He looked up at her, fatigue in his face, and something else. Fierce determination. This whale was not going to die while he breathed.
‘Marc … the tide’s coming in.’
He turned his eyes heavenward and closed them briefly in salute. His lips moved briefly.
‘Is that good?’
Hazel eyes lowered back to hers, clear and honest, as if they’d forgotten she was an unwelcome blast from the past. ‘That’s very good. Maybe we can refloat her.’
‘It’s a her?’
‘You can tell by her short, curved dorsal fin.’ His head jerked in the direction of the other whale. ‘I think that one might have been her calf.’
The unfamiliar stab of grief slid in under her ribs and washed over her with another shove of the waves. This mum had followed her baby in to shore. Maybe she’d stranded herself trying to save her little one. Was that why her eyes kept rolling around—was she trying to find her calf? Empathy for the animal’s loss nearly overwhelmed her, stealing the breath she desperately needed to keep her muscles working. But she embraced the pain and almost celebrated it. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt such sorrow. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt much of anything.
Her eyes fell back on the suffering whale. Her ire—and her voice—lifted. ‘Where are they?’
He kept up the rhythmic sloshing. ‘Who?’
‘The rescuers. Shouldn’t they be here by now?’
The sloshing stopped. He stared. ‘We are the rescuers, Beth. What do you think we’ve been doing for the past three hours?’
‘I meant others. People with boats. Shovels. Whale-rescue devices.’
The sun must have been causing a mirage … That almost looked like a smile. The one she’d never imagined she’d see today.
‘Oh, right, the whale-rescue devices.’ Then he sobered. ‘A big group of volunteers is about fifty clicks to the west, helping with another stranding. As soon as they have that situation stabilised they’ll be out to help us. Our solo whale doesn’t stack up against their entire pod, unfortunately.’
‘A whole pod stranded?’ Beth cried. ‘What is wrong with these creatures?’
If not for the tender way she ran the dripping T-shirt across the whale’s skin, taking unnecessary care to avoid its eyes, Marc would have read that as petulance. But he squinted against the lowering sun and really looked at her strained face. Much paler than when they’d started. Despite the blazing sun. Back to the colour it had been when she’d first climbed out of her rental car back at his property.
Beth was tired. Emotionally and physically spent already, and they’d only been out here a couple of hours. She looked as wretched as his mother when she was coming off a particularly bad bender. The bleached cheeks and shadowed eyes had the same impact on him that his mother’s had.
Used to. Before he shut down that part of him.
Beth had much worse to get through yet. The rescue was only just beginning. Maybe he should have shoved her out back at the homestead. Done her a favour and sent her packing. If he’d left just five minutes earlier he would have been out here alone, anyway, so what was the difference if she left now? He had enough supplies to get him through the night.
Water for life. Food for strength. Potassium for cramps. Whisky and wetsuit for warmth. Enough for a day, anyway. Hopefully by then backup would have arrived.
‘It often happens this way,’ he said, taking pity on her confusion. ‘There’s nearly forty volunteers at the other stranding, apparently.’
Beth stared at him between refreshing her whale-washer in the ocean and leaning towards him over the animal as the water ran down over it. ‘Forty! Couldn’t they spare us a couple of people?’
‘Anyone spare is already on their way to other isolated strandings that the aerial boys identify along this stretch of coast. They know we’ve got this one in hand.’
Beth laughed a little too much and waved her paltry, dripping T-shirt around. ‘This doesn’t feel very in hand.’ Marc dived forward and covered the whale’s blowhole to protect it from the cascading water. The whale feebly blew out at the same time. At least she could still do that much.
He found himself suddenly possessed of very little tolerance. ‘Hey, if you want to go, knock yourself out. I’ll do better without your negativity anyway.’
Beth lifted her head and glared, the first sign of fire in those bleak eyes since they’d got out of his Land Cruiser. ‘I’m not negative; I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’m doing.’
The raw honesty spoke to some part of him a decade old. It triggered all kinds of unwelcome protective instincts in him. This really was more than she’d bargained for when she came cruising down his drive, looking all intense.
He sighed. ‘You’re doing fine. Just keep her body wet and her blowhole dry. It’s all we can do.’
They fell to silence and into a hypnotic rhythm in time with the wash of the ocean, the groans of the whale and the slosh … slosh of their wet fabric. Marc did his best to ignore her, but his eyes kept finding their way back to her. To features drawn tight that had once shone with zest. Trying to work out why she’d come. Part of him was curious—the part that had always wondered what the heck had happened all those years ago. But the other part of him wasn’t into lifting lids off unknown boxes any more. And he’d done far too good a job of driving Beth Hughes clear out of his memory. Until today.
‘Do you need to contact Damien? Tell him where you are?’
Frosty eyes lifted to his. ‘I’m not required to report in.’
‘I