Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

“Sophie finished it.” The kid stamped his foot. “And you gave her the grape! Grape’s my favorite!”

As the boy demanded her attention, the little girl ran into the wind, arms outflung, curly hair skinned away from her face. She was around five, more interested in the joy of the day, the violent crash of waves over rock, than her brother’s tantrum.

“That’s enough, Cabot,” the mother snapped. “You have to wait.”

His sister threw up her arms, racing closer to the rocky shoreline as the wind plastered her pink T-shirt to her small chest.

“But I’m thirsty,” the boy whined.

An unexpectedly fierce gust made Lucy take a step backward. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the little girl stagger, lose her balance, and with nothing more than the softest cry, stumble onto one of the treacherous boulders lining the edge of the water. Lucy gasped as her small arms flailed. The child clawed to find a hold, but the rocks were too slippery, and within seconds, she’d tumbled into the rough water.

Even before her head vanished under the churn, Panda had begun to run. Lucy raced after him. The mother finally saw what was happening and screamed. She started to run but was farther away.

Panda scrambled onto the slippery boulders, trying to locate the child as he moved. A wave crashed around his legs. He must have seen something because he kicked against the jagged rocks and launched himself into the water in a powerful dive.

Lucy clambered onto the wet rocks, barely keeping herself from falling in, too.

Panda surfaced. He was alone.

Lucy was dimly aware of the mother’s cries behind her. Panda went under again. Lucy scanned the water for a glimpse of pink, saw nothing. Panda came back up, grabbed some air, and dove.

And then Lucy saw something. Maybe just a reflection, but she prayed it was more. “There!” she screamed when he resurfaced.

Panda heard her, twisted in the direction she was pointing, and went under again.

He stayed there forever. She tried to spot him, but he’d gone deep.

The waves crashed over the rocks, but their roar couldn’t block the mother’s heartbreaking cries. Seconds ticked by, each one an hour long, and then he came up, the child anchored against him.

The little girl’s head hung listlessly against his white T-shirt. Lucy felt time stop. And then the child began to choke.

Panda kept her head well above the churning surface while she coughed and gagged. She started to flail. He put his mouth to her ear, talking to her. He was slowing everything down, giving her time to get her breath back, to understand that she was safe before he tried to pull her through the rough surf back to the jetty.

She clutched him around the neck, burying her face against him. He kept talking. She seemed to be breathing easier now. Lucy couldn’t imagine what he was saying. She spun toward the mother, who’d scrambled to Lucy’s side. “Wave to her,” Lucy said. “Let her see everything’s okay.”

The mother managed to muster an unsteady croak. “It’s all right, Sophie!” she yelled into the wind. “Everything’s all right.” Behind her, the boy watched in wide-eyed shock.

Lucy doubted Sophie could hear her mother above the crashing waves, but the child wasn’t fighting Panda’s grip on her. He had to be tiring, but he kept talking to her as he began struggling toward the shore against the tumbling surf.

The mother tried to crawl past Lucy to the jetty’s edge, but her thin sandals didn’t have the grip of Lucy’s boots, and she kept slipping. “Get back,” Lucy ordered. “I’ll get her.”

Panda drew close. He caught Lucy’s eye. A wave hit her in the knees as she crouched down. She braced herself, reached out. He lifted the child and with almost superhuman strength, managed to press her into Lucy’s arms. Sophie blindly fought this new stranger’s grip, but Lucy held tight until Panda pulled himself up. The mother was scrambling toward them, but Sophie threw herself at Panda. He gathered her up and carried her off the rocks onto the path, his strong, tanned arms incongruous against the little pink T-shirt.

Even then, she clung to him. He dropped to a crouch and cradled her. “You’re safe, champ. It’s over. Did you leave any water in that lake, or did you swallow it all? I’ll bet you swallowed it. I’ll bet there’s no lake left …”

He went on like that. Nonsense. Insisting she’d drunk the lake dry until she finally turned to look, saw it wasn’t true, and began to argue with him.

Her mother took longer to recover. She alternated between hugging her child as if she’d never let her go again and repeatedly thanking Panda through her tears. In the distance, Temple had given up her walking lunges in favor of jogging and was heading back toward them, oblivious to what she’d missed.

Panda listened patiently to the mother’s frantic chatter about where they were from and why her husband wasn’t with them. He talked to Sophie again and her brother. When he was eventually satisfied that the mother was capable of driving, he helped her load the kids in the car. The mother grabbed him in an awkward hug. “God sent you to us today. You were His angel.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, all stern-faced cop.

The woman finally pulled out of the parking lot. Beads of water still clung to Panda’s beard stubble, but the ends of his hair had already started to curl. “Just so you know … ,” Lucy said, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

He gave her a tired smile. “Give me a couple of hours, and I can fix that.”

Tight little buds of warmth began unfurling inside her.

Temple appeared, red-faced and out of breath. “Why are you wet?”

“Long story,” he said.

As they drove home, Lucy thought about his patience with the hysterical mother. But most of all, she thought about his gentleness with Sophie. The way he related to kids didn’t fit what she thought she knew about him. Even Sophie’s bratty little brother … When the boy had lost patience with not being the center of attention, Lucy had wanted to throttle him, but Panda had engaged him in a discussion of the lifesaving techniques every “man” should know.

Panda was a chameleon. One minute, a surly, barely articulate biker; the next, a no-nonsense bodyguard to the world’s most demanding client; and today, a combination superhero and child psychologist.

He unsettled her. Disarmed her. Confused her. She knew people couldn’t be pigeonholed, but she’d never known anyone who resisted a label more than he did.

LUCY FROWNED AT THE MICROWAVE-SHRIVELED green bean draping the clump of chicken on her plate that night. Temple gazed longingly toward the refrigerator, as if she hoped a stream of hot fudge would magically pour out of the water dispenser.

Panda had been quiet all through dinner, but now he pushed his plate away. “I have a surprise for the two of you.”

“Tell me it involves pastry,” Lucy said. “Or letting me cook real food.” Salad was the only contribution she was permitted to make to a meal—all vegetables, no cheese, no olives, no croutons or creamy salad dressing.

“Nope.” He kicked back in his chair. “We’re going out on the water to watch the fireworks.”

“I’ll pass,” Temple said. “Two kayaks for three people isn’t my idea of fun.”

“No kayaks.” He got up from the table. “I’ll meet you both down at the dock. No excuses.”

While Temple finished her dinner Lucy grabbed a sweatshirt and went outside to see what Panda was up to. A black-hulled cabin cruiser, maybe twenty-five feet long, was moored at the dock, a boat that hadn’t been there last time she’d looked down here. “Where did this come from?” she asked.

Panda tossed a pair of life preservers in a locker on the deck. “I talked to Big Mike a couple of days ago. His guys delivered it while we were at the parade and hid it in the boathouse. I leased it for the rest of the summer.”

“What’s this?” Temple said, coming down the steps.

After he’d explained, Temple began calculating how many calories waterskiing burned.

Lucy couldn’t stand it. “I’ll make a deal with you, Temple. If you promise not to use the word calorie for the rest of the night, I’ll work out with you tomorrow. For a little while,” she quickly added.

“Deal,” Temple said. “Really, Lucy, you won’t believe what a difference rigorous exercise makes in—”

“You also can’t talk about exercise, fat grams, cellulite, or any of the rest of that crap,” Lucy said. “Basically, you can only talk about sloth.”

“I’m all over that.” Panda started the engine.

He handled the boat as easily as he handled everything except human relationships. The wind had calmed, the sky had cleared, and the stars were just beginning to come out. He goosed the throttle when they hit open water and headed toward the point that divided them from the town harbor. As they rounded it, they were met with a flotilla of pleasure boats waiting for the show to start, their lights bobbing like fireflies above the water. Some of the boats flew yacht club burgees; others displayed patriotic pennants.

When they were just inside the harbor—close enough to see the show but away from the other boats—Panda turned the bow into the current, set the anchor, and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, laughter and music drifted across the water.

Temple grabbed a cushion and crawled to the bow, leaving them alone.

THE FIRST OF THE FIREWORKS exploded above them, an umbrella of red and violet. Lucy rested her head against the back of the bench seat that ran across the stern of the boat. Panda did the same, and they watched in surprisingly comfortable silence. “What you did today with little Sophie was pretty great,” Lucy eventually said as a shell of stars withered above them.

She felt him shrug. “You’re a good swimmer. If I hadn’t been there, you’d have gone in.”

She liked how certain he sounded. She glanced over at him and watched a trio of silver comets shimmer in his eyes. “The surf was rough. I don’t think I could have pulled her out.”

“You’d have done what you had to,” he said curtly, and then, “People need to watch their kids better.”

The sharp edge to his voice seemed unwarranted. “Children move fast,” she said. “Hard for any parent to watch them every second.” Sailboat spars jingled in the silence between booms, and water slapped the boat’s hull. “You understand kids. I guess that surprised me.”

He crossed his ankles. Purple palms dropped a trail of stars, and orange peonies unfolded. “You can’t be a cop and not deal with kids.”

“A lot of gang stuff?”

“Gangs. Neglect. Abuse. You name it.”

She’d seen a lot of troubled kids through her work, although she suspected not as many as he had. It was odd. She was so accustomed to regarding Panda as an alien being that she’d never thought about what they might have in common. “Sophie didn’t want to let you go.”

A silver weeping willow glittered against the dark night. “Cute kid.”

Blame it on the night, the fireworks, the emotional aftermath from what could have been a terrible tragedy, because her next words came out unplanned. “You’ll make a great dad someday.”

A short harsh laugh. “Never going to happen.”

“You’ll change your mind when you find the right woman.” She was sounding too sentimental, and Viper came to her rescue. “You’ll know her when you see her. Opposable thumbs. Not too choosy.”

“Nope.” He smiled. “One of many good things about modern science.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vasectomy. The medical profession’s gift to guys like me.”

A fusillade of explosions split the air. This was so wrong. She’d seen him today with the kids, witnessed what a natural he was. He should never have done something so permanent. “Don’t you think you’re too young to make that kind of decision?”

“When it comes to kids, I’m a hundred years old.”

She’d been involved with child advocacy too long not to know what cops faced, and in the dim light she thought he looked haunted. “I saw too many dead bodies,” he said. “Not just teens but infants—five-year-old kids who hadn’t lost their baby teeth. Kids blown up, missing limbs.” She cocked her head. “I saw parents on the worst day of their lives,” he went on, “and I’ve promised myself I’ll never have to go through that. Best decision I ever made. It’s hard to do your job when you wake up every night in a cold sweat.”

“You saw worst-case scenarios. What about the millions of kids who grow up just fine?”

“What about the ones who don’t?”

“Nothing in life comes with a guarantee.”

“Wrong. A snip here, a snip there. It’s a damn good guarantee.”

The sky lit up with the grand finale, the bangs, crackles, and whistles ending their conversation. She respected people who understood themselves well enough to know they wouldn’t make good parents, but instinct told her that wasn’t the case with Panda.