‘I’m going to abseil down, and I want you to lower the rest of my pack.’ He adjusted his harness for a final time and held out his hand. ‘Do you have a radio for me?’
Nick gave up arguing, but his face was white and his eyes flickered between the rising tide and the sky, obviously looking for a helicopter. Hoping.
Jenna felt helpless. ‘I want to do something. If the boy is badly injured you’ll need help. I can abseil down, too—’
Ryan didn’t spare her a glance. ‘You’ll stay here.’
‘It’s my daughter down there.’
‘That’s why you’re staying up here. You’ll be too busy worrying about her to be any use to me.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’ Anger spurting through her veins, Jenna picked up a harness. ‘You need me down there, Ryan. Two of them are in the water, one of them injured, and one of them is stuck on the rock face. He could fall at any moment. You can’t do this by yourself, and Lexi is just a child.’
Ryan paused. Then he looked over his shoulder, down at the jagged rocks. ‘All right. This is what we’ll do. I’ll go down there first and do an assessment. If I need you, Nick can get you down to me. But watch my route. Have you abseiled before?’
Jenna swallowed, wishing she could tell him she’d scaled Everest four times without oxygen. ‘Once. On an adventure camp when I was fifteen.’
‘I love the fact that you’re so honest. Don’t worry—Nick can get you down there if I need you. Hopefully I won’t.’
He went over the edge like someone from an action movie and Jenna blinked. Clearly there was plenty she still had to learn about Ryan, and the more she knew, the more she liked and admired him.
‘I should have stopped him,’ Nick muttered, and Jenna lifted an eyebrow because the idea of stopping Ryan doing something he was determined to do seemed laughable to her.
‘How?’
The policeman gave a short laugh. ‘Good question. Still, what Ryan doesn’t know about ropes and climbing isn’t worth knowing. I’m going to get this on you Jenna.’ He had a harness in his hands. ‘Just in case. I have a feeling he’s going to need you. I can’t believe I’m doing this.’
‘If he’s going to need me, why didn’t he just say so?’
‘Honestly? I’m guessing he’s being protective. Either that or he doesn’t want any of us to know how easy it is.’ With a weak grin, Nick adjusted the harness and glanced at her face. Jenna wondered if he knew that there was something going on between them or whether he was matchmaking like the others.
Ryan’s voice crackled over the radio. ‘Nick, do you read me? I need you to lower that rope to me, over.’
‘What he really needs is a miracle,’ Nick muttered, lowering one end of a rope down to Ryan and securing the other end to a rock. ‘That should keep the boy steady while Ryan finds out what’s going on. I hope he does it quickly. There’s a storm coming. Great timing. Can today get any worse?’
Only an hour earlier
she’d been lying on the grass on Ryan’s cliffs, bathed in sunshine and happiness.
Eyeing the rolling black clouds, Jenna approached the edge cautiously. Peering over the side, she caught her breath. Here, the cliff face was vertical. The rocks plunged downwards, the edges ragged and sharp as sharks’ teeth, ready to razor through the flesh of the unwary. Her stomach lurched, and the sheer terror of facing that drop almost swallowed her whole.
‘I can’t believe they thought they could jump down there,’ she said faintly, biting her lip as she saw Ryan attaching the rope to a boy clinging halfway down. Then her gaze drifted lower and she saw Lexi’s small figure, crouched on an exposed rock at the bottom. The girl had her arms around a boy’s shoulders, holding him out of the water, straining with the effort as the sea boiled and foamed angrily around them, the level of the water rising with each incoming wave.
Watching the waves lick hungrily at her daughter, Jenna felt physically sick. ‘That boy is going to be under the water in another few minutes. Lexi isn’t strong enough to pull him out. And she isn’t going to be strong enough to keep herself out.’ Feeling completely helpless, she turned to Nick. ‘Get me down there now. Don’t wait for Ryan to talk to you. He has his hands full. I can help—I know I can.’
‘I’m not risking another person unless I have to. It’s bad enough Ryan going down there, but at least he knows what he’s doing. You have no cliff rescue skills—’
‘I’m her mother,’ Jenna said icily. ‘That counts for a great deal, believe me. Get me down there, Nick.’
He slid his fingers into the collar of his jacket, easing the pressure. ‘If someone has to go it should probably be me.’
‘You need to stay up here to co-ordinate with the coastguard. I don’t know anything about that—I wouldn’t have a clue.’ Jenna glanced down again and saw that Ryan had secured the boy and was now abseiling to the bottom of the cliff. He landed on shiny deadly rock just as another enormous wave rushed in and swamped both teenagers.
Instantly Ryan’s voice crackled over the radio. ‘Get Jenna down here, Nick. It’s an easy abseil—’
Easy? Torn between relief and raw terror, Jenna switched off her brain. To think was to panic, and she couldn’t afford to panic. Her daughter had climbed down there, she reminded herself as she leaned backwards and did as Nick instructed. All the same, there was a moment when her courage failed her and she thought she was going to freeze on the black forbidding rock.
‘Just take it steady, Jen.’ Ryan’s voice came from below her, solid and secure. ‘You’re nearly there.’