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.
