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‘Y-y-you’re a cop?’ Romy stammered out excitedly at Stone.

‘A federal agent. See. Says so right here.’ Stone flashed an official federal badge he’d dragged out of the ute’s glovebox. ‘What’s going on, Celeste?’

‘The hatchery has had a break-in. Someone has stolen eggs and hatchlings.’ Celeste gripped her throat, the worry deepening the creases around her eyes.

‘How many?’

‘Dad’s in there now, doing a count.’ Jed nodded at Stone’s ID badge. ‘Are you legit with this Stock Squad thingy?’

‘It’s real.’ Stone tapped on his satellite phone and waited for the other end to pick up.

‘Hey, Bossman, how do you feel about crocodiles? We’ve got some cold stock stolen at Saltscale Farm.

Know the place?’ Stone listened with head down, as Celeste wrung her hands with worry, while her son Jed tried to console her.

‘Yeah, they’re doing a check on numbers now… Okay, no worries. See you soon.’

Stone tucked the phone away and lifted the cooler. ‘The team is on their way. In the meantime, I’d like to put these babies to bed before I do my day job.’

No-freaking-way! Romy’s jaw dropped at the cheeky chopper pilot who was way more than she’d realised.

‘Jed will help you with the newbies. Who’s your friend?’ Celeste smiled at Romy. ‘Another backpacker for the house?’

Backpacker? That made her spine stiffen. She might’ve been carrying a pack, but she wasn’t some suntanned Brit on a gap year.

But then Stone gave a sly smirk as he casually slid his arm over Romy’s shoulders. His breath warm against her neck as he whispered into her ear, ‘Don’t panic. This way they won’t ask too many questions… This is Romy Radford. She just flew in to escape the southern autumn.’

‘Hi, that’s Celeste, my mum, and I’m Jed Rowntree.’ He held his hand out to Romy. Celeste politely smiled as she folded up her apron, leading them towards a large building.

‘Is this your farm?’ Romy politely shook Jed’s callused hand, noting his tan was as deep as Stone’s.

‘Family’s. I grew up here.’

‘Wow, that is so unusual.’

Jed shrugged. ‘It’s no different to a cattle station or a chicken farm, except the animals are more dangerous, aren’t they, Stone?’ He playfully nudged his elbow into Stone’s ribs, who matched the boyish grin. ‘How many eggs did you bring us today?’

‘Thirty.’ Stone tucked the cooler safely under his arm. ‘They’ve been in this thing for almost an hour now.’

Jed’s smile fell. ‘Mum? Stone and I should go to the hatchery and tuck these new eggs in first.’

‘That’s where your father is, annoying Lenora upstairs.’ At the heavy door, Celeste swiped a pass card at the panel. A light turned from red to green, and the door unlocked.

‘Heavy security,’ muttered Romy. Even the doors had bars on them like a prison.

‘It still didn’t stop them from stealing.’ Celeste scowled with tight lips, as the heavy wrinkles shifted around her soft eyes.

‘It’ll be okay, Mum. You’ll see.’

‘I feel so violated.’ Again, Celeste gripped her throat, her voice strained. ‘It might be a farm, but this is our home, too.’

Jed rubbed his mother’s back, as he spoke to Stone. ‘They broke into the hatchery last night, or so we think.’

Stone arched an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean, you think?’

‘Dad only just noticed it.’

‘Our eldest, Lenora,’ Celeste explained to Romy, ‘is doing a stocktake now with her father. They’ve been at it all morning.’

Feeling awful for Celeste, Romy offered a soft smile of sympathy. It was lame, but it was all she could do. Normally Romy hid behind the camera, and no one noticed her, that she felt positively naked without a camera, or a phone.

‘Listen, Celeste, how about me and Jed tuck in these eggs first? And, by then, the rest of the team should be here so you and Malcolm can answer all our questions at once, and we’ll work out how to help recover your stock. Does that sound like a plan?’

‘You’re a gem, Stone. It must have been fate for you to show up like this to help our family. Right time, right place, huh.’ Celeste gave Stone’s arm a motherly squeeze. ‘I’ll radio security to let your colleagues in. Will they be in police cars?’

‘Nope. We’re not regular cops.’

They were led down a short corridor, and entered a muggy room made of meshed metal and glass, where in-ground water troughs ran along the sides like a clear drain.

‘Wash your boots, please.’ Celeste dipped her gumboots into the drains.

Romy tugged on the back of Stone’s shirt.

‘You keep tugging on my shirt like that, shortcake, and you’ll strip me down. All you need to do is use your voice or sign language. I’m quite versed in both.’

Was he joking about understanding sign language? ‘What is going on?’

‘We have to wash our shoes to go into the hatchery, Lennie keeps it pretty sterile.’

‘But you’re carrying dirt in that cooler.’

‘Don’t worry, they’re going straight into a quarantined room.’

Romy washed her hiking boots in the whooshing water that smelled like antiseptic detergent.

She then wiped them down on another floor mat, and washed her hands alongside the others before entering an open room inside the large shed.

The air was so thick with humidity, it was like entering a tropical sauna.

Instantly her shirt stuck to her sweating skin. ‘How hot is it?’

‘Answer her, Jed. It’s your show to share,’ urged Stone.

‘Um, well…’ Jed rubbed the back of his neck shyly.

‘Go on, it’ll do you good, son,’ said Celeste. ‘My boy gets quite shy around the girls.’

‘ Mum .’ The poor guy dropped his head to his chest, adjusting his cap.

‘You go tuck in the new ones, while I go find your father.’ Celeste rushed off. ‘Just radio us when you’re done.’

‘So, where do you want these, Jed?’ Stone hoisted the cooler to his chest. ‘You can give Romy a tour while you’re at it.’

Romy gave young Jed an encouraging smile. ‘This place is amazing.’ Except it was sweltering hot.

‘We speak in indoor voices here,’ whispered Stone, pushing open another heavy glass door on the right, that led to a dark corridor.

‘Why?’ Romy followed Jed and Stone inside.

‘Think of this place as a nursery for newborn babies at a hospital.’ Stone put his finger across his lips. ‘Shh.’

That explained why it was so quiet. But what kind of nursery had their babies living in sweltering temperatures like this?

‘Go on, Jed, this is your backyard, mate.’

‘Um, yeah, like Stone said, we keep the noise to a minimum.’ Jed shrugged.

‘I get it,’ she stage-whispered.

Again, Jed gave her a shy smile before using the swipe card to open another doorway where the lights were dim.

‘We keep the hatchery at 32 degrees with the humidity at eighty per cent to mimic the crocodile’s natural nesting conditions.

Plus, we found the warmer it is, the quicker they grow.

’ Jed looked at the place with pride as he led them down the dimly lit corridor.

Inside, it smelled of animals, but not like your typical zoo either. This place had a distinct earthy aroma, like peat moss mixed with river water, reminding her of an aquarium.

As they walked down the main corridor, large glass windows showed off rooms set on either side, where indirect red lights reflected off the shallow pools.

‘The red lights keep the eggs warm,’ said Jed, ‘and don’t freak out the hatchlings. They’re hypersensitive to anything too bright when they first hatch.’

Romy rubbed her fingertips together, missing her camera that would record this tour, or her phone at least to take notes. ‘How long do they take to hatch?’

‘The average is eighty days.’ Jed plucked two trays off a nearby rack.

‘We keep the eggs on these trays, set in a soft substrate, so they don’t have to dig too far.

We still cover ’em though, to mimic the wild.

You see, croc mums bury eggs in the nest, and when the hatchlings chirp, she’ll dig them out.

But in here,’ Jed said, nodding at the hatchery, ‘they might not have a mum, but we give them just enough cover to feel safe, but not enough to get stuck.’

‘Do you use the soil that Stone’s carrying?’

‘It depends on the soil’s quality and how much we have of it.’

‘Not much, just enough,’ mumbled Stone, carrying the cooler.

‘Mostly, we use sand and other materials to help mimic the crocodile nest. I’ll show you.

’ Jed used his swipe card to unlock an empty room, then flicked on the red lights and adjusted them with a dimmer.

He then turned on a low tap to fill a small wading pool.

‘The water we use comes from a specially filtered tank, like you’d find in any large aquarium house. ’

‘That explains the smell. But different.’ It was also steamy like a jungle, too. ‘Now what?’

‘We mark the eggs.’ Jed helped Stone take the eggs from the cooler. ‘We do that so we can keep them in the same position. We don’t want the embryo to drown.’

Romy watched on, fascinated, as both Jed and Stone marked each egg, then tenderly placed them into the special padded trays. Jed then tapped some details into a phone app as Stone shared the information of the predicted laying date, parent information, and expected hatching date.

Then they were back in the corridor, with Jed pulling the door shut with a heavy click of the lock.

Using the radio, Jed waved at the security camera in the hallway. ‘Hey, Bastion, hatching pod nine has 30 new eggs, approximately one week old. Can you patch in the cameras, activate the sensors, and run a check on the room’s temperature, please.’

‘Will do.’ Came the reply over the radio. ‘Temperature is set…’ A few clicking sounds came over the speaker. ‘Cameras are recording, and the sensors are live. Consider the new batch of babies locked in.’

They stood staring through the window at the dirt-covered lump concealing the eggs, like newborns behind glass in a hospital maternity ward.

This time Romy squeezed her hands into her pockets, fighting the desire to film everything.

She could clearly envision the camera angles to capture the details of each egg, the trays, and how the red light softly reflected over the shallow ponds.

She hated this, not having her camera with her, while feeling privileged for being here at the same time. ‘What happens to them now?’

‘We wait,’ replied Jed. ‘They’ll stay there until they hatch.

Some other hatcheries will move them from incubators to pens.

But Lenora, my sister, has proven that the less they’re handled, the higher the birthrate.

It’s why we put them straight into the nesting trays here in these pens, where they’ll stay for a while. ’

‘It’s not that different from a hen farm, hatching chickens to lay more eggs and more poultry pieces for the supermarket shelf,’ said Stone.

Romy blinked at the uncanny similarities. ‘How will you know they’ll be ready to hatch?’

‘We’ve got sensors on the nesting boxes to alert us, and these pens have soft walls to prevent injury, along with that shallow pool to allow the hatchlings to stay hydrated.

Plus, we’ve got techies who monitor these areas daily, cleaning these places to ensure their environments are sterile.

We want them to get a good start in life. ’

Romy narrowed her eyes at the sleek dome cameras mounted high on the walls.

Their discreet lenses could capture sharp, wide-angle footage even in low light, thanks to their infrared capabilities—perfect for filming in dim, humid conditions.

Sadly, that type of camera’s film quality wasn’t the best. Unlike Romy’s cameras, sitting in Stone’s ute, that would pick up the details in cinematic clarity. This was torture.

Yet, with this much security in place, the cameras, the swipe cards to get past the heavy metal doors, not to mention the barbed-wire fences and security guard, how could anyone steal anything from inside this hatchery?

There was a crackle as Celeste’s voice came over Jed’s radio. ‘Jed, tell Stone the Stock Squad are here.’