Chapter Forty-Six
The Colorado yawned wide as Mandy’s raft drifted toward Upset Rapid, a long tongue of muddy water lapping at the foamy peaks
ahead. She could feel the muscle of the river underneath their little boat, pressing them toward the roar.
“Listen up.” Thor back-paddled them into a swirling eddy on the right, arresting their forward momentum. “There’s a big old
lion’s den of a hole at the bottom of this rapid. If we get stuck in it, we flip. If we flip, there’s no rescue boat to pick
us up.”
“Meaning?” Guy said.
“Don’t get stuck in its roar. If you fall in, grab one of the lines around the outside baffles and stay with the boat. Doesn’t
matter if the raft is right side up or where it’s pointing: Just hold on. Otherwise, you could get eaten by the hole, or the
tail waves might pluck you up and spit you downriver faster than we can catch up.”
“How do we avoid the hole?” Charlie asked.
“We’ll take the line on the right. It’s rocky, but we can make it.” The cliffs were still in shadow, but the river was sparkling
in the sunshine. Thor swung his paddle back into the water and took three hard strokes, pivoting them into the current. “Let’s
rock and roll.”
The river swept them into a tight tunnel of waves.
Mandy listened for Thor’s voice, trying to follow his instructions, but up front, her dad was confronting his first rapid ever with unstudied chaos.
Guy paddled when Thor called for it, but also when he didn’t, digging into the whitewater in a ceaseless frenzy.
The raft wobbled and smacked the water as they headed for a long line of rocks and waves. The boat leapt over the first two
waves, then shot right and buried itself in the third.
“Guy! Stop!”
Mandy whipped her head around to see Thor brace against the back of the boat as the whole thing tipped, the prow shooting
to the sky.
The raft slammed back down and spun wildly. A full circle, another half turn, and now they were hitting the waves sideways,
each bigger than the last. The water frothed like chocolate milk, spraying muddy geysers twenty feet in the air before raining
down on them. She could hear her dad cry out as the boat hurtled sideways downstream, slamming into wall after wall of water.
But he kept paddling, his frantic movements shoving them closer to the rocks on the right.
The rocks got bigger the closer they got. A pile of ancient stone, millions of years in the making, opening its jagged mouth
to her.
“STOP!”
Guy let go of his paddle, and it launched into the air. The raft spun again, and Mandy screamed. Thor dug in and yanked the
boat downstream. The river kept raging. They spun left, crosswise to an enormous boulder, and Mandy started to feel the weight
below her fall away. The raft was tipping, sliding sideways. Its rubber bottom shot up the rock, Mandy’s side of the boat
rising into the air like a carnival Tilt-a-Whirl. She grabbed a strap and clenched it to keep from falling down across the
boat into the churning whitewater.
“We’re pinned!” Thor shouted.
There was no way to escape. The boat was pressed against the boulder sideways, with Mandy and Thor straddling the high-side
baffle seven feet in the air, while Charlie and Guy sputtered at the water level, blasted by the full force of the waves.
Between them, poorly secured gear shot out of the boat—PFDs, paddles, the braid of garlic—looping in the air before plunging
like diving birds into the whitewater.
All Mandy could do was bear-hug the rubber tube and pray.
Each surge of water shoved the boat against the rock again with a terrifying jolt.
Thor urged her dad and Charlie upward, stretching out an arm to help them crawl one by one to the high side.
Guy had lost his shoes in the driving whitewater, and Charlie was crying.
But they inched their way upward, until all four of them were squished together on the high-side baffle.
They were safe for the moment. But they were also stuck, marooned above a swirl of angry waves against a sedan-sized boulder,
their only form of escape the yellow raft flipped up on its side. The boulder was just big enough that they could probably
crawl onto it, but it was uneven and slippery with spray, hardly stable or comfortable enough to stay long. And what would
happen if they let go of the raft to move to the rock? Would it stay shoved against the boulder forever? Or would it unwrap
itself and shoot downriver with the rest of their supplies?
“Now what?” Mandy shouted.
“We have to unpin the boat,” Thor said.
“How?” The river was still pounding the lower edge of the raft below them, jackhammering it in place against the boulder.
“There’s a little pocket of water back here,” Thor said. He pointed to a strap at the front of the boat. “I’m going to grab
this end. You’re going to give the back a shove. With luck, it’ll catch the pocket, come loose, and we’ll jump on.”
“Jump?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.”
Charlie moaned and clutched the baffle tighter.
“How do we push it?” Mandy asked.
“Get up on the rock and line up as close together as you can. Hold the baffle and put your feet against the boulder for leverage.”
Carefully, Mandy heaved herself over the tube, pressing her shoes back against the rock.
Her feet slid against the slimy surface, scrabbling for purchase, but the rock held.
It felt solid. Charlie and Guy swung over as well, lining themselves up shoulder to shoulder with their hands on the back edge of the raft.
She could feel Charlie shivering next to her.
“On my count,” Thor said. “Three . . . Two . . .”
On one, Thor yanked, and they leaned all their weight forward. But the raft didn’t budge.
Mandy looked down in the space where water was shooting up between the rock and the back of the boat. “I think there’s something
caught.”
“Here!” Thor handed her the silver folding knife, its blade open and facing out.
She leaned down to take a closer look at the gap, shielding her eyes from the spray. One of the ratchet straps looped around
the raft was snagged on a chicken head of rock. “You sure it’s okay if I cut this?”
Thor nodded. She took a deep breath and swiped the blade across the webbing. Her first cut missed, but on the second attempt,
she sliced a screaming rip that split the strap in two with a bang, throwing it into the air. The old knife was sharper than
she’d thought.
She gave Thor a thumbs-up, and he started shouting again. “Three . . . two . . .”
This time when they shoved the baffle, the high side of the raft came clear of the rock, the whole boat hanging in midair
for a fraction of a second before it flipped upside down and started spinning away from the boulder.
“Jump!”
“It’s upside down!” Charlie yelled.
“JUMP!”
Just before the raft flew past them, they dropped onto its underside.
“Hold on!” Thor shouted. He was spread across the upside-down raft, digging in the river behind them with both hands. “We’re
coming to the hole!”
She could see it. A deep, hungry mouth, sucking water fifteen feet down and shooting a wave at least thirty feet high. This
was no washing machine. If they fell into that hole, there was no getting out.
Mandy clutched at her dad, at Charlie, at whatever straps she could find.
She held her breath.
They shot past the hole.
“Woo-hoooo!” she screamed as they bucked through the tail waves, the raft racing toward calmer water. “WE DID IT!”
The boat spun one last time when they hit the softer part of the river, no longer chaotically, but like a sleepy drunk, slowing
with every rotation.
“We did it.” Thor was grinning wildly, soaked head to toe, his face sporting a fresh scrape that drew an angry red line across
his forehead.
“I am never going rafting again,” Charlie rasped.
“Me neither,” Guy added. Both men looked stunned.
“Please,” Mandy said. “That was awesome. We were awesome.” She flopped on her back across the upside-down raft, letting the warm air prick her soaked, exhausted skin.
“Good little knife,” Thor said.
“It did its job.” Mandy realized she’d been gripping it tightly ever since she’d cut the strap. She sat up and carefully folded
it shut. Engraved lines ran up its handle in a rough suggestion of leaves, the sun outlining the knife’s blunt, terrible beauty.
When she went to hand it back to Thor, he waved her off. “Keep it.”
Then he leaned forward.
“What is it?” she asked.
“That pattern. I didn’t notice it this morning, in the dark. But I reckon maybe I’ve seen that knife before.”
Charlie peered over. “Huh. I think I’ve seen it too.”
“What about you?” Thor asked Mandy.
She took a closer look at the knife in her hand. “No. Never. The first I spotted it was in the eddy, by Stefan’s body. Where
did you see it, Charlie?”
He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
Mandy didn’t have time to deliberate over whether Charlie was lying. “What about you, Thor?”
The river guide closed his eyes.
“It was Marc.” When Thor looked up, a drop of blood slid down from the scrape on his forehead, tingeing his left eyebrow red.
“The mule guide. He had it with him the night I met him.”
“How many years ago was that?” Charlie asked.
“Not years,” Thor said. “Days. I met Marc two nights before this trip started.”
Mandy was surprised. “Had you been on different work schedules?”
“Nah. Marc was a canyon newbie. Last month, a boatman took off for a private gig on the Flathead, up in Montana. Big Pete
told me if I could find a new mule wrangler, I could guide the river the rest of the season. Marc bought me a beer at a bar
in Flag last week, we got to chitchatting, and . . . that was it.”
“Did he have guiding experience?” Mandy asked.
Thor shrugged. “You don’t need it to run mules. He was interested, and I knew he could tough it out. New to the Southwest,
he told me. Retired JTF-2. Worked the same part of Afghanistan where I was ten years earlier.”
“JTF-2?” Charlie said.
“Canadian Special Forces,” Thor replied. “Like, Army Rangers of the north.”
“He did seem a little martial,” Guy said. “Not sure you get muscles like that running mules.”
“Yup,” Thor said. “I remember thinking the knife seemed a little out-of-date. I wondered if his great-great-grandfather used
it to liberate Canada from the Brits.”
Mandy thought back to that first morning up at the rim, the two guides standing together, Thor a rangy mountain goat, Marc
a silent bull. But Marc had only come down to that first beach with them. He hadn’t set foot on a raft or in the water. Presumably,
he’d hiked the mules back up to the rim that afternoon, and then gotten the call to take Babette and Guy down the other side
the next day.
And then Babette died. Marc hiked back to the North Rim for help. But somehow his knife crossed the river to kill Stefan.
She couldn’t see it. All the pieces of the puzzle floated in her head in discrete chunks, and Mandy wished Liv was there to
line them up properly. But all she had was her instincts, and the hazy sense that she was missing something.
She turned to her dad. “Marc didn’t bring a raft or a kayak down with you, did he?”
“No,” Guy said. “He only had a little pack for water. All of Babette’s and my stuff was loaded on the mule.”
“If Marc didn’t cross the river, how did his knife end up killing Stefan?” Charlie asked.
“You.” Thor pointed at Guy. “He must have given it to you or Babette. You were the last people to see him.”
Guy shook his head. “I swear to you, I never saw that knife before this morning. I don’t even know if Marc had it when he
was hiking us down. He could have given it to the lady who killed Stefan at another time.”
Charlie snapped to attention. “Wait. I remember now—”
But Thor interrupted him, turning on Guy. “Why should we believe you? How do we know you aren’t lying about this whole a-lady-killed-Stefan
business?” Thor came up to kneeling and pushed himself closer to Guy, who was sitting on the front edge of the upside-down
raft. The boat wobbled, sending a sheet of river water pouring across its back. “You convinced us to get out of there. You
said we’d get help. But that was a lie. How do we know you didn’t kill Babette, and Stefan, maybe even Marc too, and now we’re
just your escape route?”
Guy’s eyes were fierce. “That’s not what happened.”
The boat dipped again, and Mandy scooted back, trying to keep them from tipping. “My dad was tied up when Stefan died. There
was no way—”
“You got proof, buddy, or just talk?” When Guy didn’t respond, Thor started to reach toward his belt. Toward his knife. “That’s what I thought. I don’t believe a single word out of—”
Mandy flipped open the silver knife and plunged it into the dead center of the upside-down raft. There was a huge explosion
of air, and the boat slumped, folding in on itself and letting out a horrible hissing noise. Guy shouted and tumbled into
Thor, who hit Charlie, all of them crashing into the center of the deflating raft. Mandy stayed high on the back tube, holding
the blade tightly in her hands, instinctively defending herself from what might come next.
“Take us to shore,” she demanded. “And stop threatening my dad.”
Thor stared up at her from the shallow pool of water in the middle of the upside-down raft. His eyes were hot, and Mandy braced
herself for another tirade, or an assault.
Instead, the guide started to laugh, his braying chuckle chopping across the sunken boat.
“Looks like you’ve picked up the law of the wild after all.”
Thor hauled himself over the back tube and reached down into the river with both hands, swinging them around to face the North
Rim.
“Where are we going?” Guy fumbled to his knees, pulling himself up against the left baffle and trying not to slide back into
the ruined middle of the boat.
“Only place we can.” Thor’s powerful arms dug into the river, steering them into a fast slip of water that pushed them diagonally
to the right. The upside-down raft started limping toward shore, still bleeding air from the middle. Guy had to grab one of
the ropes lining the edge of the boat to keep from flipping out. He glared at Mandy. But she’d saved him. Even if she’d sabotaged
their escape in the process.
“Where are you taking us?” There was real alarm in Charlie’s voice.
“I’m beaching us.” They drifted to a spit of land on the north side of the river that was more boulder than beach, with long,
flat terraced slabs of rock licking at the water. “It’s called Bloody Ledges. We’ll stay until the others arrive. Or don’t.
We’ll stay as long as we bloody need to figure this out.”