20
Our raft picks up speed as we row together, cutting across the river, aiming for that splashing figure at the end of the tree branch.
From the swift pull of the current, I can tell we won’t have more than a second to pause alongside her. If we don’t approach at precisely the right angle—and if we don’t get close enough—we’ll fly past her, with no hope of rowing back upstream.
We have one shot to rescue this woman.
Between the distance and the darkness, I can’t tell who it is. “Can you swim?” I call to her, hating that Bryan will be able to hear what I’m saying, too.
He must know she’s there now: a fifth survivor.
And if we miss our chance to save her, he’ll come from behind and make sure the number of survivors goes back down to four.
“No—my life jacket—it’s … it’s caught.” The sentence is broken, her voice fraying at the edges. She fights to keep her head above water, the tree branch jerking up and down in the powerful current, shaking her like a rag doll. Her face dunks beneath the surface again and again.
We’re ten yards away from her now.
Then nine, then eight. I still can’t tell who the woman is.
Bryan is closing the gap, too. He’s dropped the Michael Myers act and is rowing in earnest, now that he’s sighted the woman caught on the tree branch. Maybe fifty yards behind us and approaching fast.
We’ll have seconds to save her, at most.
I finally catch a glimpse of the back strap of her life jacket, twisted around the thick, partially submerged tree branch.
There’s no way we’re going to be able to untangle that in the brief window we’ll have as the raft cruises by her.
The branch is broad, too—no way we’ll be able to break it.
I try to think fast, but panic claws its way up my throat.
I dig my paddle into the river and pull hard.
“Steer along the left of the tree!” I hiss to Deborah and the others—just close enough to reach her, but not so close that we’ll hit the trunk and get trapped behind the dangerous obstacle.
If we approach the tree at the wrong angle, we’ll get stuck.
Then we’ll be sitting ducks, just like the woman on the branch, waiting for Bryan to come finish the job.
Or we’ll topple the raft and be at the mercy of the cold, dark rapids.
The seriousness of the situation floods me with dread. The likelihood of saving her seems so low, it’s almost stupid to try. I’m going to have to look in her eyes and then leave her to Bryan’s knife.
“Tell her to take off the life jacket,” Parker whispers in my ear again, his calm, steady presence radiating beside me, completely at odds with the chaos of this nightmare.
This time, I don’t question his voice, his presence. I just blurt out the words in my head, calling to the woman, “Can you unbuckle your life jacket?”
We’re six yards away now, then five.
She hesitates. “Y—yes.” The river pushes her head underwater and she sputters, gasping for air. “I’m hurt, though—can’t—swim.”
Four yards. Three yards.
“Do it! Do it now,” I beg, praying we can grab her.
With an anguished cry, the woman thrusts one hand above the water’s surface and claws at the front of her life vest, grasping for the buckles.
Two yards.
One.
This is our only chance. I recognize the woman and her custom purple life jacket now, but can’t for the life of me remember her name. She showed me photos of her twin boys. She was wearing a headscarf before, but now I can see her close-cropped, tight black curls.
“Allie, Pam, grab her!” I cry as the raft moves into position.
Both women already have their arms outstretched over the left side, reaching. “Imani!” Allie gasps.
Imani. I commit that name to memory, needing to be certain I know it, whether or not we can save her.
It suddenly breaks my heart that I didn’t pay better attention to every woman on this trip.
I should have known all of their names before they were gone.
I should have asked to see pictures of all of their loved ones.
“Get that life jacket off, Imani, then hold out your hand!” I demand, while Deborah and I desperately try to row backward against the forceful current so we don’t sail past her.
“I can’t!” she screams, her voice raw with pain and panic.
And then I see why.
Her right arm, the one closest to us, is frantically working to unbuckle her life vest.
But her left arm is just a stump, blunted at the elbow. The flesh trails off into a dark bloody mess, draining into the choppy water.
There’s no way she’s going to get that life jacket off in time.
We can’t hold the raft here any longer. The current is too fast. We’re going to pass her.
But then, with a roar, she wrestles the final buckle loose and slips into the water.
Her black curls disappear from view as her head goes under.
For an agonizing few seconds, I see no sign of her. How could she stay afloat with that injury? Has she gone underneath the raft? Where the hell is she? My heart plummets as we fight the current, certain that even if she does surface, we’ll have missed our chance to pull her to safety.
Then Deborah flings her paddle down and throws herself across the right side of the raft, shouting, “She’s here! I’ve got you! Don’t let go, Imani!”
Allie, Pam, and I rush to help pull Imani into the raft.
“Thank you,” she keeps repeating between sobs, blinking back river water and tears.
“We need something we can use as a tourniquet,” Pam says, her voice somehow strong and calm. I suddenly remember that she spends her days helping panicked animals—that as a vet, she must be steady under pressure, tending wounds that would make anyone else pass out.
“My pants have a cord we can use,” Allie says, already reaching for her soaked joggers and unthreading the string.
As Pam hurries to help her get the placement of the tourniquet right, murmuring assurances that she did this with an injured husky just last week, a sharp clapping sound comes from behind us.
My brain takes a moment to register what the noise is, even as I spin around to look.
I realize it’s not a clapping sound.
It is clapping.
Bryan stands at the long guide oars of his gear raft, bringing his hands together in slow, methodic slaps.
He’s only twenty yards behind us, now.
“Five of you,” he calls, as his eyes skim over our raft. “Nice.” He puckers his mouth and lets out another low whistle.
My pulse thuds. Bryan tilts his head and opens his mouth, then closes it again and makes a few strokes with his oars, like he’s inviting us to run, so he can give chase.
“This next rapid is a doozy, ladies. But if you make it down, we’ve still got a lot of night left to play.”
My throat tightens with rage. He’s absolutely loving this.
For the briefest moment, I let my unanswered questions rip through me.
Who the hell is this Kellen-Stroop-wannabe psychopath? What does he want? Why has he chosen us?
Because surely, he can’t actually be Kellen Stroop. Kellen Stroop is dead. Kellen Stroop was a twenty-something-year-old man when he murdered those rafters at Camas Creek seven years ago. And the acne-scarred, neck-bearded, baby-faced kid in the raft behind us right now is not nearly that old.
Just as quickly, I push those questions away for later—because there has to be a later.
If we survive this next rapid, I have no doubt Allie will tell us everything she wanted to say around the fire last night.
But what matters right now is getting away from this monster and somehow getting all of us down this insane river.
I focus on rowing in unison with Allie while Pam finishes the tourniquet, all while sailing toward the enormous whitecaps ahead.
“Thank you, thank you,” Imani keeps repeating, her voice broken by her chattering teeth.
I make myself look at her, not Bryan.
I can’t tell if the droplets rolling down her cheeks are tears or river water.
Her skin—a rich, dark umber, the last time I saw her—looks ashen and pale in the moonlight.
Pam has tucked her between the inflated benches in the middle of the raft, and her body is shaking violently.
There’s no question she’s in shock. It’s impossible to know how much blood she’s already lost from that arm.
A pool of dark liquid is starting to form around where she huddles, mixing with river water.
We have to get that injury bandaged properly—but there isn’t time right now.
Surviving this next rapid is our priority.
Its mouth is now directly in front of us. A few more seconds, and we’ll be committed to whatever path we choose to ride.
“Which way?” I hiss, desperately trying to see past the looming, initial waves. Where are the hidden boulders? Which line of current will flip us, or snare us in a whirlpool or eddy? Which will bring us safely through the whitewater and out the other side?
“I don’t know!” Allie replies, flustered. She tilts her head to the right. “That side looks a little calmer—at the start, anyway? Should we try to angle that direction?”
I hesitate. The right side of the river does look a little less violent, but that doesn’t mean shit.
There were plenty of times the guides chose what looked like a terrifying initial line through a set of whitewater, only to reveal the calmer line was packed with rocks like icebergs that would have high-centered the raft or worse.
Then again, if we stay left, where we’re currently pointed—and take the first enormous wave head on—we could be putting ourselves at risk for a fast flip, unless we hit it perfectly.
The water is rolling like a bottled tsunami.
Can we manage to keep the raft straight with only four of us rowing, and no powerful guide oars?
And what if there’s a hole—one of the whirlpools Gracie told us about—directly beneath that huge wave?
“Where do we go? Has anybody been down the Middle Fork?” Deborah demands.
None of us reply. Of course we haven’t been down this section of river before. Getting a spot in a raft to run this isolated stretch of water is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Without a guide who knows these rapids like the back of their hand, it’s a gamble. A gamble with our lives.
My head swims as the hopelessness of our situation hits me again.
If we choose wrong, we’ll flip. And if that doesn’t kill us, Bryan will swoop in to pick off the survivors.
He’s closing the distance aggressively now, cruising fast along the left side of the river directly behind us, forcing us to make our choice.
Panic closes in, shutting down my instincts. It’s a falling feeling, like we’ve already capsized. Like there’s no hope.
“Look behind you. Look at him,” Parker’s steady voice insists.