28
The only thing I know for sure is that I’ve made Leo angry.
“Bitch!” he curses as he plunges his oars into the water, rowing toward me like he’s going to hunt me down if it’s the last thing he does.
Exactly like I hoped.
As his hungry expression contorts with rage, his eyes dart between me and the overturned passenger raft. He definitely saw Pam slip underneath it. He probably figures that the other women are hiding there too, out of sight.
He knows they aren’t going anywhere but downstream—same as him, same as me.
If he lets me get away, though, I might have the smallest chance at slipping away while his attention is divided.
And besides, he needs me to pay for what I just said to him about the groover and Fight Night. His face promises me that much.
I kick harder, pumping my arms through the water fast until the din of the whitewater ahead is so loud I can’t even hear my own labored breaths.
But I can still hear the slap of those gear-boat oars behind me, getting closer.
If he catches me before I hit this rapid, it will all be for nothing. He’ll kill me—and then still be able to turn his boat around and get the others, if he really leans on the oars.
“Swim, baby, swim,” Parker urges, his voice losing that calm, steady cadence for once. I realize he’s chanting in time with my breaths.
I’m past the minefield of boulders now, and the current grabs hold of me with a terrifying force, drawing me faster and faster toward the whitewater. I never could have imagined a scenario where I’d dive headlong into the jaws of the frothing mouth ahead, but right now it’s all I’m focused on.
I have to make it there before I feel an oar against my head, or a knife in the sliver of neck exposed above my life jacket.
But anything is better than hiding under that raft with the others, waiting for him to pick us off one by one.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll buy Allie and the others some time.
If I can draw Leo downstream through this rapid, he won’t be able to get back to the others easily.
He’ll have to wait them out. And then maybe they can manage to get the raft turned over, possibly even get past him and continue down the river.
They’ll have a shot at getting back home alive.
I can do that for them. I can give them a chance.
Despair and determination dig their claws into my back as I kick faster, angling for the wall of whitewater churning only a few feet ahead of me.
Impossibly, I realize that I’m going to make it. The current sucks me into the first wave with a rush of speed. The wall of whitewater lifts me up then pushes me hard underwater, sending another sizzle of adrenaline rushing through me.
I’ve done it. I didn’t feel the blow of his oars, the sharp metal of the knife on the back of my neck. And now, for better or worse, I’m in the whitewater, at the complete mercy of the river.
Euphoria and terror light me up while the river grabs on with its many hands, turning me over and tumbling me onward. He won’t be able to catch me for the next few minutes. I know that for sure. He’ll have to worry about navigating his raft unless he intends to flip.
Then I realize, to my horror, that I haven’t heard the thunk of the raft slamming into the waves behind me. I haven’t heard the slap of those oars.
He isn’t following me anymore.
I try to turn around, try to catch sight of him, but the force of the river smacks me against a boulder then sweeps me sideways into a deep wave, dipping my head under. I come up for air just in time to see the gear boat pointed the opposite direction, Leo leaning back hard on the guide oars.
No, no, follow me! I want to scream, but the next wave is already driving me underwater again, pulling me down into the chaos before I can open my mouth.
I’ve failed. At the last second, when it mattered most, I failed.
That final glimpse of Leo flashes inside my eyelids in the churning darkness—the tight line of his mouth, twisted into a smirk.
And then I belong fully to the rapid, trying desperately to keep my head above water for long enough to draw in gulps of air before the next surge sends me crashing into unseen debris that bashes and claws at my back, my sides, the skin on my legs.
I barely feel it. All I can think about is what’s going to happen over the next few minutes, when Leo reaches the people I’ve abandoned.
There’s nothing I could have done for them. If I’d stayed, I would have died, too. I know that. But that doesn’t ease my dread. I spin in the froth, sputtering and coughing, eyes darting across the canyon walls. The basalt glows with early light, shades of deep pink and orange.
I scan for any sort of narrow shoreline or shelving in those walls, anywhere I could get out of the water and try to make my way back to the others, but there’s simply no way.
The “Impassable Canyon” was given that name for a reason.
There’s no shoreline anywhere to be seen.
And the sheer walls rising up from the waterline on both sides of the river might as well be skyscrapers for how steep they are.
I’m willing to bet that even the mountain goats can’t navigate this section of the river.
The adrenaline that’s been fueling me is burning down to despair and exhaustion.
This plan wasn’t brave. It was stupid.
Leo is going to kill those women now. And then he’s going to come downriver and hunt me, too. I’m alone, without a raft, without any hope of rescue. He’ll find me sooner or later.
My arms and legs feel like lead weight, and I release the “Idaho Easy Chair” position, letting the current drag me along.
There’s still nearly fifty miles of river between myself and civilization, if my ongoing estimate is correct.
Unless I’m going to swim that far, I’m done for.
I’m already so drained and freezing, I’m not sure I could make it another mile on my own, let alone fifty.
I close my eyes and turn my face toward the rising sun, wondering if maybe I should just unbuckle this life jacket and let myself sink. Get it over with, instead of spending whatever time I have left waiting for Leo Marsden to kill me.
Surely, that would be less painful.
The thought is dangerously familiar to the ones I’ve had over the past two years since Parker died, but this is the first time I’ve really considered what it would actually mean to end things. To let myself fall into the same dark nothingness I imagine that Parker has disappeared into.
I remember learning once in a swim class that it’s dangerous to try to save a drowning person.
Because they’ll pull you under, too, panicking and clawing in a desperate effort to get to safety.
I’m certainly on the edge of drowning right now, but I’m doing the exact opposite—going dead weight and refusing to swim any longer.
I’ve made it past the worst of the rapid, but that doesn’t matter.
Unexpected tears blur my bleary, stinging eyes. “I’m sorry, Parker,” I cry, not sure what I’m apologizing for. “I’m sorry.” I cough out the words through a precious pocket of air, the same way my husband did the night he died, a tinny last gasp through the microphone.
There is no reply.
A wave of grief and doubt surges up inside me. He’s gone. Or maybe, more likely, he was never here at all. That voice in my head urging me to fight, to swim, to rally, to make the next move, was just my own will to survive.
And now, even that voice has disappeared.
There’s nothing left to do but give up. And the river is more than willing to assist me.
As I tip into a seemingly gentle curl of whitewater, it’s as if the surface abruptly drops out from under me—like a hidden door, a sudden vacuum. Then the current abruptly folds back on itself.
And then I’m falling.
Into another hole.
I find myself pinned in place, violently yanked back and forth by the pull of whatever is beneath me in the depths.
“No!” I cry, the words getting lost as another rush of water fills my mouth and my head is shoved underwater, then back up, again and again.
My despair shifts back into panic. This isn’t drowning. It’s worse. Almost drowning, over and over again. Every time I claw forward to free myself from the water’s grip, the current seizes me by the shoulders and drags me backward, spitting in my face.
I can see calm water just a couple of yards downriver, green glass where the sun has finally hit the surface, but it might as well be a mile away.
My legs keep kicking because they don’t know what else to do, but only the river has any sway, surging around my body in a violent swirl.
“No!” I cry again, rage and desperation displacing the numbness I felt seconds earlier.
It’s like the river is on Leo’s side, holding me in place for him until he’s finished with whatever awful things he is doing to the others.
Faint, distant screams fill the air.
In my mind’s eye, I watch Leo dislodge the raft, lifting it away from the terrified women hiding beneath, exposing them. Pam, Deborah, Imani. He plunges the knife again and again, turning the water red while Allie watches helplessly from her hiding place on the other side of the river.
“No, no, no,” I choke.
It won’t even matter if one of the women manages to hurl herself into the whitewater and briefly escape, like I did. He’ll catch her, too.
It’s only a matter of time. Leo has already won.
Without a raft, without a guide, without any way to escape, all of us are already dead.
I reach for the buckle of my life jacket.
It’ll be better to go under, let the hole drag me all the way down to the bottom of the river, than to let him find me like this.
But my hands are useless, numb blocks of ice.
I can barely feel my individual fingers, let alone find the ridges of the clips that would release the buckles.
For a moment, I almost laugh. I can’t even die right.
The sunlight finds me as the shadows shift and I whirl in place, half-alive, half-gone, my chin barely above the churn, and only when the current allows it. I steel myself to lean forward, stop fighting, and invite the water to close its hand over my mouth.
I hope it’ll be quick. Quicker than whatever Leo has in mind.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” This time, when Parker’s voice echoes through my head, it isn’t calm or steady or soothing. It’s loud and angry. Angrier than I ever heard him get while he was alive.
At first, I’m so stunned I don’t know how to react.
And then my own anger—the rage I’ve pushed down to the deepest place, where it could fester, ever since I got that awful phone call—rises higher than the river. You don’t get to tell me what to do right now, Parker! I died when you died. I have nothing left to give!
Without waiting for a response, I try to go limp, letting my head loll forward in the water and forcing the air out of my lungs.
Immediately, my chest seizes. My body bucks toward the surface, and I start coughing violently as the animal instincts in my body refuse to comply with my attempt to end things.
The tears come fast and indignant, hot on my icy cheeks.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of electric green upstream.
My stomach clenches.
It’s too late, now. He’s coming for me. And there isn’t one fucking thing I can do about it.