30
Through the water in my ears, I hear a voice. No, voices.
Women’s voices.
Deborah’s low, scratchy bass, and Allie’s fast, birdlike cadence.
“She’s alive!”
“Hurry, get her in the boat!”
“Oh my god!”
“Make some room, get this crap out of the raft!”
I blink as the sky whirls, blinding blue and white above me, while fumbling hands pull me over the side of the raft by the lapels of my life jacket.
I can’t quite believe what’s happening.
It’s not Leo. It’s my friends. They’re here with me, somehow. And I realize, in a daze, that they aren’t sitting in the wrecked orange passenger raft. They’re in a neon green gear raft.
At first I think it must be Leo’s, but then I see the shape of a yellow cooler, dry bags, life jackets, and more paddles.
This is the second gear raft—and it has its guide oars intact, unlike our orange passenger boat.
When I hit the floor and roll to my side, coughing up more water, the surface is firm and bouncy instead of spongy.
Like maybe our other raft had been dragging with a slow leak.
I try to bring the fuzzy faces around me into focus. Each wears the same exhausted, terrified, but hopeful expression. They’re the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen. Allie, Deborah, Pam, Imani, and—I can’t quite process what I’m seeing—a woman at the back of the boat, in the guide position.
It’s Macy.
Tears I was sure had run dry pour down my cheeks, burning raw skin as I stare at her, disbelieving. This isn’t possible. None of this is possible. Am I hallucinating? Am I dead? Is Leo Marsden stabbing me in the neck right now, and this is where my mind has gone to escape the awfulness?
No. I’m alive. I’m right here breathing, in and out, despite the pain in my lungs.
My eyes stay locked on Macy, who gives me a lopsided half-smile as Pam and Deborah help me sit up, tucking me between Imani and Allie in the center of the raft.
The right side of Macy’s head is a matted mess of hair, and blood has dribbled down to stain the top of her swim shirt a watery red.
A deep, gory cut runs from her ear to her mouth, where wire sliced so deep I can see the muscles of her cheek dangling through the wet, gaping flesh.
A flap of skin hangs loose beneath her chin, revealing glistening pink tendons beneath.
Her ear is nearly severed, held on by a thin strip of tissue.
She survived the wire. Barely.
But she’s alive. She’s alive. We all are.
Relief and joy spread through me, as bright and beautiful and impossible as the rays of sun peeking over the edge of the canyon.
“How did … what … where’s Leo?” I sputter, eyes moving over the faces of the women around me.
“Who’s Leo?” Macy asks, her voice ragged. “You mean … Bryan?”
I glance at Allie. There clearly hasn’t been time to explain everything we’ve unraveled.
“We’re pretty sure Bryan’s real name is Leo Marsden,” Allie begins, talking rapidly. “You know … from the Camas Creek murders.”
Macy stares at her in disbelief, but just shakes her head. “Whoever the fuck that guy is … he’s downriver now,” she says, her voice stilted and almost unrecognizable as she tries to keep the cut on her mouth from moving too much. “He would’ve come past you just before we did.”
I realize, with a chill, that it was Leo’s raft I first glimpsed with my eyes open underwater.
That’s why I’d been sure I saw his raft leaving.
He’d sailed right past me, probably figuring I’d drowned in that hole.
If I hadn’t played dead the second Parker’s voice whispered in my ear, I might be dead right now after all.
In that moment, I know I won’t waste any more energy debating whether that voice is really Parker. Because what I know for certain is this: That voice loves me. It wants to protect me. And it knows that deep down, I actually do want to keep breathing—despite the pain.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, trying to focus. I don’t even know where to start with the questions spinning through my brain.
“Macy got him on the run,” Pam crows, pushing her slick wet bob behind her ears. “He’s not going to mess with us now,” she adds firmly.
Macy leans on the oars to pull us into a calmer pocket of water beside the canyon wall, and I can’t tell if she’s grimacing or if it’s just the new set of her mouth.
“I wish I could’ve done more. I knocked him into the water for a few seconds, with one of these.
” She indicates the long, sturdy guide oars in her hands. “But that’s all I could do.”
I try to picture the scene, but there are too many holes. And something inside me balks at celebrating victory yet.
This feels too convenient. He planned this horrifying “opus” for way too long to give up now.
When I see Allie’s expression, I know she’s thinking the same thing. There’s no way that Leo just high-tailed it out of here after getting knocked into the water—by a guide who called him “Flip-Flop” and made him carry the groover. A woman, no less.
Macy noses the raft against a narrow cove, effectively anchoring us where the water is almost devoid of a current. I can hear birds again, I realize—swallows, and the distinctive chatter of chukars—as Macy lets the oars drop against the locks.
“I can row for a while in the guide position if you want to rest?” Deborah offers between chattering teeth, but Macy shakes her off.
“We should all take some time to get warm, get a little food in us, drink water. Get our strength back. We’re safe for now …
he has no real way of getting that raft back upstream by himself.
” Macy nods toward the swift current beyond our pocket of calm.
Then she holds up two liter-sized water bottles.
“I grabbed everything I could when I went back to our camp at Anvil Falls.”
How the hell was she able to get back to that camp? I stare in disbelief at the assorted gear in our boat.
“Oh, thank god,” Deborah says, her voice quavering. “Thank you, Macy.” As she takes a water bottle from Macy, she winces. “Can we do anything with the first aid kit … for you?”
Macy shakes her head and shoots me another lopsided smile.
“Nah. I know I look like shit, but it could have been a lot worse. If Kaia hadn’t seen that wire when she did …
if I’d ducked half a second later … well …
you know.” She tries to smile again, and winces.
“I’m gonna ride the adrenaline. Let’s get Imani’s arm cleaned and bandaged with some real supplies.
And there’s some Mylar blankets in that purple gear bag for the rest of you,” she adds.
My heart constricts. Not only am I still alive, but not alone anymore. Five of us are here, alive, together, breathing.
My friends. Those words echo through my mind again.
Because I realize they’re true. These women are my friends now.
Not random strangers on some summer-camp float trip I planned to white-knuckle my way through.
Friends. It’s a word I haven’t used for a long time.
I pushed everyone so far away after Parker’s death.
The realization makes me want to weep again. That, and the fact that for the time being, we’re safe. We have a raft. We have a guide to navigate the rapids. We have each other.
Pam opens up the dry bags and starts pulling out first-aid supplies and thin, shiny blankets. Allie offers me a pink water bottle, and I take a few small sips.
“I still don’t understand how you’re here—and how you’re alive,” Deborah says to Macy, who rests against the oars.
“Me neither. What happened?” I prompt, trying to process how any of this is possible. “Five minutes ago, I thought you were all dead.”
“We thought the same about you,” Macy says.
She gazes downriver, and I follow her line of sight—but the only thing visible is distant whitewater ahead.
She lifts her hand to her ruined face then curls her fingers into a fist before touching the gaping wound.
“When I fell out of the raft at Anvil—after hitting that wire—I blacked out.” She pauses, unable to go on as her face crumples with emotion.
“When I woke up, I was wedged face-up against the canyon wall and a couple of boulders. Right below Anvil Falls. Pretty sure that’s the only reason he didn’t see me, because I was almost behind the falls.
It’s also why none of you could see me, and it’s the only reason I didn’t get sucked into that undertow.
So honestly, it was pretty damn lucky. It took me a while to get out with the current pinning me there, and it took me even longer to make my way back upstream.
An hour, at least. But I found one handhold after another in the canyon walls and kept clawing my way forward, and finally stumbled on a steep game trail.
And I did it. I made it back to camp. Then I got in the second gear raft we’d left behind.
It took me forever to drag it across the sand by myself. ”
My mind flashes back to the chaos of the night before. It feels like a hundred years ago. Both gear rafts had been piled high with supplies, which sent everyone scrambling to get in the empty passenger rafts instead. Leo had taken the first gear boat—leaving the other behind.
Pam wraps a Mylar blanket around my shoulders, blocking the morning breeze, and I close my eyes, the now-blinding sunlight beginning to warm me. I think again of my grandmother’s quilt.
Macy stretches her arms in front of her, flexing at the fingers and shaking her hands to get the blood moving.
“At first, when I saw the bodies floating at the bottom of Anvil … I thought you were all dead. But the second passenger raft was gone, and so was the other gear raft, so I knew you had to be downriver. I decided I was going to try to catch up with you. I rowed like hell all night—until I got to the end of Haystack and saw that fucker closing in on your flipped raft.”
I listen in amazement. If I’ve been estimating distances correctly, she rowed at least thirty miles overnight to catch up with us. I can see the exhaustion written across her face, but I can only imagine how hard she worked to make up for that lost hour.
“Holy shit,” I murmur. “You got here just in time. What happened back there at Haystack?”
Allie speaks up then, locking eyes with me.
“While Leo was chasing you all, I kept pulling myself along the canyon wall. I was trying to get far enough upstream to reach the flipped raft. But when I got to the bend, I saw Macy coming down the last wave of Haystack.” She shakes her head, blinking back tears.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. One second, I’m sure he’s going to pick all of us off one by one, and the next, Macy here is pulling me into her gear boat, and we’re racing to beat Leo to the overturned raft where everybody else was hiding. ”
“We thought we were goners under there,” Deborah cuts in, her gravelly voice thick with emotion.
“And then all of a sudden we heard women screaming like banshees, a loud whack, a splash, and then Allie was reaching under the raft, screaming for us to get into the gear boat. By the time I got out from under the raft, Leo was scrambling to get back in his raft, as it was getting swept downstream.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe in amazement.
Macy is back in charge. We have a guide who knows this river and can get us to safety. We have the rowing power and can outmaneuver him. We aren’t a bunch of amateurs, dead in the water, anymore.
But an uneasy thread of doubt still weaves through my mind.
Macy’s expression darkens. “I hit him as hard as I could.” She indicates the long, heavy guide oars, scarred from years of use and only half-varnished.
“I aimed for his head, but it caught him in the life jacket, and he went overboard. I wanted to hit him again … but he was already getting swept downstream.” Her face blanches.
“All I could do then was get Deborah, Imani, and Pam into the gear raft with Allie and then move downriver—where we found you floating in that hole.”
Nobody speaks for a few seconds.
“Thank you,” I say. It sounds like too much and not enough. The words hang in the air as the women around me nod soberly.
I pull the foil blanket tighter around myself, staring out at the glittering green water.
I want Leo to be dead. But as my gaze moves back to my tightly clenched hands, my eyes land on my wedding band—the one I still refuse to take off.
It’s bent, warped slightly where it must have slammed against a rock.
The finger it wraps around is scraped and bruised down to the bone.
But that ring is still here. Just like I am.