31
The pocket of calm water where Macy has stopped the raft is a welcome change from the endless current we’ve been riding for hours. But the more Allie explains what we’ve unraveled about Leo Marsden, the more terrified and angry Macy looks.
“Holy shit,” she whispers every other sentence. “I knew he was a douchebag, but holy shit.”
The last time Allie brought up the Camas Creek murders in front of Macy—back at the campfire—Macy had walked away with Gracie, looking annoyed and spooked.
Everything has changed since then. Now, Macy hangs on Allie’s every word.
When Allie gets to the part about Leo’s mom taking him on that rafting trip when he was seventeen—probably because he’d been kicked out of that wilderness survival camp—Macy’s eyes suddenly go wide.
“Shit, shit, shit. Hold on.” She tilts her head, like she’s remembering. “I think he fucking knew. Holy shit, he knew Bryan was Leo.”
“Wait, what? Who knew that?” Allie prompts warily, glancing at me.
Macy shakes her head in stunned horror. “My stupid boss at Rapids Unlimited. Adrian. Way back in the spring, when we were training the new guides, I told him that ‘Bryan’ wasn’t a good fit.
I’m the leader on the river—I’ve been here longer than Josh or Gracie—so the other rafters are supposed to listen to me.
But during drills, Bryan acted like he couldn’t hear me half the time.
And he behaved like a total moron on the river, with those flip-flops.
Like, he was almost trying to be stupid.
But when I told Adrian, he acted like I was making a big fuss over nothing. ”
She winces as her jaw tightens, pulling on her injury. “Gracie knew there was something wrong with him, too. You remember how we made him wear his flip-flops during Fight Night? He called her a bitch under his breath. So I told her we should ‘cannonball’ him that night.”
When she sees the confused looks on our faces, she explains.
“Gracie and Bryan—I mean Leo—were facing off on the rafts stacked up in the river. Most of the time, nobody actually goes into the water during Fight Night. They just fall over onto the center of the raft if they lose the match. But when Gracie whistled, I jammed my foot down onto the back of the raft just as she jumped up—and then came down hard. It popped him like two feet into the air, he lost his balance, and went into the river. When he came up, everybody was laughing, and I swear I’ve never seen anybody so angry.
I joked with Gracie that we should put a lock on our tent door.
” Her face falls as she remembers. It’s all too real now.
“Okay, but why do you think your boss knew that ‘Bryan’ was really Leo?” Pam asks, winding a bandage around Imani’s elbow with practiced precision.
“That’s the thing. Adrian usually listens to me when I speak up about something. But he insisted we had to give ‘Bryan’ a chance on the river—that it was important, and he’d explain everything to us guides when the season was over.”
I frown. “Do you have any idea what he might have meant by that?”
Macy makes a pained growling noise in the back of her throat.
“He said there was going to be some top-secret news article, and we’d all get featured in it.
And it had something to do with ‘Bryan.’” She shakes her head angrily.
“At the time, I made a joke asking if this was like, some kind of ‘Make a Wish’ for him to play rafting guide. Because when Gracie and I complained about ‘Bryan,’ he gave me this dad-lecture about how we needed to give him a chance, because he’d had a really hard life,” she says in disbelief.
“Adrian actually got a little choked up.” She shakes her head slowly back and forth.
“And he sort of stumbled when he said Bryan’s name for the first time during introductions—like he was about to say a different name, then corrected himself.
I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but now … ”
“Why the hell would your boss let him on the river as a guide if he knew it was Leo?” Deborah asks, incredulous.
“Because nobody—except a few of the true-crime junkies on my Reddit board—thought Leo was anything other than a victim of this horrible, sad situation. He was the heroic ‘survivor,’” Allie says tightly.
“It sounds like maybe Leo convinced him it was going to be some kind of inspirational news story,” I say.
“Like, redemption for the rafting company, good press … because they probably didn’t look too great when Camas Creek happened.
I bet your boss loved the idea of this supposed survivor coming back triumphant to raft the river as a guide. ”
“I can see that kind of bullshit on that dumb news segment ‘Monday’s Man of the Hour,’” Imani mutters weakly.
Macy nods. “I think that’s exactly what happened. Adrian’s a good guy, but I can see him being sucked in by something like that. He’s a softie. He’s got like … ten rescue dogs.”
All of this is starting to make a sick kind of sense.
I close my eyes and let my head rest against the side of the raft, suddenly realizing how bone-tired I am after being awake all night.
Even though the raft isn’t moving—snugged against the canyon wall in the calm water—my mind still swims with the chaos of the whitewater.
When I open my eyes, I see that Macy’s expression has darkened.
Her grimace is both frightening and painful to look at, with the gaping wound running across her cheek and up to her eye.
“He’s not going to get away with this. He’s going to get caught.
Even if … even if we don’t make it, Adrian knows Leo’s his real name. So let him run while he can.”
“He isn’t worried about getting caught, though,” Allie says emphatically. “He wants the credit for what he’s doing—and what he did before, too. Called it his ‘opus.’”
Macy’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead in shock, and she looks to each of us in turn, as if we might offer some kind of rebuttal to Allie’s insane theory.
It isn’t a theory, though. And all Macy will find in our expressions is grim agreement.
“She’s right,” I say slowly. “When he caught up with us after Anvil … he pretty much said exactly that. He doesn’t want Kellen Stroop to get the credit for Camas Creek anymore.
He wants people to know his name. He’s part of some ‘incel’ group, where they think people who do this sick stuff are gods. ”
Despite the thermal blanket and the sun, I shiver.
“So if he wants credit, why the hell did he run away when Macy showed up?” Deborah begins. “I don’t get it. He tried to stay behind our raft the whole time, before. He didn’t want us to be able to follow his line through the rapids. But I guess now that we’ve got a guide with us—”
“Shit. Shit, shit.” Macy abruptly gets up from where she’s been resting against the back of the raft, grabbing hold of the oars to start us moving downstream and back into the current, angling the oars to skirt an outcropping of boulders.
“Everybody, grab a paddle and start rowing with me,” she barks.
“I think I know what he’s planning now …
and it’s not good. We need to move as fast as we can. ”
Allie glances sideways at me, her expression frozen in fear.
I stare back at her, just as terrified to learn what Macy is thinking.
“What are you talking about, Macy?” Pam protests as the raft picks up speed. She wraps an arm around Imani, getting her situated for the journey. “Why are we rushing now?”
Macy makes a frustrated growl. “I really thought he was booking it down the river so he’d have a head start at escaping …
because yeah, you guys have a guide again.
He knows I can get you all down this river safely.
But if he doesn’t care about getting caught …
Well, that changes everything …” She trails off with an anguished moan.
The uneasy feeling in my chest balloons larger, pressing against my ribcage as I reach for my paddle. There’s barely a flicker of whitecaps on the river here, and the current is relatively mild except for a faster line surging to our left. Macy angles us toward it.
Deborah rows alongside all of us, but she doesn’t match Macy’s urgency. “I don’t get it. We should rest a little longer, let him get farther ahead of us. I found some beef jerky and peanut butter M&Ms in the dry bag!” she adds hopefully.
“No! Paddle, now!” Macy cries. “Get us on that faster line!” This time, her voice is stern enough that all of us start digging in harder with our paddles.
As we move into the flow, the river pulls us along at a strong clip.
When we come around the next bend in the canyon, I can see taller whitecaps frothing ahead, the start of yet another rapid.
“Tell us what you know, then. What’s he planning?” Allie asks, her voice rising in pitch as she pushes hard with her paddles.
“If he doesn’t care about getting caught, it means he’s probably not running away from us. He’s trying to beat us to the takeout at the end of the river.”
“Why would he do that, though?” I ask in genuine confusion, still failing to understand. “When we get to the takeout, there will be a bus waiting, and more people—”
“No, that’s not how it’s going to happen,” Macy says angrily.
“About two miles before the takeout, there’s a rapid called Splinter Ridge.
” She lets that hang in the air, but when none of us respond with a spark of recognition—or mirror her terrified look—she continues.
“It’s a Class Six. Completely unrunnable. ”