35
My pulse spikes as the realization of what I need to do hits me square in the chest. I draw in a sharp breath, then ask, “Macy, how fast is the current right before the falls?”
She shrugs. “It’s actually pretty slow. Slower than this. Why?”
“Then I’ll stay with the raft,” I blurt. The words escape me before I can second-guess. “I’ll swim behind it.”
Five faces turn toward me—incredulous. Imani’s lips part. Pam and Deborah gasp. Macy cocks her head, eyes widening in her battered face. Allie freezes entirely.
“Think about it,” I continue, throat tightening, “I can hold the raft back for a few minutes after you all get out of the water and start moving past him. I’ll float it down the slowest line possible toward the falls, so he’ll be watching.
He’s going to see six shapes in the raft.
He’ll think we’re all inside … until it finally gets close enough that he realizes we’ve tricked him.
And when the current gets too strong, I’ll swim for shore and stay low in the water.
He’ll never even know I’m there. But it’ll buy the rest of you some time to get past him, before he realizes what’s going on. ”
Even as I say the words, I’m fully aware that about a hundred things would have to go right to make this work.
Even one thing going wrong could mean certain death for any or all of us.
Questions swarm my mind. Can I hold the raft back all by myself?
Will he really be so focused on the raft that he doesn’t realize the other women are slipping past him on land in the dark?
What if the current is so strong it pulls me, along with the raft, over the impassable Splinter Ridge?
Nobody says anything for a moment.
“I don’t like this,” Allie finally says, crossing her arms over her chest. “No way. Too much room for error. There’s gotta be another option.”
“It’s the only option,” I say, knowing it’s true in my gut.
“The decoy has to be convincing. And it won’t be convincing unless we can control the raft.
It might start drifting sideways too soon—or even toward him.
He’ll know something is fishy.” I turn around fully, facing the other women.
“I can do this. I still feel strong,” I lie.
“The rest of you, move as fast as you can. Get ahead of him on the trail, and keep going. If we’re lucky, he’s already figured out how to get his gear raft down to the bottom of Splinter Ridge.
And you can get inside and race downriver.
If I can catch up with you … or find a way to take him out, I will.
” My voice breaks. “This gives us a shot, at least.”
Macy exhales through her teeth, the sound wet and ragged. “I should do it,” she murmurs, voice dull, but there’s no power behind the words. She is swaying even while she sits.
Pam whispers a curse under her breath. Deborah presses a shaking hand over her mouth.
Allie clears her throat. “Not you, Macy. You and Imani are going to need someone to support you,” she says.
“But I can help Kaia,” she adds sharply, her voice cracking.
She flashed me a fierce smile. “Swim team, remember?” Despite the exhaustion turning her face a pale gray in the dimming light, there’s a light in her eyes.
“If you’re swimming behind that raft, I’m swimming with you. ”
My breath catches. “Allie—”
“Nope, it’s settled. Deborah and Pam can stay with Imani and Macy,” she says firmly, eyes boring into mine.
“They’ll each have someone to help them if …
” She lets the thought trail off. “Not to brag, but like I said, I’m probably the strongest swimmer here.
I can help you steer, and I can help hold back the raft …
and then we can help each other get out of the river.
Maybe, if we’re lucky, we can chuck a rock at Leo’s head. ” She smiles again.
“This is a bad idea,” Macy says softly. “Two people in the water is twice the risk.”
“And twice the control,” Allie shoots back. “If Kaia gets sucked under, if the raft pivots, if the current spins her sideways—what then? She can’t do this alone. There’s no way. Strength in numbers.”
I feel myself shaking—not with fear, exactly, but with something sharp and overwhelming. A cocktail of dread and the last of my adrenaline—but also gratitude.
I don’t have to do this alone.
“Allie …” I whisper, my voice threatening to break.
But she’s already moving, checking the straps of her life jacket, securing her hair into a fresh ponytail, tightening everything with quick fingers. “We’re doing this together whether you like it or not. Now come on, we need to start getting our dummies ready.”
The sky above the canyon rim is streaked with gold. The fat half-moon has appeared in the pale blue to the west, and the canyon walls are beginning to darken. We’re almost out of time.
Macy’s good eye drifts toward the curve of the river downstream.
“We have maybe half an hour before we get to the spot in the river where he’ll be able to see our raft,” she says.
“Maybe. I hope I’m remembering right. We’ll have to stay along the canyon walls until we get to the start of the portage trail, so if he’s looking for swimmers in the water there … he’s going to see us.”
My heart hammers as I follow her gaze downriver.
I imagine slipping into the river, propelling the gear boat weighted with our makeshift ghosts.
“We’ll make sure he’s looking at the raft, not in the water along the canyon,” I say quietly, catching Allie’s eye.
“And when we get close, we’ll scream loud enough to make him believe we’re really going over. Now, let’s get moving.”
As I reach for the nearest dry bag, Parker’s voice fills my mind. “You’ve got this.” But now it seems like the words aren’t just meant for me, but for the we I feel forming around me.
“All right,” Macy rasps, letting go of the guide oars and moving to sit beside me on the side of the raft.
Up close, I can see her injuries better, and it makes me want to cry.
Half her face is swallowed under layers of swollen, purpling flesh, angry at the edges and flapping with dried and fresh blood.
One eye is half-closed, the lashes glued together.
“We need six shapes. How do we do this?”
I hesitate. I have no idea how we’re actually going to build these dummies from the haphazard supplies at our fingertips.
“Oars first, they’ll give us height,” Pam says, and I smile despite myself. She’s in vet mode.
She sees me grin and smiles back. Her face has gone waxy with exhaustion, her sunburned skin red and lips chapped, but her eyes are clear. “I’m no swim team star, but I am a crafter. Helps me de-stress.” She laughs. “I doubt it’ll have that effect right now, though.”
Deborah tosses a coil of rope at her feet. “This should help bind everything together. It looks pretty long,” she says, breathless. “Maybe there’s more in the bottom of the blue bag.”
Allie unbuckles her life jacket first, and the rest of us follow her lead—including Imani, with some assistance—while Pam collects our supplies.
She works with impressive quickness, strapping some of the life jackets around bundled clothes, stuffing Mylar blankets and food wrappers into empty rain jackets to give them shape.
Imani has slumped even farther down in the bottom of the raft, her eyes glassy and breath shallow as we work.
The stump of her elbow is fully visible now, the bandage long gone.
The flesh is cut clean where the wire sliced through muscle and sinew, and the blood is seeping again, despite Pam re-tightening the tourniquet.
The smell of it, raw and metallic, wafts on the breeze every so often.
But there’s no time to re-bandage the wound.
Imani blinks at us, trying to focus. “Tell me … what to do,” she says, voice slurred.
“You just hang on and get ready to move,” I tell her, though my throat tightens around the words. I push our last half-empty water bottle into her hand and wait until I feel her fingers grip it. “Have another few sips of water, and rest. We’ve got this.”
The wind changes and the current picks up as we come around the next bend, moving faster even though none of us are rowing anymore. My heart skips as I try to count down how many minutes remain before we reach the point where he’ll be waiting and watching for six women silhouetted on a raft.
Six whole, visible women.
“Kaia,” Pam calls. “Help Allie tie these two paddles together. Make a spine and arms. We need the guide dummy to look most realistic, it’ll be the one he sees most clearly. Our Macy.”
Macy tries to smile in response, but her face is so swollen it barely flinches.
I kneel beside Allie, fingers clumsy on the wet rope.
We lash the paddles in a rough T-shape, cinching them tight.
Then Pam wraps a rain jacket around the top to create a torso and pulls a life jacket over it, tightening the straps until it holds its form.
From a distance, with the low light … it could be a person.
“Two more,” Macy rasps.
Pam and Deborah manage another figure, but we’re running out of clothing and supplies. Without a word, we collectively remove the windbreakers we’re wearing, the extra layers of pants we pulled out of the dry bags earlier.
Macy’s hands are shaking so badly she can barely tie the knots on the final figure. Pam takes over, her jaw clenched in determination. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she says gently. “Just human enough.”
I swallow hard and keep working. We have to be getting close to Splinter Ridge.
Rope bites into my palms as I pull it tight around a paddle-and-jacket rig. My vision blurs from droplets of spray as the raft crashes through a short rapid that none of us even bother to row through.
Finally, six shapes sit haphazardly in the raft—slumped, life-jacketed, eerie in the dwindling light. And maybe, just maybe, believable enough to pass as body doubles.
Allie leans back, hands on her hips, chest heaving, as she looks at Macy. The guide oars are all that remain for steering now, but that doesn’t matter anymore. “How much farther?”
Macy grimaces as she angles the raft toward the canyon wall. “We’re pretty much there. Past that big outcropping of boulders, he’ll be able to see us. If we’re getting into the water, now’s the time to do it.”