38
I can’t see Leo’s face, can’t read his expression, but I can feel his attention locked on the raft—and the six shapes perched inside.
Has he spotted me? Has he spotted Allie. Is his jaw tightening at this very moment, as he realizes he’s been fooled? If he knew where to look, he could see the tops of our heads behind the rear bumper, barely breaking the surface like crocodiles.
Keep looking at the raft. Don’t look in the water. Please, please, please.
I don’t dare let my eyes linger on him. There’s no point. All that matters in the next three seconds is the fact that our raft is racing forward, only ten yards from the falls’ edge now—and the fact that the undertow is sucking us swiftly toward the whitecaps’ frothing fingers.
We’ve reached the final point of no return. The exact spot Macy said we absolutely cannot go past.
Which means that maybe Leo is actually about to watch us fall to our death, dashed to pieces on the rocks below, along with the dummies. If we don’t make a move right fucking now, we’re goners.
“Shit!” Allie chokes out. She flashes me a terrified look, then tips her head left with a slosh. And then she’s gone, ducking beneath the dark surface of the water before I can reply or react.
“Now!” Parker commands, yanking me from the panic that’s pulling me under as fast as the undertow. “Dive!”
Something brushes past me underwater like an enormous fish, followed by an urgent tug on my leg.
I yank my frozen hand free of the raft’s D-rings and rope, draw in a breath, and plunge under the surface behind Allie, kicking blindly toward the left bank while trying desperately to keep my body hidden beneath the surface.
Once my head is submerged, I open my eyes wide in the dark green, the water thick as oil. I can’t see Allie—can’t see anything except murky shadows.
I know enough to swim away from the current, but everything else is a blur, and my pace is so slow it feels like I’m barely moving at all. Am I angling enough to reach shore? Do I really have the strength left to get there?
The panic swells again, but before it blooms I make out a shape moving in front of me, beckoning. Defined, and impossibly easy to see, for how dark the water is.
It’s Parker, as real as he’s ever been, urging me to follow.
And I do, with everything I have left.
My lungs already beg for air as I swim against the current, turning more sharply toward the shore. I try to keep up with Parker’s moving target, but no matter how hard I try, the current drags me back toward the hungry, gaping mouth of Splinter Ridge.
The gravity of the river suddenly shifts, yanking me away from my path and flipping me like a washing machine, and for a terrifying second I think I’ve gotten trapped in another hole.
Then my shoulder slams into something solid—another boulder.
“Push off it,” Parker cries, and I propel myself sideways and up, breaking the surface just long enough to gasp in a breath before diving back under.
Did Leo see me? Did he hear my splashing?
Where is Allie?
I can’t worry about any of that right now. I have to keep swimming.
I reach out blindly for Parker in the dark water, fingers grasping for his shirt, an arm, anything, even though I know he isn’t really there. My hand closes empty, again and again. But it keeps me reaching, keeps me moving.
The roar of the falls in my ears is deafening, even beneath the water, louder than it’s ever been.
When I look to my right, I can see the churn of whitecaps just feet away.
Oh god. The drop-off.
I flail harder. My feet definitely break the surface this time, and I can only hope the force of the splash will be lost in the foamy water.
I’m at the threshold of Splinter Ridge, the unrunnable rapid. Past the point of no return.
I kick frantically, climbing more than swimming, my eyes locked on Parker’s retreating feet as I push toward the left bank that must be somewhere ahead in the darkness.
The water surges and breaks around me, carrying my body with it at each swell, until I can’t tell if I’m moving or swirling in place.
Just when I’m sure I can’t swim anymore, my palm slaps solid rock.
It’s the canyon wall, slick with algae but solid. I find a divot to grab hold of, even as the current tries to rip me away.
I claw for a second handhold. Then another. The rock is slippery, offering barely any purchase, but I hold on with everything I have.
My head breaks the surface and I suck in air, blinking blindly.
I’m so close to the edge of Splinter Ridge, I can feel it vibrating through the stone I cling to with my numb fingers.
The mist drifts up like cold breath, coating my face.
I’m only maybe two yards from the edge. Near enough to see the first yawning, abysmal drop where the water simply disappears into distant chaos.
From this vantage, I find myself thinking that Macy’s warnings about Splinter Ridge were almost modest. The jagged bottom is so far down, there’s absolutely zero chance of anybody surviving the drop.
And it isn’t a straight drop—more like a series of landings, where serrated black boulders poke out of the snarling falls like teeth.
If the first level didn’t catch you in its jaws, it would send you end over end, down the next drop, and the next, on top of more saw-toothed boulders and beneath the unimaginable force of slamming whitewater.
My fingers ache where they cling to the rough surface, the thud in my chest as violent as the falls.
I’m not going over that precipice, though. I’ve made it. I’m safe for now, pressed against the canyon wall.
There’s movement to my right—someone pulling themselves toward me. A drenched, dark shape in even darker water.
Parker, I think at first.
Instead, to my relief, I see Allie’s dripping pale face and wide eyes.
She reaches me a few seconds later, one hand finding my shoulder and gripping tight for a moment. We cling to the rock together, both of us shaking, wedged into a merciful eddy where the water can’t send us hurling over the edge.
“Holy shit, we didn’t go over,” she whispers through chattering teeth, although it sounds more like a question than a statement.
Before I can reply, a noise from above us lodges the words in my throat.
Clattering rock—from overhead.
My eyes snap up to the outcropping that juts out above us, and fresh dread washes over me. Allie and I are directly beneath the lookout point where Leo has been watching the raft.
He’s standing maybe fifteen feet above where Allie and I cower against the canyon wall, trying to make ourselves as small as possible beneath the slim ledge.
I shake my head and clamp my mouth shut, but there’s no need to warn Allie. Both of us have gone rigid.
I see a flash of green out of the corner of my eye.
Our raft hovers at the very edge of the falls now. And at first glance, even I’m drawn in by how lifelike those hastily constructed decoys look in the long shadows. They shudder violently as the nose of the raft rams into a boulder near the ledge, looking just like real rafters in peril.
Almost.
But the raft is too light, spinning sideways as it hits a wave, ricocheting against a boulder at the precipice. From Leo’s angle above us on the outcropping, he’ll be getting a much clearer view now, too.
I press myself flush against the canyon wall, not daring to breathe, not even daring to look up at the silhouette overhead in case he so much as feels my eyes on him.
But I can hear him—the barely audible scrape of his Chacos on the rock as he moves closer to the ledge. And maybe I’m imagining it, but I swear I hear that eerie whistle rising above the growl of the falls.
Just then, one of Pam’s decoys collapses against the front of the raft, revealing nothing but a life jacket draped over a paddle, knocking into Macy’s dummy and sprawling across the guide oars.
I wince. With every second that passes, the illusion is crumbling into half-formed, badly made skeletons.
The whistling stops.
“The fuck …” Leo’s voice comes from above us, barely audible over the roar of the falls.
He doesn’t sound angry, though.
He sounds puzzled. Has he realized our trick? Or is he shocked that we’re actually going over the falls instead of facing him?
He laughs, and something scrapes against the rock above our heads.
I hang off the rock wall just far enough to risk another look at him. He’s leaning over the edge of the outcropping now, and in the faint light I can see that he’s holding something.
The long, thin object is only half-visible and in view for maybe a second before he moves back out of view on the ledge.
My heart stops, dread rushing through me before my brain can make sense of what I’ve just seen.
Long and angular, but not a rifle. The shape is wrong for that.
An arc, attached end-to-end with a thin line.
A hunter’s bow, I realize. He is holding up a bow, and a nocked arrow. This is his failsafe to finish us off one by one at the portage.
Oh god.
The tuneless whistle reaches my ears just as something zings through the air above our heads, arcing toward the raft, all of it happening so fast I barely have time to register the madness.
The arrow strikes the water behind the raft, where Allie and I were only moments earlier. It cuts through the surface then disappears.
Leo lets the tune drop, grunting.
A second arrow flies, then a third. They punch through the side of the raft, the neon green surface dimpling inward around the shafts.
Then a fourth arrow, a fifth, a sixth, slice into the dummies just as the raft slips into the falls, disappearing over the edge.
Even with the din of the pounding water and my blood thumping in my ears, the loudest sound is the silence that follows.
There’s not a single scream from inside the boat.
No cries of distress as the raft flips end over end onto the first row of jutting boulders, flinging dummies overboard, their parts scattering like shrapnel as they sail through the air and are swallowed by the spray.
The raft slams down one final stair step of rocks before continuing into the abyss.
But the eerie silence doesn’t last long.
I lock eyes with Allie as a sound rips through the air that makes my blood run as cold as the river water. Something between a laugh and a scream.
“You fucking bitches!”