“That’s it! One more big tug!” Talos heaved himself backward, slamming into the back of the raft to give us more momentum in dislodging ourselves.
With one last shove, the raft finally scraped away from the rock. We tipped dangerously to the left, leaving us all to grab onto the handles on the sides of the craft quickly.
“Hang on!” Talos stood up again and used his paddle as a rudder against the rock, shoving us out and away from it. Water kicked up, spraying us all right as we hit one of the rapids dead on.
With one last severe dip, the raft was righted and finally we were back in the main channel.
“All right, nice work, everyone!”
“Ellen!” the older man shouted, his face drawn back in a panicked look while his finger pointed out into the water.
My head snapped back, following the line of his finger to someone in a life vest floating down between the rapids. Their arms waved frantically, disappearing beneath the swell and then popping up a harrowing three seconds later, the coughing and sputtering barely heard over the rush of water.
“Ellen!” the man called again, careening toward the side of the raft and tipping the entire party in that direction.
Ohfuck.
CHAPTER 7
Marlow
The second theman lunged forward, I snapped my hand out to grab at the back of his life jacket, hauling him away from the side of the raft before he had the bright idea to tip us all over.
The strap I had a hold of pulled taunt while he jerked forward again, a grunt tumbling past his lips while he tossed his paddle down onto the floor next to his wife’s unoccupied spot.
Clearly, he was too out of his mind with worry to be thinking straight, but it wouldn’t do any of us any good trying to save that poor woman if we were all too busy trying to keep ourselves from getting dragged under one of the rapids while trying to get back into the raft after being flipped.
“Ellen!” he shouted again.
I tightened my hand around the nylon strap while it dug uncomfortably into my skin. For an old guy, he sure knew how to throw his body weight around. As soon as I ripped him back with a sharp jerk, I steered him down toward the floor, practically tucking him between his bench and the one in front of him as gently as I could manage given the small and compacted space.
Talos was already in motion next to me, grabbing the discarded paddle and tossing it into the river to keep it from breaking the man’s fall and his back.
“Shit,” I heard Talos say, right before a shrill whistle blasted me in the eardrum, rattling my fucking brain in the process.
Two more whistles answered farther down the river from us. Quite useless, seeing as how there was no way any of the other rafter parties were going to be rowing back up this way to help us. Which meant one of two things, we fought the current ourselves to try and get to our fallen comrade or someone was going swimming.
Ellen’s figure went down under the water again, popping up a moment later as she sputtered and coughed, her hands desperately clinging to the front panels of her life vest that was coming up near her shoulders from how hard the water was tossing her around. Even if that vest was strapped snug around her body as tight as it could go, it wouldn’t matter if she managed to wiggle out of it trying to fight from getting pulled under again.
“Keep focused,” Talos barked, his voice sharp. “Remember your training. We’re going to cut through the rapids and make our way over there.”
I had a feeling by the time we coordinated and got over to her, she’d be floating face down while the current took her to wherever it wanted. We had no time to be fucking around here and letting Talos try and wrangle up the three remaining people able to keep rowing was a waste of that precious time.
So, instead of listening to him bark at me to grab my paddle and spin us around toward Ellen’s direction, I tossed it down onto the floor at my feet.
“Marlow—”
I didn’t bother waiting for the inevitable chiding before tossing myself right over the side of the raft and practicallyrolling down into the next set of rapids. There was a distant “Fuck!”that I caught just as I speared my hand through the water, cutting into the force of the spray that kicked up as soon as my body faced west.
Swimming was the only hobby of mine I hadn’t yet grown bored of from childhood, making it second nature to fall back into those old and practiced strokes I knew all too well. Call it the fish in me or blame it on the competitive nature of showing off to the academy boys while in boarding school gym class I’d yet to grow out of twenty years later.
The water was much colder than what had been kicked up inside of the raft while we’d been slowly making our way back over to the river’s channel, sending my adrenaline spiking through my system and propelling me forward.
Ellen’s eyes were wide while she floated aimlessly toward another rapid, her mouth moving while she said something I couldn’t quite catch over the swell. Our helmets were a bright yellow, stark against the murky browns of the water, making it easy to keep my eye on her while getting to her.
There was another sharp trill of Talos’s whistle, signaling to either the rest of the crew again or using it to belatedly scold me for doing something as stupid as jumping into a raging river with no plan outside of grabbing Ellen and swimming back.
Okay, so maybe this was one of my least smart impulsive choices.
