As a silver lining, at least now they’d have an exciting story to tell the grandkids over Christmas dinner.
“River right,” Talos called, climbing over top of me and fishing his paddle off of the floor by my head. “Let’s park this thing.”
CHAPTER 8
Blake
The last thingI expected to come over the radio was a request for emergency medical assistance down at the riverside.
“Couple of guests fell in the water. We’re going to need the paramedics down here to check on them. Non-life threatening injuries so far,”were Talos’s exact words.
I tried to not let my mind run wild while the chattering on the radio continued with rapid-fire questions shooting back and forth from both sides as I heaved myself up from my desk and quickly shoved my shoes back on to sprint out the door.
This wasn’t the first time we had a guest or two take a plunge and most certainly wouldn’t be the last. We’d trained for plenty of scenarios and seldom took new clients up to the trickier spots on the river without at least some kind of professional training under their belt.
While it was never easy to extract people from the river, the life vests were mandatory for a reason, as were the helmets that kept them from cracking their skulls open on any rocks hidden under the swells of water.
Non-life threatening.
That was a good sign.
Talos reporting it was the real problem my mind was latching on to.
All of it could be chalked up to a coincidence. In fact, there was a strong possibility it wasn’t his group at all that had suffered from the predicament and was a simple case of Talos having gotten onto the radio first to report up to base camp about it. Whatever guests had fallen into the water sounded like they were fine and simply a little shaken up from the ordeal.
Most likely this was a case of a younger couple eager to prove themselves to their peers. Hell, maybe it was Marlow’s swinger friends and conveniently would give me the excuse to kick them off the property for violating rule number one when it came to adventure camp: don’t be a fucking idiot and get yourself almost killed.
Wishful thinking, sure, but a guy could dream right?
I hitched a ride down with two of my medically trained staff, following after another golf cart that had my other two, and hung on for dear life as our golf cart careened down the steep pathway to get down to the river’s edge. The air was much cooler down here than up at base camp, the rapids a soft and distant noise in the background that soothed my weary nerves as we pulled up to the four groups all settled off of an old docking site.
The groups were scattered around the small area, creating a wide berth for us to come through and over to where our river guides were gathered. Two of them were bent over, attending to whomever it was on the ground, while the other two—Talos among them, nodded to the paramedics hustling their way.
As soon as Talos stepped away from the group, giving our first responders room to work, my entire body froze. An older couple was sitting on the ground, the man’s arm wrappedaround his wife’s shoulders while she had looked visibly shaken and drenched from, presumably, taking a nice dip in the river.
Across from her, looking almost as drenched, was Marlow.
My throat burned as I tried to swallow.
“Hey...” Talos nodded to me, heading my way. “Think we might need to call an ambulance after all.”
I forced out a breath. “Someone knock their head?”
“No, but the woman swallowed a lot of water. She threw up some of it when we docked but she’s still looking a little sickly.”
“And... Marlow?”
God, did I even want to ask?
He looked fine from here, but that was from twenty feet away.
The one day I didn’t accompany him on a fucking expedition.
Talos snorted. “You didn’t tell me he liked to play hero, too.”
My brow popped instantly. “What?”
“Dove in head first after her like it was out of some action movie. He swam all the way out to her and pulled her back one-handed. It would’ve been pretty impressive to watch if I wasn’t busy trying to keep the entire raft from tipping over.”
