“Cody.” Tia’s voice was flat and urgent. She pointed downstream. Something red was caught in a sieve, under a tree canopy. A paddle. “He boasted about setting traps for humans, about hunting women. Maybe this was him trying to get a woman off the river, force her into the bush where his dogs could catch up.” Tia scanned the ferns along the banks, backpaddling. “So where is she now?”
“Maybe the kayak overturned. Maybe she bailed. If we find her kay—”
A bark, low-pitched and husky. A shout: “Shut up!” Close behind. Shit, Shane had caught up fast. Cody kicked into gear, pulling hard into the current.
“Tia, I want to find her, too. But right now we gotta stick to the plan, stay ahead of him.”
She nodded curtly, her lips thin.
“We get past the waterfall, we’re home free.”
Another nod.
The next rapid was short and brutal. No more sign of kayakers. Then the goddamn river began to meander, just when they could have used a solid patch of straight water to pull ahead. Every bend, every cliff, every bay, Cody expected to see camo gear, hear the zing of a potshot. The dogs had silenced—under control, on the hunt? The rush of the rapids turned into a roar, the roar into thunder. Mist billowed around an upcoming blind bend. The waterfall. A sudden scream cut overtop.
Tia charged up alongside him. “Hear that?”
“Yep.”
“It was close—just through there.” She nodded at a strip of stony beach on the right bank.
“Tia, we gotta get to the waterfall before he does.”
“It could be her.” Another scream, indistinct. “I can’t not...”
His gut churned. Fuck.
“You go ahead,” she said, paddling for the beach. “I’ll check it out.”
Dammit. He followed, ripping off his spraydeck as his kayak skimmed to a halt behind hers. He jumped out with a crunch and pulled the boat under a clump of ferns as she did the same.
“You have to keep going,” she said, stepping out of her spraydeck. “Stick to the plan.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
She unclipped her life jacket and tossed it on the kayak. “This is about your brother, isn’t it?”
“Don’t bring him into this. It’s about you.” He nodded into the forest, trying not to shout above the crashing water. “It’s about her.”
“I can look after her—and me. Best thing you can do is raise the alarm. You’re not thinking straight because of what happened before.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m thinking.”
“We don’t have time to argue. Staying is a bad decision. Go.”
Another scream, almost inhuman. He frowned. There was something odd about it. His ears couldn’t get a fix on it over the roar of the falls.
“Cody, go.” She scrambled up a mud bank.
Leaving made sense. Of course it did. He dragged his palms down his face, slick with mist and sweat. But, fuck it. Maybe stayingwasa bad decision, but it was the only one he could live with.
He caught up with her in a dark gully where the forest muffled the waterfall to a bass boom. She shot him a disapproving look, then started.
“Hear that?” she asked.
A snorting, ahead. Not dog, but he’d swear it wasn’t human. He overtook her—and froze. Farther down the narrow gully, a monster of a black boar tottered and swayed to its feet, curved tusks glowing white in the gloom. Holy shit. Grunting, it lowered its huge matted head—and charged. Cody reared and smacked into Tia. She yelped. An instant of weightless panic and then he landed on dirt, taking her out on the way down. The boar barreled toward them, getting bigger by the second. It threw up its head and squealed. Then its legs buckled and it thudded to the ground, the impact shuddering like a quake. It slid to a stop so close that Cody could feel its hot breath.
“He’s bleeding,” Tia whispered, pointing past Cody to a deep, dirty gash in its flank, oozing with fresh and dried blood and yellowy gunk. Behind it, on the leaf litter, was a long red smear. “The dogs must have had a go at him—a while back. He’s dying.”
