My brain clocks it as strange, but I just grip my paddle harder and try to focus.
Only one more wave, one more drop—nothing compared to what we’ve just made it through.
My stomach clenches. During the chaos of Anvil, I’ve momentarily forgotten about Bryan.
There’s little question that he’ll be right behind us—if he makes it through the falls. And if he follows Macy’s line of travel, he probably will.
As if reading my thoughts, Macy calls out hoarsely, “Keep rowing once we get past the canyon. There’s a lot of us and only one of him. We’ve got more power than he does. We just need to put enough distance between us on the river—”
Then the roar of the falls fades and Macy’s voice goes quiet, replaced by a dull humming in my head. Then a deep, familiar voice echoing through my mind.
“Head down!”
It’s Parker’s voice.
Is this a mental break?
His voice comes again, pleading.“Head down, Kaia! Now!”
The words rip through my mind right as the raft ahead of us shoots through the final stretch of whitewater, nosing down the drop then popping up like a cork on the final wave.
And just as it does, the two figures at the front of the boat jerk back violently.
So do the women behind them, dropping into the water like a chain of dominoes, toppling out of control.
18
For the second time tonight, time slows to a crawl even though we’re flying across the water.
More figures in the lead raft slam backward, in a strange, coordinated ripple.
I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing in front of me, even while Parker’s voice urges me to figure it out.“Remember what happened to Raymond in Virginia!”he says urgently.
The name and the place ping vaguely familiar as connected to one of Parker’s outdoor-enthusiast friends, but what happened? And why does that matter right now? I can hardly think straight.
Ahead of us, bodies are falling into the churn. And as they do, dark liquid sprays in arcs, like buckets of ink being flung into the air. Most of it disappears into the whitewater as the boat crests the last wave. But some droplets fly far enough to splatter my hands, my life jacket, my hair. Blood—it has to be blood—that nauseating, tangy, metallic smell cannot be river water.
“Head down!”Parker pleads in a fever pitch. “Remember!”
I try, racking my terrified brain to remember, but all I feel is dread and panic as we surge toward the big wave. Thesituation has gone from bad to worse somehow, but I can’t make sense of anything. Where is all that blood coming from? Why did the other women fall out of the raft like that?
Time seems to stop, freeze-framing the chaos in front of me. Distorted, choked screams rise above the river’s roar. Not of fear this time, but shock—and agony.
If I weren’t at the very front of our raft, I might have thought the other women hit a submerged boulder and fell backward into the water. But no. Their bodiesjerkedbackward like they ran into something at high speed. Like a horrifying game of Red Rover.
My eyes land helplessly on the silhouette of the last woman, seated at the back of the boat. As the ripple effect reaches her, she drops her paddle and holds her hands out in front of her before dropping sideways like she’s been knocked out. Her head lolls over at a strange right angle as she tips into the frothing wave, blood trailing after her into the water. I taste copper on my lips again.
There’s something wrong with her neck. Like it’s been cut clean through. I can see the pale gleam of bone through the dark wound, peeking through the ebb of black liquid.
I recognize the shape of her stubby pigtails, but don’t know her name.
“Clotheslined,”comes the word, in Parker’s voice, just as the glint of something shiny catches my eye again, strung between the walls of the canyon maybe three feet above the surface of the water. There’s a clump of something clinging to it that I abruptly recognize as hair.
I finally realize what Parker is trying to tell me.
When we first got married, his friend Raymond went dirt biking with a friend in Virginia, following a trail that veered into private property. The landowner had posted a NO TRESPASSING SIGN—and immediately beyond it, a tension wire strung across the trail between two trees. A “wire trap,” the news article called it. It’d been meant tothrow the boys off their bikes, teach them a lesson for trespassing. Instead, as the bikers roared down the hill and collided with the wire, it did fatal damage.
Raymond initially survived, but barely. His family had to take him off life support three months later.
