My friends.Those words echo through my mind again. Because I realize they’re true. These women are my friends now. Not random strangers on some summer-camp float trip I planned to white-knuckle my way through.Friends.It’s a word I haven’t used for a long time. I pushed everyone so far away after Parker’s death.
The realization makes me want to weep again. That, and the fact that for the time being, we’re safe. We have a raft. We have a guide to navigate the rapids. We have each other.
Pam opens up the dry bags and starts pulling out first-aid supplies and thin, shiny blankets. Allie offers me a pink water bottle, and I take a few small sips.
“I still don’t understand how you’re here—and how you’re alive,” Deborah says to Macy, who rests against the oars.
“Me neither. What happened?” I prompt, trying to process how any of this is possible. “Five minutes ago, I thought you were all dead.”
“We thought the same about you,” Macy says. She gazes downriver, and I follow her line of sight—but the only thing visible is distant whitewater ahead. She lifts her hand to her ruined face then curls her fingers into a fist before touching the gaping wound. “When I fell out of the raft at Anvil—after hitting that wire—I blacked out.” She pauses, unable to go on as her face crumples with emotion. “When I woke up, I was wedged face-up against the canyon wall and a couple of boulders. Right below Anvil Falls. Pretty sure that’s the only reason he didn’t see me, because I was almost behind the falls. It’s also why none of you could see me, andit’s the only reason I didn’t get sucked into that undertow. So honestly, it was pretty damn lucky. It took me a while to get out with the current pinning me there, and it took me even longer to make my way back upstream. An hour, at least. But I found one handhold after another in the canyon walls and kept clawing my way forward, and finally stumbled on a steep game trail. And I did it. I made it back to camp. Then I got in the second gear raft we’d left behind. It took me forever to drag it across the sand by myself.”
My mind flashes back to the chaos of the night before. It feels like a hundred years ago. Both gear rafts had been piled high with supplies, which sent everyone scrambling to get in the empty passenger rafts instead. Leo had taken the first gear boat—leaving the other behind.
Pam wraps a Mylar blanket around my shoulders, blocking the morning breeze, and I close my eyes, the now-blinding sunlight beginning to warm me. I think again of my grandmother’s quilt.
Macy stretches her arms in front of her, flexing at the fingers and shaking her hands to get the blood moving. “At first, when I saw the bodies floating at the bottom of Anvil … I thought you were all dead. But the second passenger raft was gone, and so was the other gear raft, so I knew you had to be downriver. I decided I was going to try to catch up with you. I rowed like hell all night—until I got to the end of Haystack and saw that fucker closing in on your flipped raft.”
I listen in amazement. If I’ve been estimating distances correctly, she rowed at least thirty miles overnight to catch up with us. I can see the exhaustion written across her face, but I can only imagine how hard she worked to make up for that lost hour.
“Holy shit,” I murmur. “You got here just in time. What happened back there at Haystack?”
Allie speaks up then, locking eyes with me. “While Leo was chasing you all, I kept pulling myself along the canyon wall. I was trying to get far enough upstream to reach the flipped raft. But when I got to the bend, I saw Macy coming down the last wave of Haystack.” She shakes her head, blinking back tears. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. One second, I’m sure he’s going to pick all of us off one by one, and the next, Macy here is pulling me into her gear boat, and we’re racing to beat Leo to the overturned raft where everybody else was hiding.”
“We thought we were goners under there,” Deborah cuts in, her gravelly voice thick with emotion. “And then all of a sudden we heard women screaming like banshees, a loudwhack,a splash, and then Allie was reaching under the raft, screaming for us to get into the gear boat. By the time I got out from under the raft, Leo was scrambling to get back inhisraft, as it was getting swept downstream.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe in amazement.
Macy is back in charge. We have a guide who knows this river and can get us to safety. We have the rowing power and can outmaneuver him. We aren’t a bunch of amateurs, dead in the water, anymore.
But an uneasy thread of doubt still weaves through my mind.
Macy’s expression darkens. “I hit him as hard as I could.” She indicates the long, heavy guide oars, scarred from years of use and only half-varnished. “I aimed for his head, but it caught him in the life jacket, and he went overboard. I wanted to hit him again … but he was already getting swept downstream.” Her face blanches. “All I could do then was get Deborah, Imani, and Pam into the gear raft with Allie and then move downriver—where we found you floating in that hole.”
Nobody speaks for a few seconds.
“Thank you,” I say. It sounds like too much and not enough. The words hang in the air as the women around me nod soberly.
I pull the foil blanket tighter around myself, staring out at the glittering green water. I want Leo to be dead. But as my gaze moves back to my tightly clenched hands, my eyes land on my wedding band—the one I still refuse to take off. It’s bent, warped slightly where it must have slammed against a rock. The finger it wraps around is scraped and bruised down to the bone. But that ring is still here. Just like I am.
31
The pocket of calm water where Macy has stopped the raft is a welcome change from the endless current we’ve been riding for hours. But the more Allie explains what we’ve unraveled about Leo Marsden, the more terrified and angry Macy looks.
“Holy shit,” she whispers every other sentence. “I knew he was a douchebag, but holyshit.”
The last time Allie brought up the Camas Creek murders in front of Macy—back at the campfire—Macy had walked away with Gracie, looking annoyed and spooked.
Everything has changed since then. Now, Macy hangs on Allie’s every word.
When Allie gets to the part about Leo’s mom taking him on that rafting trip when he was seventeen—probably because he’d been kicked out of that wilderness survival camp—Macy’s eyes suddenly go wide.
“Shit, shit, shit. Hold on.” She tilts her head, like she’s remembering. “I think he fucking knew.Holy shit, heknewBryan was Leo.”
“Wait, what? Who knew that?” Allie prompts warily, glancing at me.
Macy shakes her head in stunned horror. “My stupid boss at Rapids Unlimited.Adrian.Way back in the spring,when we were training the new guides, I told him that ‘Bryan’ wasn’t a good fit.I’mthe leader on the river—I’ve been here longer than Josh or Gracie—so the other rafters are supposed to listen tome.But during drills, Bryan acted like he couldn’t hear me half the time. And he behaved like a total moron on the river, with those flip-flops. Like, he was almost trying to be stupid. But when I told Adrian, he acted like I was making a big fuss over nothing.”
She winces as her jaw tightens, pulling on her injury. “Gracie knew there was something wrong with him, too. You remember how we made him wear his flip-flops during Fight Night? He called her a bitch under his breath. So I told her we should ‘cannonball’ him that night.”
