32
Splinter Ridge.That name sounds vaguely familiar. Then I remember where I’ve heard it before. In that dream I had about Parker, where it was only me and him in the raft. I’ve never actually heard the phrase “Class Six” before, but I can’t seem to form a sentence to ask Macy what it means. The look on her face freezes me all over again, and the word she used ricochets through my mind.
Unrunnable.
Everyone on this raft knows that some parts of this river are almost as savage and deadly as the man who has planned this killing spree. We barely survived the Class Four at Anvil. I can’t even imagine what the river looks like on a Class Six.
“How the hell is there a Class Six at the end of this river we’re running right now?” I burst out. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s a portage point on the left, right before Splinter Ridge. Every single raft going down the Middle Fork pulls out there, and everyone carries their boats about thirty yards along a trail that cuts through a boulder field and puts you down at the bottom of the rapid … where it’s safe to launch again,” Macy explains, panting while she rows.
I let that sink in, dazed. “So he’s racing us to the portage,” I say numbly, understanding finally starting to dawn.
“Yeah,” Macy says tightly, deftly steering around a house-sized boulder in the middle of the whitewater. “Come on you guys, row left, all left, keep going. Keep rowing together.”
We navigate through small waves and whitecaps that might have made everybody on this raft laugh with delight two days ago. Instead, we’re paddling like our lives depend on it.
“So what’s he going to do when—if—he beats us there?” I ask.
There has to be a way out of this. We can’t have come this far for nothing.
“We’ll catch him,” Deborah says between ragged breaths. “We’ll get to the portage and whack him with Macy’s guide oars again,” she adds, not missing a stroke. “All he’s got is that knife and his oars. He’s one person. There’s more of us,” she says with astounding confidence. “We’ll just knock him back into the river, throw the first aid kit at his head, clobber him, get past him—”
“You think he’s going to let that happen?” Allie cries. “He’s been planning this for months—no,years. He’s a piece of shit, but he’s smart. Look what he managed to do with that wire. I can’t even imagine the level of planning that took.”
Hearing her call himsmartmakes me so sick to my stomach I nearly stop rowing.
But she’s right.
He got away with a mass murder at seventeen years old—and came out looking like a survivor to everyone—except few savvy people from his hometown who knew there was something very wrong behind those dull eyes.
Allie isn’t finished though, each angry sentence punctuated by strange pauses and gasps as the raft slams through the whitewater. “He’s absolutely not going to let us survive this.” She lets out a low moan. “He’s going to be ready to finish us off. You know he’s got some sick plan for anybody who makes it downriver.”
We all go silent. The only sound is the gnashing rush of the water against the raft.
Then Deborah asks, “Hang on, what exactly makes Splinter Ridge unrunnable?” Her voice is loud and clipped, like she wants to fight. “Can’t we just—”
“You think Anvil was bad?” Macy says. “It’snothingcompared to Splinter Ridge. The first wave sends you down a vertical drop, more than thirty feet down—onto a boneyard of logs and other shit that’ve gotten lodged in the biggest hole you can imagine.”
“But maybe—” Deborah tries to interject.
Macy cuts her off. “I’m telling you. It’s fuckingunsurvivable.There’s no maybes. Rafting through it would be the equivalent of trying to ride a bike down El Capitan in Yosemite.” She keeps rowing, chest heaving with effort while she locks eyes with Deborah. “Every year we have these wannabe rafting bros who’ve seenThe River Wildand think they’re hot shit. They always say, ‘I bet I could run it,’ like the guides are just being overly cautious. But you should see their faces when they get their first look. It’snothinglike that movie. We will absolutely flip and die if our raft goes down that nightmare.”
I don’t want Macy to be right about Splinter Ridge. I don’t want Allie to be right about Leo. But my head buzzes with dehydration and terror and adrenaline—and the sick suspicion that both women are absolutely correct.
Leo is going to kill us.
Or the river is going to kill us.
We die one way or another. It’s that simple.
“We still have more rafters than he does, though,” Pam protests. “So we have more rowing power. That’s what you said to us before, right?” she asks Macy.
Macy doesn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah, we do have asmalladvantage in rowing power. The guide oars do the heavy lifting,” she says, rocking the long, powerful oars against the fulcrum of the oarlock. “I was trying to be optimistic back then, keep our spirits up to get through Anvil. But he’s got a huge head start on us now. If he chooses the right lines and rows hard, it’s going to be really tough to catch him.”
“But we have to try, right? It’s worth a try?” Pam begs.
Macy catches my eye, and for a split second I don’t focus on the wreckage of her injury. Only the sad terror in her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, still rowing furiously. “We’ve got to at least try.”
