Hanging back, Nell watched as the first kayaks took the Double Falls, the roar so intense that they used hand and paddle signals to indicate who was going where and when. The rapid was composed of a complex boulder field that hid the river from view, not allowing a boater to see the water ahead or to gauge the drops in advance. From upriver, the boulders made any paddlers downstream disappear from view.
Elton had positioned rescue guides on top of boulders with throw ropes, should someone have to swim. If a boater had to do a wet exit on the Double, they might need a hand to avoid the undercut rocks wanting to pull them under.
The two lead paddlers fanned out above the falls, searching the banks, studying each ledge and undercut rock, looking for places where Joe might have holed up if injured, or washed up if unconscious, or where a body could be hidden. Two other kayakers took the cheat, their creek boats and small body weight allowing them to make it through the trickle of water left from the storm. Nell recognized the woman who had given her the sliver of dry suit and lifted her paddle in greeting. The woman waved back just before she disappeared behind rock. Nell didn’t want to see the cheat—the place where she had condemned her husband to injury and…and going missing.
A minute after the first four kayaks vanished from view, the next two boaters took the Double, automatically keeping a reasonable space between each boat and an eye on each other for safety. And then it was boat number seven’s turn. Nell took the center line of the falls, keeping one blade or the other of her paddle in the water, bracing often as the churn banged her boat against rocks before the river was drawn together in a rush, deepening between the narrowing riverbanks and the house-size rocks that marked the start of the Double. The snarl of water was a physical vibration through her boat. She hit the first big drop. The water swirled tightly, sliding down hard over a long drop. Still running big water, it was a slamming run, but she handled the white water efficiently, guiding the yellow and orange boat with her lower body.
She hit the curling wave at the bottom, her boat cutting through the splash, disappearing totally and resurfacing after a sharp upward thrust of her knees, water in her eyes and up under her unfamiliar helmet. She hit the bottom of the second drop, compensating with a hard brace as her boat flipped halfway over, and she was past the Double.
The sun, pallid and weak, nested in the treetops just above the eastern horizon, teasing with undelivered heat. In the wet suit, Nell was drenched to the skin, the cold stabbing like knives. The skin of her hands whitened and puckered on the lightweight paddle. She was breathing deeply with exertion, and felt a measure of the familiar fear return. Joe was somewhere ahead. And, likely, a dangerous rescue.
She was tiring faster than expected, her energy draining as she maneuvered her boat out of the current, into an eddy and still water. A concussion took a lot out of a person. That and the lack of sleep, lack of food, dehydration and worry. Safe, at the bottom of the falls, watching the other kayakers appear from the rapid, she popped her skirt and drank half a bottle of water, sitting in the sun for its weak heat.
Drinking, breathing deeply, Nell made herself turn and look up the bank at the small area where Joe had left her, noting that she couldn’t see atop the flat place where she had awakened. Alone.
Elton bumped her boat with his. “This where he left you?” he asked over the sound of the water.
Without looking at him she nodded and pointed. “That flat area there.”
Elton drew his boat to the shallows and popped his skirt, pulling the kayak up the shore after him. One of the Perception Arcs followed, the paddler beaching his boat and climbing up the rocks. They were looking for any clue to Joe’s whereabouts.
Elton put his head close to the other man’s and they nodded, gestured at the bluff rising from the river and walked the small space itself. They squatted and all but the tops of their heads disappeared. Nell turned her boat away from the men and stared upstream, over the Double.
Turtle Tom guided his mustard-yellow Liquid Logic kayak close and looked Nell over. “You okay?” he asked, voice pitched to rise above the falls.
Nell nodded, knowing her expression was giving away more than she wanted.
“You need anything, you holler. I’m here for you.” When she nodded again, Tom swept and changed direction. As he moved, the sunlight caught the brown of his eyes and added a blue note. Tom was a pretty man, even with all the tats, and Nell knew he was much more than the poor, undereducated river guide he appeared. Tom came from money, enough that he could live anywhere and any way he wanted. Trust-fund money. House-in-the-Hamptons money. Ivy-League-schools-and-trips-abroad money. Not a fact he shared with the other guides, but one he had told Joe and her when they opened the shop.
“Thanks,” Nell said to his back, feeling a bit of her unacknowledged loneliness fade. Waiting in the still water at the side of the small pool, she watched the kayakers paddle around, searching the banks. There were more of them today, eleven in all. The initial plan was for some of the paddlers to stay on the upper section of the run, especially at the Long Pool, checking again in areas that had been dredged yesterday, while the larger group went on downriver to the Narrows. Earlier she had overheard a kayaker say that they were there to “see if anything interesting floated to the surface.”
Mike had shot the guy a nasty look, which Nell appreciated on one level, but if the searchers had to watch their mouths because of her, it would make for a long day. Mike had backed off when she shook her head at him, but she knew his protective instincts were likely to pop up again.
The Ranger raft, with the same four people in it as yesterday, came over the Double Falls, last craft in the search, drenching everyone in the raft and eliciting a few yodeling yells. Mike steered the craft toward her and bumped it against a small rock to stop its motion. The little pool was only a few yards long and the current through the middle was swift. With a draw stroke, Nell eased into a cleft between rocks, making room for the raft.
“Joe isn’t here,” Nell shouted to Mike over the water’s roar as the raft drifted closer. “He had to come out after the Double.”
Mike nodded and hollered back, “I know. But it’s smart to check everywhere, and Elton isn’t going to let us miss anything.” The raft bumped against her kayak. “You okay?” he asked now that he was closer. “Headache?”
The other three in the raft looked at her with concern. “I’m fine,” Nell said, hearing the impatience in her voice.
“You better be,” he said. “Your mother chased me down before we left and tried to tear me a new one for letting you on the river.” He touched his helmet in a salute and steered the raft in a half circle, watching the boaters.
When the kayakers completed a thorough search of the small pool, Elton whistled to let them know it was time for the Washing Machine and the El. Watching the six boaters in front of her start the run, Nell screwed the top back on the water bottle before resecuring it in the boat. She bent forward, stretching RiverAnn’s skirt back in place.
There was a lot of give-and-take on the water in a paddling group, even in a search and rescue operation. Everyone tended to change position a bit, all but the team leader who stayed at point, in front, and Mike in the rear. Between them, Elton and Mike kept track of every boat. Nell watched the sixth paddler in front of her disappear and took her turn.
With a draw and sweep stroke of her paddle, she turned upstream, reading the water. Deftly, she stroked into the eddy, leaning downstream as the current caught her and whipped her boat around. Using powerful forward strokes, she headed toward the Washing Machine, positioning herself among the other kayaks so they didn’t get in each other’s way.
The initial drop was turbulent, the river roiling and dipping like a living thing. The water level was lower today, making the long line of class IIs sharper and tighter. There was less recoil, less big water, but it was still bigger water than most of the paddlers had ever taken here. Unlike dam-fed rivers, which maintained the river flow at each release to make power, rain-fed rivers give a different ride every day. A boater could run the same river over and over again and still have things to learn about it.
Nell’s little boat took the rapids with a steady hard bounce, jarring her, making her glad she had popped two ibuprofen at breakfast and tucked another two in a Ziploc baggie for later. The headache she had nursed was still a shadow on her brain, reminding her she had been injured, that her she really shouldn’t be on the water today. Reminders she steadfastly pushed into the back of her brain with all the other stuff she could think about later, after they found Joe.
There wasn’t much in the way of a resting spot after the Washing Machine, but kayakers ferried through the current and checked banks and around the bigger rocks. One guy secured his boat, got out and looked into a narrow cleft that was currently above the waterline. Nell searched the shores with her eyes, probing for any sign of Joe or his equipment. She didn’t search below the water. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t be.
The water felt even colder than it had when she was feverish, only two days past, and Nell shivered, back-paddling to keep in place in the mass of boaters stretched out along the river. Several times she felt she was being watched and looked around, but no one was looking at her. Above her, on rocks, two paddlers with rescue ropes were scrambling up the rocks, just in case, their boats secured and bobbing in the eddy.
At Elton’s whistle, the six boaters in front of her sped toward the El. One at a time, their kayaks swept forward and were seized by the current, then plummeted and sluiced through the difficult run.
From behind, she saw each paddler study the shoreline and rocks as they sped past. One boater did a hard river-right turn, running his boat totally out of the rapid and up onto a flat rock to inspect a bit of shore not visible from the water.
Her heart squeezed painfully, waiting as he poked something with his paddle, her breath tight with hope. And tumbled hard when he thrust a hand against the stone, pushing back into the river, tears of disappointment gathering, and she forced them down, blinking and swallowing. Not now. Later. She could cry later.
Hamp tapped her boat with a paddle, and gave her a thumbs-up. Though Nell couldn’t hear him, she read the guy’s lips through his wispy beard. “We’ll find him.” Nell nodded, and he added, “Sweet run, girl.” But a pain was growing in her chest, so tight she thought she might explode.
When Hamp dropped from sight over the ledge, Nell drove her small boat into position in the current. Busy watching the search, she was slightly out of place. Unexpectedly, the water snatched her kayak and pulled her forward. It was nearly impossible to refuse the river when it was ready for you to move.
She was only a little early, and rather than fight the current, Nell let the river capture her. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, relaxing for the rapid. She headed for the El alone, her place in the line of boaters out of sequence but not dangerously so, getting a glimpse of the paddlers behind her jockeying for new positions.
The water was wicked squirrelly on the approach to the El, and she braced more than she paddled, working herself into position. The hole seemed more determined today, sucking at her boat, slowing her momentum. Nell dug in, leaning forward hard with each strong stroke, willing herself downstream, still darting her eyes left and right, looking for Joe. The hole released her and she shot forward, straight at the ledge.
The El was riotous, a rodeo-bull ride where the kayak rode the crest of the water one instant and pitched beneath it in the next. The river curved up, over the ledge, with a hard jounce. She rocked a hip up and pushed with her foot as she took the drop. As always, the nasty diagonal curler gave her boat a come-hither tug, trying to dump her over. But it wasn’t as big today as the last time she took it, and Nell made the drop smoothly, plunging into the lower water with two vigorous thigh lifts.
She glided into the Long Pool. With a series of strokes, she pulled out of the current river-right, spotting Hamp, RiverAnn, Harvey and Stewart river-left. She waved and Hamp lifted a paddle in response. The boaters behind her arrived more or less in sequence, but the last two kayakers taking the ledge were too close together, and one of the boats, a yellow creek boat, hung a moment too long on the ledge. The other boat careened toward it, a purple-and-green blur, the boater trying to maneuver hard left, a look of restrained alarm on his face. He jerked his right hip up hard, revealing the hull, all but lying down on the water, bracing so hard his shoulders pivoted behind him. He made it. But the water was feeling malevolent. It picked up his boat and tossed it.
Nell watched in horror as the small crafts collided.