not be happening. How in hell had Lisa fallen in? No way to call for help. Cell phones didn’t work in the Talkeetnas, and he needed both hands on the paddle. The snowmelt had the river up to at least a Category III with four-foot waves and a rocking roll with worse ahead in the tight turns of Hairpin Gorge. His friend Spike had told him that the old prospectors had called that part of the Wild River the Turn Back Gorge, but there was no way he could turn back now, even if he lost her.
Using the paddle, he braced himself away from another rock, then righted the kayak when it was yanked into a pivot point. Off to the races again, squinting through the spume, hoping to see that slash of orange. She had to be here somewhere, unless she’d been trapped in a snag or sieve underwater.
In the first twist of Hairpin Gorge, narrow, gray haystacks of constricted water piled up into standing waves on both sides of the bow. He saw the path through it was chaos. Lisa would never survive.
The crash of the water almost deafened him. He pointed the kayak toward the chute and plunged into it. He glimpsed red king salmon struggling to go the other way. He fought a force he felt he’d never conquer, but sometimes a narrow ribbon of white water was faster than other places in the river. He was chilled and sopped down to where the spray skirt gripped his waist. He braced his knees against the inside of the craft, working the foot rudders, praying he wouldn’t capsize. When Uncle John had taught him kayaking years ago on his summer vacations, he’d joked it was really an underwater sport. He’d taught Mitch the Eskimo roll, but it would be a life-and-death combat roll if he flipped today.
Lisa knew she’d be dead already if she hadn’t been wearing her PFD. To keep her arms and legs from being banged by rocks both above and below the surface, again she fought to wrap herself into a ball, knees pulled up, arms around them. But when the water rolled her head under, she had to let go to right herself. She tried to kick and paddle but she still got tossed aside and around out of control.
She saw the taller walls of the gorge ahead. The first turn into it nearly finished her. She held her breath until she thought her lungs would burst. For one wild moment the sun was in her eyes. She tried to think of hot days on the beach, the South Florida sun beating down on her, not the weight of all this water. She might suffocate before she’d drown.
On the next turn, she knew she had to make one last grab for something along the bank or she’d black out. She had to drag herself out of this water, hang on. Back at the lodge, Mitch would miss her, maybe figure out what happened. But what had happened to get her in this killer river?
She tried to grab a rock and was shocked to realize both arms had gone numb. What was that called when you got so cold you fell into a fatal sleep. drifted into death? She couldn’t die of something she couldn’t recall the name of. Lawyers always had the right terminology, whether in English or Latin. Qui bono, who would profit from a crime? Lawyers knew all about plea bargains … the way out … but there was no way out here.
Though Mitch was in great physical shape, the muscles in his arms and back not only ached but burned. He had to find her now or it would cease to be a rescue and become a body recovery, if he could even manage that. But a whirlpool snagged him, and when he freed himself, he shot into another chute. It was fast, very fast, suddenly a smoother ride than any of Spike’s musher sleds on sleek snow with his huskies barking. He imagined he heard them now, heard voices in the roar of the current, heard a woman’s screams, but it was all in his head.
After the second twist of the gorge, he saw her again, pinned against a busher—a fallen tree—caught like a salmon in a Yup’ik fish wheel. Danger! Bushers were deadly, because they could trap a kayak or smash its thin plastic hull to bits.
But he had to risk it and go after her. Maybe they could climb out onto the tree, make it to the rock ledge. Was she moving? She’d have to be hypothermic by now, but could it be even worse? The power of the water pinning her there must be brutal.
He tried to edge in next to her, but the kayak corkscrewed and the current capsized him. Praying he wouldn’t hit his head on the trunk or a submerged rock, he held his breath as he went under. The frigid slap of water shocked him, and made him fear for Lisa even more.
“Eskimo roll!” He heard his uncle’s voice, clear and crisp. “Paddle thrust, body twist! Up! Over and up!”
He fought to keep from panicking. His lack of helmet could kill him, too. Upside down, with his body submerged but buoyed by his PFD, he lifted his paddle above the water with both hands out, then swept his torso and paddle while he snapped his hips up. The rotation worked, though the thrust of the current slammed the kayak sideways against the tree trunk again, jarring his teeth as he shook his head and upper body like a dog to get the water off. The entire craft shuddered.
He sucked in a huge breath. Despite the warmth of the air and sun, he felt as if he was rolling in snow. Five feet away from him, Lisa lay sprawled, unmoving, draped over the tree trunk like a drenched rag doll, apparently not breathing as the water crested in white plumes over and around her back. At least it had stopped her before the rest of the sharp turns and then the series of small falls a couple of miles beyond. And, thank God, she was upright with her shoulders and head out of the water.
He tried to brace himself with the paddle to get close enough to at least touch her, pull her down into the kayak or get them both out onto the tree. But when he took another stroke, the washing-machine effect of the churning river flipped him back under again.
Christine Tanaka occasionally glanced out the kitchen window of the lodge, but she kept cutting smoked salmon strips with her small, sharp ula. She was readying plates of appetizers for their guests from Mitch’s old law firm—his job in his past life, as he liked to put it.
“Iah, don’t say it that way!” she’d told him more than once. “It sounds like you’re a ghost come back from the dead!”
But really, Mitch could do no wrong in Christine’s eyes, including the fact he mispronounced her name in her Yup’ik tribal language when he called her Cu’paq. It was a tough language for a kass’aq, with its clacking sounds deep in the throat. But it always sounded like Mitch was saying Cupid, that little winged spirit who zinged arrows into people to make them fall in love. She knew too much about that and how dangerous it could be. But the thing with Mitch was he honored her people and was trying hard to become an Alaskan. She loved him for that and for so much more.
She jumped at the deep voice behind her and turned off the Yup’ik radio broadcast she often listened to in the summer when she worked, just to hear the language of her kin. One long, beaded earring snagged in her thick, shoulder-length hair, and she tugged it free.
It was Jonas Grant, the tall, African-American lawyer here with the Bonners. He was one of the attorneys vying for the senior partner position that used to belong to Mitch.
“Mind if I come into your kitchen?” he asked, holding the swinging door ajar. “Tell you the truth, I’m starved, and Mitch told us to see you if that was the case. All this fresh air or my jet lag’s making me hungry.”
She was surprised she hadn’t heard him come in because she had sharp ears and usually sensed someone’s presence, but this man moved so quietly. Jonas had a shaved head, which wasn’t the wisest thing in Alaska, but it probably worked well where it was hot and humid.
Mitch had joked, “I taught Jonas everything he knows, which means he’s pretty smart.” She thought the man’s wide, dark eyes under his sleekly arched brows backed that up. Jonas was always watching others—keeping his own counsel, as Mitch had put it when he’d given her a pre-arrival rundown on their guests. Yes, she could see that Jonas Grant was always calculating what to say and do. Truth be told, she
