“You don’t have to,” Jenny said, a little too eagerly.
“We just want the boat, okay?” Ace didn’t need any extra drama. He had plenty enough already. Jenny was Pete’s problem, and God grant him the strength to deal with it. “Our feet are tired and it’s a long way to the end of the river.”
“But we’ll get lost,” Pete said, his Northern whine now in perfect pitch with Jenny’s, as if the two had been practicing together for years. “We don’t know the trails.”
“You’ll learn ‘em.” He waved the revolver like a bank robber in a movie, the piece heavy in his hand. “Leave the paddles. You can take your backpacks.”
“He’s not going to rape me,” Jenny said. Ace couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or disappointed. Maybe she had a little seed of submission in her, as God intended. She sounded like a woman who could be put in her place at the hands of the right man. With this Pete clown, fat fucking chance.
The couple took their belongings out of the canoe, and Clara tied her backpack to the steel support bar that ran across the middle of the boat. “How do you work this thing?” Ace asked Pete, hefting the paddle and testing its weight.
Pete was all too anxious to get Ace downriver. “Row on the opposite side of the boat from the direction you want to go. Say you wanted to go left, and hard. Then both of you will paddle on the right.”
“You’re not going to shoot us, are you?” Jenny asked, still standing behind Pete, still Yankee, still ninety-nine-percent bitch.
“They might identify us,” Clara said.
“Mercy is as mercy does,” Ace said. “We’ll be long gone by the time they hike out of these woods and get back to the world. Let’s get this piece of shit in the water and make like ducks. Besides, the angels ought to take care of them.”
Ace dragged the canoe to the edge of the river, keeping the Colt where the couple could see it. Not that he expected Pete to make a play, but he’d seen plenty of men screw up at the hands of a woman, and Jenny might be the type who got off on recklessness. As long as she didn’t risk nothing herself. And she wouldn’t. She was a woman. Some things were as sure as the sun of a new day and the eternal love of the Lord.
The canoe sat a little askew in the water, probably because of the dent. Ace climbed in front, pushed against the sandy bottom with his paddle, and eased the canoe toward the white water.
“Hey, wait for me,” Clara said, running after him, splashing to reach the boat and clamber into the back, nearly tipping it in the process. Ace grinned. He hadn’t considered leaving her behind at all. He’d forgotten all about her.
Maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age.
“Thanks for the canoe,” Ace hollered at Pete and Jenny, the New Jersey couple who would probably sell the story of this encounter to some magazine. Make money so Jenny-bitch could spend it on games of chance.
Then the current caught the boat and he found himself fighting it, the paddle jerking in his arms, the rocks approaching too fast. Clara wasn’t much help on her end, and the boat jerked and plunged in the water, threatening to spill them at any moment. They had gone a hundred feet backwards, squirting down a thin waterfall that splashed Ace’s neck and shoulders, before he finally got the hang of it and pointed the canoe downstream.
His arms were noodles. But, Ace had to admit, the rush was decent, and riding the rapids sure beat the hell out of hoofing it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bowie saw immediately that his decision to group Farrengalli, Raintree, and Dove was a good one, though he didn’t like putting Dove at the Italian loudmouth’s mercy. She’d handled herself well so far, despite her moment of weakness in the predawn mist. But that had been his weakness, too. Doubly so, since he was the leader, and the best leaders knew when to deprive themselves for the good of the group.
Bullshit. He couldn’t lead himself out of a paper bag, much less guide this bunch of losers to a healthy payday. Matter of fact, a paper bag fit just right, because Farrengalli’s flask had aroused a thirst he hadn’t felt in four years, not since he’d picked up a white chip at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and dropped the liquid amnesia he’d relied on in the aftermath of Connie’s death.
While Raintree’s craft made good headway after launch, Bowie’s crew was flailing and flagging, already a couple of hundred feet behind. Bowie had mentally dubbed Raintree second in command, though not through any overt show of favoritism. Raintree had taken position in the rear of the craft upon launch. On big water, a pilot sat far above the waterline, just before midship. In white water, the paddler in rear had the most responsibility, using the paddle as a rudder to guide the vessel.
They had been on the water less than an hour. Lane, sitting in front of Bowie, was left handed, and would have made a good complement to his two right-handed partners if he had more stamina. ProVentures’ corporate ringer was clearly worn out from the previous day’s hike, and apparently a night’s sleep on the hard ground had done little to recharge his batteries. So much for his company’s sleeping bag with its space-age polymers and annoying name of “Hibern8.”
Lane was what was known as a “lilly-dipper” in boating vernacular. Though Bowie and McKay were strong enough to compensate for Lane’s futile flailing, there would come a time when three oars would be needed. Ahead, Raintree’s raft skidded through a rooster tail, with the craft leaping up and hanging free of the water for a full two seconds before smacking back into the foaming rapids.
“See that?” Lane shouted above the roar of the water. “Awesome.”
“Hang on,” Bowie said. “Curler coming up river right.”
While the first part of the run had been relatively calm, with rocky shorelines broken up by occasional sandbars, the channel now narrowed, with one side of the gorge marked by a thirty-foot granite wall and topped by desperate scrub pines. The right side of the river was pocked with large boulders, and Bowie wasn’t sure the raft would hold up against full-speed contact. A vicious slab of wet, sparkling stone, its edge like a hatchet, appeared off the starboard bow.
Bowie’s warning of a curler had come too late to prepare. The current had accelerated over the last fifty feet, the water deceptive because the whitecaps had disappeared. Instead, the surface of the water was ribbed, as if preparing to bottom out like bathwater rushing down a drain. Bowie could sense the pull of the water drawing them toward some hidden threat ahead, either a hole or haystacks, a standing series of high waves. First, though, he had to fend off the blunt-edged shelf of rock. He thrust out his paddle and jammed it against the rock like a jousting lance, expecting the telescoping handle to shatter. Instead, the impact jarred his forearms and caused the raft to turn sideways.
“Left, left, left,” Bowie shouted, thrusting his paddle off the port bow. Lane, who hadn’t had time to change sides, still worked the opposite side, but McKay hesitated, unsure of the proper reaction. By the time he stabbed his oar in the water, the boat had turned another ninety degrees and they faced upstream as the raft bucked and rubbed over a series of submerged stones.
“Shit,” Bowie said. “Hold off, McKay, and let me turn it.”
Bowie flipped his paddle and dug it hard off starboard, bracing his legs against the yielding, inflated walls of the watercraft. The resistance caused the raft to spin, and they were once again heading sideways down the river. An aberrant current pushed them toward the cliff on the left side, despite Bowie’s desire to stay on the swifter but smoother side of the river.
“Hang on,” Bowie shouted as the raft smacked against the head wall and stuck, caught by the raging current that sought to shove the rubberized craft and its occupants through the unforgiving granite. Water spurted over the side of the raft, pooling in the bottom, chilling Bowie’s legs despite the SealSkinz. The Muskrat was designed to stay afloat even if fully flooded, but its handling ability would be severely diminished.