She started to text him back that she just wasn’t feeling up to it tonight.
She really didn’t want to make trouble. And not with Wade. It was true, he hadn’t been much of a husband to her mom. There were always rumors of him screwing around and he didn’t exactly shine with compassion when she deteriorated and really needed him. By that time he was either too drunk or too stoned to be of much help; then he was let go from the Aspen sheriff’s office and had to call in every favor he was owed not to have been brought up on criminal charges.
But he’d always been nice to Dani. Growing up, he was like one of those larger-than-life figures who would come in your life every once in a while and was always involved in fun, cool stuff. He took her camping and riding. He introduced her to famous people as “his little girl.” Then he’d go on a binge. She’d gone to a few Al-Anon meetings and the part about how addicts weren’t even in control always hit home. Wade was at the top of the list. The only parts of his personality stronger than his charm and charisma were his urges to be temperamental and self-destructive. Dani had tried to forgive him for being such a shitty husband to her mom. And at times maybe she had. And then sometimes his betrayals and constant pushing her mom away when she needed him most crushed her and broke her will. The same will everyone said they saw in Dani.
But now this was Wade’s last chance in life, and it was clear he didn’t want to rock the boat. To Dani, the mosaic all fit together. Trey. The Cradle. The path that seemed to have been made down there from the road. Rooster claiming he saw something and then his balloon crashing down in flames. Maybe she couldn’t prove any part of it, but it was all there for anyone to see if they wanted to take a look. She knew she was pushing the line with him. Wade didn’t like to be crossed and he surely didn’t like his authority questioned. Not in this job, which was the last rung on the ladder for him. And maybe Dani had made him look small to his staff.
But she couldn’t just walk away from it. She couldn’t just pretend it was all just some unrelated incident so the Chamber of Commerce could still brag about what an idyllic valley they lived in here.
What’s this all about? Wade had asked of her.
She got up and went out to the deck. The moon was bright. The crickets were buzzing. The sky was dark and wide, the shadow of Mount Sopris looming in the distance. It was like you could see every star on the sky.
She sat in the Adirondack chair and put her feet up on the railing and swigged her beer. Blu shuffled out and curled up at her feet.
She wasn’t about to stop, no matter what Wade had made her promise. How could he understand? She owed Trey. She owed him big.
Maybe everything.
They were on the upper Colorado River in Gore Canyon, two Aprils ago. There were four of them. Chase Gould and Tom Twilliger, both expert rafters. The lure was the biggest early spring runoff in years, over a thousand cubic feet per second coming down the river, which turned a Class Four into a Five, and a Five into sheer heaven.
Trey heard about and he called Dani and they decided to join in. They packed up their gear in Chase’s truck and made the ninety-minute drive to Kremmling. Gore was an unspoiled mountain canyon, lined with snowcapped mountains and jagged cliffs. The three-mile rapid run through it had some of the most challenging whitewater in the country.
Dani had done the run once before, but never with so much water. It started out moderate: Applesauce and Sweet Dreams, easy Class Threes, just to stick your toe in the water, as they say. The gems were up next. Scissors, which could cut anyone up or flip you over, and Pirate, with its deep holes and rocks the size of buildings, and a ton of water slashing around. It wasn’t just good technique that got you down; this run was also about strength. In the hardest water Dani had ever had to push around. There were plenty of yelps and whoops of exhilaration, paddles raised triumphantly at every chute they made it through.
Then they hit Tunnel Falls.
Most people do Gore Canyon for the Kirshbaum, a half-mile narrow chute of rocks and holes with a 120-foot vertical that builds up the speed like a raceway. But the Falls is its signature rapid. Massive rocks on both sides of a narrow chute and then over a twelve-foot drop. You have to navigate through it at just the right line; otherwise it’s a headfirst wipeout. Guaranteed.
And that was with half the water the four of them had that day.
Chase was up first. The best and most experienced of them. He’d won a few competitions. The basin at the bottom of the falls had a ton of water thrashing about in it. He hit it just like they drew it up, the rest of them looking on from thirty yards upstream. He disappeared over the edge, spray and foam exploding around him, and from where they were they had no idea. And then ten seconds later they saw him reappear fifty yards downstream, his paddle raised high, his ecstatic whoops drowned out by the turbulent water’s roar.
“Whoooiieee!” Trey lifted his paddle in appreciation. They all cheered.
Tom was up next. He was no slouch himself. In his red helmet and yellow raft, the back of his craft careened into a rock just as he went over and he didn’t hit it right.
“Shit,” Trey groaned. “Wipeout.” Dani watched him go over and couldn’t see what had happened below, other than seeing Chase, downstream, running his finger across his throat, meaning he’d capsized. It took a while until she finally saw Tom again, hanging on to his raft, riding with the current, giving the thumbs-up that he was okay.
“You ready?” Trey asked Dani. “I’ll pick up the rear.”
It was Trey’s way of saying, I’ve got you covered if anything happens, and were it anyone else Dani would have probably shot back, “You first. By all means …”
Instead she just nodded and said. “Up to you. Last one down buys the beer,” and steeling her nerves, pulled into the chute. She never felt there was a run she couldn’t make it down, even this one with more water than she’d ever handled. She knew the trick was to keep the approach steady and hit the falls head-on so that the crosscurrents wouldn’t pitch you to one side, which was what had happened to Tom. Dani felt her speed pick up and strained to hold her line, but the whooshing current was stronger than she anticipated and pitched her around. As she got within six feet of the drop, she knew she was off-line, the back of her raft knocking against a rock, spinning the bow sideways. Her heart leaped up and she tried to correct, but there was no way she was strong enough to push this powerful a current around.
Fear gripping her, she basically went over the edge sideways.
To this day, she recalled the sensation of her heart toppling even faster than the raft, before being slammed by the icy water headfirst, as hard as if she had barreled into a wall. Her helmet knocked into something hard—a rock, the bottom?—and then the desperate, helpless realization that she was out of the craft in Class Five water.
Over the years, she’d wiped out a hundred times—everyone had. Tom had just a moment before. That’s how you learned. Spread your arms and get your feet forward and try to hold onto the line to your craft, she told herself.
But the line slipped out of her grasp. She felt her kayak shoot off ahead of her and when she tried to position her legs forward, it was like they were caught up in something.
It took her a second for her to realize: She was underwater.
Her first mistake was to try to yell, which sent a rush of icy water into her lungs. She gagged. She quickly got her wits back, realizing, though the fall was disorienting, that she’d been caught in some kind of whirlpool—fierce water swirling around. And even with her senses dulled and the knifing sensation of icy water in her lungs, she knew to make herself as still as she could and not to panic nor fight what was happening. Let the vortex release her and lift her up. She’d practiced it a hundred times.
But this time it didn’t.
A frantic fear began to set in. Being thrashed around, not knowing up from down, her eyes stung by frigid water like dozens of bees attacking her, the coldness in her lungs sapping her strength.
Stay calm, she told herself, stay calm. But in her agitation, seconds seemed like minutes. She had no idea how long she was under and she feared she would lose her breath. Her mouth opened, water spilling into her lungs. Numbing her. For the first time in her life she felt fear on the river. Her instincts failed her. It took everything she had to suppress the basic urge to scream.
Please stay calm, Dani. Somehow. Don’t struggle against it. The eddy will free you. You know what to do.
She realized Chase and Tom were way too far downstream to help. No way they could make their way back up against that current.
And Trey, sooner or later, he would realize what had happened. Chase had probably already given him the sign. But how long would he wait to see if she came through? Or if, coming after her, he’d nail the run perfectly and be swept right past.
Panic started to rush into her blood like the icy water in her lungs. She began to feel the very real fear that this could be it for her.
Let me up. Let me up. Dani started to struggle against it, which she knew was the wrong thing.
Please.
On the deck with Blu, looking up at the starry sky, Dani was gripped by the same sensation as if it were yesterday. One she’d never felt until that moment.
And hadn’t since.
The overwhelming feeling she was giving up.
That she was going to die.
In the river, she felt water all over her, icy and black, the irony that something she loved so much was now about to kill her. In that moment, her mind actually began to drift, to a scene from her childhood, her mother telling her she was too young to go out on the river by herself. She’d have to wait another year. She was maybe ten then. Then—
She felt herself being lifted back up. It’s working, she remembered thinking, sure that the current was giving her up.
But it wasn’t the current. It was Trey, a hand clamped onto her wet-suit collar, the other hanging on to a rock. Pulling her out. She broke free and sucked a desperate breath into her lungs. She gasped over and over, coughing out water, throwing her eyes back at the beautiful blue sky, heaving.
Free.
“I’ve got you, Dani. I’ve got you,” she remembered Trey saying. “You were in an eddy. But you can relax. Breathe in. I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”
She clung to him like he was a buoy in the middle of the ocean, and she wanted to cry.
“Jeez, and all the really hard stuff is still a ways downstream …” He grinned at her, in that offhand way of his and with a wink that at any other time she would have wanted to throw a punch at. But this time she just smiled and hugged him, nodding, wiping away the tears. He positioned her on his chest, feet forward, between his legs, and they followed the current downstream back to her raft.
She stayed with them and finished the Kirshbaum as if it were a Three.
What’s this all about? Wade had asked, not knowing what lay at the heart.
She owed Trey. Owed him everything. He hadn’t given up on her.
No way she was about to give up on him.
Especially now.
That’s what this was about.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That same night, Wade was in his home up the canyon in Basalt. Not where he used to live, on Red Mountain in Aspen. Those homes went for millions now. In a rented house, kind of a dilapidated eighties chalet, with a dirt drive and the garage filled with his things, so he had to leave his Bronco parked outside. He’d gone to see Allie Watkins at the end of the day, just like he’d said he would. First, to pay his respects; Trey’s father had come down from up north to take possession of his boy’s body. Then to ask her, just for appearance’s sake, if somehow there was anyone out there who would want to see her husband harmed.
Her raw, red eyes looked back at him quizzically.
“Just a formality,” he explained, “in these types of things. We’re just crossing off a line of investigation.”
She shook her head. She had her long blond hair wrapped back in a braid, and was in a kind of peasant dress with a shawl covering her shoulders. “I mean, there was someone who he had a dispute with over the patent they were applying for on his camera mount,” she thought back. “Mark Conners. He and Trey went to school together at CSU. But he lives in Massachusetts now. He wasn’t even here.”
“Massachusetts,” Wade said, nodding.
“Anyway, they seemed to have ironed it all out. Trey was giving him a small share of whatever he made. So no, no one, Chief Dunn. You knew Trey. Everyone liked him. I don’t know what you mean …”
“I’m not meaning anything, hon,” Wade said, putting his arm around her as he went to the door. “Now don’t go worrying about it. You’ve got enough to deal with as it is. You go take good care of that little boy of yours, okay?”
Later, he scraped together something to eat and sat down in front of the TV with a coffee. Tonight was one of those nights he longed for something a whole lot stronger.
She’s always been a tough one to rein in. Dani. Going back to when she was a kid. Whatever she did, she did as tough as any of the boys—rock climbing, hockey, snowboarding. Once she got on something, it was like a demon was in her head. One that wouldn’t let go. She had that headstrong nature. Like her mom. Wade hadn’t had much luck in that department, either.
This time, though, just this once, he knew, he would have to back her down.
There were things she didn’t understand. Things she would see in a different way if she persisted. A way that could cause trouble for him.
Things he had to make sure didn’t come out and that couldn’t get around. Too many things depended on it.
He drank up the last of his coffee and flicked on the TV. His cell phone sounded. He took a look and saw that it wasn’t his office. The words on the screen, UNKNOWN CALLER, made the acid in his stomach shoot up. He didn’t even want to answer, but, he knew, these weren’t exactly the kind of folk you left hanging. “Hello.”
There was no greeting, only a slight pause, then a firm but soft Oklahoma drawl almost hissing the words at him. “You said this would be a piece of cake, Chief. All buttoned up. So far, I’d say that’s anything but the case.”
“I know.”
“I don’t really want to hear that you know, Wade. I think you know the consequences of what happens if we can’t contain this.”
“I’ll handle it,” Wade said, though he saw the thing unraveling like a spool of thread in a cat’s paw.
“You’ll handle it, huh? You’ll handle it how, Wade? We already thought you had it all neatly bundled up. And now there’s another person going around making even more trouble. Some girl …”
“Listen …” Wade said, his stomach tightening as if it were squeezed into a ball. “How do you know about that?”
“Don’t you worry how we know about things. Just worry how you’re going to set it right. This was all supposed to go easy. First we find the kid on the river. The same route he always goes. Tuesdays and Fridays, right? Bright and early. No one around. Other than some fool flying in a goddamn balloon who goes spouting his mouth off. We both better hope he didn’t take pictures.”
“He didn’t. And you didn’t have to do it the way you did. Now I have all kinds of trouble here to factor in.”
“Sheriff, I promise you,” the caller laughed, “your little town doesn’t even know the meaning of the word trouble, if that’s what it is.”
“This time you stay out of it. I’ll take care of it,” Wade said. He also knew these were not the kind of people you lost your temper with. “I’ll make it go away.”
“Stay out of it …?” The person on the other end chuffed back a laugh. “How do you think you even got yourself reelected, Lieutenant Johnnie Walker Black? We stay out of it, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself appointed to the prom committee of your local high school.”
“It won’t go any further. I give you my word.”
“Damn right it won’t go further … ’Cause if it doesn’t, everything
stops. Today. Not another dime. That boy of yours will have to find his own way back in life without our help. That understood?”
“It’s understood.” Wade gritted his teeth and swallowed the acidy taste back into his stomach.
“I want to be clear, Chief. Carbondale’s a cute little town. But if we have to make another stop down there, it might just be for you this time. So factor that kind of trouble into your thinking, Wade.” After waiting a moment to let the words sink in, the caller hung up.
Wade placed the phone back on the table, anger roiling inside.
He needed them off his back, but he had let them in. That he couldn’t deny.
Yes, one long set of rapids to run, he said to himself. No different than Trey.
Dani better keep her trap shut, that was all there was to it. Or he didn’t know what he’d be forced to do.
One thing he should’ve learned a long time ago, you deal with the devil, you better get ready for the temperature to rise.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Early the next morning Dani was back out on the river.
There was a ranger station at the beginning of the park road. Cammie was on duty. Dani knew her, of course; she was out here almost every day. She handed out maps and advised people on where to camp and the conditions.
And they also kept track of the car traffic. All day.
“No run this morning?” Cammie said as Dani drove up, leaning out of her hut. The river had just been reopened and Dani waited at the gate until a few vans and buses from both Whitewater Adventures and a few competitors went on through. There was no kayak strapped to the top of Dani’s Subaru.
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