Rapid Descent. Gwen Hunter

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      The tears that had been swimming in her eyes fell as she held out her arms to her best friend in the world. Her tears caught the lights and haloed him, bright glints on the silver in his hair. As if he were her own personal avenging angel.

      Mike would have laughed at the thought of being compared to an angel.

      He lowered the bedrail and sat beside her, his wiry body blocking her from the cop, and gathered her up in his arms. She sobbed into his chest, the familiar scent of the man surrounding her. She crumpled Joe’s letter at him, indicating he should take it surreptitiously.

      He tucked it into his own shirt before speaking. When the baggies were safe, he said, “Hey. What’s this?” He turned her face up and touched her cheek, his finger coming away wet. “I never saw this before. Nell Stevens, crying? Tears? Devil must be draggin’ out his long johns, ’cause it’s cold in hell right about now.”

      “I lost Joe,” she sobbed. “He’s lost on the river and he’s got to be hurt, and I couldn’t find him—”

      “Hey, hey, hey.” He snugged her face against his shoulder, stroking her short hair. He lowered his voice. “I’m making you a promise. Okay? Right now. If he’s findable, I’ll find him.” He tilted her face to him again. “You know that. I’d never leave somebody on the river in trouble. Specially not Joe.”

      But the words resonated inside her. If he’s findable…

      Nell stopped crying. Stopped breathing. She focused on Mike’s river-brown eyes, steady and serene. If Joe wasn’t findable, it was because he was stuck beneath an undercut rock or tangled in an underwater strainer. Or washed so far downstream he might not be found until low water in the next drought. It he wasn’t findable, it was because he was dead.

      The thought opened something up within her, a deep, dark chasm, empty and howling with icy wind. A chasm she had been ignoring, denying. A shot of something bitter and frozen rushed through her veins like ice crystals. She clenched Mike’s shirt, the flannel and long-john shirt beneath bunching. “You find him,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes demanding. “You find him and you bring him back.”

      He read her face, her demand, her desperation. Gently, Mike peeled her hands from his shirt and held them in his, like a promise. Or a benediction. He kissed her forehead, his lips cold and dry. “I won’t lie to you. But you know I’ll do what I can.”

      It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t a promise to make it all right. But the chasm that had opened beneath her moved away a bit, to the side. Mike had never lied to her. He never would. No matter what. Not even to save her sanity. But if a mountain could be moved, Mike Kren was the man to do it.

      He squeezed her fingers and let go, set his craggy, lined face in a confrontational expression, and turned to the cop. “Mike Kren.”

      “Jedi Mike? Old-Man-of-the-River-Mike?”

      Mike blocked her and Nell could see neither man’s face, but she knew they were taking each other’s measure. Mike wasn’t fond of cops. Nell rather suspected that the cop would pick up on that. And Mike was well known in the river-guide community as a pacifist anarchist. If the cop had done any research at all into river rats, he had to know that.

      “Some people call me that,” Mike acknowledged. He angled back to Nell before the cop could introduce himself, his weathered face creased in the soft light. “Tell me everything.”

      Nell whispered, pushing her broken voice, starting over with waking in the campsite. Mike asked questions as she talked, questions about water volume, wind and weather conditions, other boats on the river, the kind of supplies they had carried with them on the overnight trip. He asked about certain rocks, places where boaters could go missing for weeks or months. Questions about the cheat and what she remembered about the strainer. They were questions of an experienced river guide, and Mike’s thirty years on the rivers in the Southeast U.S. showed in each. He concentrated on current changes, taking in her description of the big water, the tube that should have been only a curl at the El, listening with intensity about the zigzag current at the end of the Long Pool, nodding when she described the Narrows, tilting his head, his gaze far away, as if seeing it all in his mind.

      Mike had been on rivers for longer than Nell had been alive and having him here improved Joe’s chances more than anything. When she reached the end of her tale, Mike sat silent, rubbing her fingers with his thumbs, thinking.

      “Okay. Gotta go, girl. Got supplies to get together. I shut the shop, put a note on the door for any drop-ins to head over to Amos’s. He can have that church group coming in on Saturday, too, if we don’t get back in. We’ll lose money but it won’t kill us like it would have before Labor Day. Later, girl.”

      He patted her shoulder, a single pat, like the promise he hadn’t been willing or able to give. Mike pointed his finger at the cop, a gun gesture, and blew through the door like a strong wind, taking Joe’s letter with him. The cop didn’t know that. Yet.

      Nell lay back on the inclined bed and closed her eyes, fighting for composure. When she could control the tears, she asked the cop what else he wanted to know. And wondered if she cared enough to ask him his name again.

      The cop was silent for a moment and said, “You’re a member of the river search-and-rescue team for the Pigeon River.” It wasn’t a question. Nell nodded. “You’re certified in river rescue?”

      “River rescue, swift-water rescue, first responder, wilderness first aid, a few others, all through the New River Rescue Center.” Her throat ached with the tears building behind her lids.

      “Mighty young to be certified in all that.”

      Stupid questions, stupid comments. They needed to be talking about where Joe might be on the river. But he was a cop, and Nell had never once known cops to be useful on an SAR. They just got in the way. “I’m twenty-one. I took all the courses this past winter and early spring.”

      “With your new husband.”

      Pain sliced through her. His tone said, Your new dead husband. She nodded as the tears took over and leaked down her face. “It’s where I first saw him.”

      The memory was a stabbing shaft, bringing her skin to chill bumps. She had been on the bank of the Nantahala River, putting together a Z-drag system to save an “endangered” swimmer in the water, a certification instructor at her shoulder. She had glanced up at the water. At a boater shooting past. Looking right at her with his daredevil smile, his intense eyes, so blue they might have been lasers. The connection so immediate it took her breath away still. And he was gone, his boat downstream so fast she couldn’t follow. She had lost him. Until he showed up on the Pigeon River two weeks later. He’d been looking for her. And he’d found her. And now she had lost him again.

      “Joseph Griffon Stevens.”

      She nodded. I lost him. The breath she took ached, as if it tore its way through to her lungs.

      “You took all those courses so you could start up a new business.” Nod. “A business that had to require a lot of up-front, start-up money.” Nod. “And where did all the up-front money come from?”

      “Joe got a loan,” she whispered.

      “A loan,” he said, his tone odd.

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