Page 2 of One Last Chance

“I was born for this.”

He stepped out then, life pouch first, and bellied into the water.

He started to swim along the edges of the shore, where the water couldn’t jerk him into the boil.

Please, please, be there.

Frankly, Axel and the boys might not have seen Guy and his daughters at all if they hadn’t stopped under the falls. They’d gotten out of their kayaks to scout the blind spot ahead, where the river simply vanished over a hard horizon line, smoky mist rising to suggest a brutal—albeit possibly fun—drop.

Not so fun once he’d gotten a look at it. Forty feet down to a narrow cauldron of boiling water. Axel hadn’t remembered it being this lethal.

Or maybe he’d simply been younger and more stupid back when he’d run this river before.

He’d been looking upriver, his thoughts on, well, mistakes, when he’d seen the paddler drop over the upper falls.

A red kayak nosediving, then pinging up in the foam and mist.

“Is he upright?” said Jude, next to him at the time.

“Dunno,” Axel said and took off his sunglasses, a little hazy with mist. “There—” He’d pointed to a white helmet and blue jacket that’d surfaced with the red kayak. “It’s stuck in the backwash.”

Indeed, the cauldron had caught the kayak, swirled it around, pulled it into the froth and back toward the falls. The paddler fought to escape.

“They’re going to have to flip, get into current and let it pull them out.” Sully had come up to them.

And that’s when the second kayaker came over. A bigger paddler, he splashed down hard, and the weight propelled him deeper into the water. He caught the current and jetted out of the cauldron.

“Like that,” Sully said.

But then the kayaker turned, paddling back toward the falls even as the rapids grabbed him.

“Look out!” This from Levi Starr, standing upriver. “There’s a?—”

Downed tree. A strainer, it lay in the water like a net, and with the paddler’s back to the obstacle, the river ran him right into it, tangling him.

He lost his paddle and grabbed onto the tree as the flow dragged him under.

“For the love—” Axel started up the shoreline even as Levi hustled to the kayaks for rescue rope bags.

And then the third kayak came over. Axel got a better view this time. Orange helmet, orange kayak, long dark braids?—

A girl. She splashed down on the far side of the falls, tipped, rolled, and . . . vanished.

Horrified shouts from the trapped man turned the moment from trouble into disaster.

While Levi and Jude pulled out their rope bags and fought to get the man to shore, Axel slid into his kayak and pushed out into the eddy beneath the falls. He paddled close enough so that his voice might lift over the thunder.

No sign of the orange kayak.

The first paddler, red kayak, had big blue eyes, dark hair, and so much fear on her face he nearly got in the water. A girl, midteens, fighting to escape the grip of the falls. “You’re too high in the water!” His voice lifted over the thunder of the falls. “You need to paddle upstream, then ball down in the water and catch the suspended load, let the current carry you out. I’ll be right here to catch you.”

She nodded, and brave kid that she was, paddled out into the boil, rolled to her side, got deep?—

The current shot her past the boil line and into the outwash. He grabbed her kayak.

But she was still under, fighting to get upright, and clawed at him. Pulled.

He went over. Under.

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