Deadly Currents by Beth Groundwater Page A

wetsuits.
    Noticing her stiff posture and quivering lip, they asked her what was wrong. She kept putting them off with “later” until the last set of customers climbed into their car and drove away. Then in a burst of tears, she told them about Uncle Bill.
    Kendra followed her into the house, sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “How can you stand to be here, Mandy, after finding him, you know?”
    Spying her brother sitting in her uncle’s chair at his computer, Mandy halted as if she had slammed into a wall. “I can’t stand to be here. I can’t. But I can’t abandon the business either.”
    Mandy turned to Kendra and Gonzo and took a deep breath. “Are any runs scheduled for tomorrow?”
    Gonzo shuffled his feet, gulped, and nodded. He took a moment to draw himself up to his full height, obviously holding in tears. “The Brown’s Canyon afternoon run was cancelled. But we’ve got a full-day run down Bighorn Sheep Canyon in the morning with seven customers. Dougie and I are down for it.”
    “Do you think you could still do it?”
    “We need someone to run shuttle. Normally Bill …” Unable to finish, he scrubbed a hand across his mouth and looked away.
    “Oh God, Gonzo.” Kendra ran a comforting hand down his arm, then looked at Mandy. “I’ll do it.”
    “But it’s your day off.”
    “I’ll do it,” Kendra said fiercely, “and I won’t take any pay for it.”
    Fresh tears sprang to Mandy’s eyes. She managed to push out a thick “Thanks.”
    Then she fell apart again. Kendra wrapped her arms around her, and Gonzo patted her back. The three of them stood in a little knot in the hall, whimpering in raw pain, until David came out with a box of tissues.
    After a round of blows and wipes, they were able to make plans for the next day. David volunteered to handle the payments and paperwork. With heads bowed in grief, Gonzo and Kendra left.
    David tried to lead Mandy into Uncle Bill’s office, but she resisted. “I can’t go in there. Not yet.”
    He sat her down on the living room sofa. “Wait here. I’ll print off some stuff and bring it out to explain to you.”
    He returned with a few sheets of paper, mostly spreadsheet printouts, and laid them on the coffee table. “While you were out back, I went over the accounts. I need more time to understand everything, but from what I can see so far, Uncle Bill’s company was on a slow, but sure, one-way trip to bankruptcy.”
    “See here, and here?” He pointed to totals on the spreadsheets. “His expenses have been greater than income for months now.”
    Mandy fell back against the cushions. “Damn. He never told me things had gotten that bad.”
    “Probably didn’t want you to worry.”
    And she was too wrapped up in her river ranger training to wonder why he was belt-tightening, like patching the oldest raft instead of ordering a new one.
    “He could have continued like this for another rafting season maybe, but the recent cancellations really hurt him. I doubt he would have made it through the end of this season. And he knew it.”
    David handed her a bookings list printed out that morning with some notes in her uncle’s scrawled handwriting. The last line read ‘Not enough,’ and was underlined.
    The desperation her uncle must have felt washed over Mandy. “What do we do, David? How can we save his business?”
    With sad eyes, David appraised her then said softly, “Do we really want to save it?”
    “What do you mean?” Mandy looked around the darkening house, dusk shadows lengthening across the floor. It was now an empty shell without the jovial presence of her protective uncle. “He poured his life into the company. It was his legacy to us. He wanted me to run it after he …”
    “Died?”
    “No, retired! We can’t let his life’s work die with him, David. We’ve got to try.”
    “I already told you, Mandy. I can’t stay here. And you’ve got your new career to think about. You can’t run this