Fatal Descent by Beth Groundwater Page B

one passes by, continue on with what you had planned for this afternoon?”
    Mandy shook her head. “With our radio busted, we don’t have any way to reschedule our pickup. And, we don’t have enough food and water.”
    “I could fish for supper,” Paul offered.
    Elsa pshawed that suggestion. “Yeah, right, like you could catch enough to feed sixteen people. And Tina and I have classes to get back to. We can’t extend our vacation time.”
    Mandy stared at the woman. How could Elsa go on about climbing and her vacation time when her lover was dead? What a cold-hearted bitch!
    Alice put down her half-eaten sandwich. “Look, the family’s talked about this already. We don’t think Alex would have wanted us to quit. He was so anxious for all of us to experience the Canyonlands.”
    Hal nodded and put an arm over his wife’s shoulders.
    Amy glanced toward the river, where Alex’s body lay out of sight, below the edge of the river bank. “I feel like his spirit is still with us,” she whispered. “Maybe appreciating the wild beauty of this place is the best way to say good—” She choked up and couldn’t continue.
    “Oh, honey, maybe you’re right.” Diana reached for her daughter’s hand.
    “And, it’s not fair to the rest of you if his death ruins your vacations,” Alice said. “We should stick with the original plan until we can find a way to get word out.”
    “I agree,” Les said forcefully.
    Everyone looked at the older Andersons, who glanced at each other. Finally, Hal breathed out a sigh. “Okay,” he said, and the rest of the family nodded in agreement.
    “Does everyone else agree with that?” Mandy asked and looked around.
    Relief seemed to be etched on most of the faces of those who were not in the Anderson clan.
    “Okay.” Rob pushed off from the picnic table and stood. “Even though we’ll keep moving, we’ll also keep trying to find a way to get word out. We guides will search for hikers and other boats along the way. Once the radio dries out, I may be able to get it to work. There’s a repeater at the confluence, so I’ll try calling there. Our goal will be to arrange for Alex’s body to be taken to a morgue as soon as possible.”
    Diana took Hal’s hand and squeezed it. “And Hal and I will go with him.”
    “Me, too,” Amy said.
    “No, we want you kids to finish the trip no matter what,” Diana said. “As Alice said, it’s what Alex would have wanted.”
    A tear rolled down Amy’s cheek. “I don’t want you two to have to deal with everything by yourselves when you get back. I want to help.”
    Les put a hand on her shoulder. “You heard your mom. And besides, it may not happen. We might all be stuck on the river until the end of the trip.”
    And apparently whatever Les said was golden, because Amy shut right up.

seven
    What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t
have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going,
and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.
    — hal boyle
    After lunch, Mandy worked with the rest of the guides to reallocate gear between the rafts, so there was room for two clients to sit in the front again of Mandy’s oar raft. With Alex’s body bag strapped in the front of Rob’s raft, there was no room for others to sit there. That meant he might be oaring solo for the rest of the trip. He and Mandy had made that decision, with the Andersons’ okay, because none of the clients—not even the Andersons—wanted to share a raft with Alex’s corpse.
    During the shuffle, Mandy’s emotions wavered between guilt over Alex’s death, anxiety about the loss of the radio, their link with the outside world, and doubt about whether she or Rob could have done anything different to prevent either. She was also worried about what might happen to them on the rest of the journey. Since she hadn’t been able to speak alone with Rob at the lunch stop to talk about Betsy’s findings, she had made do with saying, “We need to talk