Wicked Eddies by Beth Groundwater Page B

tone-deaf humming with the radio. Mandy tuned him out and watched the landscape of grassy ranchland stream past the window while she reflected on Cynthia’s words about Faith the prior evening.
    What did she mean when she said Faith wasn’t safe yet? Safe from what? Was the teenager using drugs? Did she owe someone money for drugs? Someone who would get violent if they weren’t paid? Or was she involved in a gang? Had she been sneaking out of the house to see some boy or to drink at one of the bars that wasn’t careful about carding?
    And what had Cynthia warned her young cousin about? The dangers of drugs and alcohol? Date rape or safe sex?
    Or was Faith suffering from deep depression or some other psychological condition? Maybe it was the demons of her own mind that she wasn’t safe from. Cynthia had said that “maybe” Faith committed suicide, as if she felt the girl was capable of it. But the alternative was even weirder. What “risk” would Faith have taken that would have gotten her killed? Mandy vowed to talk to Cynthia again, when she’d had a chance to process her cousin’s death.
    Lance gave her a poke in the arm when he turned off Highway 24. “We’re almost there. What ya’ been thinking about? That girl you pulled out of the river yesterday?”
    â€œYeah, sorta. Sorry I haven’t been better company.”
    â€œHey, I understand. It was a bad scene.” He drove the pickup into the parking lot and maneuvered it so the small flatbed trailer behind them was near the ramp down to the river. He turned off the engine and rested a large hand on her shoulder. “Time on the river will help. It always does.”
    Mandy gave him a smile. “Yes, it does. Let’s go.”
    She hopped out of the truck and started unlashing the catarafts from the trailer. Since it was likely they would need two boats to deal with the strainer, they’d taken two of the single-person craft that river rangers usually used for river patrols. Each one had an oaring seat clamped onto a metal frame suspended between two bright blue inflatable pontoons. Mandy and Lance stowed their lunches and the tools for cutting branches in dry bags in the equipment cages bolted behind the seats.
    After they’d parked the truck away from the ramp and locked it and pushed their rafts into the river, Mandy took a deep breath and let the music of the gurgling water start working its magic. A large black rook let out a loud caw and flapped its wings overhead. A trout splashed near one of her oars, and a bright yellow butterfly fluttered among cattails along the bank sawing against each other in the slight breeze. When the sun warmed her back, she pushed up the sleeves of the splash jacket under her PFD and dipped her oars in the water again.
    Yes, trouble had occurred in Mandy’s human community of Salida, especially for Cynthia’s extended family, with the death of two members—her uncle Howie Abbott and his niece Faith Ellis. Mandy knew firsthand how wrenching even one death in the family could be. But all was right with the world of nature, at least today here on the Arkansas River, and it made her feel glad to be outdoors and alive to enjoy it.
    Lance whooped when they rode their two rafts over a class III riffle, and Mandy flashed him a smile.
    â€œYou know,” he yelled over the rush of the water, “I’ve never understood why the commercial outfits don’t run this section more often.”
    â€œIt is beautiful,” Mandy shouted back. “But let’s keep the secret.”
    Soon, they reached Frog Rock Rapid and tied up upstream. They hiked down and studied the strainer. A couple of huge cottonwood limbs with lots of interlocking smaller branches were wedged between two large rocks. There was no way to get to the bundle from the shore, or to eddy out a raft near it. They decided to tie Lance’s raft to a nearby cottonwood, let it drift