One Mile Under (2 page)

“So what about us …?” Steve, the retired salesman from Atlanta who was on the right side asked with some disappointment.

“Okay, you guys on the right, I didn’t mean to leave you out …” Dani held back, timing it perfectly as they reared, about to go over the first big dip. “All
you
have to do is just hold on for your lives!”

The froth kicked up and the raft plunged about five feet as she traversed through the tricky S-curve at the top of Entrance Exam, a chute of three interlocking, swirling rapids. The large raft careened against a rock. Everyone screamed as they were thrown up and down, out of their positions. “Okay, left side … Get ready …” Dani warned. “We’re gonna take on some big-time water in a second.” The raft kicked sideways, bouncing up out of a hole like a rubber bath toy in a tub.

“Now, paddle, everyone!
Paddle!
”

They lurched forward, nine paddles propelling them down the chute, icy water spilling in from all sides. Everyone on the left side worked feverishly, letting out screams and whoops. Dani guided the raft around and they spun through the last part virtually sideways, a huge “
Whoa!
” sounded as they dropped down another four-foot dip and then bounced out as if ejected by a slingshot, water cascading everywhere.

“
All right!
” Dani hollered. Everyone was screaming and drenched. “Everyone like that?”

“That was so cool!” Megan shouted, as they made it into a calmer stretch in between rapids.

“We lose anyone?” Dani asked above the whitewater roar. “Look around. I get docked if I don’t bring everyone back. Harlan, still with us, up there?”

The young girl was gleeful. Most fun ever. Her older brother, though, didn’t seem to think so and looked about as white as a ghost. Dani called up front, “What’s the matter, Harlan, you eat something that didn’t agree with you this morning?”

“No, ma’am,” Harlan said, blanched. “That was just really scary, that’s all.”

Everyone laughed.

“Well, now you’re a pro. From here on, it’s a piece of cake. And left side, that was great work! I want to thank you all for pulling us through. I did mention, didn’t I, that this was my first trip down, solo …” They all turned back to her. “
No?
Gosh, I left that out. I thought I’d told you all that. Well, maybe not my first, actually. I did do a demo run with one of the instructors when they gave me the job.”

Everyone was laughing. Barney’s Revenge was next. A legitimate Class Four. Followed by the Falls. Then One Too Far, where after you’re sure you’re through and start to relax, there’s this unexpected five-foot dip where your stomach drops along with the raft—the spot where Dani always yelled out, “Well, that’s the one too far!”

By Hell’s Half Mile they’d all been scared, exhilarated, bounced around like on a barroom bronco. Totally drenched. There were only a couple of more rapids to go. The Baby’s Cradle and Last Laugh, both less challenging Class Twos and Threes. The river was slightly calmer down here. Flat water, it was called. Though because of all the rains of the past week and the late spring runoff, there was a ton of water pushing them around, so every rapid posed a little challenge.

“Coming up on the Cradle …” Dani called out, a series of five interlocking chutes that gave you the sense of being rocked back and forth, hence the name. The first one always took you by surprise. She said, “I know I kinda gave you all the impression that it was going to be a piece of cake from here on in … Well, sorry—” As if from nowhere, the current grabbed them. “You all better start to paddle, guys … ’cause I’m afraid I lied!”

The next sensation was your stomach plummeting like a jet that had just dropped three thousand feet, dipping and rising, water spilling in. The adrenaline was rising. Everyone screamed. It was slightly tricky here, bounce off a rock and come out of a turn the wrong way and you could capsize. Once, Dani spun around and had had to make it through Slingshot backward and had almost fallen out herself. This time she nailed it perfectly, excited whoops of “All right!” and “Piece of cake!” coming from Harlan, who was now clearly enjoying himself, along with a lot of water-soaked smiles.

“You guys are proving to be tougher than I thought. So next up—” Dani positioned herself to take on the next rapid.

That was when she saw something up ahead along the shore that didn’t seem right.

It was just a flash of red at first, below the third of the Cradle’s rapids, the easiest, called Baby’s Rattle. For a second it just looked like an overturned kayak floating there, which happened occasionally. Everyone else was either paddling or laughing at their drenched raft mates and hadn’t noticed it yet.

But as she drew closer, her worst fears grew real. It wasn’t just a kayak out there, there was something inside. Someone in it. The flash of red she saw turned out to be the rider’s wind jacket. Suddenly the people up front spotted it, too, pointing.

“Oh my God, what’s that! There’s someone in there!” Harlan’s mother exclaimed.

“I see it,” Dani said, feathering the raft closer. “Everyone just stay calm.” Though inwardly she acknowledged that this wasn’t a good sign. “We’re gonna pull in over here and I’ll go take a look.”

She pitched the raft along the easiest route down the next chute, her heart beating anxiously now. She knew most of the people who rode out here, especially the ones who came out this time of the morning.

“I’m gonna pull in over there.” She steered toward a shallow rock bed up ahead along the shore. “I want you to all get out.” That way the raft wouldn’t continue to drift downstream with her team still in it. “Steve, Dale,” she said to the two largest guys, “I want you to help me drag the raft up onto shore. Everyone please wait here. I’m gonna go take a look. I’m really sorry you have to see this.”

They disembarked and dragged the raft up onto the shore bed until it was secure. Dani grabbed the radio out of the nylon gear case and clipped it to her belt. “Everyone, please, wait here. The current’s a little tricky and can take you by surprise. So whatever you do, don’t wade in after me.”

They all muttered, okay.

She ran along the shallow rock bed in her Teva sandals, until she got as close as she could to the overturned craft. It was trapped in an eddy pool, water swirling all around. Some forty feet from where she was. The current was still powerful here, enough to make what she was doing dangerous. Dani traversed her way across the rocks, slick as ice from a few thousand years of water rushing over them, her rubber sandals seeking whatever traction she could find. If she slipped, the current would hurl her down the final leg of the Cradle. She’d be separated from her crew. Not to mention, it was dangerous. She had no helmet. This wasn’t exactly smart.

Once or twice she almost slipped and had to catch herself, whitewater lashing at her legs. The overturned kayak was maybe ten yards from her now, on its side in the swirling pool. No sign of movement inside. The current tugging at her from all around.

Without a rope or a partner, she knew what she was doing really wasn’t the smartest idea.

Finally, she made it across, straddling the eddy where the kayak had come to a stop.

“Can you hear me?” she called out. But whoever was inside wasn’t responding and hadn’t moved. She could see it was a guy, but his face was in the water, the current slashing all around. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, either. Everyone always thought they could take this river without a care. Dani bent down, positioning her legs on the rocks for traction, and flipped the body over on its side.

Her stomach dropped, just as precipitously as if she had plummeted over the falls herself. She stared for a moment, shocked and disbelieving, denial, then sorrow filling her inside.

She knew him.

She stared into the dead rider’s drained, colorless face.

She knew him well.

Trey Watkins, Charles Alan Watkins III, whom everyone always jokingly referred to as “Your Honor,” because his name sounded more like that of a Supreme Court judge, than someone who could ski the back terrain at Aspen Highlands with the best of them. He’d done a few off-terrain videos in a few Warren Miller ski films—and rock-climbed out at Maroon Bells in the summer. He also used to teach hang gliding off the summit of Ajax.

Dani also knew he could get down this river without a hitch in the worst of conditions, and this surely wasn’t that.

There were abrasions all over his face and a fresh, oozing wound on his skull, and his neck was pitched at a horrifying angle. She grabbed his wrist and looked for a pulse, not finding even a hint of a heartbeat.
Oh
,
Jesus, no …
She rested him back down in the river.

Trey.

She knew he came out and did an early run before work sometimes, just to keep his feet in the game, now that he had a regular job. Regular, meaning off of skis, the mountain, or the river. She recalled how a few years back he and Dani had ended up together after last call at the Black Nugget, when Dani had come back after college after her mother had died. It wasn’t much of a relationship, or even what you’d call a fling. Trey wasn’t exactly boyfriend material back then. He was a quiet, rugged guy from a small town up north, and with his long ponytail, his washed-out, blue-eyed smile, and that easy, but confident way, women always seemed to flock to him. As Dani had a couple of times, maybe a little rootless and angry back then over her mom.

But somehow Allie Benton made all that change. Trey settled down, married, cut his hair. He even got a totally “straight” job managing the Outdoor Adventures shop in town. They had a kid. Petey. Who everyone said made Trey a changed man. Dani had last seen him a couple of months ago at the Post Net store in town. He was mailing off an application to the national ski trade show. He’d developed this custom mounting for those GoPro action cameras that skiers and riders put on their helmets, and which they were selling like crazy in the store. Dani remembered thinking,
Who’d ever figure Trey Watkins for an entrepreneur?
Amazing what having a kid could do.

And here she was staring at him now. Bloodied and crumpled. Those washed-out blue eyes that looked like Roger Daltrey’s of the Who stilled. It didn’t make a bit of sense where they were. Trey could handle a rapid like the Cradle with Petey on his lap. He could do it blindfolded, even
with
this amount of water being pushed around. Dani inspected his kayak. She didn’t see any gashes or dents. She looked at the oozing abrasion on the side of his head. She just closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief.

Poor Trey.

She thought about trying to drag the body out and administer CPR, but he was gone. It was clearly too late. She took out the radio from her belt. The company bus was set to meet them all not too much farther downstream. It was already on its way there.

“
Rich.
Rich …” she called in. “Can you hear me? It’s Dani.”

No one answered. Only a scratchy static came back.

“Rich, get on the horn, quick, I need you,” she said, trying again. “It’s urgent. Something’s happened here.”

“You at the fords already?” Her tour partner finally came on the line. “God, you’re early, Dani, it’s only—”

“Negative, Rich. I’m at the bottom of the Cradle and we’ve got some trouble here. There’s been an accident.”

“Oh, shit,” he went, imagining the worst. “Everyone okay …?”

“Not us,” Dani said. “It’s Trey Watkins. His raft flipped over. There’s a gash on his head. He’s not breathing, Rich.”

“
Trey?
Oh my God …” Everyone knew him. “Any sign of a pulse?”

“Negative, again. I can’t believe this, Rich.” Trey could ride with the best of them out here. The most challenging water was all well behind him. She looked back and saw her raft team all gathered on the shore, looking on. “I’m holding him here, Rich. He’s dead.”

Chief Wade Dunn kneeled down on the rocks overlooking the river, as the Pitkin County Rescue Team pulled the kid out of the water.

Not a kid really. He was twenty-nine. One of those adrenaline junkies around town who did it all. Off-terrain skiing. Paragliding. Mountain biking. The on-site opinion of one of the EMTs who inspected the body was blunt-force trauma to the head and possibly a broken neck. Any one of those rocks could have caused it. No telling how far the raft had continued down.
Made you wonder.
Wade watched, lifting his Stetson custom cowboy hat. Trey Watkins was also a topflight river rider. This far downriver, he was way past anything that might have been thought of as a challenge. Wade knew his young wife. Allie. Pretty, and must be quite a gal to tame someone like Trey. And things were just starting to take off for the guy. A new kid, and he had this camera-mount business that was just getting off the ground. Allie’s father, Ted Benton, who owned a rib restaurant and a small hotel in town, once joked to Wade that his son-in-law was going to make them all look poor.

Wade watched the rescue boys do their job.
Look at him now.

They lowered down a stretcher, then hoisted the body back up the slope, and cut a path in the brush to where the emergency vehicles had parked on the road. Wade stood up and looked at the body as they brought it by. It looked exactly like what it probably was: the kid must’ve flipped and struck his head on the rocks. Enough to cause that wound or to break his neck. Probably trying out some slick new move. Grab some air or a spin-o-rama, or whatever they call them today. And not wearing a helmet. Not as smart as ol’ Ted thought, apparently. These kids, they all think they’re invincible. Come here from all parts, think their life is a fucking X Game. They’d do a drug and alcohol test in the postmortem. Who’d bet on what they’d find?

Thrill junkie.

He was like that once, too, Wade reflected. Invincible, or he surely thought so. That was back when he was the sheriff in Aspen. Not Carbondale, the little commuting town thirty miles down the road where everyone lived who couldn’t afford to live in Aspen. Shit, he could’ve pretty much run for mayor back then. Or governor. Anything he wanted. He knew all the big celebs—Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, Goldie Hawn, and all the big CEOs flying in on their Learjets and Citations. Now look at him. Divorced. Twice. Widowed once, though they had been living apart. A couple of stints in detox. Running a police force one-tenth the size of what he used to, and lucky to have the damn job at that. Looking a whole lot older than his fifty-seven years. Basically broke. Now he was what, the mayor of the sober community here in town? Younger, more ambitious men all waiting in line for him to retire.