Free Deadly Currents by Beth Groundwater Page A

getting caught in the rapid’s recirculating hydraulic, she couldn’t imagine what it would do to a guy in an inner tube.
    “I see.” Mandy rubbed her chin. “Can I talk you out of running Seidel’s Suckhole? It’s pretty hairy for someone in an inner tube to run.”
    “Nope. Gonna do it.”
    Mandy looked at her cat. She always carried two extra PFDs on her raft, her backup and one to use for rescues, in case a swimmer lost his. She tugged one out of the gear basket in the back of the cat and held out the PFD to him.
    “How about borrowing this PFD from me? I’d feel a lot better about your chances for making it out of the river alive today if you did.”
    When the man just stared at her, she pushed it closer. “You can leave it for me beside the big, gray rock next to the takeout.”
    Reluctantly, the guy took the PFD and shrugged it on. “Okay.” He stepped farther into the river.
    “May I?” Mandy reached over and buckled the PFD. “Next time, please bring one of your own. And bring at least one friend, preferably two, to go tubing with you.”
    The guy gave a grim nod, then sank his butt into the tube and swirled out into the current. He paddled his arms and kicked his feet, as if trying to get as far away from her as quickly as he could.
    When Mandy returned to her station next to Steve, she asked, “Well, how’d I do?”
    “Pretty good. You were polite and nonconfrontational, got him to listen to some advice, which he might apply next time he rides the river. I doubt I could have done any better, given how uncommunicative he was.”
    Pride swelled Mandy’s chest. Maybe, just maybe, she was getting the hang of this job. “I doubt I’ll see that PFD again, though.”
    “Hey, at least you got him to take it,” Steve said. “And here’s hoping that if we do see it again, it’s not on his dead body.”

Do not insult the mother alligator
until after you have crossed the river.
    —Haitian Proverb
    After another restless night, Mandy sat at her kitchen table sipping a cup of strong coffee. She hoped it would kick her fuzzy brain into gear, though she didn’t have to go into work. Monday was one of her days off, since few boaters traveled down the river the first day of the work week. While flipping the pages of The Mountain Mail , Salida’s local newspaper, she remembered yesterday afternoon and smiled.
    Wonder of wonders, near the end of the day, she and Steve had found her PFD neatly stashed behind the gray rock at the Stone Bridge takeout, just as she had requested. That day, the man with the inner tube had been lucky.
    Unlike Tom King.
    She flipped another page and put the coffee cup down hard. Tom King’s photo appeared in the obituaries section.
    His memorial service was planned for ten o’clock that morning. She checked the clock on her kitchen stove. Eight thirty. Maybe going to the service would help her close the book on not being able to rescue Tom King, bury the guilt, banish the nightmares. Or at least turn a page.
    A few minutes before ten, Mandy stood at the corner of 4th and D streets, the center of gravity for Salida’s church population. Episcopal and Catholic churches stood one block away. Clustered at this intersection were the First Christian Church, the First Baptist Church, and directly across 4th street from her, the First United Methodist Church, where Tom King’s service was due to begin.
    Staring at the red brick edifice, she smoothed clammy hands down her black skirt and flattened the collar of a brown button-down shirt. She had found the shirt stuffed in the back of her closet and had hastily ironed it. The shirt and skirt didn’t go together, but they were the two darkest and most conservative pieces of clothing she owned.
    An older couple walked up the concrete steps of the church, the man leaning heavily on the rail. The woman turned to wait for him. She peered at Mandy, as if trying to discern who she was and if she was related to the deceased.
    Mandy had a