Rapid Descent

She nodded. I lost him. The breath she took ached, as if it tore its way through to her lungs.

“You took all those courses so you could start up a new business.” Nod. “A business that had to require a lot of up-front, start-up money.” Nod. “And where did all the up-front money come from?”

“Joe got a loan,” she whispered.

“A loan,” he said, his tone odd.

Nell opened her eyes, seeing a halo now around the cop, but if he was an angel, he was an angel of the devil. His tone was too guarded, suspicious and Nell didn’t know why. She blinked and he wavered in the watery mix. Tears leaking down her face burned fresh trails in chapped skin. Her head was thumping like a jackhammer.

The words clawing down her throat, she whispered, “If you think I did something to my husband, you are stark raving crazy. Now go away.” It wasn’t the best thing to say in a negotiation with a cop—and everything was a negotiation, when it came to cops—but she just didn’t care anymore.

The cop studied her, his gaze taking in her bruised and lacerated hands, her face, lingering on the bump in her hairline. “I’d like the letter back, please. Until the investigation is over with. Or they find your husband. I’ll give you a receipt for it.”

“No.”

His brows rose. It was real surprise on his face, not some kind of fake cop look. But Nell had been raised with PawPaw and with Mike. She knew her rights, and like her independent mountain forebearers, she had little regard for keepers of the law. Nell just wanted them to get the heck out of her way and let her do her job.

“I won’t sign a receipt. You get a subpoena,” she whispered, “you can have anything I have. Till then, no. Besides, I don’t have any letter.”

The cop slid his eyes to the door. “I’ll be damned. He took it, didn’t he?” When Nell didn’t reply, his mouth turned up on one side in a knowing half grin and he looked back at her. “We’ll be talking.”

“Whoopie.”

The cop laughed, a single harsh bark of sound, and left the room, letting the door close noiselessly behind him.

Nell stared at the ceiling, silent tears dripping onto the flat pillow beneath her head.

Orson Lennox checked the phone’s display. His dad. It was 5:00 a.m., but it was also his first day on the job with the Knoxville PD. The old man had known he would be up. “Yo. You still up, old man?”

“Cop hours,” Nolan said. “And I can still whip your butt.”

“No question about it. What’s up?” Orson said, tying his spit-shined black shoes.

“You run rivers. Could a tiny little female with a concussion run the South Fork of the Cumberland alone? After a lot of rain?”

“You always run a river alone, Pop, no matter how many people are with you. But—” He thought a moment, trying to balance thinking like a paddler against thinking like a cop. “With a concussion? Only if she was real determined or real stupid.”

“How ’bout if her husband went missing on the river and she was going for help.”

“Possible. Any chance she did him in and tried to make it look bad? That’d make her pretty determined. He have money?”

“Friggin’ loads. And it looks like he mighta beat her up first, so maybe she can plead self-defense. Thanks. And good luck today, okay?”

“Nine tenths preparation, one tenths timing,” Orson said, quoting his father. He heard Nolan laugh at hearing his own words about the existence of luck quoted back to him. The call ended. Orson closed the cell, wondering about a paddler and her dead husband on the South Fork of the Cumberland. It was a perfect place to commit a murder and make it look like an accident.

6

“I’m fine, Claire. Really. And I’m leaving,” Nell said as she pulled a second long-sleeved T-shirt over her head. One was white and the other matched her jeans. Her mother had color coordinated her wardrobe, which made Nell smile while hidden by the knit of the second shirt. She smoothed down her flyaway hair and checked the site of the IV, pressing on the bandage the nurse had applied after Nell pulled the tubing out. It had made a big, bloody mess. The nurse had tsked and said something about blood work indicating signs of dehydration.

Well, duh. You think?

Nell didn’t remember anyone taking blood, but she had several bruised needle marks in both of her elbows. None of them looked like they were going to bleed again. Her butt, however was sore on both sides. She had taken two antibiotic shots, one in each cheek. They hurt when she sat.

“You look like you got beat up by a trucker,” Claire said.

Not hit by a truck. That would have been too close to what had happened to her husband, Nell’s father. But beat up by a trucker, that was okay. Even though truckers everywhere would take issue with her comment.

Nell bent over and stepped into her jeans, watching her mother through the wisps of her short hair. “I’m alive. What I look like isn’t important. I’m going to the put-in. Mike will need someone to handle the radios.”

“You have a concussion.”

Nell bargained with a lie. “Once I get to water, where I can keep an eye on the SAR, I’ll put on lipstick.”

Claire hesitated, tapping her manicured fingers on the bedrail while Nell pulled on socks. Her mother bargained back. “And you’ll stay in the RV. And not go on the river. At all. Promise.”

“Off the river for twenty-four hours.” When Claire didn’t answer Nell said, “Take it or leave it. I’m twenty-one years old, so I can sign myself out of the hospital anyway. I know. I asked the nurse.”

“Deal.” Claire frowned at her. “You remind me more ’n more of my father, you know. More and more.”

“PawPaw’s good people, even if he is the biggest hillbilly in the state. So, thanks.” Nell slid on laceless running shoes. “He didn’t want to come?” she asked in a smaller voice.

“You know my daddy. He ain’t leaving his mountain, his house or his dogs. Or that still he claims he don’t have. But he sends his love.”

Nell nodded and stood. Her grandfather and his shotgun would have been mighty handy against the cops, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Gotta go.”

While she talked to the nurse, Claire tight-lipped with disapproval at her side, Nell was careful to breathe shallowly, so that neither of them could hear her wheeze and somehow force her back to bed. Besides, she was breathing easier, and her fever was gone. Mostly. Nell could tell a difference in her body already, just since the shots. She wasn’t well, but the pneumonia wasn’t going to take over and put her back in bed.

The nurses called it “signing out against medical advice,” or AMA, and it took half an hour. They gave her a sheet of paper about what to watch out for with the concussion and another about the infection in her lungs, then handed her a bag that contained her helmet, her river shoes and her river-wet underclothes. They had been cut from her body and were still dripping. Nell wondered why the cop hadn’t taken them. Her PFD was gone. And she had no idea what had happened to her seven-hundred-dollar boat and the three-hundred-dollar carbon-fiber paddle.

Then she was in the parking lot in the soft morning sunlight. She spotted the RV. It was a one-year-old twenty-five-footer, bought from a foreclosure place off of I-40. Joe had bought it for them to live in, in Hartford, during the paddling season. They had left it in the Bandy Creek campground and she hadn’t thought about it since. Seeing it warmed her almost as much as seeing Mike had.

She headed to the RV, trailed by Claire, who continued to chatter all the while about how she looked like she’d been beaten up, and why didn’t she wear makeup at least for special occasions. When she could get a word in, Nell asked, “Who brought the RV in?”

“Mike, of course. You don’t think I drove that monster. ’Sides, where do you think I got your clothes? I called Mike when I got close to Oneida and he met me in it. I followed him in. There’s my car, see?” She pointed to the parking space behind the RV, the bright red two-door Mazda parked between the lines.

“You need makeup on,” Claire said. Nell shrugged. “For the TV lady.”

The words brought Nell up short. “What TV lady?”

Claire flushed slightly under her makeup, looking just a tad discomfited. Which meant it had to be something really awful. Claire could rearrange God’s calendar and social life without batting an eye. If she was uncomfortable, then it was a doozy. “The one who wants to do an interview. Right over there.”

Claire pointed and Nell saw a white news van with a satellite dish on top heading their way. Nell turned furious eyes on her mother.

“Don’t you go looking at me in that tone of voice,” Claire said, pouting and sliding into the dialect of the Tennessee mountains. “’Sides. They can help get the word out. Get more people to help look for Joe.”

“We have all the help we need, Claire. Only trained and certified rescue people need to be on the Cumberland. It’s too dangerous.”

“You were on it,” Claire said, as if that lessened the classification of the river’s rapids. And in Claire’s mind, it likely did. As if she just had a new thought, her mother held her big baby blues wide, heavily mascaraed lashes batting once. “And it’ll be great publicity for the business when they find and rescue Joe, your names all over the TV airwaves.”