Forbidden River

by Brynn Kelly

  “Sounds good.”

  “Only problem—it’s a flash flood zone. If the rain starts up, with the melting snow in the tops, we’re screwed. But we’ll be safe enough tonight. We’ll take on the waterfall in the morning.” She switched off the light, but not before a flicker of doubt crossed her face.

  “Waterfalls aren’t as dangerous as you think, if you approach them right,” he said. “The trick is to go with the current and not get stuck in the suckback. I can talk you through that.”

  “My brother says it’s like being caught in an underwater washing machine. Of course he wouldn’t go near that waterfall.”

  Something caught Cody’s attention, on the dark far bank. “Shit, a light,” he whispered, narrowing his eyes. Dozens of lights—a constellation of bluish pinpricks.

  “Gotta watch those glowworms.” He didn’t have to look to know she was smiling. “One drop of their lure on your skin and the neurotoxins crawl into your veins. They reach your heart and boom, game over.”

  “Whoa, serious?”

  “No.”

  He flicked his paddle, sprinkling her with water. “It’s not polite to take advantage of the dumb tourist, you know.”

  “Oh, I’d take advantage of you any da—”

  Her grin died. She looked down at the map and quickly refolded it. Tried to refold it. She didn’t find the right creases. She swore, thrust it into his hands without meeting his eyes and ripped off the lamp. As he put the map to rights, she swept her paddle and pulled away, back straight, focus fixed ahead.

  He blew out a long, slow breath. Did she clam up because she hadn’t meant to infer she wanted to jump him, or because she regretted admitting it? And why so flustered? She didn’t strike him as the easily embarrassed type.

  Interesting. Was it possible this attraction wasn’t one way?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY THE TIME they hauled their kayaks into the clearing, pulled on warmer layers and began unpacking supplies, thick darkness had fallen and Tia’s belly was flip-flopping. And not because of the madman hunting them. Tonight that threat was distant. No, right now it was Cody who had her nerves strung tight. She’d spent far too much of the evening admiring the way the tightly packed muscle of his arms and shoulders and back shifted as he pulled the paddle through the water and flicked it out again. He had an easy command of the kayak, like he had an easy command of his body.

  She’d be such a cliché if she had a fling with a tourist. Not that he was offering.

  “Good spot,” he said, unrolling a thin sleeping mat.

  “Yeah.” She stretched backward, her spine giving a satisfying crack. The overhanging cliff jutted into a starry sky. It’d be a chilly night.

  “Even if he figures out where we are, which I doubt, he can’t... Holy shit!”

  She snapped straight, her pulse vaulting. “What is it?”

  The slap of palms on skin. Ah. The locals had found Cody. She grabbed the spray from the pile of supplies and limped to him.

  “Hold still,” she said, spraying his legs. “You might want to rub it in.” Before I do it myself.

  He coughed, swatting the air. “What is that—mace?”

  “Lethal, eh?” she said, spraying her own skin, avoiding the wounds. “I’m guessing citronella, peppermint, lemongrass, mānuka... My koro’s trapper mate makes it, especially for the sandflies around here. He makes a killing at the Wairoimata markets but won’t tell anyone the secret recipe. We call him ‘the Colonel.’”

  “You’re really limping now.”

  She zipped the little bottle into the pocket of her spray jacket, ready for the morning, and stretched her neck side to side. “Lucky we’re not walking out.”

  “We better fix you up.” He picked up a long nylon bag and untied it. “The tent’s bright yellow so we’ll just use it as a groundsheet.” He laid it on the grass, its dark underside facing up, and slapped the mat on top. “We only have one sleeping bag.”

  “The climbers are carrying theirs.”

  “You can have it.” He shook it out and tossed it onto the mat. “Come sit. I’ll get the first aid kit.”

  Her leg throbbed as if it’d heard. She lowered herself onto the sleeping bag, digging her fingers into her aching right shoulder. The reflective white cross on the kit stood out against the dark, bobbing along beside him like it was floating.

  “Where did you fly in from?” she said. “America, or...?”

  “Started out in Corsica—a mighty long time ago.”

  “Is that your base?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you normally holiday alone?”

  He settled in beside her leg, strapping on his headlamp. “No one is fool enough to join me. Like you say, it takes a special kind of death wish.”

  He switched on the lamp, flicked out his pocketknife and slid it under the hem of her jeans. She’d rather avoid light but she’d also prefer he didn’t do this blind.

  “What about your brother?” she asked.

  He stilled. “How do you know about my brother?”

  Shit. “You mentioned him.”

  “Pretty sure I didn’t.” A definite bitter note. He stabbed the fabric from underneath and sawed. “Did you Google me?”

  Honesty is the best policy, as her mother used to say before she got convicted. “Had to check I wasn’t delivering a novice kayaker to his...”

  “...death?”

  “So...your brother?”

  The pressure around her leg released as he cut. “What about him?”

  “He’s into suicidal kayaking, too, right?”

  Cody pocketed the knife and began to unpeel the denim, stopping where he met resistance. She held her breath.

  “Was,” he said.

  “He gave it up? Smart guy.”

  “He died. Kayaking.”

  Oh my God. “I’m sorry. That was...”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “No, seriously, I am sorry.” She’d intended to tease him, not upset him. “How long ago?”

  “Seven years.”

  “That’s why you joined the legion?”

  He grabbed nail scissors from the kit and started snipping around the wounds. “I enlisted a year later.”

  That tightness in his tone—he wasn’t just grieving, he was angry. There was something unresolved, something he wasn’t going to volunteer.

  “Were you with him when he died?”

  Snip. “Yep.”

  Yikes. “So is it him you blame, or yourself?”

  He jerked his head up, his brow stern, the light drilling into her. “What?”

  She shut her eyes and pressed the heels of her palms to them. “You’re pissed off about it.”

  She sensed a return to darkness. When she opened her eyes, the night was twice as black, apart from a cone of light around him and her leg.

  “Shouldn’t have happened,” he said, drawing her lower leg across his lap, sending tingles over her skin. God, Tia, he’s talking about his brother’s death.

  “Accidents never should,” she said. “That’s why they’re so hard to accept. Though, to be fair, any death that isn’t from extreme old age is hard to accept.”

  “I guess.” As he cut away the fabric, the points of impact became clearer. The dog had attacked from the rear, but its top teeth had embedded near the front of her shin and the bottom ones in the flesh underneath.

  “Is that what happened to your family—an accident?” he asked.

  She shook her head, not that he’d see.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

  Hell, the whole of New Zealand knew the story. Why not him, too? “My mum and dad got sent to jail.”

  He lifted his gaze, shielding the light. “Whoa. Th
at I didn’t see coming. The way you spoke about accidents—I thought...”

  “No, that’s more professional. I’ve mopped up after a lot of tragedy. Guess I’m a little desensitized,” she said, feeling the need to explain her tactless questioning.

  “Happens.” He pulled tweezers from his kit. “Is that partly why you left the air force?”

  She frowned. Did she want to share details? She’d met the guy only a few hours ago.

  “Talk to me, Tia. It’ll take your mind off this.”

  Good point. And she felt an urge to connect with the part of him that was still living his hell. “I’d had enough of senseless death. I wanted to return to the land of the living where sudden, violent death is the exception, not the norm.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I know it’s a cop-out to leave other people to do that job, but after a while you either go mad or you go numb. I could feel myself swinging between the two, sometimes empty, sometimes furious, as if my mind was trying to settle on which way to go. When you start laughing at the other guys’ dark jokes, about the bodies, about death...”

  He tilted his head. “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t want to reach the point where it was me making the jokes. And you can’t shovel that shit while you’re swimming in it, no matter how many psychologists they dump you in front of.”

  “You’re still doing good work, with the search and rescue ops.”

  “It’s as much death as I can handle.”

  “These tourists—it’s hit you hard, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” She swallowed. “Must be hard for you, too, after your experience.”

  “This next bit...” The corners of his eyes wrinkled.

  “It’ll hurt, I know. Just do it.”

  He gave a grim nod. She guessed that was him slamming the door on sharing his story. He bent closer, his warm breath coasting over her skin. She closed her eyes, concentrating on that, not on—

  “Yeow,” she breathed, her eyes flicking open.

  The tweezers held a bloody tuft of denim. Mate, it felt like he’d stabbed her, not removed something. Blood rolled down her shin. She bit her lip and rode out the pain, switching focus to his face. His stubbled jaw was square and serious, his brown eyes sharp, lines etched between them. His brow hunkered as he tugged again. She braced, keeping her gaze on him as the pain struck. As he worked, she kept staring, kept breathing. If he looked up, she could avert her eyes. In the meantime, she’d run with the only pain relief on offer.

  “My brother, Zack,” he said quietly, still focused on her leg. “We were doing a river in Spain. He went down a waterfall and got impaled on a branch. Total freak accident. It was a mess.” He examined a fragment of denim in the tweezers like it was a portal into the past. “Years later, a doctor buddy—the medic in my commando team—went over the medical report for me. The way the stick hit was crazy unlucky—the speed he was going, the trajectory, how it snuck in under his life jacket and jammed between his ribs. A quarter inch either way and it might have just cracked a rib.”

  Her chest tightened. “Was anyone else with you?”

  “No. It was like this. Isolated. That’s why we picked it. He begged me to stay with him, but I figured if I did he was definitely dead. So I paddled for help. By the time we got back...” He gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His eyes shone. “He’d only lasted half an hour. Half an hour.”

  She shuffled forward awkwardly and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “I don’t usually talk about it,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “For exactly this reason.”

  “I get that. So you blame yourself.”

  “Should’ve known going for help was futile. Should’ve listened to him. He died alone, in so much pain... When we found him you could still see it on his face.”

  Her eyes stung. She knew that look. You didn’t get that look out of your head, even with a stranger. With someone you knew, with your brother... “I would have gone for help, too. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Sheesh, you’d think that after all this time she’d have found something more helpful to say than I’m sorry.

  “I think that’s all the denim.” He ran his fingers around her calf and grabbed a packet of antiseptic wipes. “This is gonna hurt.”

  She released his shoulder. “It’s fine.”

  “Thank you for being the first person ever not to say, ‘It wasn’t your fault, there was nothing you could have done, you couldn’t have known...’”

  “I figure you already know all that.”

  He started wiping, his touch so gentle she could barely feel it, though she could feel the sting, all right. “My parents made such a point of not blaming me that I knew they were struggling not to themselves. They were so determined that it shouldn’t destroy us as a family, but something like that—it can’t help but screw everything up. So I did the adult thing and ran away.”

  “Oh, believe me, I get that.”

  “Thing is, because I’ve upended my daily life, it seems possible that Zack’s back in San Antonio, doing his thing. It’s not like I’m walking past his old office every morning, or sitting at the bar where we used to hang, or driving past his apartment. It’s mostly when I go home that...” He shook his head. “And I don’t go home, so...”

  Her chest twisted. If she lost Tane...

  “So, yeah, you asked before if I was pissed? I don’t know if it’s that anymore, but the regret sure follows you around.” He grabbed another wipe. “Are you angry, about your parents?”

  “Hell, yeah. Whenever I think of it—which is a lot—I get this knot of rage right here.” She thumped her chest.

  They fell silent. The pain dulled to a stinging throb, which had to be progress. She pulled her right arm across her chest and then her left, but the ache remained.

  “To risk stating the obvious and saying what everybody says,” she ventured, “you know you shouldn’t be angry at yourself for your decision, right?”

  “In theory, sure. But it’s not something I can rationalize. Not an hour of a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d stayed. Of course, I wish that fucking branch had never happened, but that wasn’t the direct result of a choice I made.” He tossed a wipe in a growing pile. “What did they go to prison for—your folks?”

  Tia bit her cheek. How could she clam up after his admission? “They used to own a big retail chain. High profile, you know? Always sponsoring this and mentoring that and sitting on boards and getting awards and going to black tie functions. All over the social pages. Media darlings.”

  He opened a tube of antiseptic cream and started dabbing her wounds. “I’m guessing you didn’t live around here.”

  “No, I grew up in the city, in Auckland.” She massaged the muscles at the top of her back. “My dad didn’t want anything to do with my koro, with his working-class roots. He got out of Wairoimata as soon as he was old enough and only grudgingly came back to argue with Koro every Christmas. He sent my brother and me to private schools, hired tutors, sent us for music lessons and golf lessons. They were grooming us to take over the business.”

  “You, too, huh? But you enlisted?”

  He fixed a dressing to her shin and grabbed another. “My great rebellion. I always had this uncomfortable feeling about their business. I guess I picked up on the undercurrents in their conversations, their body language, but I was too naive to know what it meant.”

  “Which was?”

  “They were committing massive fraud and tax evasion. Usual story—the company was failing but they kept lying to shareholders to prop it up, lying to the tax department, hoping they could work their way out of it. But it just got worse until... Two years ago I was on transport duty in Iraq when Tane sent word. They’d been arrested—him, too. It was one of the biggest fraud cases in New Zealand.”

  “T
ane?” he said, carefully matching her pronunciation. Tah-nay.

  “My brother. He very narrowly avoided jail. He’d been working with them a few years, but they’d kept him in the dark and he managed to prove it. The whole thing broke him, though.”

  “Ah, man, that’s tough.”

  “Sucks to be us, eh?”

  He met her gaze, shielding the light, and grinned. “Sure does.”

  She chewed her bottom lip and his gaze dropped to it, making her décolletage warm. If she leaned in a little and he leaned in a little... Her breath shallowed out. His jaw twitched and he looked away. As he grabbed another dressing, she allowed herself a full inhalation. Turned out she was a sucker for a sexy man listening to her pity party.

  She eased back onto her elbows, buying some distance. “So this solo kayaking thing. Is it a tribute to your brother?”

  “Exactly that,” he said, resuming his task. “Once a year, every year since—except when I enlisted and hadn’t earned the leave. Before he died, we narrowed down a list of the wildest runs in the world and made a pact to kayak them. We’d only just started when...”

  “So you’re finishing it for him.”

  “And for me. When I’m alone in a place like this, I can imagine he’s here with me. This is gonna make me sound crazy but...” He shook his head.

  “Hey, I already think you’re crazy.”

  He smiled, a meltingly sad smile. “After a day or so I hear his voice. It keeps him alive for me, kind of fills up the hollow.” He tapped his chest. So he had a hole there and she had a knot. “And when I’m kayaking, when it gets gnarly and I have to focus, the world vanishes. I feel like me again—the me I used to be.”

  “Some people meditate to get that feeling.”