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Copyright © 2018 by Jenny Milchman
Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Adrienne Krogh/Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover image © Kati Kalkamo/Plainpicture, Jurij Krupiak/Shutterstock
Cover image composite by Debra Lill
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Milchman, Jenny, author.
Title: Wicked river / Jenny Milchman.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040810 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.I47555 W53 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040810
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One Year Before
Part One: Lost
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Two: Found
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Part Three: Trapped
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Part Four: Saved
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
One Year After
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Josh, who was there on our own honeymoon in the woods, and every joyful, beauty-filled, wild day since. Thank you for making this journey possible.
One Year Before
Twigs and branches tore at her arms like razor wire, so fast was she running. Breath coming in bull puffs, stinging her nose, drying out her throat and mouth. Her feet churned the soil into clouds of dust. It hadn’t rained in weeks, the driest August on record.
If rain had been predicted, Terry wouldn’t be here right now, caught in this mad race to a nonexistent finish line. She always checked the Weather Channel assiduously before a hike. Five-day forecasts were relatively accurate, and Terry didn’t backpack for more than three. That way, she only had to take two days off, brackets around a weekend, including time for travel. As with everything else, Terry was practical in her outdoor pursuits. She didn’t push herself to cover long distances, nor deal with things like bad weather. Trying to get a stove lit under a drumbeat of rain, slick outer gear humidifying the inside of your tent. Who needed that?
What she wouldn’t give right now for the annoyances of a drowned-out expedition.
He was right behind her.
Huh, huh, huh came the breaths she fought to drag in. She could feel their pulse in her eardrums. She couldn’t keep going at this pace much longer. She’d had a head start, but the man was taller and fleeter than she, made strong by all the work entailed in the shelter he was starting to build.
He had asked Terry if she wanted to see the shelter, and for a moment, she’d been tempted. With horrified regret, she recalled the keen insight and interest the man had exhibited in her approach to hiking and equipment preferences. His attention had been compelling. But coming to her senses—just go off with a strange man in the woods?—Terry had declined, and then he had gotten angry.
That was when she ran.
Woods surrounded her on all sides, both cape and canopy. She broke through another pincushion of sticks, shutting her eyes to protect them, hoping the ground would stay level before her. Fat, fleshy leaves slapped at her face; then, she realized that the leaves were actually flying through the air like missiles.
Terry twisted, shooting a look over her shoulder as she raced on.
The man was hacking at trees
with a machete, reducing their protruding branches to stubs. Whereas Terry had only her body to use as a blade, which was taking its toll on her. Bubbles of blood dotted her arms; welts stood up on the exposed part of her chest. Her shoes relentlessly beat the clods of earth, stirring up that crematorium wake of ashy dirt behind her.
She had told the man her name. That was the thing Terry couldn’t let go of now—how susceptible she had been to his charms. “Terry,” he had echoed. “A solid, capable name.” If he had said her name was beautiful, or even pretty, the connection would’ve been lost. Terry herself was neither of those things, and she knew that her name wasn’t either. Its full version—Theresa—felt too fancy and she’d adopted the diminutive in girlhood. Terry lived alone, cooked herself solid, nutritious meals, and assisted a pool of doctors during the week, while hiking solo on the weekends. The man seemed to recognize all of this about her, and be drawn to her despite it.
Or because of it.
A meaty stick caught her in the back, thrown like a javelin by the man. Terry nearly went down, but stumbled and regained her footing. She was close to giving up, just stopping like a kid in a game of tag. Okay, you got me. He would in the end anyway, wouldn’t he? But no, she couldn’t die out here in her beloved Adirondacks. The man was close enough now that she could hear the hissing slash of the machete blade, feel a rainfall of slender pine needles when he sliced through the air with the weapon’s steel edge. She drilled down and found a final spurt of speed, not daring to take another look behind her.
But the woods were opening up at last, giving way to some other sort of terrain. What was it? Her brain was too oxygen deprived, too terror fueled, to process the change in landscape.
The man hurled his machete in a great, soaring arc of rage, its silver spear turning end over end, headed right for her.
They were at a gully. That was what explained all the sudden space.
Terry dove just before the blade hit the rim of earth and plunged into the ground.
• • •
He would expect her to roll all the way to the base of the ravine, use the creek that rushed there to make her escape. Instead, Terry threw both hands out, clawing her nails into dirt, stones, and grit, arresting her fall halfway down the hill. Scrabbling on her belly in panic, praying that her movements were invisible from above, Terry made her way to an overhang of rock and slid beneath it. The stone ceiling protected her from sight. Terry tasted soil, felt some creature of the earth—a worm, or maybe a small snake—squiggle away, its sinuous body cool against her bare cheek.
The man bushwhacked past the new, wobbly trees that clung to the ravine, maneuvering downhill through brittle, rain-deprived brush, and coming within a few feet of Terry. Upon reaching the bottom, he entered the water and went splashing downriver. After a while, she could no longer hear his churning feet.
Enough time passed that Terry began to picture her getaway. She’d only be half a day later than expected, and who was there to expect her, really? Just the doctor who worked Mondays. Terry pictured signing the Turtle Ridge trail register, her hand shaking so hard that her entry would be nearly illegible, although she would still follow protocol, do the right thing; that was Terry’s way. She could actually feel the wooden lid on the box that protected the log, too heavy to hold, given her compromised state. It would fall, catching her bruised and scraped fingers, and she would bite back a bleat of pain.
But at least she’d be safe.
She had saved herself. Calm, capable Terry, far too prepared and competent to wind up in trouble in the woods, would be out of this mess soon.
Then a pair of arms as strong as winches slid beneath the rock and pulled her out.
Part One
Lost
Chapter One
We deceive ourselves.
Those were the words in Natalie Abbott’s head when she woke up the morning of her wedding.
It was a terrible thing to think, especially when you were about to get married, and Natalie immediately rolled over in the lofty bed and tried to fall back asleep. Today would be a huge day, and tomorrow promised in some ways to be even bigger.
But sleep refused to come, forestalled by the prospect of this afternoon’s ceremony, and last-minute preparations still left to make for their honeymoon. Sunlight streamed through the gauzy curtains that hung over the windows across from her bed. The country inn where she and Doug were getting married dated back to 1812, and amenities like blackout shades had been sacrificed in favor of historical detail. The glass in the windows had warbles in it that had been blown there two centuries ago.
Apprehension began to turn into anticipation. Natalie wrapped her arms around herself—this inn did have air-conditioning, at least—and shivered in pure delight. What a beautiful place to be married. If you were going to start a new life, this was the setting for it.
There was a knock on the door, and Natalie threw back the flowery sheets and padded across the floorboards, wearing only a baby-doll nightie. She had hoped that Doug might make a middle-of-the-night excursion to her room, despite the ban against them seeing each other until this afternoon. A final romantic interlude with her fiancé seemed worth shucking some old-fashioned superstition. Most of the married couples they knew had bent other rules, agreeing to a “first look” for convenience’s sake, for instance, while Natalie and Doug had decided to opt for tradition and take wedding photos after the ceremony.
Tradition was important to both of them, and for much the same reason: neither had had a lot of it while growing up. Which meant there were gaps, big holes, when it came to talking about their pasts, but Natalie never blamed Doug for going stony and silent. There were parts of her own upbringing that she avoided thinking about as well.
“Doug?” she whispered, cracking the door.
“Doug!” came the retort as her sister pushed her way through the opening. “You get to spend your whole life with him. But this is the last day I can take care of my baby sister.” Claudia gave an exaggerated sniff, then smiled at Natalie.
Natalie took a step backward, allowing Claudia inside and offering a smile in return. Doug was maintaining the custom, her older sister was keeping the promise she’d made back when Natalie was just a toddler and Claudia already crossing the threshold to teen status, and the faint trace of foreboding, with which Natalie had woken, was finally receding, like a wave on the beach, before the wonder of this day.
Claudia held out a tray. “The inn sent breakfast since Doug’s in the dining room eating his,” she said. “And Dad wants to know if there’s anything he can do to help.”
They exchanged smiles, Natalie knowing that the blend of ingredients she saw on her sister’s face must be mirrored on her own. Indulgence, regret, annoyance.
“My mani?” Natalie suggested, displaying ten ragged nails. It was about as likely that her father would take on the task of grooming as anything else—which was to say, not very likely at all.
Claudia acknowledged the comment with a wry nod, then set the tray on an antique desk and whipped a cloth napkin off a plate. She poured coffee from a carafe, its fragrance filling the room. “The girl is coming in a few hours with her kit,” she said. “She’ll do your toes too.”
Natalie wiggled her toes against the wood floorboards. She walked over to the desk—though the motion felt more like prancing—and took a bite out of a muffin. “Then I guess we won’t need Dad’s assistance.”
They traded smiles again. Claudia fingered a strand of Natalie’s hair while Natalie explored the interior of an omelet. “I think you should wear it up after all,” Claudia said.
Natalie looked up at her big sister, and nodded.
• • •
Later that afternoon, Natalie glanced at the porcelain clock in her suite, an analog relic that actually ticked. Just past two o’clock, with her hair and makeup already completed. Less than two hours to go.
&
nbsp; Natalie gave the woman laboring over her scruffy hands an apologetic look before casting her gaze toward the view outside. As dictated by custom, she and Doug had parted just before midnight last night. Right now, he was probably hanging out in one of the outbuildings scattered across the generous grounds of the inn, or maybe playing a game of tennis or basketball on the far-off courts.
Absurdly, Natalie missed him. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how accustomed she had grown to having Doug by her side. It’d been easy to allow the distance between herself and her friends to draw itself out because Doug filled a void inside Natalie that no one else ever had. From the night they’d met three years ago, stumbling into each other—literally—at the bar where Doug drank with his buddies, a gaping hole inside Natalie had closed over like water filling in a space.
“Hold still,” the woman doing Natalie’s nails cautioned.
Natalie hadn’t even realized that she’d flinched. She felt a pang of loneliness, incongruous on this day when she was going to pledge herself to be joined to someone else forever.
Her sister had left to see to the host of last-minute tasks—checking on the floral arrangements, making sure the fruit gummies were tied up in their taffeta bundles—while Natalie had filled the remainder of her morning with a long, luxurious bath. Then came the arrival of the three beautifying women, like Sleeping Beauty’s trio of fairies: this one who did nails, another who had applied a painterly palette of makeup, and a third who’d looped Natalie’s hair into a series of curlicues, then added a dozen slender braids, securing the whole thing with a rafter of vines. Natalie felt a bit silly being tended to so richly, but even she had to admit that the effect appeared to be worth it. Doug would hardly recognize her. They could let out her hair like a pleated cloak around them when they had sex for the first time as a married couple.
Natalie glanced down at her lap, then at the floor. Her manicure was nearly done, and her toenails glistened like tiny peach seashells.
Claudia was to be her maid—make that matron—of honor, and Natalie also had two bridesmaids. Not her closest friends from the city—there’d been tension with Eva and Val ever since Natalie had met Doug, and it’d come to a head after the engagement. Natalie had been forced to reach out to a pair of old college friends, with whom she had largely lost touch, but who rallied when Natalie explained that she was getting married.
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