Flash of Fire (16 page)

“Dog meat, Hamilton!” Robin screamed from where she had managed to back paddle and save herself—an eddy current at the side of the raging river. In a pool perhaps twice the length of her tiny little kayak, it slowly whirled her in a clockwise circle every ten seconds.

Large rock.

Cliff face.

A little bit of grass.

More cliff face.

A roaring menace of Class III rapids pounding over rocks.

More roaring menace, ultimately launching itself off a ten-foot-high waterfall into more psychotic roil of Class III madness.

Large rock.

Cliff face.

A little bit of grass.

She let the kaleidoscopic whorl continue until she was starting to feel a little nauseous. With an ill-timed flick of the paddle, she almost launched herself out into the maelstrom rather than moving to the side of the current as she'd intended.

Robin managed to recover before she shot out of her safe haven. Her next attempt to move to the edge of the whorl so that she could grab on to the cliff wall threatened to launch her once again into the death-and-destruction zone.

So she sat in her toy-sized boat twirling in slow circles, contemplating the various forms of murder she would be perpetrating on one Mickey “Blue Eyes” Hamilton, if by some miracle—like maybe a
Star Trek
transporter beam—she was rescued.

Getting a helicopter in here safely would be a hell of a trick and getting back out even harder.

No way to climb the cliff even if she abandoned her kayak. Hell, a gecko with its sticky little feet probably couldn't scale this sucker.

A sharp bleat, only a little louder than the thunderous river, had her looking upward. A baby mountain sheep, still more fuzz than fur, was looking down at her from an impossible perch several stories above her. Then it laughed at her again and scampered away up the cliff.

Fine!

There was still no way to climb up the sheer—

Just to drive their casual arrogance home, a mother sheep with huge, curling horns went scampering up after her kid.

Double fine!

She glared back down at the eddy, where she was tucked into the only refuge from the mini Niagara Falls and—not being some crazy breed of mountain sheep—would be stuck here until the end of her days.

On the next spin around, she eyed the tiny clump of grass. Which was just that, tiny. Only if she wanted to live the rest of her life in fetal position would she fit there. But better that than the Rapids of Doom. She was designing her tiny grass hut, built season by season from carefully nurtured grass fronds, when another slow spin revealed Mickey coming toward her.

He'd been leading the way all day. Had graduated her from flat water to Class I, which basically meant the water was moving on its own rather than standing still.

After lunch, and some more splendidly mind-numbing sex, he'd introduced her to Class II. A little rough water, a rock to dodge, a couple of one-foot drops, just enough that she could feel herself go partially weightless.

Ah, but she had been young and naive then. After the first section of Class II, she'd foolishly decided that she could get to enjoy this sport.

Worse, she'd told that to Mickey.

They'd come out of something Mickey had called the “high side of Class II” in good shape and back into a lazy curve in the river that she now understood was a low Class I.

River savvy.

Nothing the girl couldn't do.

Fly to fire.

Screw a man until they both went blind.

Take a Class II rapid in stride on only her second day ever on a river.

…yeah right. Not anymore.

Now, she was going to kill Mickey for suckering her into this. Nothing had prepared her for what had awaited them around that last lazy bend.

Mickey had given her one of those all-knowing smiles of his as they approached it.

“What?”

“Listen.”

She'd listened. And heard what sounded like ocean waves, which made no sense. The nearest ocean was hundreds of miles away, safely on the other side of the largest mountain on the whole continent.

Then it had sounded more like a train.

A freight train.

One in a big goddamn hurry.

Then, like a flight of helicopters hovering low around the corner, the pounding fusillade of sound echoing off the canyon walls. The air, which had been lazily pine scented, was now thickening with tiny water drops like when you were working close to a spraying fire hose.

They'd come out of the bend. The valley had been moseying along beside them in pleasant pull outs with charming stands of trees and brush. The occasional moose—damn, but they were huge—had watched them go by as the cute giants chewed on a handy berry bush. Around that fateful River Bend of Last Resort, the valley walls had shot upward until it looked like that scene with the statues carved out of thousand-foot-high cliffs in one of the
Lord of the Ring
movies.

As she watched the standing waves in a stupefied way for the length of three heartbeats, she was swept into the rapid. It became a blur of disconnected near disasters.

Rock! Turn hard to the right.

Another! Turn the other way and paddle for all she was worth…which only made her go faster!

Hole behind a rock. Mickey had told her holes were bad, very bad. Back paddle until her arms were screaming and then shoot around the lip of it.

Backward through the next rapid!

Dig in a blade and spin like a top.

Almost going over.

Saving herself with a quick stab of the paddle and a lucky ricochet off a submerged boulder.

Off a two-foot jump, a jarring bounce off a rock, and a face full of ice water.

She didn't remember quite how she'd finally reached the last-ditch sanctuary of the little eddy current that was destined to be her new home for all eternity, but she did.

Another gentle whirl around. Big rock. Cliff face. Future grass hut. Cliff face. Big rock. Mad rapids that she'd survived and would never ever go near again.

Mickey paddling toward her…going
against
the rapids that were waiting to kill her.

He progressed toward her, conquering the river's racing current inch by inch. His double-ended paddle whirled like a windmill in a hurricane. She twisted her head around to keep him in view for as much of her slow twirl as possible.

His arm and chest muscles were finally explained. He looked like a goddamn god driving toward her against nature's best efforts to drag him away. Well, at least the last thing she was ever going to see in this life was an example of quite how exceptional a human male could be, because…
Damn, girl!

With a last wild effort, his kayak launched into her eddy current and stopped close beside hers.

“Hey, Robin Pink Breast. What are you doing here?” he asked, all cheery as if this was somehow fun.

He was barely out of breath.

She hit him.

* * *

Mickey saw the paddle blade coming at his shoulder but couldn't dodge it in time. The blow knocked him sideways, and he was over into the icy water before he could get his paddle lined up.

He went with the roll, slashed his paddle hard, and used his momentum and a judicious dig with his blade to pop back up. He shook his head to clear the water from his ears and hair. Chill water slipped down his back and found its way inside the spray skirt. An involuntary shiver ran up his spine.

Robin was gaping at him. “How did you do that?”

“What? The Eskimo roll?” he had to shout for her to hear him over the roar of the rapids.

“Yes, the Eskimo roll,” she mimicked his voice with a heavy layer of anger. “Something that looks useful as hell and you don't bother to teach to me before trying to feed me to a river that's even now gnashing its teeth at me. It wants to eat me for lunch. And not in a good way.”

“No, I'm the only one who gets to do that.” Not even a tiny bit of softening at the recent memory of how much fun he'd had down between her lovely legs during lunch. He also recalled how incredibly she had returned the favor.

“Well…” His guess had been right. Robin, when angry, was indeed formidable. When she hadn't come up to the chute behind him, he'd been terrified at what he might find. At first he'd searched for a flipped boat and a battered body going by.

The image of her trapped in a hole, submerged hard against a rock, had sent him racing back upstream. His relief at spotting her slowly whirling around in an eddy current like some prima ballerina had made him laugh with relief and swallow a fair amount of river water from a sudden blast of spray.

At least it wasn't fear. Anger on the river was much easier to deal with than cowering fear.

“The reason I didn't teach you the roll is that it takes hours of practice, even in a swimming pool. Doing that to you on a freezing lake would not have been a kindness. And then using it in a rapids is a whole other technique entirely. That's why I showed you how to get out of the boat if you got flipped. You do remember that, don't you?”

Without hesitation, she tapped the pull loop on the front of the spray skirt that wrapped around her body just below her breasts and was hooked over the edge of the cockpit cowling. “Pull and swim out of the kayak. Try to keep ahold of the paddle,” she recited dutifully.

“Good girl.”

“Stop being condescending, Hamilton, or I'll go for the throat next time I whack you.”

“Safety, Robin. It's—”

“Safety?” she exploded at him as they whirled around opposite sides of the eddy current. “Safety?” It was nearly a scream. “You launch me into Class Eighty-Three rapids with no training and you're talking about safety?”

He considered his response for a moment, then answered in his best schoolroom voice. “As I explained before, there are only five classes of rapids, Robin.”

He barely managed to duck in time, so that her paddle blade bounced off his helmet rather than chopping off his head. Her wild flail almost flipped her over. He saved her a dunking with a strong paddle stroke in her direction and a quick grab.

“Uh, thanks,” she managed a little sheepishly once she was stable again.

“Okay.” Mickey wondered how deep her reservoir of anger might be once tapped. He hoped that it had mostly run its course. “Let's talk through how to attack this rapid.”

“I can't even see it with all this whirling around.”

Mickey waited for the eddy to spin them to the right position, then he nudged her boat sharply forward. It slid smoothly ahead to bump lightly against the big rock that defined the downstream edge of the eddy and would offer the best view of the run. The motion had kicked his boat back-end-first past the eddy line and out into the river current. A couple of quick paddle strokes and he was able to join her.

Her scowl was back, but she didn't explain why.

Mickey decided that ignoring it was the safest policy. He pointed his paddle at the rapids.

“Once we peel out across the eddy line here, you want to aim for the big downstream V. See the clear green water?”

At her tight nod, he continued quickly.

“That will shoot you past those two big rocks, but don't worry, these rapids aren't big enough for there to be any keeper holes.” He decided that his description of getting caught in one of those had been a poor choice of mid-trip stories. A keeper hole trapped kayaks, kayakers, and—if it killed them—their bodies in dangerous churning backflows that were almost impossible to escape. Rescues from keeper holes typically required a team with ropes or a river raft that was far bigger than the specific hole—the method his dad had used to save him the one time he'd thought he was strong enough to break out of one on his own.

“Thank God for small favors. But what about that?” Robin aimed her paddle at the little waterfall.

“The Tea Cup?”

“You're calling the Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction a Tea Cup?”

“Sure. See how it squeezes between the two big rocks? And then it dumps through in a smooth line as if you're pouring tea?”

“And then it kills me.”

“Let me show you a trick.”

“Can I kill you afterwards?”

“Sure.”

“Okay then.”

“As you go off the Tea Cup—”

“Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction,” she insisted. “MFDD.”

“—lean back and try to lift up the bow by kicking your legs upward. It's mostly a hip move, and I know from experience you have really amazing control of your hips.” That got most of the smile he'd been looking for. “It's called a Boof.”

“So you want me to Boof the Tea Cup before I kill you for leading me into the hungry maw of the Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction?”

“Exactly!” He anticipated her swing this time, caught her arm, and used it to drag her against him. She melted into his kiss just like she did every time.

He forced himself to let go of her before he totally lost his head and ended up dunking them both. The water really was cold and hadn't stopped slithering out of his hair and down his back.

“Follow right behind me and do what I do as exactly as you can. Once I'm through the drop, I'll clear off to the side and wait for you at the bottom of the Tea Cup just in case you bungle the Boof. But you won't. You've taken to this more naturally than anyone I've ever taught.”

* * *

And with one of his smarmy grins, he was off and Robin was digging in to stay in his wake. Ever so impressed with his own teaching abilities…yet he had somehow convinced her to follow him.

They “peeled out” across the eddy line and her gently whirling Pool of Everlasting Safety was lost behind her before she even had time to say good-bye to her imaginary grass hut or the sneering sheep who watched over it.

Paddle left, paddle right. Twist around the rock. Drop into the downstream V—which was like tipping a Firehawk into a steep dive. They accelerated so fast that it snapped her head back.