1
LINCOLN
The gravel lot was empty except for a mud-splattered truck and a guy hauling a raft up the bank like it weighed nothing.
He had it flipped upside down over his head, arms braced wide on the hull, and he was carrying it from the waterline to a rack near the building with an easy, unhurried stride. The muscles in his back moved under a sun-faded T-shirt that had probably been dark green once. His shorts were wet to mid-thigh. River sandals. No hat. Hair that was brown and too long and plastered against his neck from the water or the heat or both.
He racked the raft, flipped it right-side up with one hand on the grab line, and turned around.
He was good-looking in the way that mountain men were good-looking—like he’d been assembled from the same raw materials as the landscape and nobody had bothered to sand down the edges. Strong jaw, sun-darkened skin, eyes that were lighter than the rest of him. He looked like the kind of man who smiled easily and meant it about half the time.
He also looked like the kind of man who was done for the day and did not want to be bothered.
Too bad.
“Are you with Wildwood River Co.?” I asked, already walking toward him. I’d left my car door open. The engine was still ticking.
He looked at me the way you look at someone who shows up at a restaurant five minutes before closing. Not rude. Just assessing how much of his evening this was about to cost him.
“I am Wildwood River Co.,” he said. “Or a sixth of it. We’re closed.”
“Your website says you run Class IV trips.”
“We do. At eight a.m. Not at—” He glanced at the sky, gauging the light the way people in the mountains did instead of checking a watch. “Five forty-five in the evening.”
“What about right now?”
He stared at me. Then he laughed—short, surprised, like I’d said something in a language he understood but hadn’t expected to hear.
“Right now, I’m putting boats away. The river’s not going anywhere. Come back in the morning.”
I didn’t want to come back in the morning. I’d been driving for two hours with the windows down and my music too loud, and the whole way here, the road had been climbing into mountains that got greener and steeper and wilder with every mile. My blood was doing the thing it always did when something big was close. The hum. The pull. The feeling that my body already knew what was coming even if my brain hadn’t caught up yet.
I’d found Wildwood River Co. online three days ago. Their Class IV trip was called the Tempest Run—a five-mile stretch of continuous whitewater through a narrow gorge with names like Jawbone, The Churn, and Dead Man’s Pocket.The description on the website was filled with language likeexperienced paddlers onlyandguide reserves the right to refuse participants based on skill assessmentandthis is not a float trip.
I’d read it four times. My heart rate had gone up every time.
“I’m not a walk-in looking for a sunset float,” I said. “I want the Tempest Run. I’ve paddled Class III in the Nantahala and the Ocoee, and I’ve done Class IV on the Gauley. I know what I’m getting into.”
Something shifted in his face. Not the dismissal I was used to—the one where people heard what I wanted to do and immediately started talking me out of it. This was interest. Reluctant, irritated interest, but interest.
“You’ve run the Gauley,” he said.
“Upper and Lower. Last October.”
“Water levels?”
“Twenty-six hundred CFS. It was a release weekend.”
He was looking at me differently now. Still annoyed, still clearly ready to be done with his day, but the assessment had changed. He wasn’t deciding whether I was serious. He was deciding what to do about the fact that I was.
“The Tempest Run isn’t something I send people on alone,” he said. “It’s guided. I’m in the raft with you, reading the water, calling the lines. That’s not negotiable.”
“Fine.”
“And it’s not happening tonight. The light’s wrong, the water’s up from the rain we got Tuesday, and I haven’t scouted the gorge since the level changed.” He pulled a paddle off the rack and inspected the blade, running his thumb along the edge like he was checking for damage. “What I’m telling you is that I take this section of river seriously, and if you want to run it with me, you’re going to let me do it right.”
The way he said “with me” landed differently than it should have. Like the words had a weight he hadn’t planned on, and he’d noticed it a half second after they left his mouth.
