her. Gretchen kept her gun pointed skyward and slipped her other arm under Vera’s lolling head. Josie stood, keeping her upper body bent so she couldn’t be seen over the top of the barrier, and pulled off her boots, tossing them into the water. Then she unzipped her jeans, peeling them off. Gretchen looked at her with wide eyes. “Boss, I don’t think this is the time—”
“Watch,” Josie shouted at her. The water was knee level now. She tied the pant-legs together. Holding the waist of the jeans, she flapped them, trapping air inside the legs. As fast as she could, she bunched and tied off the waist area. The pant-legs were fat with air. Josie said, “Help me,” as she tried to slip Vera’s head between them. Gretchen helped work Vera’s head through the inflated pant-legs so that the jeans acted as a flotation device. Then she let herself fall back into the rising water. A moment later, her boots bobbed to the surface and floated away. Then came her jeans. Josie kept one hand on Vera while Gretchen tied her own pant-legs together. She couldn’t get the air into the top, so she took hold of Vera while Josie did it.
The water lifted them, carrying them away. Gretchen slipped her head through her floating pants and reached for Josie’s hand. But Josie and Vera were already on the current, rocketing downriver. Josie struggled to keep proper hold on Vera. The woman’s body was completely limp. Water surged over Josie’s head, and she spluttered as her mouth broke the surface. Again, she felt a squeezing in her chest. Calm, said a voice. Stay calm. But there was no staying calm. A scream ripped from her throat as she turned onto her back and pulled Vera onto her stomach. The makeshift flotation device wasn’t enough for them both. Josie’s head kept sinking below the surface. Her lungs burned.
She concentrated on trying to keep her arms wrapped around Vera. Water poured over her head, into her lungs. Flailing, she broke the surface again, and her body hacked so hard trying to expel the water that pain pierced her upper back. Then the water surged over her again. Her eyes were open but all she saw was darkness. The black abyss of the angry, voracious river. It was swallowing her whole. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop anything. Not the river. Not Vera’s death. Not her demons or the tears that came even now in her last moments as she sank.
The darkness can’t hurt you, Jo.
It was Ray’s voice, one of the last things he had said to her. She heard it as clearly as if he were talking into her ear. But that was impossible because she was underwater, clinging to a dying woman who was still bobbing along the surface of the river only by virtue of Josie’s pants. There was some kind of shift in the current, as though they’d passed through an eddy or something. Their bodies spun sideways and Josie’s head broke water again. She coughed, trying to get the water out of her lungs. Vera’s head flopped against Josie’s shoulder. Josie willed her legs to work, to paddle, to keep herself afloat. In her periphery, she saw a large branch shoot past them. Trees. She had to get to the shore or close enough to any trees overtaken in the flooding to grab onto them. They’d never make it following the current. Emergency responders wouldn’t find them before Josie tired out and drowned.
Her legs kicked as she craned her neck, trying to find any sign of land. Finally, to her right, a grove of trees came into view ahead. Every muscle in her body burned with the effort of paddling sideways with Vera hooked onto one of her arms. They barreled past the trees before Josie could reach them. A grunt of frustration escaped her. It was getting harder to take in breath, to stay afloat, to hold on. But she was closer to the edge of the water than she had been. She sent up a silent plea to any higher power that might be listening, and a moment later she was rewarded by another smattering of trees, these with more spindly trunks but grouped closer together. She reached out her free hand as the current carried them past. Her palm slapped against the trunk and slid off. The same thing happened with the next tree. The water was moving too fast. With every