second Lacey’s face crumpled, before she quickly rearranged it into stoic.
It didn’t make sense. Lacey had tied the tent into this canoe. He’d seen her doing it. She’d even come over to check that he’d tied his in properly.
Victor’s head jerked up, and he scanned the water. They had to get the tent back. It was in a waterproof cover, so it should be okay. As long as it hadn’t gone floating off down the river, never to be seen again.
It wasn’t heavy. The poles and the cover were deliberately designed to be lightweight, both to save on the energy needed to carry them, but also for events such as this.
“Here.” Kelvin’s canoe had nudged into shore. He leaned forward and threw Victor a couple of ragged towels. He draped one around Lacey’s shoulders, and she tucked it into her sides without even acknowledging him, her eyes still scanning the lake.
The smaller towel wouldn’t even travel from shoulder to shoulder on him, so he shrugged out of his life jacket and used it to briskly rub his arms and legs, the rough surface adding some sensation to the numbing cold.
C’mon, c’mon. His gaze traveled to the opposite bank then back again. Then away from the rapids and down where the lake widened back out again. In all the chaos, it was possible it had bobbed past the two canoes still in the water and they hadn’t seen it.
Nothing.
He tracked back. Moved his head to the left. To the last set of rapids. Holding his hand up over his eyes, he squinted against the morning sun, checking all of the shadows in case they weren’t.
His pulse thrummed as he took the moving water as a grid. After a few seconds, his gaze landed on what looked like a shadow, but something about it felt off.
A scraping against the shore indicated both the other canoes were back on land. “Kelvin, do you have the binoculars?” Victor asked the question without taking his eyes off the shadow.
“Sure. What are you looking at?” A couple of seconds later the weight was placed in his palm.
“Just give me a sec.” Victor raised the lenses to his eyes and bit back a moan.
It was the sack containing the tent, the top just showing above the surface of the water. In what had to be ridiculous odds, when the canoe had flipped the tent must have sunk just far enough to catch the undertow pulling back toward the rapids.
Now it was caught in the vortex of water swirling around the rock and nothing, short of about three months with no rain, would free it without intervention.
“What can you see?”
Beside him, Lacey dropped her now-soaked towel on the ground and had her hand out for the binoculars.
Victor handed them over. “Look at the rock in the last set, close to the middle.”
Lacey twisted the lenses as she held them up to her eyes. A couple of seconds later she swore softly under her breath.
“What happened out there, guys?” Kelvin crunched over the sand and gravel, stopping a few feet from them, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts. From the shrewd look in his eyes, Victor would bet the estate Kelvin knew exactly what had happened and was still unfolding.
Lacey opened her mouth, but Victor cut her off. “It was my fault. A hundred percent. I got distracted for a second and lost my oar. Lacey showed incredible skill getting us out of the rapids without tipping.”
“Except we did.” Lacey made the statement without inflection or accusation. “We’ve also lost the tent because it wasn’t tied down properly. But I can get it back.”
She what? Victor’s gaze darted back to where the tent was still pinned against the rock. Then he looked up the river, trying to calculate what possible run anyone could do that would both get through the rapids safely while getting close enough to the rock to somehow dislodge the tent.
There was no way. Not when the smallest canoe they had was a double hull traveling canoe. None designed for agility in white water. He was just a rower, not a canoeist or kayaker, but it was as plain as the nose on Lacey’s face that what she was suggesting was, at best, extremely risky.
“Where is it?”
Lacey handed the binoculars to Kelvin and pointed. “Over by that rock.”
Kelvin took his time studying the water, long enough that Victor began to think he was seriously considering it.