Down River. Karen Harper

walked it before, only seen it from the air.”

      He yawned, stretching a bit, flexing his muscles, then relaxing. She was panicked to realize she could feel his merest movement in the pit of her belly. Even in this tight wet suit, her breasts tingled. She had to get him talking, maybe really wake him up so they could push on now.

      “I’m sorry I ruined everything,” she told him. “I mean at the lodge, where you had those bonding activities planned for everyone.”

      “Yeah. The Bonners’ bonding experiment.”

      “It’s not fair if this disqualifies me.”

      “Maybe they’ll see you as a survivor who can handle anything after this.”

      “I’d like to pretend so—that this is all some sort of test, and they’ll jump out of the berry bushes and say, ‘Surprise! You were just on Candid Camera, ‘or something like that. Then the emcee will say, ‘Here in the Alaska twilight, we have seen how a wimpy South Florida native was saved from the raging river and taught to survive in the wilderness by—’”

      “Shh!”

      “Sorry. I’ll shut up and try to sl—”

      “Lisa, shut up! I think I hear a plane!”

      He yanked their canvas cover open and jumped up. She heard it now, too, a much better sound than wolves howling. She staggered to her feet as he ran back toward the bog, into more of a clearing than where they were with bushes and birch trees.

      “Damn!” he shouted, pointing back toward the river. “I think it might be Spike’s plane, though there are lots of red ones. But it’s over the gorge, heading west!”

      “Can we wave something? If we only had something for a signal!”

      “It may circle back if they’re searching. If they’ve found evidence we put a kayak in the river, maybe they’ll look below the falls, and that’s where we’re heading—right now. Come on. We’ll sleep when we get back to the lodge. Let’s pick some more blueberries and head out.”

      She helped him gather their goods and stuff them in the tent that made his pack. The drone of the plane faded, but at least it wasn’t dark, and Mitch’s shouting seemed to have made the wolves move on. Now they had to move on, too.