Though Mitch was in great physical shape, the muscles in his arms and back not only ached but burned. He had to find her now or it would cease to be a rescue and become a body recovery, if he could even manage that. But a whirlpool snagged him, and when he freed himself, he shot into another chute. It was fast, very fast, suddenly a smoother ride than any of Spike’s musher sleds on sleek snow with his huskies barking. He imagined he heard them now, heard voices in the roar of the current, heard a woman’s screams, but it was all in his head.
After the second twist of the gorge, he saw her again, pinned against a busher—a fallen tree—caught like a salmon in a Yup’ik fish wheel. Danger! Bushers were deadly, because they could trap a kayak or smash its thin plastic hull to bits.
But he had to risk it and go after her. Maybe they could climb out onto the tree, make it to the rock ledge. Was she moving? She’d have to be hypothermic by now, but could it be even worse? The power of the water pinning her there must be brutal.
He tried to edge in next to her, but the kayak corkscrewed and the current capsized him. Praying he wouldn’t hit his head on the trunk or a submerged rock, he held his breath as he went under. The frigid slap of water shocked him, and made him fear for Lisa even more.
“Eskimo roll!” He heard his uncle’s voice, clear and crisp. “Paddle thrust, body twist! Up! Over and up!”
He fought to keep from panicking. His lack of helmet could kill him, too. Upside down, with his body submerged but buoyed by his PFD, he lifted his paddle above the water with both hands out, then swept his torso and paddle while he snapped his hips up. The rotation worked, though the thrust of the current slammed the kayak sideways against the tree trunk again, jarring his teeth as he shook his head and upper body like a dog to get the water off. The entire craft shuddered.
He sucked in a huge breath. Despite the warmth of the air and sun, he felt as if he was rolling in snow. Five feet away from him, Lisa lay sprawled, unmoving, draped over the tree trunk like a drenched rag doll, apparently not breathing as the water crested in white plumes over and around her back. At least it had stopped her before the rest of the sharp turns and then the series of small falls a couple of miles beyond. And, thank God, she was upright with her shoulders and head out of the water.
He tried to brace himself with the paddle to get close enough to at least touch her, pull her down into the kayak or get them both out onto the tree. But when he took another stroke, the washing-machine effect of the churning river flipped him back under again.
Christine Tanaka occasionally glanced out the kitchen window of the lodge, but she kept cutting smoked salmon strips with her small, sharp ula. She was readying plates of appetizers for their guests from Mitch’s old law firm—his job in his past life, as he liked to put it.
“Iah, don’t say it that way!” she’d told him more than once. “It sounds like you’re a ghost come back from the dead!”
But really, Mitch could do no wrong in Christine’s eyes, including the fact he mispronounced her name in her Yup’ik tribal language when he called her Cu’paq. It was a tough language for a kass’aq, with its clacking sounds deep in the throat. But it always sounded like Mitch was saying Cupid, that little winged spirit who zinged arrows into people to make them fall in love. She knew too much about that and how dangerous it could be. But the thing with Mitch was he honored her people and was trying hard to become an Alaskan. She loved him for that and for so much more.
She jumped at the deep voice behind her and turned off the Yup’ik radio broadcast she often listened to in the summer when she worked, just to hear the language of her kin. One long, beaded earring snagged in her thick, shoulder-length hair, and she tugged it free.
It was Jonas Grant, the tall, African-American lawyer here with the Bonners. He was one of the attorneys vying for the senior partner position that used to belong to Mitch.
“Mind if I come into your kitchen?” he asked, holding the swinging door ajar. “Tell you the truth, I’m starved, and Mitch told us to see you if that was the case. All this fresh air or my jet lag’s making me hungry.”
She was surprised she hadn’t heard him come in because she had sharp ears and usually sensed someone’s presence, but this man moved so quietly. Jonas had a shaved head, which wasn’t the wisest thing in Alaska, but it probably worked well where it was hot and humid.
Mitch had joked, “I taught Jonas everything he knows, which means he’s pretty smart.” She thought the man’s wide, dark eyes under his sleekly arched brows backed that up. Jonas was always watching others—keeping his own counsel, as Mitch had put it when he’d given her a pre-arrival rundown on their guests. Yes, she could see that Jonas Grant was always calculating what to say and do. Truth be told, she was wary, too, so she’d recognized that in him right away. And she liked the color of his skin, a lot like the Alaskan sun- and wind-burnished complexions of her people—that is, her former people, before so many turned their backs on her for what she had done.
“Sure thing,” she told him with a nod. “I’m fixing salmon tenders with strawberry dip, moose enchiladas and squares of fresh-baked bread with black raspberry spread for appetizers. You want something to drink, too?”
“No, thanks—just hungry.”
As she fixed him a hearty plate, she glanced out the window to note no Mitch, but no kayak either. She squinted into the sun to see Ginger Jackson getting in her motorboat for the across-lake trek home. Ginger made all of the baked goods for the lodge and brought them each afternoon, especially the array of yummies for the breakfast buffet the next morning. How she managed to bake all that with a bum right hand was beyond Christine. The only bad thing about Ginger’s baking was that she fed her brother Spike too much. In the summer, when he wasn’t running the dogs but was mostly taking tourists flightseeing, he put on weight around his middle.
Spike Jackson’s red seaplane sat at the far end of the lake since some guests had complained about the early-morning noise when he took off near the lodge. If guests didn’t want to drive or land at Talkeetna’s airport, he flew them in from Anchorage. He also took people on what was called flightseeing. Earlier today he’d flown Mrs. Bonner, who had her own private pilot’s license no less, to view the entire area from Talkeetna clear down to Wasilla. She’d said she wanted to see the little town where that spunky, ambitious Sarah Palin was from, who had come out of nowhere—though folks hereabouts didn’t think of big-boom Wasilla or the capital, Juneau, as nowhere—to run for vice president of the United States. Mitch had mentioned that Mrs. Bonner had a brother who was big in Florida politics and aiming higher, so no wonder Mrs. Bonner was interested in Alaska’s Governor Palin.
Christine handed the filled plate to Jonas. “Thanks,” he said with a big smile that flaunted lots of straight, white teeth. “My boy would say this really rocks—not the smoked salmon but moose in an enchilada.”
“How old is he?” Christine asked as she followed him toward the door to the big common room that comprised the living area and dining room. The lodge bedrooms were upstairs in two wings, guests to the east side, Mitch’s suite to the west. Christine’s room was at the back corner of the first floor, next to the small library loaded with books about Alaska and overlooking the stone patio with the barbecue, fire pit and Finnish wood-fired sauna and hot tub, and then the lake beyond.
Actually, the Duck Lake Lodge—the original name for the lake was Dukhoe—was the most beautiful home she had ever had. Made of rough-cut local spruce with pine-paneled walls, it boasted a seven-foot bubble window overlooking the lake. The entire building and the outlying cabins were heavily insulated, so in the winter it was like being in a thermos that held heat from the big, central stone fireplace.
The fourteen-foot cathedral ceiling above the common room had hand-hewn beams that soared above comfortable clusters of upholstered sofas and chairs interspersed