Down River by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

can only see so far down the ledge. We’ll have to watch our footing, that’s all. As a matter of fact, maybe you should go out barefoot, and we’ll put these fancy, schmancy Manual designer shoes on you after.”
    “Do you mean Manolos?” she asked with a little laugh.
    “Yeah. Just testing your memory.”
    He turned away to let her get her clothes on over the body-hugging wet suit she already wore for warmth. He glanced at his waterproof watch and noted it was way past pre-dinner time back at the lodge. Surely they would realize that he and Lisa had not just decided to run away together.
     
    Spike and Christine were overseeing the search effort. Of course, Spike was trying to order her around, but she wasn’t taking any guff from him. Whatever she’d done in the past, she wasn’t going to be a doormat for any man.
    Iah, but Spike Jackson was an imposing man. Nearly six and a half feet tall, red-haired and big-shouldered, he seemed larger than life—certainly larger than any Yup’ik man she’d ever known. Yet he had a lanky grace and a boyish manner at times. But when cornered, or upset as he and all of them were now, he turned into a real macho man.
    “Okay, listen up here,” he told the guests assembled in the great room of the lodge. “I radioed my sister, Ginger, and she checked the area across the lakewhere Mitch said they were going. No sign of them. The red two-seat kayak’s missing, but sure as hell someone as skilled as Mitch didn’t capsize in the lake.”
    “I repeat,” Graham Bonner put in, “I’ll gladly pay for an air search and rescue.”
    Christine figured Mr. Bonner was used to being in charge. Still, the Bonners had pitched in to help scour the immediate area of the lodge for Mitch and Lisa. The Bonners were such a handsome couple—trim, silver-haired and blue-eyed. Although they were fish out of water in the Alaskan wilds, she could tell they were used to being in control of all they surveyed.
    “Yes,” Ellie Bonner added. “Spike, if we take your plane up, we’ll pay for the gas, and I’ll go with you to copilot while you use binoculars or vice versa.”
    Christine guessed Mrs. Bonner was in her late fifties, a natural beauty aging gracefully, petite and pretty with a cap of hair that contrasted with her sharp, sparkling eyes.
    “Thanks,” Spike said, “but thick tree cover around here and the river gorge and mountains make that not a good option for spotting them. Besides, they couldn’t have hiked out this fast to the flatter tundra and valley areas where we could see them. Both of his vehicles are still here. They’ve gotta be around somewhere—maybe took a walk in the woods, skidded into a hole, someone turned an ankle, then ’cause of predators, they thought they had to stick together, something like that. The locals we got coming from Bear Bones know the area and can fan out around the lake. Mitch and Ms. Vaughn must have decided on a different place than where he told Christine he’d beach the kayak so they could talk things out.”
    “On a private little picnic?” Christine heard Vanessa whisper to Jonas behind her. “Talk things out, my foot!”
    “Just don’t put your foot in your mouth,” he muttered back. “You’d better cooperate with all this and look like you mean it.”
    Christine didn’t let on that she’d heard them. Spike was saying, “Mitch must of just pulled the kayak up on a stretch of beach where we haven’t spotted it yet, that’s all.”
    The sound of vehicle engines and the blast of horns drew them all outside. At least forty people, nearly half the population of the nearby town of Bear Bones, piled out of pickup trucks or SUVs. Some wore backpacks; some carried rifles.
    Christine went back inside quickly. She didn’t need their stares right now and even the sight of guns made her uneasy. Her stomach was tied in knots already. Lisa lost was one thing, but she couldn’t lose Mitch.
    “Okay,” she heard Spike tell everyone in a