Hydraulic Level Five Read online

  Cover

  Title Page

  Hydraulic Level Five

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  Sarah Latchaw

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  Omnific Publishing

  Los Angeles

  Copyright Information

  Hydraulic Level Five, Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Latchaw

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Omnific Publishing

  1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor

  Los Angeles, California 90067

  www.omnificpublishing.com

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  First Omnific eBook edition, September 2013

  First Omnific trade paperback edition, September 2013

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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  Latchaw, Sarah.

  Hydraulic Level Five / Sarah Latchaw – 1st ed

  ISBN: 978-1-623420-23-9

  1. Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 2. Divorce—Fiction. 3. Mexican-American—Fiction. 4. First Love—Fiction. I. Title

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  Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw

  Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna

  Dedication

  For my sister, who fell in love with Colorado.

  Introduction Quote

  Hydraulic Level Five

  When water pours over an object hidden in the heart of the river, water reverses upstream and creates a whitewater hydraulic. River travelers are often trapped in its dangerous churn indefinitely…

  Prologue

  Untitled Draft 1.1

  © Samuel Caulfield Cabral

  The Real Water Sirens

  “IF YOU’RE GOING to be a nixie,” says the boy, “you need an ‘N’ name. Water nacken and nixies only have names that start with ‘N.’”

  Two children, pale and dark, slight and tall, stand in silent battle over the fairy tales woven through the waters of Bear Creek, swollen cold with melted Rockies snow. The nacken king watches his nixie queen. Today, she lugs her pink banjo to their shaded kingdom. That fancy banjo will be ruined in ten minutes.

  “Neelie Nixie?” she suggests.

  “Neelie’s a nice name.”

  Pale girl sweeps jelly-grimed fingers through his hair so wind-wild, it could snap brush bristles. He jerks away. She knows he will, but still, she tries.

  Blue eyes send a thousand warnings. In another world, his mother called them “sky eyes.” She walked him to his alphabet classroom, smoothed his cowlick and said love you eyes of blue, so blue I could fly. Sky Eyes! He moved to hug her, but she held him back. She rose from silk-clad knees, wistfully touched his cheek in a silent “be good,” and left. He was good, dutifully organizing his crayon box and cubby hole, far away from other baby-faced boys and girls. Kids were as odd to him as scratch-n-sniff stickers, until Bear Creek.

  The nacken king watches his nixie queen, whose smile is now a furrow too sad for any seven-year-old. The thing is, her frown mirrors his own.

  A countdown to one, and snarls and splashes echo over firs as they tug-of-war with limbs. The nixie queen has a small tear in the hem of her shirt, a scraped knee, and a soaked bum. But she holds her revenge until he bends to rub life into his chilly toes.

  She doesn’t think. She lunges.

  The boy yelps as she pummels square into his side, tumbling them both into the creek. Their heads dip under and they sputter when icy ribbons wrap bodies and freeze clothes. The boy pushes her off of him and scrambles to his feet…only to fall again.

  She laughs, but her laughter quiets as tears well in her king’s blue eyes. He furiously slaps her helping hand away and swipes at his cheek.

  “Caulfield…” she says.

  “Leave me alone.” He springs out of the creek, yanks on his shoes. Squish squash squish over to his bike.

  When he is gone, she falls onto the blanket and pulls her pink banjo to her side, a meager comfort. Corn-husk hair splayed, she stares through the web of quivering branches and plots how best to guard her tender heart from Caulfield.

  Caro, it’s a deviation from my normal work. When Kaye finds out, it’s World War III.

  ~SC

  SC, from what I hear, she turns into a hellcat every time her name and “Neelie Nixie” are uttered in the same breath. There’s no pleasing her, Sam. Don’t even try.

  ~Caro

  Chapter 1: Reading Water

  Reading the anatomy of a river—its eddy

  and flow—helps a paddler harness its power

  and thwart danger.

  “ARRRGH! ANGEL!” I PADDLED against the current in a vain struggle to turn the open-topped kayak before we hit the massive whitewater hydraulic churning twenty feet ahead.

  “¡Ajúaaa, vámonos! Come on, Aspen Kaye, paddle! That damned play park is getting surfed.” Angel’s muscled arms furiously kicked up frigid river water.

  “Don’t call me Aspen—crap!”

  We’d tried to surf that “damned play park” every single rafting trip for the past six years, since we first tackled the Shoshone stretch of the Colorado River. Each April, we immersed ourselves in the beautiful, white-capped Rockies to hit the rapids in their prime—when snow slid down the mountains into the river, making for wild whitewater. I had this obsessive idea that we’d be able to ride the top like a surfboard.

  Our friends hollered from the cataraft. I vaguely heard Santiago command Molly and Danita to tighten the straps around the gear as he pulled the six-foot oars from the river, bracing for the hit. Wetsuits were a necessity—the difference between hypothermia in two minutes or twenty. Adjusting my helmet, I glanced over my shoulder at the hydraulic, just beyond Angel’s grinning, goggled face. Sun hit the wave and fractured into a million sparkling drops, spitting ice into the air, ready to swallow us whole.

  “’Kay, Kaye, remember, tuck in if we capsize!”

  “Yeah, Angel, I know, we’ve done this six—crap! Crapcrapcrap!”

  “Here…we…GO!”

  I shrieked as the kayak began to jerk. I leaned back and clutched my paddle, squeezed my eyes shut. For a moment, when I felt the duckie dip and lift, I thought we’d done it—we’d surfed the wave. Then the kayak flipped up, followed by my feet. Pulling my knees from their harnesses, I kicked out of the kayak and let the hydraulic attack me. Water hit me like an igloo wall, and I screamed obscenities before I was sucked under. Bright sky swam by, followed by fluid gray, then sky…gray…sky…gray. I forced my arms around my knees and balled up, tumbling over and over and over. I wondered if I’d ever see the surface again, and then I saw sky, and only sky. I gulped precious air and whooped.

  “Spank-me-son-of-a-shrew, that’s cold!” Raucous laughter erupted around me as I grabbed my paddle and let the current carry me to the overturned duckie.

  “Watch your mouth, Kaye! You’re cussing like a kindergartner.” Santiago—Angel’s youngest brother—steered the cataraft our way.

  I wasn’t one for outright cussing (Lyons was small and word from the playground got to our folks fast), so ages ago, Sam and I had come up with alternatives. With his brilliant mind and my big mouth, it was flipping magical, the way we’d strung innocent words together into phrases that sounded downright dirty. “Steaming, unholy waste, plague and atrocity” was solid Shakespeare.

  Samuel and me. My gut twisted sharply. Plume-plucked p
uttocks.

  I grabbed the duckie’s side cord just as Angel swam up, and together we flipped it over. “You okay, manita?”

  I nodded, teeth chattering too hard for words. We drifted until we found the rest of our caravan taking-out along a steep, rocky slope.

  Angel pulled off his helmet and shook his military-cut hair. “Oh, Kaye, we almost surfed that mother this time.”

  “Yeah,” I panted, still winded. We secured the duckie, and then Angel stalked off to the bushes for a piss.

  My entire body trembled. Molly unfolded her long frame, sturdy as a ponderosa pine, and pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from a wet bag. “Have a swig of this.”

  I took the bottle and swiftly threw it back, amber flames licking my throat. I coughed and waited for seeping warmth.

  “You are going to drown yourselves one of these days if you’re not careful…” I simply nodded and dug through the wet bag for my fishing hat. “Why don’t you head over to the hot springs? They’ll heat you right up.” Reaching under my chin, she unlatched my helmet like I was a five-year-old and gave me a shove.

  Danita and Santiago stretched out on flat rocks like seals, black and sleek, heads lolling in the sun. Danita Maria Cabral…a tumble of gleaming black curls, curvy Latina hips. The Cabral gene pool certainly kicked out some lovelies. She waved me over. I saw the no-nonsense eyebrow lift behind her designer sunglasses and tried a pre-emptive strike.

  “You’re wearing Dior shades on a rafting trip?”

  “They’re old.” She ripped the sunglasses from her eyes. “If you keep trying that hydraulic, one day either you or Angel won’t break the surface.”

  “Yeah, Molly said the same thing.”

  “Well, maybe you should listen to me, Kaye.” Molly planted herself next to me on the rock. “You take too many risks. Ice rappelling, paragliding…and I heard about how you skipped out on Vail’s last ski day to chase avalanches in the backcountry with Hector…in cow costumes, no less!”

  “Hector and I didn’t go leaping and twisting off cliffs. Just two friends taking a leisurely ski down a scenic mountain. We were udderly safe. Get it?”

  Santiago’s ears perked up at the word ski. “Dang, Kaye, you cliff-huckers.” Cliff-hucker? Hmmm…it had potential for my cuss-word stockpile.

  “We live in Colorado, playing on mountains is in our blood,” I reminded them.

  Danita huffed. She couldn’t stand Hector Valdez and thought his penchant for risky sports was a bad influence.

  I eased my muscles into the water. Before long, Angel’s heavy footsteps plodded our way, then his deep voice cut through the quiet. Despite the cool spring air, he’d rolled his wetsuit down to his waist, showing off his beautifully muscled chest. Once upon a time, he’d been pimply and pudgy, never acknowledged save by our small group of friends. But he left for the Air Force Academy and came back confident and…well…hot. One hand clutched his water shoes, the other, the Goon Bag—our consolation prize of cheap, nasty wine.

  “Tra-di-TION…Tra-di-tion! Tra-di-tion!” He shimmied in his best Tevye impersonation and tossed me the Goon Bag. “Drink up, Kaye! Shlapp that hard, hermanita, you earned it today.”

  “Yessir, First Lieutenant Valdez.” Lifting the plastic bag over my head, I gave it a couple of good smacks and trickled crappy wine into my mouth.

  “How’s the water?” He beamed at Dani and stooped for a kiss. She twisted her head away, taking his grin with her.

  Danita sucked furious air through plump, pink lips. “Angel Esteban Valdez, you pendejo, I am so sick of watching you and Kaye try that same old stupid surfing stunt on a class five hydraulic! What if you’d drowned? Ave María Purísima, you are no better than Hector!”

  “Dani—”

  “I’m not exactly keen to lose my fiancé right before the wedding, especially since you just got back…” She lapsed into Spanish, winding down.

  Angel gave her the minute of venting she needed. “I’m sorry you were worried.” His dark eyes shone with regret, though I noticed he hadn’t actually apologized for trying to surf the rapid. “But I know what I’m doing. There’s that stretch of calm water right after the rapid. If we didn’t have that, there’s no way we’d try to surf. Trust me, mi amor.” Danita sniffed, but she didn’t say any more. While patient to the point of being lackadaisical, even Angel had his breaking point. “Anyway, I found this burned-out Ford up the hill, behind those aspens. It must be fifty years old. The upholstery’s gone and the windows are broken out, but it’s a good place to set up camp.”

  The car it was.

  It was a tranquil night. Just the rushing water, the cadence of evening birds, rustling aspen leaves. Angel grilled burgers over a small campfire. Danita and Molly chatted on their sleeping bags. Santiago leaned against the old car, mini flashlight in his mouth, hunched over a book.

  The sun faded. Amazing didn’t do it justice—I was never one for clever descriptions. It had always been him, so lyrical and perfect.

  “Kaye, listen to this.” Santiago held up his book. “It could totally be us right now: ‘As the sun set, the entire mountainside went up in flames like parched timber. It crept behind the Matterhorn, painting them in bottomless blues and purples and stars…’ Creepy, huh?”

  I anxiously crossed my arms over my chest. “What are you reading?” I already knew the answer.

  “Water Sirens.” The other three’s heads shot our way and Santiago mistook their concern. “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been out for like, six years. I’m probably the very last person in Lyons to read it. But damn, Kaye, your ex can write an awesome story!”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “I can’t wait to read the other five books!”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m still not sure what a nixie is.”

  “Nixies, nacken, sirens…They’re all seductive water spirits known for drowning their victims.”

  “So, why are water spirits battling…what are those monsters called?”

  “The Others.”

  “I mean, did Cabral have some sort of obsession with mythology when you guys were together?”

  I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation again. Not ten months after our marriage crumbled, Samuel had struck gold with his debut novel, and ever since, I’d been subjected to readers, critics, and entertainment journalists prying into my personal life.

  “Knowing him, they’re most likely metaphorical nixies. Something along the line of being lured in and drowned by his ex-wife?”

  Danita winced. Santiago was unfazed. “Why the Alps, though? What’s wrong with Colorado?”

  I couldn’t tell him how the Swiss Alps were like Camelot to my ex. His birth mother had taken him on a ski trip to Zermatt when he was five. He stayed in the lodge while she hit the slopes and the nightlife. It was the one and only “family vacation” she’d ever spent with him.

  “Probably changed it so I wouldn’t sue his sorry tail.”

  He tilted his head like a cockatiel. “Why would you sue him?”

  Danita groaned. Molly muffled a laugh. Did this man live under a North Face-embossed rock?

  “Santiago, how far into Samuel’s book have you gotten?”

  “Um, about one-third.”

  “Do any of those naughty lil’ nixies seem familiar to you?” I knew my bitterness was loud and clear and I’d become that person. But Neelie Nixie was a sore spot for me.

  Santiago shrugged. “I’m not paying too much attention to the characters. The action scenes are much better.”

  I practically had this bilge memorized, I’d stewed over it so long. “‘She had the soft mouth of an angel,’” I hinted, “‘but what came out of it was so awkward, it made the comparison farcical.’”

  A blank look. Santiago probably didn’t know what farcical meant.

  Molly jumped in. “How about ‘eyes as deep as ancient forests’? I always liked that one.”

  “‘Fashion sense of a hobo’?” Thanks, Danita.

  “‘She
could drink a ladybug under the table…and that was about it.’” Molly laughed. “Smart boy, your ex.”

  “‘Chaos stalked her so frequently, she should have slapped it with a restraining order,’” Angel piped up from the campfire, flipping another pineapple skewer.

  “Oh har har har. You all can quote that brilliant Byron’s little snipes like scholars. How about some burgers there, Valdez? It’s almost eight o’clock.”

  But Danita, mouth quirking, added one more to my pile of published shame. “‘In the sack, Neelie didn’t care if she won…she was just happy to be nominated.’”

  “Dani, you tramp, that isn’t even in there!” Oh, that was it. I leaped from my sleeping bag and dove, evoking a screech from my traitor friend. But then, a figurative light bulb flickered over Santiago’s stubbly head.

  “You—you’re Neelie Nixie? Seriously?”

  I hated that cartoon nickname. Hated it almost as much as I hated my first name—Aspen—courtesy of my hippie parents. Seriously, what had Samuel been thinking, sharing all of that personal stuff with millions of strangers?

  “Wow…Kaye.” Santiago’s eyes went wide as they flicked across the page. “Is it true you have a heart-shaped freckle on your—”

  Samuel Cabral was going to die when I saw him again, I thought for the thousandth time. If I ever saw him again…

  Steaming, unholy waste, plague and atrocity—Angel and Danita’s wedding.

  Chapter 2: Bank Scout

  Before navigating a treacherous stretch of river,

  a paddler must get out of the craft and scout

  the rapids from the bank.

  I STARED AT THE BLANK whiteboard, tapping a dry-erase marker on my knee. I never had problems coming up with ideas in my beloved brainstorming room. Warm purple walls. Cushy art-deco chairs. A marvelous cascade chandelier I’d found at a local art festival, made entirely from recycled eyeglasses. And the centerpiece: my big whiteboard.