Page 106 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

Charlie crumpled a protein bar wrapper in his fist and tossed it at Guy.

“Why you?”

“Why me what?”

“Of all the people in the world my sister could have turned to, why did she come to you?”

“Thanks,” Guy said. “Thanks a lot.”

Charlie appeared unfazed. Mandy’s outburst had rattled the power balance in the boat, and Guy was no longer their captain. “Babette had all kinds of powerful people in her life. She was strategic about keeping in touch, sending little gifts, so she could always go back to someone if she needed them. You’re a criminal with no meaningful resources. What did she see in you?”

“I helped her out with investor strategy,” Guy said. “And I believed in her. Her methods, her vision, all of it. Unlike some people.” Guy gave Charlie a pointed look before continuing. “She and I had dinner the night before she was coming down. Babette told me all about the Essence Quest and how I was missing out. I told her to give Mandy and Liv a hug and a howdy but camping just wasn’t my bag. And I was busy, anyway. I was resolving an issue with another project I’m working on, a line of gold-infused weight loss shakes. Vitamin Au was doing great, growing fast, until the idiot board president replaced the CEO with his defective nephew last month. Now it’s tanking. Babette got real interested. She asked a million questions about how I was addressing it.”

Mandy turned to Charlie. “Was your sister into weight loss products?”

“Not at all. She called them indoctrination devices in the cult of female perfection.”

“I didn’t get it either,” Guy said. “Thought maybe she wanted to pick up the distressed asset. But then, early the next morning, she showed up at my hotel room.”

Thor smirked. “She wanted a taste of your shake?”

“She told me CareFree was under threat.”

“What kind of threat?” Charlie said.

“All I know is it had something to do with the Regent Group. Maybe that’s why she came to me, because I’m the one who introduced her to Stefan. I thought he was legit, but investors have a bad habit of screwing over founders. Babette was terrified they were going to do something to ruin CareFree. To ruin the whole business.”

“Our family would never let that happen,” Charlie said.

“That’s the thing,” Guy said. “She thought you and Devon might be part of it. That you might turn on her and ally yourself with Stefan.”

Now Charlie was silent.

“Right about that one, huh, brother?”

“I’m confused,” Mandy said. “Even if Babette was afraid the Regent Group was going to take over, or that Charlie and Devon might be part of it . . . what could have possibly changed between when you had dinner and the next morning to make her worried enough to show up at your hotel and beg you to come down with her?”

“All she said was that there was someone on the trip who wasn’t supposed to be there,” Guy said. “And she didn’t beg. She demanded. She promised she’d make it worth my while.”

“So that’s when she tasted your shake,” Thor said.

“Ew. Enough.” Mandy swatted the guide, then turned back to her dad. “Who wasn’t supposed to be on the Essence Quest?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Fiona,” Charlie said. “It must have been her. Devon and I were shocked when she showed up at orientation.”

“But how would Fiona even know about the orientation without an invite?” Mandy asked. “She made it sound like Babette bribed her to come. She clearly wasn’t excited about roughing it.”

“Maybe she lied,” Guy said.

“Maybe.” If so, Fiona must have had guts of steel. To crash her ex-employer’s Essence Quest and insist she’d been invited by the CEO herself—a CEO she had to believe was going to show up at some point. Was Fiona planning to ambush Babette in the canyon? And then, when Babette didn’t show, did she improvise somehow?

Something else occurred to Mandy. “Babette wasn’t at orientation. She wasn’t at the South Rim at all. If Babette was in Vegas the whole time, how would she even know someone crashed the trip?”

“Maybe PK told her,” Charlie said. “They were in constant touch.”

“But if PK called or texted her the night of orientation—if Fiona or someone else showed up uninvited—don’t you think that would have been fixed before we hiked down to the canyon the next morning?”