Page 110 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“I’ll do it,” Liv said. “I’ll move him. If the cops ask, I give you and Katy full authority to say I forced your hand. That you had nothing to do with it at all.”

Big Pete stared at her. Liv stared back. Swallowed hard. She was about to commit a crime. She was signing her own pink slip. No more State Department. No more global jet-setting. But this decision would take her to the one place she needed to go.

“Fine,” Big Pete said.

Liv turned to Lucinda. “Do you think those paddles PK and Fiona made could be used as shovels?”

“I’ll find out,” Lucinda responded.

Liv nodded. “Okay. We need to dig a hole. A big one. Then we’re getting out of here.”

It took forty minutes before they had an acceptable trench. No one said anything when they pushed Stefan’s body in. The whole affair was silent and horrible, everyone’s eyes sliding away from the tarp as soon as it was covered by sand.

“I’m sorry. You deserved better,” Liv finally said. She was speaking to the fresh mound on the beach, to the big sky, to all of them.

The quiet held them for one more minute, and then they had to make their choices. Devon and Liv were the first to commit to going, but in the end, all the guests chose to climb on the supply boat beside them. No one wanted to stay and wait with Katy and Stefan’s dead body on the beach. Katy stood at the helm of their mountain of discarded gear, saying nothing. It was impossible to know if she was angry to be left behind or glad to be rid of them.

Imogen let out a single whimper when she saw her phone battery bank and all the Babette products they were abandoning. “Couldn’t we—”

“Come on,” PK said. For the first time, he spoke gently to Imogen, a sad half smile on his face. “When we get home, I’ll send you so much CareFree you won’t remember any of this.”

“I can’t imagine there will be a CareFree without Babette,” Fiona said.

Devon looked at her sharply but said nothing.

Big Pete launched them into the water, working the giant pair of oars at the top of the supply boat. Katy watched them blank-faced from the shore. No one waved. No one talked. Whereas the rafts were small and nimble, the supply boat was more like an inflatable barge, rising high above the Colorado on its massive tubes, with everyone huddled close to the center. The spray barely reached Liv’s sneakers, but the distance from the water didn’t make her feel safe. Quite the opposite. She had no flotation device, and her bench was a wobbly plastic cooler that threatened to chuck itself into the water with every ripple.

Even in the slow sections, the Colorado never stopped roaring. Liv had thought she’d tuned it out, but that was a lie. Its growl was constant and unrelenting, unbothered by their frenzied decisions and crimes. She was trapped in its capricious violence, its ability to surge without warning. It soaked the edges of her thinking, dousing her surety in fear. When she looked down at the water, at the muddy rush below her, all Liv saw was how hard and far she could fall.

Chapter Forty-Six

The Colorado yawned wide as Mandy’s raft drifted toward Upset Rapid, a long tongue of muddy water lapping at the foamy peaks ahead. She could feel the muscle of the river underneath their little boat, pressing them toward the roar.

“Listen up.” Thor back-paddled them into a swirling eddy on the right, arresting their forward momentum. “There’s a big old lion’s den of a hole at the bottom of this rapid. If we get stuck in it, we flip. If we flip, there’s no rescue boat to pick us up.”

“Meaning?” Guy said.

“Don’t get stuck in its roar. If you fall in, grab one of the lines around the outside baffles and stay with the boat. Doesn’t matter if the raft is right side up or where it’s pointing: Just hold on. Otherwise, you could get eaten by the hole, or the tail waves might pluck you up and spit you downriver faster than we can catch up.”

“How do we avoid the hole?” Charlie asked.

“We’ll take the line on the right. It’s rocky, but we can make it.” The cliffs were still in shadow, but the river was sparkling in the sunshine. Thor swung his paddle back into the water and took three hard strokes, pivoting them into the current. “Let’s rock and roll.”

The river swept them into a tight tunnel of waves. Mandy listened for Thor’s voice, trying to follow his instructions, but up front, her dad was confronting his first rapid ever with unstudied chaos. Guy paddled when Thor called for it, but also when he didn’t, digging into the whitewater in a ceaseless frenzy.

The raft wobbled and smacked the water as they headed for a long line of rocks and waves. The boat leapt over the first two waves, then shot right and buried itself in the third.

“Guy! Stop!”

Mandy whipped her head around to see Thor brace against the back of the boat as the whole thing tipped, the prow shooting to the sky.

The raft slammed back down and spun wildly. A full circle, another half turn, and now they were hitting the waves sideways, each bigger than the last. The water frothed like chocolate milk, spraying muddy geysers twenty feet in the air before raining down on them. She could hear her dad cry out as the boat hurtled sideways downstream, slamming into wall after wall of water. But he kept paddling, his frantic movements shoving them closer to the rocks on the right.

The rocks got bigger the closer they got. A pile of ancient stone, millions of years in the making, opening its jagged mouth to her.

“STOP!”

Guy let go of his paddle, and it launched into the air. The raft spun again, and Mandy screamed. Thor dug in and yanked the boat downstream. The river kept raging. They spun left, crosswise to an enormous boulder, and Mandy started to feel the weight below her fall away. The raft was tipping, sliding sideways. Its rubber bottom shot up the rock, Mandy’s side of the boat rising into the air like a carnival Tilt-a-Whirl. She grabbed a strap and clenched it to keep from falling down across the boat into the churning whitewater.