Page 112 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

They shot past the hole.

“Woo-hoooo!” she screamed as they bucked through the tail waves, the raft racing toward calmer water. “WE DID IT!”

The boat spun one last time when they hit the softer part of the river, no longer chaotically, but like a sleepy drunk, slowing with every rotation.

“We did it.” Thor was grinning wildly, soaked head to toe, his face sporting a fresh scrape that drew an angry red line across his forehead.

“I am never going rafting again,” Charlie rasped.

“Me neither,” Guy added. Both men looked stunned.

“Please,” Mandy said. “That was awesome. We were awesome.” She flopped on her back across the upside-down raft, letting the warm air prick her soaked, exhausted skin.

“Good little knife,” Thor said.

“It did its job.” Mandy realized she’d been gripping it tightly ever since she’d cut the strap. She sat up and carefully folded it shut. Engraved lines ran up its handle in a rough suggestion of leaves, the sun outlining the knife’s blunt, terrible beauty.

When she went to hand it back to Thor, he waved her off. “Keep it.”

Then he leaned forward.

“What is it?” she asked.

“That pattern. I didn’t notice it this morning, in the dark. But I reckon maybe I’ve seen that knife before.”

Charlie peered over. “Huh. I think I’ve seen it too.”

“What about you?” Thor asked Mandy.

She took a closer look at the knife in her hand. “No. Never. The first I spotted it was in the eddy, by Stefan’s body. Where did you see it, Charlie?”

He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

Mandy didn’t have time to deliberate over whether Charlie was lying. “What about you, Thor?”

The river guide closed his eyes.

“It was Marc.” When Thor looked up, a drop of blood slid down from the scrape on his forehead, tingeing his left eyebrow red. “The mule guide. He had it with him the night I met him.”

“How many years ago was that?” Charlie asked.

“Not years,” Thor said. “Days. I met Marc two nights before this trip started.”

Mandy was surprised. “Had you been on different work schedules?”

“Nah. Marc was a canyon newbie. Last month, a boatman took off for a private gig on the Flathead, up in Montana. Big Pete told me if I could find a new mule wrangler, I could guide the river the rest of the season. Marc bought me a beer at a bar in Flag last week, we got to chitchatting, and . . . that was it.”

“Did he have guiding experience?” Mandy asked.

Thor shrugged. “You don’t need it to run mules. He was interested, and I knew he could tough it out. New to the Southwest, he told me. Retired JTF-2. Worked the same part of Afghanistan where I was ten years earlier.”

“JTF-2?” Charlie said.

“Canadian Special Forces,” Thor replied. “Like, Army Rangers of the north.”

“He did seem a little martial,” Guy said. “Not sure you get muscles like that running mules.”

“Yup,” Thor said. “I remember thinking the knife seemed a little out-of-date. I wondered if his great-great-grandfather used it to liberate Canada from the Brits.”