Page 113 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

Mandy thought back to that first morning up at the rim, the two guides standing together, Thor a rangy mountain goat, Marc a silent bull. But Marc had only come down to that first beach with them. He hadn’t set foot on a raft or in the water. Presumably, he’d hiked the mules back up to the rim that afternoon, and then gotten the call to take Babette and Guy down the other side the next day.

And then Babette died. Marc hiked back to the North Rim for help. But somehow his knife crossed the river to kill Stefan.

She couldn’t see it. All the pieces of the puzzle floated in her head in discrete chunks, and Mandy wished Liv was there to line them up properly. But all she had was her instincts, and the hazy sense that she was missing something.

She turned to her dad. “Marc didn’t bring a raft or a kayak down with you, did he?”

“No,” Guy said. “He only had a little pack for water. All of Babette’s and my stuff was loaded on the mule.”

“If Marc didn’t cross the river, how did his knife end up killing Stefan?” Charlie asked.

“You.” Thor pointed at Guy. “He must have given it to you or Babette. You were the last people to see him.”

Guy shook his head. “I swear to you, I never saw that knife before this morning. I don’t even know if Marc had it when he was hiking us down. He could have given it to the lady who killed Stefan at another time.”

Charlie snapped to attention. “Wait. I remember now—”

But Thor interrupted him, turning on Guy. “Why should we believe you? How do we know you aren’t lying about this whole a-lady-killed-Stefan business?” Thor came up to kneeling and pushed himself closer to Guy, who was sitting on the front edge of the upside-down raft. The boat wobbled, sending a sheet of river water pouring across its back. “You convinced us to get out of there. You said we’d get help. But that was a lie. How do we know you didn’t kill Babette, and Stefan, maybe even Marc too, and now we’re just your escape route?”

Guy’s eyes were fierce. “That’s not what happened.”

The boat dipped again, and Mandy scooted back, trying to keep them from tipping. “My dad was tied up when Stefan died. There was no way—”

“You got proof, buddy, or just talk?” When Guy didn’t respond, Thor started to reach toward his belt. Toward his knife. “That’s what I thought. I don’t believe a single word out of—”

Mandy flipped open the silver knife and plunged it into the dead center of the upside-down raft. There was a huge explosion of air, and the boat slumped, folding in on itself and letting out a horrible hissing noise. Guy shouted and tumbled into Thor, who hit Charlie, all of them crashing into the center of the deflating raft. Mandy stayed high on the back tube, holding the blade tightly in her hands, instinctively defending herself from what might come next.

“Take us to shore,” she demanded. “And stop threatening my dad.”

Thor stared up at her from the shallow pool of water in the middle of the upside-down raft. His eyes were hot, and Mandy braced herself for another tirade, or an assault.

Instead, the guide started to laugh, his braying chuckle chopping across the sunken boat.

“Looks like you’ve picked up the law of the wild after all.”

Thor hauled himself over the back tube and reached down into the river with both hands, swinging them around to face the North Rim.

“Where are we going?” Guy fumbled to his knees, pulling himself up against the left baffle and trying not to slide back into the ruined middle of the boat.

“Only place we can.” Thor’s powerful arms dug into the river, steering them into a fast slip of water that pushed them diagonally to the right. The upside-down raft started limping toward shore, still bleeding air from the middle. Guy had to grab one of the ropes lining the edge of the boat to keep from flipping out. He glared at Mandy. But she’d saved him. Even if she’d sabotaged their escape in the process.

“Where are you taking us?” There was real alarm in Charlie’s voice.

“I’m beaching us.” They drifted to a spit of land on the north side of the river that was more boulder than beach, with long, flat terraced slabs of rock licking at the water. “It’s called Bloody Ledges. We’ll stay until the others arrive. Or don’t. We’ll stay as long as we bloody need to figure this out.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Liv was sweating, and not just from stress. In the frenzy to get back on the river, she had somehow neglected to grab her cap.

It was ridiculous to worry about her hat when there was a murderer with her on the supply boat. She knew that. But it was the hottest day of the trip—105 at least—they were low on drinking water, and her sunblock had been jettisoned by the Babette skin care police. She kept squinting down at the river, wishing she could dunk her head, a hand even, but the water was at least two feet below the baffles of the boat. Without a life jacket, she didn’t dare even get close to the edge.

All the guests had bundled themselves in the middle of the barge, ringing Big Pete, who worked the giant oars from a perch above their shoulders. The only exception was Lucinda. The older woman was at the very back of the boat, her paddling gloves on, dangling one of the deconstructed camping chairs in the water like a crude rudder.

There weren’t many of them left. Devon. PK. Fiona. Imogen and Lucinda. And Big Pete.

His powerful oars drove them down the Colorado much faster than they’d gone in the rafts. There was no bumbling chitchat, no amateur paddle strokes to nowhere. Even the rapids passed quickly, the bucking waves tempered by the massive size of the supply boat. They were going deeper into the canyon whether she liked it or not.

Just like the canyon, Liv’s investigation, while riddled with side trips, was fundamentally about narrowing. If Stefan’s killer was indeed a lady, as Mandy’s note had suggested, the pool of possible suspects was small. PK and Big Pete were out. Imogen didn’t seem clever enough to plan a scavenger hunt, let alone a double murder. And Lucinda had no connection to Babette’s business. So Liv homed in on the two women now sitting on opposite sides of Big Pete’s perch: Fiona and Devon.