Page 122 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“I’m sorry,” Big Pete said. “I thought we’d catch them by now. But Upset’s too dangerous. The hole at the end of it is big enough to drown all of us.”

“You can do it,” Devon said. “You’re a professional.”

Liv pulled herself upright to join Devon’s campaign. “Please. I know it’s scary, but think how scared they are right now.”

“We don’t know what they feel right now,” Big Pete countered. “But they’ll feel a lot worse if they get through this and find out we didn’t. We’ll beach the boat and start again at first light.”

That was it. It was over.

As Big Pete paddled them toward the right bank, Liv cursed herself. She’d failed. They’d come far, but not far enough to save her sister. And she was still feeling strange. The pincushion of stars crowded the sky, but she hadn’t cooled down.

“Are you okay?” Fiona asked. “You look queasy.” She was wedged in by the crates, grasping a taut ratchet strap an arm’s length away from Liv.

No, she wanted to shout. She wasn’t okay.

“Do you want a sip of water?” Fiona said. “Or one of my masks? At least take off that hat. It’s dark. I don’t think you need it anymore.”

“It’s fine,” Liv said. She couldn’t show weakness. Not to a suspect.

Above them, Big Pete uttered a single low grunt. Then another. It sounded like he was wrestling with something, his shoulders straining as he worked the massive oars.

The river’s chattering voice gathered into a howl. The boat jolted left, Big Pete cursed again, and Liv fell, nearly knocking Fiona over in the process. Her brain was spinning. What was wrong with her?

The front of the boat dipped.

“We’re getting sucked into the rapid!” Big Pete yelled. “Find something to hold on to!”

Fiona yanked Liv down into the narrow gap between the crates. Spray soaked the bucking boat, and Liv closed her eyes for a moment, relishing the icy water, the cool relief. The river ran wild around them. It was her enemy and her salvation. She couldn’t see the massive waves, but she could hear them calling to her like deadly sirens.

“Hold on!” Big Pete shouted, and the boat flew into the air.

Liv turtled into her little cubby, Fiona trembling beside her. The blond woman looked just as unsettled as Liv felt. Just as vulnerable.

Think, Liv urged herself. Find something to ask her.

Her brain, usually so quick to race down multiple paths at the same time, felt sluggish. Clogged. The boat smacked the water again, and she could feel the synapses knocking inside her skull. She wondered if the CareFree she’d used earlier had interacted with the day’s heat somehow, if it was boomeranging back on her now. She couldn’t wrap her head around the minutiae of an arcane contract, let alone her tongue. So she grasped for something simpler.

“Babette’s death?” she said.

“What about it?” Fiona asked.

The boat dipped, and Liv fell into the blond woman.

“We’re past the hole!” Big Pete yelled.

Fiona’s face loosened, but Liv felt no relief. She scrambled for the words she needed.

“The waste material,” Liv said. “The . . .” She lost the word then, running the fingers of her mind over the bumps on Babette’s forehead. “Stippling. Did the resin kill them? Justine Long and Babette?”

The boat spun and slowed in the tail waves, the whitewater disappearing behind them. But Fiona didn’t speak. It looked to Liv as if the dermatologist was physically gathering her words, like apples. Like sheep. Sheep? She had to focus.

“Yes,” Fiona finally said. “The waste material is lethal. Far worse than the raw plant, and fast acting. I believe it killed them both.”

“Who knew what happened to Justine Long?”

“All the Sauvage siblings. And Stefan.” Fiona looked back at her now. “He must have known. The Regent Group closed their investment weeks after that focus group, so Babette would have had to divulge it. I thought it was messed up how Babette jumped from Justine’s death to a huge cash infusion. Like a deal with the devil.”

“The devil,” Liv breathed. Katy’s stories about datura burbled up in her brain, swirling with the briefs she’d read for her upcoming assignment in Bogotá. “Devil’s breath. The zombie flower.”