Page 127 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Give me that letter,” Lucinda said.

“I don’t think so.”

A blast shook the air, and Liv fell to the ground.

Mandy screamed and ran to her. Behind her, there were shouts. It sounded like someone had tackled Lucinda. There were grunts, then a soft thump. But no more gunshots. No more victims.

Only Liv.

And so much blood.

The rocky ledge beneath her sister was wet and slick where Mandy knelt. She whipped off her sweatshirt and pressed it to Liv’s chest, to her shoulder, squeezing until the fabric was black with blood. Behind them, she could hear Thor and her father shouting at Lucinda, presumably as they wrangled her into submission.

She leaned down. She let the rest of them go. She put her face as close as she could to her sister’s.

“She showed us who she really was,” Liv whispered. She grimaced then, her whole face contracting. “It hurts.”

“She shot you in the shoulder,” Mandy said. She held her sister tight, tighter than she ever had, letting the blood and sweat and tears all mix together.

“Then I don’t want to paddle anymore.”

Somehow this stupid joke made Mandy burst into tears.

“What happens now?” Liv rasped. Her voice was growing fainter.

“The police are on their way,” Mandy said. She took a quick glance over her sister’s shoulder. Thor had reclaimed the gun and wrapped a length of webbing around Lucinda, tying her to a boulder. “And Lucinda’s not a threat anymore.”

“She did it,” Liv croaked.

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“I figured out who and how,” Mandy said. “But not why.”

“All I had was why.” Liv closed her eyes, and Mandy’s heart jumped back into her throat. Had her sister lost too much blood already?

But then Liv came alive again. “We’re a good team.”

Relief. Gratitude. And one thing that confused Mandy.

“The letter,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me about it when you found it?”

Her big sister looked up at her, eyes glazed, and time stopped again. Mandy knew Liv might not remember this night. But Mandy would. She quieted her brain and locked in on this moment, this little pocket of hope deep in the heart of the earth.

“There is no letter,” Liv whispered. “I made it up. I lied.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

Las Vegas, One Year Later

Liv scanned the bustling hotel ballroom for a hint of her sister. Nada. It didn’t seem possible that she could have lost Mandy between their suite and the party—what had she done, run away with the blackjack dealer who’d smiled at them in the elevator?—but here they were. Here Liv was, in her least favorite city in North America, in a silver-and-white dress Mandy had insisted she buy for the occasion. Sleek, glossy people milled around the room, sipping cocktails filled with pastel elixirs and flower petals. While everyone else glittered, Liv felt like a crumpled piece of tinsel ten days after Christmas.

“Nice cult they got here, don’t you think?”

Before Liv could respond, Mandy wrapped her in a hug, as if it had been months and not minutes since they’d last seen each other. She always did this now. Every week, her little sister bombarded Liv with rhubarb muffins and triple-texts and last-minute invitations to quiet dinner parties that turned out to be karaoke rodeos. Maybe Mandy had always had it in her to be so persistent, so giving, so eager to dump the whole jar of sprinkles onto the cake. But these past eight months, living in Austin, it was the first time as an adult Liv experienced it up close.

It wouldn’t last forever. Someday Lucinda would be convicted, Liv’s interminable administrative review would end, and she could get back to the business of international diplomacy. Liv nodded at Casey Ito, the gangly special investigator in his ill-fitting suit, who was watching the crowd from the corner with a bottle of water in his hand. He nodded back.