Page 30 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“You saw how they came in that cardboard box,” Charlie continued. “All white, but labeled individually with our names.”

“Did you find a difference?”

He thrust his hat at her, and Liv took a quick scan. Charlie’s cap was dry, the embroidered white B standing out against the streaked mud and silt from his thrashing in the Colorado. Other than its mottled coloring, it looked the same as the other hats, including the one she’d snapped to the belt loop of her pants.

“Take it,” he insisted. “Look inside.”

Did he want her to appreciate the tea tree mumbo jumbo in the lining? She flipped over his hat, preparing to extricate herself from this odd encounter before she got trapped in a dissertation on the healing power of crystals. But when she looked inside, she saw something she didn’t expect. More embroidered stitches—not thick and raised like the B on the outside crown, but fainter, barely visible. Bright white thread scratched wispy letters across the inside of the crown, forming ghostly words. The message was only legible because the rest of the hat was so dirty.

CROSS ME AND YOU’RE DEAD TOO

She looked from the hat up to Charlie.

“It’s from Babette,” he said.

“What does it mean?”

Silence.

“You’re dead too?” she prompted. “Has someone close to you died recently?”

“Fourteen months ago, there was an accident. At the business. Babette took responsibility, but she wasn’t even there. She didn’t . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he dropped his gaze back to his ball cap. Flipped over, it looked just like the others. Which made Liv wonder. She pulled out her own hat and examined it. The fabric was grayed by the river water, with just a tinge of sweat around the brim. She grabbed a handful of crumbly orange sand from the beach and smeared it across the inside of the crown. Nothing.

She looked down at the two hats, one threatening, the other simply dirty. “You’re sure these came from Babette?”

“Positive. She buys special gifts for everyone whenever we have an Essence Quest. For Fierce, she got us all custom windbreakers with our moon signs embroidered on them.”

Liv wondered if Babette’s former assistant had used his jacket as a makeshift sling after he broke his arm.

“She gets them all herself? PK doesn’t place the orders for her?”

“As far as I know, Babette’s always taken care of them directly. Wants it to be a surprise. She would have shipped that box to the lodge on the rim a few days ahead of our arrival. If we were up in civilization, I could pull the tracking information from our corporate account. But down here . . .”

Liv looked at Charlie’s hat, the words YOU’RE DEAD TOO plainly visible in thin white thread against the muddy material. She had a thousand questions for him. But there was only one she had a good shot of getting a straight answer to.

“Why did you bring this to me?”

“I thought you were some kind of international hotshot detective.”

“I am an investigator. But this is outside my area of expertise.”

Charlie persisted. “If someone came to you with a message like this, what would your analysis be?”

She looked from his face down to the hat.

“I’d need more information.”

“If this was all the information you had,” Charlie continued. “Please.”

“I would say you’ve been issued a warning of some kind.”

“Not a threat? She said I’m going to die.”

“Not precisely. It says if you cross her, you’re dead. Did you cross her?”

Charlie didn’t answer.