Page 35 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Who here knows that you’re part of Dad’s Nassau LLC?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you were their first investor,” Liv said, “some of them know that, right?”

Mandy considered it. “Charlie must know who I am. He sends out the monthly investor reports. If PK was in charge of invites for the trip, he’d know. And of course, Babette. She and Dad have met a bunch of times.”

“Does she know about Dad’s criminal background?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“The message in your hat. Money can’t protect you. Maybe Dad pissed her off somehow, and she’s threatening to expose him for violating the terms of his parole. To cancel your investment.”

It didn’t make sense to Mandy. “Why would she turn her back on her first investors? It wasn’t a thousand percent kosher, but we don’t have that big a stake. And Dad told me they have a real connection.”

“Does he have a connection to Charlie, too? If Charlie is crossing Babette somehow, and Dad is helping him—”

“I don’t think so,” Mandy interrupted. “Dad only ever talks about Babette. He introduced her to some other prospective investors, and they got at least one hit, another backer who’s way, way bigger.”

“The one Stefan represents?”

“Maybe? I’ve never met anyone here before. Honest.”

“You’ve never met them. They’ve never met you. And yet here you are, with a threat embroidered into your hat.”

Mandy realized most of what she knew about the company had come through Babette’s autobiography, social media, or her father, all of which employed filters that made things look shinier than they really were. Now she sat with Liv in the rough-edged darkness, their headlamps casting overlapping pools of weak light on the unfiltered sand.

“We don’t know for certain that these messages came from Babette,” Mandy said. “Charlie was the one handing out the hats. He could’ve lied about where they came from. It seems convenient to blame the person who isn’t here.”

“But why would he doctor his own hat to threaten himself?”

“Maybe he’s trying to draw attention away from something else.”

“Like what?” Liv said.

Mandy racked her brain for anything her dad might have said to suggest a fight or power struggle between the Sauvages. There was nothing. Just Dad’s boasts about the big-money investor he had introduced Babette to, and the even bigger payout he envisioned for himself and Mandy. She believed in Babette, but she’d also heard that kind of talk from their dad many times: about a made-to-order omelet delivery service, an AI pet matchmaking app, an mRNA-based drug that cured arthritis. Guy Chisholm had the tendency to talk about investments in the rosiest terms until they went belly-up, at which point he insisted he knew they’d been doomed from the beginning.

Liv turned Mandy’s cap over in her hands. “Charlie gave me the impression he and Devon were planning something that was supposed to happen on this trip. Besides the rafting. He didn’t say what, but it must be volatile. No matter how scared he feels right now, that message in his hat wasn’t enough for him to tell me the whole story tonight.”

“So maybe he isn’t that frightened?”

Liv shook her head. “Or not that certain. If he’s not positive his sister hired someone to cause him harm, he might not want to divulge whatever it is he had planned. Some people defend their secrets to the grave.”

“You know,” Mandy said, “if one of the Sauvages was going to bail on this trip, I would have picked him.”

Liv eyed her curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Devon and Babette both love the outdoors. Devon’s been here before, and Babette planned this Essence Quest. But Charlie’s clearly not comfortable here. If he’s doing something so terrible Babette would want him dead, why would he agree to come out into the wilderness with her?”

“Family. It makes you do weird things.”

Mandy looked down at her sister’s dust-reddened hands. “How does Charlie think Babette is going to kill him if she isn’t even here?”

“Charlie believes Babette planned to ditch this trip,” Liv said. “He thinks she hired a hit man and marooned him here in the wilderness, where he’d be a sitting duck.”

Mandy stared at her. “A hit man? On this trip?”

“I know,” Liv said. “It sounds crazy.”