Page 43 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Pinky?” Mandy clutched her hand to her heart in mock horror. “We were long-lost cousins in the wilderness. He slithered in to protect me.”

“From what?” Imogen asked.

“From all of you.” Mandy winked.

Liv had to physically stop herself from shaking her head. Or shaking her sister. But to her surprise, everyone else laughed. Mandy was good at getting in with people. It wasn’t rational that someone could provoke you, lie to you, and you’d trust them more. But Mandy had it down.

Liv’s approach, in contrast, was more like the snake’s. Lie in the heat of the problem as long as you can. Listen quietly and sift through the opinions, arguments, and obfuscations. Hold still until you have the answer or, more often, the question that must be answered. Only then, show your muscle. Only then, strike.

She considered the work PK had done to set up this Essence Quest. With Babette absent, he was the one managing access to skin creams, algae powder supplements, and CareFree. Was it possible he was handing out the threats too? According to Mandy, PK and Charlie had spent quite a lot of time fussing over the luggage—including the box of hats—the previous morning before the hike down. Maybe Charlie was wrong, and PK had worked with Babette to get the hats made and delivered. Liv wondered how far his personal assistant role went, and to what extent Babette confided in him about the meaning of the tasks she assigned him.

And then there was Fiona. The dermatologist had mentioned a breakthrough in CareFree’s development after the third round of focus groups, fourteen months ago, which was also when Charlie had referenced a fatal accident. Liv didn’t like coincidences. Was it possible someone died from that third-round prototype under Fiona’s watch? Was that why Fiona was no longer working with the company? And if she was no longer involved, how was she so sure the product was now safe?

As far as Liv knew from a short assignment in Beijing reviewing export manifests, cosmetics were among the least regulated products overseen by the FDA. As long as manufacturers steered clear of certain banned chemicals, they could slap almost anything in a jar and sell it to Americans as lotion. Was there something volatile lurking in the formula for CareFree?

Liv gazed out at the Colorado River. Even in quiet patches like these, the water moved chaotically, individual ripples forming and splintering in the fractured glow. This stage of an investigation was like that, incoherent by design, each new piece of information another shiny object with the potential to blind her to the raging truth to come.

All she had was a messy stream of questions and data points. There was more to juggle than she could attend to all at once, but not enough to reveal patterns suggesting a clear direction forward. Whose words needed to be scrutinized, and whose could be ignored? Which was more important: the CareFree people or the product? The missing CEO or her threatening messages? It was impossible to hold every little observation in her head. But if she culled the wrong information, fixated on the wrong thread, she could lose time wandering down dead-end side canyons. She could end up tumbling through a rapid, losing her head in the whitewater. Or—she glanced at Mandy, busy trying to balance her water bottle on her chin, performing (or being?) her sunny self—she could lose more.

Chapter Twenty

Mandy was just getting the hang of taking a photo without falling out of the raft when Big Pete whistled and waved an imaginary lasso in the air.

“What’s that mean?” Fiona asked.

“We’re pulling over and circling up,” Thor said.

“For lunch?” Imogen sounded desperate. Perhaps her breakfast of powdered moss water hadn’t been as nourishing as she’d hoped.

“This next rapid requires scouting,” Thor said.

“I thought there weren’t any big ones today,” Fiona said.

“No nines or tens,” Thor responded. “Bedrock’s only a seven. But it’s what we call a consequential rapid. Look.”

Mandy peered downriver. A mountain of rock rose from the middle of the water, the waves wrapping around it and shooting down either side.

“We have to pick our way around that island,” Thor said. “Otherwise, we’ll get slammed against it.”

“And then what?” Imogen asked.

Thor shrugged. “We could flip if we don’t high-side in time. The raft could get pinned against the rock by the moving water.”

“What do you do in that case?” Liv asked.

“Crawl onto the island and make like Gilligan. Pray you’ve got enough food and crosswords until someone comes along who can help yank the boat free. One time, I came upon two guys who got stuck for eight hours up there. They’d come up with pirate names and composed an ode to canyon wrens that was surprisingly decent.”

Mandy shot a glance at Liv. How long could they last marooned on an island together? Then again, this trip was not much different—they were stuck on this river, with these people and their hats and threats and snakes and whatever else the trip threw at them, whether they liked it or not.

Thor directed the group to back-paddle until they beached on a pebbled spit above and to the right of Bedrock Rapid. The guides hopped out of the boats and started picking their way over the slippery rocks to study the rapid and carve out a plan. Most of the guests followed them, but Liv put a hand on Mandy’s shoulder, pulling her behind a cluster of boulders by the rafts.

“I have an assignment for you.”

Mandy grinned. They were on this island together. She had a quick, ridiculous urge to find some river grass and make them matching friendship bracelets. Or capes. And a theme song. They needed a theme song.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to get us switched into the other raft with Devon, Charlie, and Stefan.”