Page 53 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Maybe she convinced Michael to come,” Devon said.

“He’s in Saint Bart’s honeymooning with his fourth wife,” PK said. “I messengered them a Fierce couple’s basket.” He squinted up at the sun for a moment. “Maybe it’s someone else who can breathe firepower into the launch. Didn’t Babette have dinner recently with Giselle? She’d be a much better spokeswoman than . . . that.”

He pointed his chin at Imogen, who was bouncing on the very front of the raft like a bull rider, whooping and waving a selfie stick in the air.

“She does seem carefree,” Devon said.

“Brain-free is more like it,” PK muttered.

“Do you think it’s possible Babette convinced the lead investor to join us?” Devon asked.

Liv noticed how carefully Devon said it, as if it discomfited her even to utter the words. It was becoming clear that PK was closer to Babette than her own sister. Either that, or Devon was out of the loop on the business side of things. Maybe they were the kind of family that compartmentalized, each tending their own garden. If Liv ever ran a business with Mandy—let alone a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar one—they’d need clear delineation of responsibilities to avoid strangling each other every other second.

“Stefan’s boss has never shown an interest in personal involvement before,” PK said. “No one has even met him besides Babette. Why would that change now?”

Devon dropped her eyes to the water. When she looked up, her tone shifted. It was lighter. False. “We don’t have camping gear if she’s bringing someone with her. Every spot is taken.”

“I’m sure they’ll drum up another god-awful yellow sleeping bag,” PK said. “Seems like more than enough of those floating around.”

He scooted forward to talk with Imogen, and Liv seized the opportunity for a one-on-one with Devon. She pulled her shirt down off her head and slid across to the other side of the raft.

“How are you feeling?” Liv asked.

“About what? The fact that my sister has threatened me and my brother?” Devon’s voice was light, but her eyes were sharp.

“So you did cross her.”

Devon said nothing.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if you were scared,” Liv said. “I can help if you tell me.”

The older woman regarded her. “My sister and my brother are the emotional ones in our family. I prefer to deal with the facts.”

“What are the facts about Justine?”

“Excuse me?”

“Earlier, when we were looking at your brother’s hat. You said Justine. Who is she? Someone who was killed?”

Devon glanced forward, to where PK and Imogen were huddled over her phone. “Justine Long’s death was an accident,” she whispered. “An unfortunate consequence of the focus groups we couldn’t have anticipated.”

So Mandy had guessed right. But Devon’s wording gave Liv pause. “It wasn’t a sign of potential danger in CareFree?”

“Not at all.”

“And Babette? Does she see you as a danger to CareFree?”

The boat rocked, its nose dipping to kiss the river. Katy had shifted into a standing crouch, using her paddle to point forward. “Deer Creek’s coming up. Grab your paddles, and let’s get to the beach.”

“We’ll see my sister soon enough,” Devon said. “And whoever she’s with. It’s all going to be fine.”

She looked as if she were commanding herself and Liv to believe it.

The beach they pulled up to at Deer Creek was empty. While Katy and Big Pete wrangled the boats, Liv and the others got their bearings on the bank. Babette hadn’t made it here yet, but there was another powerful force to contend with: the enormous, pounding cascade of Deer Creek Falls. In the past two days, Liv had encountered more waterfalls in the wild than she’d seen in her entire life to date. They sprang out of cliff sides. They trickled over moss. They cascaded prettily through rocks. Each one was more perfect, more dramatic, so much so that now, staring up two hundred feet at Deer Creek Falls, she was entirely unsurprised.

But then she got closer. The water was falling straight down like a girl’s long hair, but Liv could feel the lateral power of it, how it created its own wind system at the bottom, spraying mist outward with enough force to shove her back and make her shiver. Tiny droplets caught the sun in midair, creating a perpetual rainbow that shimmered before her.

Liv walked in beyond her comfort zone, without regard for the cascade’s cold fury or the way the spray blasted her full in the face. It stung, but it didn’t matter. The sparkling, frigid water was a reprieve from the hot air and blood-and-dun muddiness of the Colorado. The rainbow mist was magic. It was unicorn water. Mermaid water. The kind of water Liv dreamed of as a kid.