Page 60 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Are the threats credible?” Lucinda asked.

“I don’t know,” Liv said. “But she suggested Charlie might meet his end. And now he’s missing. Until we find him or talk to Babette directly, we won’t know—”

Imogen let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Babette is one bad—”

“This is none of your business,” Devon said.

“Of course it is our business.” Stefan’s voice crashed into the conversation. “It is all of our business. Businesses. We are here because of Babette. And Charlie. And you. You have made promises about CareFree. We are here to see those promises fulfilled.”

His outburst stunned the group into silence.

“How were they threatened?” Lucinda finally asked. “Babette isn’t here.”

“They’re in the hats,” Liv said. “Devon, would you?”

Reluctantly, the older woman took off her cap and showed the group the message on the inside brim, the words glowing in pale thread against the reddish memory of sand.

“This is my company, not yours,” Imogen read. “Hardly sounds like a threat to me.”

“Charlie’s was worse,” Devon said.

“Did anyone else get a message?” Lucinda asked.

“Ooh! Did I get one?” Imogen said. “Show me.”

She thrust her cap at Liv, who plunged it into the creek before rubbing it with sandstone dust. But there was nothing there.

“Rude,” Imogen said. “Charlie was wrong. This hat really isn’t personalized at all.”

Liv turned to Fiona and Lucinda. “Where are your hats?”

“I packed mine away in case Imogen needed it for her filming,” Lucinda said. She touched the straw hat resting on the ledge next to her. “I prefer my own approach to shade.”

Fiona adjusted her visor and nodded. “Me too. I can’t recall where I put that hat. If I’d known . . .” The blonde looked uneasily at Devon’s upside-down hat, as if it were a snake readying to strike. “How was Charlie’s message worse?”

“She threatened him with death,” Liv said.

“Oh,” Fiona murmured. “And now he’s missing.”

The heaviness of the situation was hitting everyone. Even Big Pete looked rattled now.

PK dug frantically through his day pack. “I don’t know what happened to my cap.”

“Enough playing find-the-hat,” Devon interrupted. “We have to find the people. Charlie and Babette. Mandy and Thor. I don’t see how deliberating about my sister’s questionable communication choices will help us do that.”

“If Charlie’s really scared,” Liv said, “it’s possible he’s run off, or gone into hiding. Maybe he decided to sneak back up to the rim while avoiding the trail Babette was taking.”

“It’s twelve miles straight up from here,” Big Pete said. “Ten from the Thunder Spring junction where he left Stefan. And there is no other safe path up to the rim besides that trail.”

“Maybe he took an unsafe path,” Liv ventured. The landscape flanking the trail was vast and twisted, riddled with thick bursts of thorn bush, dizzying drop-offs, and crumbling rock. She saw a series of pockmarked caves further up the creek bed, a constellation of shallow divots and dark, yawning craters. There were a million places to get lost. A million ways to fall. She only hoped her sister was on solid ground.

“I should have hiked with him,” Devon said.

“Can’t turn back the clock now.” Big Pete spat on the ground and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right, we’ve got folks to find. Any other life-or-death revelations before we get moving?”

Everyone was silent.

“This is, like, insane,” Imogen said. “You all know that, right?”