Page 63 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“Thor?”

Darkness, and silence.

Her left calf started to ache, and she foolishly looked down. It was a long way into the narrowing V of rock below her. She imagined getting trapped there, falling tightly between the rocks and no one coming for her for days.

“THOR?”

They must be close to the exit. He must have popped out the other side and would be waiting for her in Surprise Valley. But musts couldn’t help her now. Her left leg started shaking, not from pain, but from nervousness and fatigue. She shoved her foot harder against the wall, trying to impress the nubbly surface of the rock onto the sole of her boot.

Her leg kept trembling.

This was one of those moments when bravado failed her. When she was all alone, without an audience to perform for. A good lie was like an echo: Its power came in how others reflected it back to you.

“I CAN DO THIS,” she yelled into the abyss.

Her words tumbled back and fell into the two-story gap beneath her feet.

Thor was gone. Liv was somewhere on the far side of Surprise Valley. Mandy had no choice. She had to keep pressing forward alone.

Did it take ten minutes? Twenty? At first, she was inching along, craning her ears and eyes for the guide, wishing him back into her field of vision. But Thor was beyond sight, beyond hearing. She had to accept it. She started taking bigger straddling steps along the wall, rubbing her fingers raw over the rock as she pressed herself foot by foot, hand over hand, across the chasm.

She prayed it wouldn’t get narrower, forcing her to climb higher. She prayed it wouldn’t get wider, beyond her ability to brace herself. She kept scooting sideways until she hit a sharp corner. The deep V broke into boulders, and she carefully lowered herself to the sand.

The ground brought stability, but little relief. It was only when she got to the far side and stumbled out of the slot that she started to wonder. It was only when the wall opened and she saw the tight folds of Surprise Valley laid out in front of her that she started to worry. The world before her was all boulders and brush, a stark, twisted beauty, with no discernible trails nor signs of human activity. Was she really getting closer to the rest of the group? And if not, where had Thor taken her?

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Big Pete led his group up out of Deer Creek Patio in silence. Clouds peppered the sky, but it was still brutally hot. While no one complained, they weren’t exactly skipping up the trail either. At a wide creek crossing, Big Pete whipped off his long-sleeved shirt, dunked it in the freezing water, and put it back on.

“Suggest you take this opportunity to cool off.” The lead guide stood in the creek, scooping water onto his head with his hat. “This is the last water from here up to the trail junction.”

“We don’t have time,” Devon said. “We have to find them. Before my brother does something rash.”

“Or Babette,” Fiona said. “Those hat threats are creepy.”

“Creepier than what you’ve seen from her before?” Liv asked.

Fiona nodded. “During the Fierce Essence Quest, she did sew a fake tiger fang into the neckline of everyone’s windbreaker. But this feels different. Targeted. And angry.”

Liv squinted up past the creek bed, searching the rocks for a sign of movement, of life, in the cracked landscape. “My sister and Thor are still out there.”

Imogen giggled. “I bet they are.”

“Is everything a joke to you?” PK snapped.

Liv wondered at his harsh tone. It didn’t make sense that PK was so belligerent toward Imogen. The girl was annoying. But what teenage social media star wasn’t? Surely as the person responsible for influencer engagement at Babette, it would have been PK himself who recruited and invited Imogen and her PureImogeNation followers to the river. And yet he’d been nothing but antagonistic to the teenager for the past two days.

The paucity of information Liv had about these people overwhelmed her. While the Babette guests were new to Liv, they weren’t new to each other. She’d only scratched the surface of their relationships, the fault lines that might hold the answer to the threats and disappearances. She didn’t know any of them. Not really. Not enough.

If Liv was going to figure out what was really going on with the threats, she had to go deeper. She had to get past first impressions and gross categorizations to understand who was really on this trip, and why.

“Worried?” Lucinda was walking unassisted now, but slowly. Still limping.

Liv surprised herself by nodding.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Liv was just about to launch in when Imogen gave a little shriek.