Page 89 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“I’ll get the rope.” Katy dropped the gun into Big Pete’s outstretched hand and stalked away.

“I’ll put this in a more secure location,” Big Pete said.

“You better,” Guy said. “There’s all kinds of crazy wandering this beach.” He winked at Mandy and stretched out his arms. “Can your poor dad get a hug before they truss me up for the night?”

Mandy shot Liv an angry glare before turning to their father. “You said the scenario was hypothetical.”

“And you said I needed to protect everyone.”

Mandy turned her back on Liv and folded herself into their father. Liv watched them embrace. Guy’s arms would be strong around her little sister, his chest pumping out heat. Guy’s warmth wasn’t on offer to Liv, and Liv didn’t want it. But she was well aware that the decisions she’d made to protect herself and Mandy over the years—choices made in canyons, embassies, and dingy apartments—had kept her out in the cold. Mandy and Guy shared a connection that didn’t fray in the face of lies or broken trust. Their kind of love was unreasonable. Nonsensical. Irreplaceable. Liv both longed for it and shoved it away with all her heart.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mandy woke before the sun again. She’d slept well, despite everything—Babette’s death, her dad’s strange arrival, her sister’s betrayal. She’d ended the night annoyed with her father, pissed at Liv, unsure what to believe about the others. But still, she’d fallen into an easy, unencumbered sleep, bundled in the cocoon of her sleeping bag and CareFree’s light, eucalyptus-scented touch.

From what she could see in the glow of her headlamp, everyone else had slept like the dead as well. Dark lumps spread across the sand like beached sea lions, each in their familial cluster. Imogen and Lucinda were curled up back to back. Devon, PK, and Fiona formed a three-pointed star, sleeping heads in slapping distance of each other, feet stretching out and away. The guides’ bright yellow air mattresses were down by the water, two occupied, the third presumably the property of whoever was currently on watch.

Not that she could see the Colorado at all in the inky breath before dawn. But she could hear it growling.

She suddenly felt a need to see her father. Not to wake him; just to remind herself that he was there. That he was safe. Mandy slid on her shoes and stepped around Liv’s rigid, dormant form, walking past the empty circle of chairs, beyond the kitchen setup, and over to the rocky embankment that separated camp from the cove with the boats.

The cove looked quiet, but the roar of the river filled the space. It was a furious highway, letting through only the sounds it didn’t swallow in its wet mouth or crush against its rocky jaw.

The light of her headlamp picked up the sway of the supply boat floating high above the water, an empty raft flanking it on either side. Thor was sprawled on the beach above the boats, passed out, an empty tequila bottle in one hand. She stepped around the guide and into the shallow water, putting both hands on the outer rubber tube of the stern so she could press herself up onto the supply boat. It wouldn’t be easy. The rubber wobbled under her palms, and the river sucked greedily at the bottom of her pajamas, turning her bare feet and ankles to ice in the dark.

Three.

Two.

The boat lurched toward her, the inflated rubber tube bumping hard against her hip.

Just the river, she told herself. She looked down at the little eddy she was standing in, where the water seemed eager to shove itself into the shore. It moved; the boat moved. Nothing surprising about that.

She put her hands back on the tube and braced herself to leap again.

Three.

Two.

Something was wrong. The air was dry. Her left hand was dry. But her right hand was wet.

She adjusted her headlamp to look down. Her hand was stuck to the yellow rubber baffle, outlined in a dark, sticky liquid.

She wanted to remove it. She wanted to plunge it into the river and erase whatever she’d touched there. But her eyes and headlamp moved unbidden, tracing a path past her hand, past the tube, onto the boat.

Stefan Eriksen was lying in a jumble of duffel bags and tarps, his head lolling toward her, his beard coated in a mess of black goo. There was no movement. No breath. The goo traced a ragged collar around his neck, staining his shirt and spreading out under his head, pooling on the tarp and spilling over onto the rubber baffle where she’d placed her hand. Stefan’s hands were still tied above his head to an eyebolt at the tip of the stern, his feet lashed to a crate in the middle of the boat. His ball cap had fallen beside him on a tarp, slathered in more reflective goo.

Blood. It was his blood.

Mandy swallowed hard. She yanked her hands from the tube and plunged them into the river, letting the icy water numb her to what she’d just seen. But it was no use. The memory of Stefan’s bloody throat shone against the dark water, sending bright green shock waves across her field of vision.

Something hard and slippery rolled under her left foot. A finger? She prayed it wasn’t a finger. She let the headlamp drop to the shallow water and reached down for the object. It was a slender metallic cylinder, like a mascara wand or a fountain pen. But when she pulled it out and shone the light on it, she saw she was wrong. It was a folding knife, an old silver one, with a rough pattern of leaves and vines worked along its edge. It took her three tries to figure out how to extract the blade. When she released it, it was shiny, edged in blood.

She turned to run, to wake Thor, and her sister, and the whole damn world if she could. Then the boat bumped her again.

Her father. Had he been hurt too?

She clumsily folded the knife into her pocket, took a deep breath, and flung herself up on the supply boat, training her hands and eyes to the right of Stefan’s terrible outline. Her knees slipped against the rubber, and she almost fell back into the river, but she found one more ounce of strength in her shoulders and thrust herself all the way up on the baffle.