Page 92 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“You . . . you killed the poet?”

“No!” Mandy said. “We found him like that.”

Thor’s light dangled on the dead man, the blood shining around his neck. Mandy looked away.

“Is there a weapon?” Thor said.

“This.” Mandy showed him the folded-up knife with its engraved handle. “I found it in the water, by the bank.”

“Why would they drop it here?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe they got scared?” Mandy said.

“Or they didn’t know the river,” Thor said. “They might have tossed it, thinking it would sink or get swept away. But an eddy this strong just pushed it right back to shore.”

“It wasn’t one of us,” Charlie said. “We’re still tied up.”

“And my girl got here after he died,” Guy said. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That so?” Thor ran his light over the two hostages, reaching out to give a sharp tug on one of the lengths of paracord linking Guy to the boat. Then he focused in on the knife in Mandy’s hand. He reached for it, then stopped.

“Open it,” he said to Mandy.

“What?”

“I want to watch you open the blade.”

She shot a glance at her dad, who nodded. Her fingers were numb now, her sweatshirt sleeve muddied with water and blood. She fumbled with the mechanism, trying not to shake. The knife was old, tarnished under the light of Thor’s headlamp, and it took four tries before she applied pressure to the handle properly, from both sides, to flip the blade open from its hiding place.

“Right.” Thor turned abruptly to Guy. “I believe you. She’s never fooled with that thing in her life.”

The guide took a long, slow look back toward the beach. “There’s a murderer up there, huh?”

“Someone who snuck down while you were on watch,” Guy said. Mandy could almost hear the implication sinking in. “We need your help. We’ll pay you to take us out of here.”

“Sorry. I’ve got a code.” Thor flicked his light back toward Mandy. It almost blinded her. “I don’t ferry fugitives for cash.”

“Five grand,” Guy insisted.

Mandy wondered how Guy intended to make good on this promise, given that his cash situation was precarious even in the best of circumstances. But she knew what her dad would say: That was a later problem.

“We aren’t fugitives,” Charlie said. “We’re victims.”

Thor said nothing.

“Seven grand,” Guy said. “But we leave right now. Untie us, grab supplies and a raft, and we’re out.”

“And I’ll go back to camp,” Mandy said. “Back to sleep. I’ll pretend I didn’t know anything about this. It’ll buy you time to get away.” Liv would be furious at her, but she could handle that.

“Mandy,” Guy said. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“We can’t let you go back up there. You might wake the murderer and then who knows what. It could be a bloodbath. If we sneak away, we can get to help faster.”

“But—”

“Your dad’s right,” Charlie said. “If we’re suspects, we can’t do anything. But if we go get help, we could be heroes.”