Page 94 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“She’s not the only one,” Big Pete said. “Your sister, your dad, Charlie, and Thor. That was them in that raft, with a lot of our equipment. Total jailbreak.”

“Why didn’t you go after them?”

“The river only flows in one direction. If I’d taken the other raft to follow them, there’s no way I could have come back. And then y’all would be even more stranded.”

“What about Stefan? He didn’t go with them?”

“He didn’t make it onto the raft,” Katy said stiffly.

Liv puzzled over this. Guy, Charlie, and Stefan had all been tied to the same boat. Thor had been on watch, and Mandy had been . . . Who knew what Mandy had been doing. But why hadn’t Stefan left with them? Did they decide Stefan was the killer and that they all had to escape from him?

The more she thought about it, the weirder it seemed. Given the little she understood about the relationships and alliances at play, it was hard to imagine Guy and Charlie trusting each other. It would have made more sense if just Guy and Mandy had left, or Charlie and Stefan. And Liv couldn’t even begin to guess how Thor fit in the picture.

“Did you ask Stefan if he knows why they left?”

Big Pete shook his head. “Didn’t get the chance.”

“Do you want me to speak to him?”

Liv started to move toward the back of the supply boat, where they’d tied Stefan to a twenty-gallon barrel of filtered water the night before.

“Wait—” Katy put her hand out to stop her, but Liv pushed past.

It took her a moment to parse what she was seeing. The back of the boat was piled with kitchen supplies. Between the crates, a blue tarp was pulled up and over a line of foreign objects. But they weren’t objects. They were parts of a person—a knee, a head, an unmoving chest. A German hiking boot sticking out one end, a shock of dark hair peeking out from the other.

“Is he . . . ?”

“Dead,” Big Pete said.

“His throat was slashed,” Katy added.

Liv swallowed hard. “This is bad.”

“You think?” Big Pete said. “I’m the trip leader who tied a guy up and let him get murdered. I’m the one who said we could wait for the park police to figure everything out. My job is over. My life is over.”

She heard him, but the meaning of his words didn’t pierce her focus. She was still fixated on the outline of the dead man under the tarp.

“Was he covered up when you found him?” she asked.

“I did that,” Big Pete said. “It just seemed more respectful.”

“Right. Yes. But we need to . . .” Liv took a deep breath and pinched the tiniest corner of the closest edge of the tarp, making sure her fingers touched nothing but blue plastic. She peeled it back slowly, lifting the fraying sheet high and away from Stefan’s body, hoping it wouldn’t catch on anything.

The tarp billowed away smoothly, which was a kind of blessing.

But that was wrong. There were no blessings here. Stefan was lying on his back, his throat muddy with half-dried blood. The wound, while fatal, wasn’t a gaping mess. It was a long, deep slit, a tight cavern across the mottled skin of his neck.

Liv scanned the rest of Stefan’s body. His eyes were closed, his face holding a clenched, terrible strain. His hands and feet were still tied to the boat, but his elbows were wide, knees jutting out in a butterfly position. He must have jerked against the ropes in his last traumatic moments. But he hadn’t come loose.

His clothing looked undisturbed, and she couldn’t see a knife anywhere on his body or the tarp around him. But there was his hat, overturned, the white B on the outer brim dredged in blood.

She turned away, forcing herself not to gag. Stefan hadn’t received a threat, but he’d still been murdered. She scanned the beach, looking for a weapon or some other piece of evidence among the rocks and sand. There was a dented metal box twenty feet up the beach, an empty bottle of liquor, and, closer to the water’s edge, a rainbow pom-pom hair scrunchie. She recognized it immediately as one of Mandy’s homemade craft explosions. She bent down and riffled through the ribbons of fabric—damp, but thankfully, she discerned no blood. There was a small folded piece of paper sandwiched between the bright scraps, ink peeking through the folds. She ferried the hair tie and the paper into her sleeve, burying them from view.

“Find anything?” Big Pete asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing.”

She replaced the tarp over Stefan’s body and took a step back. Then it hit her. Horror at what had happened to Stefan. Fear for her sister, Charlie, and Thor. Heck, even for her dad. And behind it, shame. Liv had just knowingly lied to Big Pete. He was one of the few people here who likely wasn’t involved in the murders, perhaps the only person who could pilot them safely out of this nightmare. And yet she’d lied to him.