My Sister is Going to Kill Me
Chapter One
Liv looked at her watch. Then at the crowd. Then, the abyss.
Her sister was missing.
The response at work when someone didn’t show up at an appointed rendezvous was clear: a twelve-step protocol Liv had memorized
on her first overseas assignment. The protocol on a sister trip? Swallow the panic and wait.
In ten years, Mandy had never missed one of their annual joint vacations. But she always found a way to show up at the last
possible moment, after Liv had mentally notified the National Guard, requisitioned a canine search unit, and completely lost
her equilibrium. The one time she’d actually called the authorities—outside a reindeer ranch in northern Lapland—her little
sister had come cantering up on an ice-bearded beast, curls bouncing wildly under a hot-pink stocking cap, eyes dancing at
the sight of so many members of the Finnish police force deployed to track her down.
It was as if Mandy wanted her to feel off balance. To stumble into their time together instead of marching forward with confidence.
And if any place could rattle her, the Grand Canyon was it. Liv had never been a fan of heights, but she hadn’t considered
this alternative: plunging depths of carved-away rock, a natural wonder that hollowed out the world instead of reaching for
the sky.
She forced herself to look over the cliffside railing she was clutching.
The South Rim of the canyon stretched down and away from her, forming a greedy, treacherous mouth.
If Mandy was here, she’d pronounce it beautiful, throw around words like “ombré” and “perspective,” paint a big bright picture of the two of them jaunting down the trail the next morning before the birds woke up.
But Mandy wasn’t here yet, and all Liv sensed was danger.
No matter how she craned her neck, their destination—the Colorado River—was beyond the terrifying zigzag of her field of vision.
She couldn’t track more than a few hundred feet down to where the footpath dissolved into a gaping wound.
But she could trace the bloodred shadows down the cliffside.
She could feel the crooked switchbacks pulsing in her knees.
She could sense the shimmering heat, which shifted from comfortable warmth at the rim to a blistering furnace down below.
She could see enough to know for certain: This time, their sister trip really might kill her.
Liv walked back to their motel room, hoping to find Mandy on the doorstep, jiggling a key and humming a made-up song.
No luck. Her sister was good for surprises, but not the I-arrived-early-and-brought-extra-sunscreen variety. It was Liv who
double-checked the packing list and dutifully purchased not one but three sets of Day-Glo strings to keep their sunglasses
strapped to their heads as they bucked their way down the Colorado. One for herself. One for Mandy. And one in case of disaster.
She turned her attention to the two careful piles of luggage arranged on the queen beds.
The left bed held the contents of Liv’s work life, tactical and practical.
Three no-wrinkle black suits, one gun holster.
A pair of low heels she always kicked off the second she was seated behind her desk.
Also her laptop, credentials, and a vintage portable lie detector her boss in Bucharest had given her after her promotion from the visa office.
She’d be going directly from the Grand Canyon to her next deployment in Bogotá, joining a smuggling task force as a profiler for the first time.
She’d spent the plane ride brushing up on the latest data on human trafficking, exotic animal trade, and new trends in street drugs.
This could be her big break into serious investigatory work.
The only thing delaying her from it was this sister trip.
For which she was assembling the second bag. Liv stared at the foreign objects she’d bought for the Colorado River. A camp
towel. A 50-UPF neck gaiter. Two insulated water bottles, absurdly large, so much so she’d started getting ads on her phone
featuring bodybuilders who crushed raw eggs against their foreheads and let the contents drip into their mouths. Cotton T-shirts,
which she bought a cheap five-pack of from a street vendor in Bucharest. Cotton seemed outdated compared to quick-dry synthetics—didn’t
it kill in the backcountry?—but she’d read it could be 120 degrees at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in the summer, which
meant the ideal clothing could be dunked in the freezing river and stay wet a very long time. She rolled the T-shirts into
a tight tube, sliding them into her duffel between a can of bug spray and a bright blue rain poncho. At least the outfitter
had provided a packing list. This was one of Mandy’s selling points for the Grand Canyon rafting adventure: It came with a
detailed plan and day-by-day itinerary. For once, Mandy had picked a trip that didn’t consist of “we’ll get there and figure
it out.” Liv had tried to suggest they could go somewhere with a schedule that also boasted air conditioning, but Mandy had
waved her off.
“You get your trips,” Mandy pointed out. “I get mine.”
Liv hated when her little sister was right.
Their sister trips had started ten years ago, when Liv was twenty-four and Mandy twenty-one, after their dad was arrested
for fraud and left them with a shoebox stuffed with hundred-dollar bills and an apartment full of unanswered questions. When
the SEC determined the shoebox money wasn’t part of their case, Mandy convinced Liv they should keep it. With their mom dead
and their dad headed to prison, they only had each other. The money—Liv preferred not to know which of Guy Chisholm’s dubious
investments it came from—was something tangible they could share, a way to reinvest in their relationship.
Liv suggested a joint savings account. Mandy countered by proposing they quit their jobs, buy a sailboat, and spend the next decade hunting for shipwrecked treasure.
After Liv put her foot down—she would not, under any circumstances, abandon her nascent foreign service career to become a pirate—they agreed to use the money for sister trips: once a year, trading off who picked the destination.
At first they played nice and considered each other’s interests.
Then, four years in, Mandy turned an alleged chill-on-the-beach vacation in Costa Rica into a death-defying caving expedition that gave Liv nightmares and foot fungus for months.
After that, the gloves came off. Liv frog-marched her sister through Paris.
Mandy took them fly-fishing in Idaho. Liv dragged Mandy to Dubai and Seoul.
Mandy brought Liv to that Finnish bush village where they ate nothing but reindeer jerky.
Considering some of what Mandy’d put her up to in the past, rafting the lower half of the Grand Canyon was practically a resort
vacation. One that would start with a ten-mile, forty-eight-hundred-foot descent at four thirty the next morning.
In the final hour before orientation, Liv tried not to think about the early morning hike, her jet lag, or whether her sister
was about to flit through the door with a new vision for the week that involved helicoptering into a pit of javelinas. She
focused on the task at hand, packing everything into its respective bag and zipping them up tight. The motel beds now held
two black duffels, each stuffed with a different life. For the next week, she would be adventurous Liv. She would be fun Liv.
She would be the cheerful big sister Mandy always wanted her to be. Even if it killed her.