Chapter Seventeen
Liv missed the first call of the conch shell. And the second. By the time she dragged herself to the outdoor kitchen, Mandy
appeared to have already drunk a raftful of coffee. Her sister’s eyes shone like a caffeinated chipmunk’s, her body draped
in a sparkly peacock-print bikini under a sarong with sea turtles floating across it. It was a lot to take in on three hours
of sleep.
“Today, we make a plan.” Mandy thrust a travel mug at her, but Liv waved her off and trudged to the handwashing station first.
“Step one,” Mandy continued. “Find the hit man.”
The astringent disinfectant stung Liv’s hands. Day two in the canyon, and her skin was already cracking from the dry desert
air. Maybe dermal hydration was more important than she’d given it credit for.
“No, scratch that. Step zero point five. Steal all hats. See who got messages. Determine if there is a hit man.”
Liv accepted the mug now and took a grateful sip. She grabbed two plates, silently handing one back to Mandy, who was juggling
a notebook and a fistful of colored pencils. The outdoor kitchen buzzed with purposeful activity, Katy flipping bacon in a
pan while Thor sliced bananas. Liv loaded up on eggs, black beans, garlic-roasted potatoes, fresh pico de gallo, and tortillas
still warm from the griddle. They might be sleeping on the ground without tents, but these guides didn’t skimp on the meal
plan.
Not that all the other guests were taking advantage of it. Down by the river, Lucinda, Stefan, Charlie, and Devon had heaping plates of food, but Imogen, PK, and Fiona had gone rogue, whisking moss-green powder from a matte-white bag into glasses of water.
Liv steered Mandy to a pair of camping chairs set apart from the others, on a rocky knoll overlooking a particularly fast
stretch of whitewater.
“Maybe first we need to make a list of everyone on the trip.” Mandy had filled her plate with tortillas smothered in yogurt
and honey. “Everyone who’s here and everyone who planned to be here.”
“We still don’t know if Babette ever intended to actually attend,” Liv said.
“Right!” Mandy was as loud as ever, and Liv silently thanked the river for its gurgling roar. “Step zero point one. Find out
as much as we can about why Babette is missing.” Mandy frowned. “That’s where we started. And got nowhere.”
“Mandy, if we’re going to look into this”—Liv reached out and tucked a loose flap of Mandy’s sarong back around her—“you have
to let me take the lead.”
“I thought we could do it together.”
Could they? Mandy had no training as an investigator and, more importantly, no aptitude for it. Telling Mandy delicate information
was like loading it into a confetti cannon. She was a suggestible, excitable fountain of imagination. Terrific for making
art with kids. Not so much for threat analysis.
“We need to be methodical about it,” Liv finally said. “Discreet. Make a plan. Follow the evidence. And play it cool.”
“I can be cool.” Mandy was practically doing a jig.
Liv raised an eyebrow. “Like a cucumber?”
“My cool is more like a hamster with suspenders and a little bow tie.”
“Fine. I’ll be the cucumber.”
“And me?”
“Just try to keep the tap dancing to a minimum.”
Mandy waved her notebook dangerously close to Liv’s coffee. “I can plan. I can gather evidence. That’s why I made this.”
She flashed a drawing of what looked like an amateur baseball team. Mandy had sketched caricatures of every person on the
trip—Devon fierce, Charlie quaking, Fiona with LED mask in hand. There was Lucinda in her rafting gloves, and Katy with her
long braid flipped over her shoulder. Imogen and PK flanked the sides, holding the ends of a team banner that spanned across
them. Liv counted fourteen people in the drawing: all the guests, the three guides, and Marc, who had hiked down with the
mules at the beginning of the trip and would pick them up in a van at the end. Plus Babette. She was at the front of the pack,
swinging a bat.
“This is . . . impressive,” Liv said. The pencil version of Mandy was grinning and waving a pennant from atop Thor’s shoulders.
Meanwhile, the two-dimensional Liv scowled down at a clipboard.
“See what I did?” Mandy said. “I gave everyone a ball cap and wrote the hidden messages we know about real small across the
brim. This way, we can keep track of what we learn about whose hat says what.”
Liv squinted down at the drawing. “CareFree Killers,” she read across the banner. “Catchy team name. But maybe a bit . . .”
“Stabby? I know. But I wanted the alliteration.”
“I appreciate your initiative.” Liv closed the notebook and put it on the rock between them. Big Pete had said it yesterday:
If they wanted to survive, they had to play like a team out here. “If we’re going to find out who’s at the greatest risk—and
who might be threatening them—we need to know more about everyone on this trip.”
“Where do we start?” Mandy’s eyes were shining with eagerness.
“Charlie seems to think Babette has been involved in deaths in the past. If that’s the case, someone else here will know about
it. You have a natural reason to talk to Babette’s team. They’re probably curious to get to know their sparkly first investor
better. And you already made friends at the poker game.”
“Fiona cheats. She hid an ace in her bra.”
“We’ll keep an eye on her.” Liv was still curious about the reason for Fiona’s presence on the trip and her stake in CareFree.
She wished there was some way she could get access to the internet. She wanted to see annual reports. Earnings calls. Staff
directories. Anything that could provide objective background research for analysis.
“What about the hats?” Mandy asked. “Should we ask to see them all?”
Liv scanned the other guests in their camping chairs, metal plates on their laps. Some were wearing their caps. More weren’t.
She tried to weigh the benefit of getting as much information as possible against the risks. Paranoia was one of the most
deadly plagues that could sweep a group, especially in isolation. It was well documented that even smart, high-functioning
adults could fall prey to mob riots, phantom outbreaks, and imaginary hit men under the grip of mass terror. Charlie was already
infected. If others reacted as strongly as he had, they could put themselves in real danger all on their own, without further
intervention from Babette.
Was that Babette’s plan? To seed fear and mistrust among her team and let it tear them apart?
“For now, let’s be discreet,” Liv said. “And focused.”
“On what?”
Liv considered the options. “There are some questions we simply can’t answer down here. We don’t know what happened to Babette,
or what she’s planning now. We have to devote our energy to information we can learn from the individuals who are here.”
“You want to talk with people one-on-one?”
Liv nodded. “But don’t scare anyone. Let’s keep our questions open-ended, and not just about Babette’s disappearance. There’s
more going on here than a missing CEO. Any guest could be involved.”
“What about the guides?”
“Them too. We’ll start with the inner circle and expand from there. I’ll touch base with Charlie, try to keep him calm. You talk to PK. See if he can shed any light on the situation.”
“Okay,” Mandy said. “But when we split up the guides, I want Thor.”
“We aren’t prioritizing who to talk to based on hotness,” Liv said.
“You have your methods, partner. I have mine.”