Chapter Nineteen
Liv knelt behind a raft, furtively applying sunscreen to her face, while Mandy told her what she’d learned and seen inside
PK’s hat.
“Thank goodness we aren’t allergic to puppies,” Liv said. “But I’m surprised Babette would threaten PK. The man dedicates
his entire life to her needs.”
“Honestly, it didn’t seem that brutal after the texts he showed me,” Mandy said. “Maybe this is just the way she operates.
The weirdest part is that PK seems fine with it.”
“Kicked dogs love their masters,” Liv said.
“He played it off, but—”
“Maybe your goddess is more of the murderous, vengeful type than you thought?”
Mandy shot her a defiant look. “She talks about this in Unleashed. Female leaders are chronically underestimated. CEOs like Babette have to express themselves forcefully to encourage others
to do their best work.”
“Sending a competitor to the hospital? Everyone is replaceable? Cross me and you’re dead too?”
“I admit it doesn’t sound encouraging.”
Liv wiped the last of the sunblock on her pants. “You did good with PK, Mand. More than good.”
Big Pete let out one of his long taxi whistles from the bank.
“Time to load up and ship out,” he called. “Today’s calmer than yesterday. More float, fewer waves. With an option to go on a real pretty hike in the middle.”
“Are we not even going to talk about the fact that Babette still isn’t here?” Fiona asked.
“The doctor is right,” Stefan said. “Has there been no information from the radio?”
“About Babette?” Big Pete shook his head. “Not a peep.”
“Then let’s get moving,” Devon said.
Fiona glared at her. “You still think she’s coming?”
“I do,” Devon snapped. Her hat was tight over her short hair, and Liv found herself wishing she could take a closer look at
it. But Charlie handed his sister a PFD, and the two Sauvage siblings walked away, down to Katy’s raft.
Reluctantly, Liv strode over to Thor’s raft, staked to a spindly palo verde tree, where Imogen, Lucinda, and Mandy were cinching
down their life jackets.
“I can’t believe we’re going through with this,” Fiona said as she approached them. “Sleeping outside with reptiles and vermin.”
“Let alone the dry air,” Imogen said. “That night serum PK gave me made it worse.”
Lucinda turned to Mandy. “Are you okay? That rattlesnake was quite the specimen.”
“Thor swooped in and saved us just in time.” Mandy looked over at the guide, who was clipping a large knife to his belt. He
winked and tipped an imaginary hat.
Fiona shook her head. “If Babette isn’t going to show up, the least they could do now is break out the CareFree. That snake
situation is exactly what this product line will be good for. CareFree transmutes worry to calm. Takes the edge off nightmares
like this.”
“Have you tried it yourself?” Liv asked.
“Of course,” Fiona said. “We took the formula through many tweaks. Four rounds of focus groups. Once we figured out what to extract and what to discard, we had a winner.”
“Did you lead the focus groups?” Lucinda asked.
“The first three rounds, yes. After the third one, fourteen months ago, there was a major”—Fiona glanced over at Devon and
Charlie, climbing into the other raft—“breakthrough. They brought on investors, started to work on production and scale. My
input was no longer needed.”
There was something the dermatologist wasn’t saying. Liv could see it in how her eyes tightened as she spoke, trying to convince
them of her words or warn them not to challenge her.
Then Liv made the connection.
“Fourteen months ago,” she said. “There was an accident.”
“How did you hear about that?”
“Charlie told me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Fiona snapped.
“He did,” Liv said slowly.
“These people.” Fiona sounded exasperated. “Devon drops me, Charlie shoves a fifty-page NDA in my face, and now he goes around
blabbing—”
“He didn’t say what happened exactly. Just that somebody died.”
Fiona stared at her. Liv could see the furious freight train parked behind her pursed lips, the story she was holding back
there. But when Fiona finally opened her mouth, it was to change the subject.
“That’s all in the past now.” Fiona’s voice was back to its clipped, measured cadence. “CareFree is safe and ready for market.
Babette sent me a sample of the production-ready formula last week. It’s perfect.”
“PK said we’d get to experience it on this trip when Babette gets here,” Imogen said. “Maybe that’s her plan. To wait to show
up until we’re jumbled up in nerves from a big rapid. She could have even planted that awful snake.”
“Pinky?” Mandy clutched her hand to her heart in mock horror. “We were long-lost cousins in the wilderness. He slithered in
to protect me.”
“From what?” Imogen asked.
“From all of you.” Mandy winked.
Liv had to physically stop herself from shaking her head. Or shaking her sister. But to her surprise, everyone else laughed.
Mandy was good at getting in with people. It wasn’t rational that someone could provoke you, lie to you, and you’d trust them
more. But Mandy had it down.
Liv’s approach, in contrast, was more like the snake’s. Lie in the heat of the problem as long as you can. Listen quietly
and sift through the opinions, arguments, and obfuscations. Hold still until you have the answer or, more often, the question
that must be answered. Only then, show your muscle. Only then, strike.
She considered the work PK had done to set up this Essence Quest. With Babette absent, he was the one managing access to skin
creams, algae powder supplements, and CareFree. Was it possible he was handing out the threats too? According to Mandy, PK
and Charlie had spent quite a lot of time fussing over the luggage—including the box of hats—the previous morning before the
hike down. Maybe Charlie was wrong, and PK had worked with Babette to get the hats made and delivered. Liv wondered how far
his personal assistant role went, and to what extent Babette confided in him about the meaning of the tasks she assigned him.
And then there was Fiona. The dermatologist had mentioned a breakthrough in CareFree’s development after the third round of
focus groups, fourteen months ago, which was also when Charlie had referenced a fatal accident. Liv didn’t like coincidences.
Was it possible someone died from that third-round prototype under Fiona’s watch? Was that why Fiona was no longer working
with the company? And if she was no longer involved, how was she so sure the product was now safe?
As far as Liv knew from a short assignment in Beijing reviewing export manifests, cosmetics were among the least regulated
products overseen by the FDA. As long as manufacturers steered clear of certain banned chemicals, they could slap almost anything
in a jar and sell it to Americans as lotion. Was there something volatile lurking in the formula for CareFree?
Liv gazed out at the Colorado River. Even in quiet patches like these, the water moved chaotically, individual ripples forming and splintering in the fractured glow.
This stage of an investigation was like that, incoherent by design, each new piece of information another shiny object with the potential to blind her to the raging truth to come.
All she had was a messy stream of questions and data points. There was more to juggle than she could attend to all at once,
but not enough to reveal patterns suggesting a clear direction forward. Whose words needed to be scrutinized, and whose could
be ignored? Which was more important: the CareFree people or the product? The missing CEO or her threatening messages? It
was impossible to hold every little observation in her head. But if she culled the wrong information, fixated on the wrong
thread, she could lose time wandering down dead-end side canyons. She could end up tumbling through a rapid, losing her head
in the whitewater. Or—she glanced at Mandy, busy trying to balance her water bottle on her chin, performing (or being?) her
sunny self—she could lose more.