Chapter Twenty-Three
Threat assessment was easy when you were doing it from an air-conditioned embassy office. Liv had a much harder time now,
standing on the empty beach at Tapeats in the hundred-degree heat, eating a peanut butter sandwich, debating whether she’d
made the right call to split from Mandy.
Her sister wouldn’t be isolated; in addition to Stefan and Charlie, Fiona and Lucinda had also volunteered to hike to Thunder
Spring. And Thor would be watching over them. She still wasn’t positive the guide was trustworthy, but so far he’d acted in
their best interests. And it probably wouldn’t bode well for his job security if he let a guest get hurt on his watch.
The real question was what Charlie was hoping to achieve on the hike. She watched him dig through his day pack, pulling out
a long-sleeved shirt to protect his pale arms from the sun. He looked resolved, fierce even, as if there was something he
had to do, and no matter how scary or painful, he was going to do it. But what could it be? Stefan had already voiced his
support for Charlie and Devon’s plan—whatever it was—and Charlie hardly seemed capable of strong-arming the Dutchman if his
allegiance had wavered because of the threats.
Liv made her way over to Mandy, who was hovering over the remains of the sandwich table with the guides.
Mandy’s hand was on Thor’s forearm. There was something about it, her sister’s fingers lightly touching the blurred grizzly bear he had tattooed there, that scared Liv for a moment.
Whether she was worried for her sister’s safety, the guide’s heart, or her own, she wasn’t sure.
“Hey,” Liv said, bumping a hip into Mandy’s. “Got a sec?”
“For you? Always. But first, help me out here.” Mandy pointed to the two-heeled sandwich in Katy’s hand. “Potato chips on
peanut butter and jelly. Good or gross?”
“Um . . . depends on the chips?” Liv said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Thor said.
“It totally matters!” Katy crowed. “Regular salty chips, yum. Barbecue, sure. But those vinegary ones, or the spicy ones . . .”
“Dude.” Thor shook his head. “You never been out in the wilderness on calorie deficit? One time I chewed on my knife holster
just to stay sane.”
Liv looked at the salt-stained leather sheath clipped to Thor’s belt. Suddenly the leftover chip dust was looking a lot more
appetizing.
“Thor’s right,” Big Pete said. “When you’re at the end of the lunch line, and you’re oaring that chub all day, I don’t care
if they’re pickle sriracha chips. It’s all going in my sandwich.”
“Remember Everything Pickles?” Mandy asked Liv.
Of course she remembered.
“When we were kids,” Mandy told the guides, “our dad thought it was funny to drop other stuff in the jar with the brine and
see what happened. How it affected the flavor. We made penny pickles, chili pickles, grass pickles, even one time he was repping
a dog food brand and he dumped some biscuits into the jar just to try it out.”
“How’d they taste?” Big Pete asked.
Liv grimaced. Everything Pickles were never about the taste.
She knew Mandy wouldn’t tell that part of the story, how he’d send his girls back to the grocery store with the mostly eaten jar of whatever crap he’d thrown in so they could complain there was something wrong with the pickles and get a free replacement.
It was a never-ending joke for him and Mandy, a game.
For Liv, it was something else. A fermented, stinking lie.
Even when she was stationed in Romania, where pickles were works of art—each jar an explosion of flowering dill and fresh-cut horseradish root—she couldn’t stand the sight of them.
“I’m with Thor and Pete,” Liv said. No more charming Guy Chisholm stories today. “Calories are calories, however you consume
them. C’mon,” she said, grabbing for Mandy’s hand, “let’s take a dip before your hike.”
Liv guided them down to a quiet stretch of the bank and waded up to her knees in the river. Now that the sun was at its apex,
the water sparkled with green flashes of movement, the light tracing every swirling eddy and flickering fish. Next to her,
Mandy unwrapped the sarong from around her bikini and dunked it in the icy river.
“Let’s talk assignments before we split up,” Liv said.
“Charlie seems pretty wound up. Want me to grill him when we’re out on a ledge somewhere?”
“I want you to do two things.”
“Grill him AND make sure no one pushes him over the ledge?”
“You can watch how Charlie interacts with Stefan, but more importantly, try to get Stefan on his own. He’s involved with whatever
Charlie and Devon are up to, even if he didn’t receive a threat. And buddy up to Fiona.”
Mandy draped her soaked sarong over her hair and torso like a nun’s habit. “Why Fiona?”
“She ran the CareFree testing for three rounds, until fourteen months ago, when someone died. Then they got rid of Fiona.
I want to know why. Maybe she screwed something up. Or maybe there’s something dangerous about their use of datura that they
don’t want her to reveal.”
“You believe that witchcraft stuff?”
“It’s not just a hippie theory,” Liv said.
“The State Department has done its own studies on that plant. I didn’t make the connection until Devon started talking about scopolamine.
In South America, they call it Devil’s Breath.
Ingesting datura can turn people into zombies, make them willing to do anything.
I’ve seen videos of people voluntarily handing over their car keys and bank cards to criminals under its influence. It’s scary.”
“But they’re using a different strain and part of the plant for CareFree.”
“That’s what they say,” Liv acknowledged. “But the fact that datura is associated with serious crimes . . . I don’t like it.
Devon says the formula they’re taking to market is benign. But Fiona said Babette begged her to come here because of a problem
with CareFree. Maybe Fiona saw something different in the focus groups.”
“Do you think the person who died in the focus groups might be named Justine?” Mandy asked.
Liv looked at her sister in surprise. Every once in a while, Mandy made a connection Liv hadn’t even considered. It was as
if the synapses that marched down straight paths in Liv’s head did trampoline backflips in Mandy’s.
“That’s interesting,” Liv said.
“Cross me and you’re dead too.” Mandy sounded excited now. “Maybe Fiona killed someone named Justine. Maybe I can crack the case right now.”
“Or maybe it was Babette.”
“You don’t like the Sauvages, do you?”
Liv hesitated. She could see the frustration on Mandy’s face, the implication that she was judging not just the Babette team,
but her.
“I don’t trust them. There’s a difference.”
Mandy swallowed. “And you don’t trust me to find out Charlie’s plan.”
“That’s not it. I’ll push Devon on that. But that’s a known issue. Whatever Stefan’s up to, what Fiona knows—that’s uncharted
territory.”
“So you get the death threats, and I get the question marks,” Mandy said. “You’re the deep end. I’m the kiddie pool.”
“It’s all useful data,” Liv said. “Not a competition. And as you said, Fiona could be dangerous. The more we know about everyone, the better we can assess whether the threats are credible.”
“What do you mean?”
“A threat is an irrational act. Why inform your target of your intention to hurt them? Why give them information they could
use to protect themselves from an attack? The threat is a kind of performance, distinct from any act of violence.”
“A performance, huh?” Mandy ran her hands through the water. “And you want to know who’s in the audience and who’s backstage.”
“Exactly.” Liv was impressed how quickly Mandy got it. “With multiple threats, it’s possible Babette does want to kill multiple
people, or has paranoid fantasies of doing so. You’d be amazed how often a disturbed individual sends death threats to the
ambassador, the pope, and the manager of their local coffee shop at the same time. But sometimes multiple threats can mean
something else. It could be a way of stirring the pot, seeding confusion. Maybe Babette wants to mask who her true target
is. Or maybe she isn’t trying to kill anyone but is trying to use the messages to extract a piece of information held by someone
in the group.”
“Maybe there’s a threat to CareFree.”
“Or maybe CareFree itself is the threat,” Liv countered. “That’s what I want to find out.”
“Hikers!” Thor was up on the bank, waving a water bottle in the air. “Let’s get hoofing. Lots of ground to cover before we
reconnect with everyone at Deer Creek.”
Liv and Mandy stepped out of the cool water and looked up Tapeats Canyon. A faint, scraggly trail snaked up the cliff alongside
the fast-moving creek. Within minutes, Mandy would be hundreds of feet above her, tucked into pockets of crumbling rock, invisible
from the river.
Liv pulled her sister into a quick, fierce hug.
“Be careful,” she said. “Stay away from the edge. Stay with the group. Remember, whether it’s real or not, you got a threat. It could have come from any one of them.”
For a moment, Mandy’s eyes widened. Maybe she was actually absorbing Liv’s words, taking her advice seriously. Then she slapped
on a sunny smile and wriggled out of the hug.
“Don’t worry. I’m an international woman of mystery, remember? We’re going to have this all figured out by the time I see
you in Deer Creek.”