Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was the shouting that woke Liv up.
It was just before dawn. The air was cool and thin, the canyon walls washed in sepia like old tea. The voices were coming
from directly below her, by the boulders that separated the cove with the boats from the sandbar where everyone had slept.
Big Pete and Katy were standing on the rocky outcropping, yelling and waving their arms at a raft in the middle of the river.
Liv sat up and squinted down at the dark water. Were the park police here already? The boat didn’t bear distinctive markings
that suggested official duty. In fact, it looked remarkably similar to the rafts they’d paddled in for the past two days.
There were three people in the raft—no, four—the middle of the boat loaded high with gear. Were they bringing specialized
equipment to handle Babette’s body? Evidence processing kits?
Liv started mentally sorting the questions and information she wanted to share with the authorities. But before she could
dig into her bag for a pen and paper, she heard Big Pete’s shouts from below take on a furious pitch.
“Hey! Stop!”
She looked again. The raft was riding low in the water, weighed down by its cargo, moving fast. Too fast. The navigator at the back was paddling hard, shooting past the sandbar where the others were starting to rouse.
The yellow boat bucked over a patch of whitewater before swirling into an eddy, and Liv assumed it was going to whip around and approach the beach on its far end.
But then, it shot downriver into the yawning granite canyon, and the shadowed cliffs swallowed all sight of it.
Just before the raft disappeared, Liv caught the words stamped in red across the back.
Wild Adventures.
“Is that another tour group?” she shouted down to Big Pete. “Are they going for help?”
Big Pete didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, he said something to Katy, and the two guides hopped down the rocks to the cove
where their boats were tied up. Headed for the radio, she bet. There must have been a conversation—or hand signals, maybe?—before
Liv had woken up.
Even if she’d wished for an opportunity to speak with the people on the raft directly, it felt good to know that someone else
had an inkling of what they were dealing with. It was too easy to feel isolated out here, thousands of feet below the surface
of the earth. If they were going to get through this, they needed others. The more people got involved, the less likely their
problems would be crushed by the rocks or washed away down the river.
She hurriedly dressed, then headed down to join the guides by the boats. But Katy stopped her on the hillside before she made
it to the shore.
“We need a minute,” Katy said.
“For what?”
Big Pete was approaching the stern of the supply boat, moving cautiously, as if it might bite him. Had Charlie, Stefan, and
Guy slept through the shouting? Liv couldn’t see the second raft on the other side of the chub, but the raft in front of it
bobbed merrily in the water.
She heard movement from behind her. The other guests were beginning to rouse, some clambering groggily to their feet.
Oddly, Mandy wasn’t among them. Their fight last night had been regrettable, but her sister was quick to forgive, and she was unreasonably chipper in the morning, which, for once, Liv craved.
She wanted to see Mandy’s wild hair and frenetic smile.
She would accept whatever colorful curses her sister might lob at her.
She was ready to try again to figure things out properly together, as a team.
As soon as Mandy saw Guy untied and unharmed, Liv wouldn’t be the bad guy anymore.
Liv hiked over to where they’d camped the night before. Her sister’s backpack was still there, unzipped and spilling over
with spangly bikinis and sarongs. There was a sketchbook and a small tub of CareFree by her inflatable pillow. But no Mandy.
Liv turned and ran down to where Katy and Big Pete were standing by the supply boat.
“My sister,” she said. “She’s gone.”
“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.
She could tell herself the scrunchie and the folded paper were meaningless, sentimental, or that her choice to withhold information
about their existence was tactical. Two people had been killed. She’d have to weigh every movement carefully now, vet every
disclosure. She’d have to strategize over what to share, with whom, and how far it might travel.
But the truth was, she didn’t have a strategy yet. She’d lied reflexively. Automatically. She’d lied for her own gain and
self-preservation.
She’d lied like a Chisholm.