Chapter Forty-Four
By late morning, the heat, nonstop paddling, and exclusive diet of caffeinated energy bars had worked Mandy into a buzzing,
uncomfortable silence. Her plan wasn’t working. She hadn’t stopped the raft, her dad hadn’t launched a grand rescue plan,
and she was no closer to knowing who killed Babette and Stefan. Maybe the mysterious Lady was Devon, who wanted control of
the company. Or Fiona, who seemed to have a deep hatred for all things Babette. Or maybe . . .
“Thor?” she said. “How well do you know Katy?”
The guide squinted. “Why?”
“Seemed like she was pretty confident with that gun.”
Thor snorted. “You should see her throw an ax. She annihilated a group of truckers at a bar in Flag last summer. Fastest two
hundred bucks I ever made.”
“Is she some kind of Wild West kid?”
“More like a trust fund kid. She came out here five years ago from the East Coast. Lives in an old horse trailer. But you
can tell she came from money.”
“Do you know what business her family was in?”
“We don’t talk about past lives out here. It’s for the best.”
Past lives. Was it possible Katy came from a wealthy family and was the whale behind Stefan’s firm?
It seemed like a stretch for a young outdoorswoman who spent weeks at a time on the river to have a second life as an international investor.
And Katy had never gotten close to Babette—she’d been at Deer Creek Falls watching the boats while all that had gone down.
Unless she knew a secret way to hike to the Throne Room?
There could be hidden slots and tunnels all over the side canyons like the one Thor had taken her through.
Speculation was getting her nowhere. Further from Liv. Further from help.
She looked over to where her dad was sitting on the other side of the raft, picking at his cell phone, his long legs straddling
the cold radio. Earlier, when the canyon had narrowed between tight columns of granite, Thor had told them the satellite phone
would be out of commission for a few miles. But now they were floating on sluggish water under an open sky. It had been like
this for at least an hour. Why hadn’t Guy called his contacts?
“Dad,” she said. “No more planning. We have to get help.”
To her surprise, he nodded. “Right you are. And I’ve got the guy.” He looked up from his phone. “At first I thought we’d need
a team, but this situation calls for maximum discretion, laser-sharp skills. Paulie’s our guy.”
“Who is Paulie?” Charlie asked.
“An ex-cop I met in prison—not dirty, just light-fingered. Smart. Very capable. He was this close to retaking the detective
exam when he got pinched, and he’s got contacts all over the west who owe him favors.”
“A convict?” Charlie said.
“Ex-convict. He’s rehabilitated, like me.” Guy nodded. “I’m thinking I make the connect, you put up the cash. A hundred grand
should do it, and I won’t take a nickel for referral. I can call him on the sat phone right now.”
Mandy stared at him. They all stared at him.
“Dad. No.”
“How about a little faith, Mand? A little belief in your hardworking dad?”
“We have to call the authorities,” Mandy said.
Guy scoffed. “You sound like your sister.”
Weird. Good. She kept going. “We need to take this seriously. I’m not the one who forced us to flee. I’m not the one who ditched
my sister on a beach with a murderer.”
“That’s not fair,” Guy barked. Then he seemed to physically collect himself, as if he recognized that showing anger might
endanger his position. “You know Livvie wouldn’t have been willing to come with us. Secure your own oxygen mask first, right?
That’s what we’re doing. So we can help her.”
“Help her how? By not using that radio? By not getting legitimate help? And no one really does that, Dad. Flight attendants
say it in their spiel, but no parent is going to watch their own kid choke for air and not do everything they can to help
them breathe again. That’s how real people actually behave around folks they love.”
“So real people are willing to make irrational sacrifices? If that’s the case, excuse me for trying to make sure we get out
of here alive.” Guy shook his head. “Liv can take of herself. I’m confident—”
“When is that not the case?” Mandy was losing control now, but she didn’t care. “Fake it till you make it, right? You taught
me that. But we’re not in the magical-thinking kiddie pool. Your sketchy friends aren’t going to fix this. People have died.
We have to stop. We have to go back. At the bare minimum, we have to call the police.”
Her words were met with silence. Guy looked annoyed, Thor unreadable, and Charlie hadn’t made eye contact with her since she’d
started ranting. Was this how things went when you told the truth? Mandy thought of all the times Liv had come off as sanctimonious,
how many times she’d batted away her sister’s objections and kept storming forward. Her dad had shown her how to do that,
too.
“He doesn’t want to call the cops,” Thor said. “And frankly, I don’t want them involved either. We’ve broken all kinds of
rules today.”
“I won’t go back to prison, Mand. I can’t.” Guy’s hard edge softened, and she could hear the fear and sadness behind it.
Charlie crumpled a protein bar wrapper in his fist and tossed it at Guy.
“Why you?”
“Why me what?”
“Of all the people in the world my sister could have turned to, why did she come to you?”
“Thanks,” Guy said. “Thanks a lot.”
Charlie appeared unfazed. Mandy’s outburst had rattled the power balance in the boat, and Guy was no longer their captain.
“Babette had all kinds of powerful people in her life. She was strategic about keeping in touch, sending little gifts, so
she could always go back to someone if she needed them. You’re a criminal with no meaningful resources. What did she see in
you?”
“I helped her out with investor strategy,” Guy said. “And I believed in her. Her methods, her vision, all of it. Unlike some
people.” Guy gave Charlie a pointed look before continuing. “She and I had dinner the night before she was coming down. Babette
told me all about the Essence Quest and how I was missing out. I told her to give Mandy and Liv a hug and a howdy but camping
just wasn’t my bag. And I was busy, anyway. I was resolving an issue with another project I’m working on, a line of gold-infused
weight loss shakes. Vitamin Au was doing great, growing fast, until the idiot board president replaced the CEO with his defective
nephew last month. Now it’s tanking. Babette got real interested. She asked a million questions about how I was addressing
it.”
Mandy turned to Charlie. “Was your sister into weight loss products?”
“Not at all. She called them indoctrination devices in the cult of female perfection.”
“I didn’t get it either,” Guy said. “Thought maybe she wanted to pick up the distressed asset. But then, early the next morning,
she showed up at my hotel room.”
Thor smirked. “She wanted a taste of your shake?”
“She told me CareFree was under threat.”
“What kind of threat?” Charlie said.
“All I know is it had something to do with the Regent Group. Maybe that’s why she came to me, because I’m the one who introduced her to Stefan.
I thought he was legit, but investors have a bad habit of screwing over founders.
Babette was terrified they were going to do something to ruin CareFree. To ruin the whole business.”
“Our family would never let that happen,” Charlie said.
“That’s the thing,” Guy said. “She thought you and Devon might be part of it. That you might turn on her and ally yourself
with Stefan.”
Now Charlie was silent.
“Right about that one, huh, brother?”
“I’m confused,” Mandy said. “Even if Babette was afraid the Regent Group was going to take over, or that Charlie and Devon
might be part of it . . . what could have possibly changed between when you had dinner and the next morning to make her worried
enough to show up at your hotel and beg you to come down with her?”
“All she said was that there was someone on the trip who wasn’t supposed to be there,” Guy said. “And she didn’t beg. She
demanded. She promised she’d make it worth my while.”
“So that’s when she tasted your shake,” Thor said.
“Ew. Enough.” Mandy swatted the guide, then turned back to her dad. “Who wasn’t supposed to be on the Essence Quest?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Fiona,” Charlie said. “It must have been her. Devon and I were shocked when she showed up at orientation.”
“But how would Fiona even know about the orientation without an invite?” Mandy asked. “She made it sound like Babette bribed
her to come. She clearly wasn’t excited about roughing it.”
“Maybe she lied,” Guy said.
“Maybe.” If so, Fiona must have had guts of steel. To crash her ex-employer’s Essence Quest and insist she’d been invited
by the CEO herself—a CEO she had to believe was going to show up at some point. Was Fiona planning to ambush Babette in the
canyon? And then, when Babette didn’t show, did she improvise somehow?
Something else occurred to Mandy. “Babette wasn’t at orientation. She wasn’t at the South Rim at all. If Babette was in Vegas the whole time, how would she even know someone crashed the trip?”
“Maybe PK told her,” Charlie said. “They were in constant touch.”
“But if PK called or texted her the night of orientation—if Fiona or someone else showed up uninvited—don’t you think that
would have been fixed before we hiked down to the canyon the next morning?”
“It was chaotic at the luggage drop,” Charlie said. “And so early.”
Mandy remembered the cranky people milling around in the predawn haze. PK and Thor arguing over the duffel bags. Imogen with
her camera, live-streaming everything, demanding that Marc strut out with mule after mule on display.
“You’re right,” Mandy said. “We started hiking by five. If there was something strange at the luggage drop that PK messaged
Babette about, she might not have seen his text until we were way down the trail.”
Charlie turned to Guy. “What time did she get to your hotel room that morning?”
“Early.” Guy shuddered.
“Six?” Mandy asked. “Seven?”
“Nine thirty,” Guy said.
“We were halfway to the river by then,” Thor said. “Zero reception. There’s no way she could have reached PK or anyone in
the group.”
Mandy looked at her father. “Why wouldn’t she tell you who it was?”
“I don’t know. She said she couldn’t.”
“But she convinced you to come down with her anyway?”
“I told you, she made me a promise.”
“What promise?” Mandy asked.
Guy glanced at Charlie, then back to her. “She said if I could help her retain her role as CEO, I could name my position in
the company.”
Charlie scoffed. “You’re a convicted felon and a fly-by-night investment advisor. What position could you possibly be qualified
for at Babette?”
“I was thinking yours.”
Charlie’s face went red. “She would never—”
“Just like you would never steal her company from her?”
“You don’t—”
Mandy gave her paddle a flick in the river, splashing them into silence with the icy water.
“Focus,” she demanded. “Babette brought my dad down here because she was worried about a threat to the company made by someone
on this trip who wasn’t supposed to be here. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell you who it was.”
“Maybe it was one of the guides,” Charlie said. “Maybe she didn’t know their name.”
Katy? But she and Big Pete hadn’t met them until they reached the river.
“Marc?” Thor said. “Could he have been who Babette was stirred up about?”
“Couldn’t have been,” Guy said. “When Marc met us at the ranch yesterday morning, Babette was all smiles and handshakes and
can I pet the mule. She’d never seen him before, I’m sure of it. When she started feeling hot and Marc told me to hike ahead
for help, she didn’t even bat an eyelash.”
“Maybe she should have,” Charlie said.
“Maybe,” Guy said grimly. “But even if Marc did kill her, he wasn’t the one she wanted my help dealing with.”
“Then who was?”
Before anyone could speculate further, a whoosh of energy hit the front of the raft. The breeze, a wandering trickle in the
warm morning air, folded into a sharp, driving wind. All around them, the river erupted into swirling boils, bubbling like
a witch’s cauldron.
“Upset Rapid,” Thor said. “Time to strap in.”