Page 100 of Sunburned

He nodded.

“When we got off the helicopter, I stepped in dog poop, and one of the crew girls told me there had been two pugs on board this morning. Were your dogs here?”

I could see the gears turning in his brain as he looked out toward the dark sea, and I realized that stepping in that pile hadn’t in fact been bad luck on my part, but good luck, because the answer was written all over his face. I held my tongue as he considered how to reply, stifling my instinct to jump in with some kind of apology to make the moment less awkward. His dogs had been here, we both knew it. But whether he would tell me the truth about why depended on whether he felt he could trust me.

Finally, he turned his eyes on me. “Okay,” he said. “I tell you this, but please, it isentre nous,okay?”

I nodded, hoping my eagerness wasn’t as obvious as it felt.

“My partner was here earlier today. He has to meet with Tyson and he bring the dogs. He bring them everywhere.”

“Why was he meeting with Tyson?”

He sighed, looking at me from beneath his brow. “He is…Rick Halpern.”

Now it was my turn to gape. Like seeing someone completely out of context and not recognizing them, it took my brain a moment tocatch up. “The same Rick Halpern whose potential investment in De-Sal Cody and Allison were fighting with Tyson over?”

He nodded, and as badly as I wanted to jump in immediately with all the questions that this information brought up, I knew he’d tell me more if I kept quiet, so I simply inclined my head, waiting for him to go on. But before he could continue, Marielle appeared with the mineral waters we had requested.

“Please, if you need anything else, you can use the phone, there,” she said, indicating the phone on the wall next to the bar.

We thanked her, and she retreated to the crew quarters, leaving Rémy and me alone. Fortunately, with his admission about Rick, I was no longer worried he might off me while we were unsupervised.

“The environment is Rick’s passion, and he wants for years to work with De-Sal, but they say no,” Rémy said, settling onto a barstool. “Allison and Cody want to work with him, but Tyson is always the problem.” He shook his head. “Then this morning, Tyson calls Rick to meet him here on this boat and says okay, he can come in the company. I don’t know everything—we speak very little after because I am coming here—but Rick was so happy.”

I climbed onto the barstool next to his, leaning an elbow on the bar. “Do the others know?”

He shook his head. “They don’t know I’m Rick’s partner. He’s very private. This way we can live a normal life.”

“I can understand that,” I sympathized. “But, your partner was trying to close a deal with Tyson while you were leading his birthday dive. That seems…awfully coincidental.”

He sighed. “Rick ask me to lead the dive and maybe discover more information about why Tyson will not let him put the money in the company. I know how important this is to him, so I agree.”

“The other dive instructor isn’t really sick, is he?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We get him VIP concert tickets on St. Martin. When Tyson call this morning and ask Rick to meet, it was too late for me to not come here today.”

“What a mess,” I said sympathetically.

“I did not know Tyson will die,” he lamented, his anxiety apparent in the shadows beneath his eyes. “How can I know that? Now I can lose my license, and Rick can lose the deal he tried for years to close.”

“But surely the deal will go through,” I said as he took a fortifying gulp of champagne. I had my doubts as well, but I wanted to make him feel better. “It’s what Cody and Allison wanted, and they’re in charge now.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe when they learn I am Rick’s partner, they will not want to work with him anymore. If there is no papers to prove Rick make the deal with Tyson, then I can be a suspect too.”

“Shit,” I said, understanding. “No wonder your darts aren’t hitting the target tonight.”

“Yes,” he replied with a sad little smile.

My suspect list was rapidly dwindling.

Chapter 38

After Rémy walked me back to my room, I locked myself inside and sat on the bed, pulling my computer into my lap. As bone-weary as I was, I had to keep pushing.

Cody had turned off the Wi-Fi, but the satellite link was still live, and I’d created another access point when I was in the security room earlier. Using the credentials I’d pilfered, I logged in to the site where the camera feed was hosted, then adjusted the view to show nine cameras at once, covering most of the indoor areas of the boat.

As Laurent had told me, the feed went back only two hours, coming online about fifteen minutes after I’d been thrown off the boat.

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