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Jennifer set her empty champagne flute on the coffee table with a clink and rose, yawning. “I’m gonna call it.” She looked at Cody. “Shall we?”

Allison stood, stretching. “Same.”

Laurent extracted his pack of cigarettes from his pocket as he stood, and I glanced at him, but again he didn’t quite meet my gaze. My heart sank. Did he suspect me too now?

“I could use one of those,” Samira said to Laurent in French as she got up, extending a hand to pull Gisèle up off the couch.

Whether or not they wanted anything to do with me, Laurent and the girls were the only people I was relatively certain hadn’t tried to kill me, and my desire not to die superseded my ego. So, swallowing what was left of my pride, I rose to follow them.

But Samira held out a hand to stop me. “We need to talk to him,” she said.

Laurent glanced from Samira to me, finally meeting my eye. But I couldn’t read him. It stung more than I wanted it to.

Cody, Jennifer, and Allison had retreated down the stairs to their cabins on the main deck. But that didn’t mean I was safe. Just the thought of walking to my room alone sent a shard of terror throughme.

Whack. The sound of a dart hitting the board drew my attention to Rémy, whose focus was trained on the target.

Behind him, Marielle and Justine wiped down the bar.

I took a calming breath. Marielle and Justine had been kind to me, and neither of them had any reason to try to off me.

I’d be safe as long as they were around. Right?

“Audrey—”

I turned back to find Laurent still loitering at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes fixed on me.

“I’m fine,” I said woodenly. “Good night.”

His jaw feathered and I thought for a moment he might say something else, before he gave me a stiff nod and jogged up the stairs behind Gisèle and Samira.

I’d never felt more alone as I strode toward Rémy. But there wasn’t time to stew in the sea of emotions frothing inside me. All that mattered now was discovering who had killed Tyson before it was pinned on me.

“May I join you?” I asked as I approached, checking again that Marielle and Justine remained in the bar.

My voice distracted Rémy as he let the dart fly, and it went wide of the target. “Okay,” he said. “But I must warn you, I am terrible.”

“I’m not so great either,” I admitted, though it wasn’t true. I was a damn good shot. But being terrible would serve me much better in this situation.

I grabbed a half-empty bottle of Dom off the bar, topping off Rémy’s and my glasses as I scoured my weary brain for an organic way to ask him about his dogs. “So, who are Mister and Sister staying with tonight?”

“My partner,” he said.

“Oh, I get it,” I teased. “The dogs made the lock screen but the partner didn’t.” My jocularity was forced, and we both knew it, but he let it slide. A kindness.

“What can I say, their little faces…” He shrugged.

I took a handful of darts from the table behind the couch and stepped up to the line, aiming for the wall just above the target. I hit it, and cursed.

“Cody says you must let it go comme ca, ” Rémy said, sending a dart flying so low it nearly hit the floor.

He didn’t seem wary of me, which I took as a good sign. “My mind isn’t all here,” I admitted.

“I understand,” he said.

Justine was cleaning up the cake now while Marielle fluffed pillows. There didn’t appear to be much more for them to do in the room, which meant that I would soon be alone with Rémy unless I said good night now. But I didn’t yet have the answers I needed.

I took aim to the right this time, and my dart lodged in one of the outer rings. “I didn’t kill Tyson,” I said. “Just to be clear.”

“Okay.” He met my eye with a shrug, apparently taking my declaration at face value. “And I did not kill him also.”

“But no one thinks you did,” I said bitterly. “They think I have a motive, but I didn’t even know the boys were in his will.”

“Can you prove this?” he asked. “To the police? It is not important what these people think.” He flourished his hand vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

“I don’t know how I would.” I leaned against the couch. “But if I can figure out who did it…”

“Do you have an idea?”

I sighed. “Not really.” Here was a chance to make sure he wasn’t on the defensive with me. “It wasn’t me, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t you or Laurent. But the rest of them…”

“I think earlier they all seem so nice,” he confided, lowering his voice with a glance toward Marielle and Justine. “ Alors, at dinner they are so— vicieux ?”

“Vicious, yes,” I agreed. This was good, we were chatting like confidantes.

“Can we get you anything else?” Marielle asked, her hands clasped behind her back.

“I would love a Perrier,” I said. I wasn’t terribly thirsty, but I wanted her to have reason to come back, and I’d noticed earlier that we’d drunk all the Perrier in the bar fridge.

“Same,” Rémy said.

“Of course,” she said with a nod.

“I didn’t fall overboard,” I whispered once she and Justine had disappeared down the stairs toward the kitchen. “Someone pushed me.”

“I believe you,” he said. “I tell them call the police, but nobody listen to me.”

“Thank you,” I said, hoping this meant he might confide in me. “Can I ask you something?”

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 is entre 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 to catch 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.