“Up you go.” Darius lifted her onto the shore.
Eve brought her legs up, and she rolled over onto her back away from the water. She didn’t stay there long before rolling over. She reached out, meaning to give Darius a hand, but with his stronger arms and longer body, he had already lifted himself from the river. He lay beside her and let out a breath. Then he was on his knees and looking at the river.
“Let that thing go,” he called to Joe, who hadn’t reached the shore yet.
“Is he towing in the boat?”
“Yes.” Darius grumbled and spread out on his stomach. He stretched out a hand. Joe took it, still hanging onto the boat’s rope. When he reached the shore, he handed it to Darius and hefted himself up. The two men flipped the boat to empty the water and then pulled it up on the grass.
“Why are you doing that?” Eve asked, holding her bent knees to her chest and shivering.
“I want to look at it.”
At the man’s grim tone, she stood and joined them. Joe had squatted down and was examining the hull. It turned out it wasn’t a single hole but two, closely placed together. The bodyguard ran his fingers over them, ignoring the fiberglass threads. Darius bent over and looked inside.
Eve leaned in beside him. There were two larger holes wider spread at the bottom. No wonder they’d taken on water so fast.
“Yep. It’s what I thought,” Joe said. “Those are bullet holes.”
Darius put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. Her shivers turned to trembling and not only from the cold. Someone had shot at them. Twice.
16
Darius needed to talk with Joe about what had happened but didn’t want to alarm Eve any more than she was. The bodyguard’s silence meant he was busy thinking about the whole macabre situation.
Had someone been out hunting and hadn’t noticed the boat, so it was a freak accident? Darius’ instincts said no. As closely as those shots had been placed, it seemed unlikely. Did that mean someone had been shooting at him? OrEve? The thought that someone might have been targeting her twisted his gut.
Darius sensed Joe looking at him as they walked. The bodyguard mouthedBill.Darius nodded. Whatever else was going on, it was time to pull in the REKD Gaming head of security. What a crazy six months it had been. Never before since they had created the company had they needed the man’s expertise so much.
Silently, they followed the river back to the boathouse where they found some folded blankets.
“I’m glad I left my satellite phone here. I’ll report this to the police,” Joe said, pulling it from the cupboard where he’d stowed it. He indicated the door and took the lead, checking the surroundings before he let them leave the building.
Eve had been silent since they’d found the bullet holes, and Darius wondered what she was thinking. When they approached the house, they found Mrs. Campbell outside.
“Oh my goodness,” she cried and hurried over to them. “What’s happened?”
“We took one of the boats out and . . . it sprung a leak, so we got a soaking,” Darius said.
“We’ll get you all taken care of straightaway.”
When the plump woman took Eve’s arm to guide her inside, Darius dropped his. He found himself eying the servants now, wondering who could have been out. These were the servants that cleaned the house and tended the grounds, but he knew there were farmhands as well. Had any of them been out and seen something?Donesomething? Was he being paranoid? The memory of those two holes so closely placed and low on the boat told him he wasn’t.
“I’d like to be in on the call to Bill,” he said to Joe as they headed toward the house.
“We should leave,” the bodyguard said.
“I agree, but she wants to see her grandfather again, and I won’t go without her.”
* * *
It tooka few minutes before Eve was finally able to convince Mrs. Campbell that she could take care of herself. The woman insisted on helping her get out of the muddy clothes, and she carried them away with her.
As Eve stepped into the bath, her mind seemed to scatter in a myriad of directions. She’d have liked to talk with Darius, but she couldn’t settle on any of the ideas that were flowing through her mind, some of them crazy.
Someone had shot at them.
There were only two bullet holes. If there was anything sinister behind it and it hadn’t been just a stupid accident, wouldn’t the shooter have fired three times since there had been three of them in the boat? Why would anyone want to kill them? It just didn’t make sense.
