Nancy stepped in. “Then we got lost,” she interrupted smoothly, leaning her backpack against a tree. She threw George a warning glance. There wasn’t any point in alerting Paula Hancock to their suspicions. If she had anything to do with the warning phone call or the missing barricade, Nancy didn’t want to put her on her guard. “I’m Nancy Drew,” she said, holding out her hand and studying Paula. “George invited me to come along.”
“Glad to have you,” Paula replied brusquely. She ignored Nancy’s hand. She had odd amber eyes, Nancy noticed, cold and remote.
Nancy shivered as though somebody had dropped an ice cube down her neck. “Have we . . . have we met?” she asked hesitantly. Those eyes—where had she seen them?
Paula straightened up. “I don’t think so,” she said more casually. “Not unless you’ve been up here before.”
“No,” Nancy said. “This is my first trip to Montana.” She was sure she had never met Paula, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew those eyes.
Paula turned to a dark, good-looking young man in a faded blue denim work shirt and jeans, who was loading a radio into one of the rafts. “Max, come and meet our grand-prize winner, Georgia Fayne. Max is an expert river-rafter,” she said, turning back to George and Nancy. “He’ll handle one of our rafts. I’m taking the other.”
“It’s not Georgia, it’s George,” George said, shaking Max’s hand. “This is my friend Nancy. And Bess,” she added as the others came up, “and Ned. We’re really looking forward to the trip. Ned’s been on a raft trip before, but the rest of us are novices.”
“Glad to meet you,” Max said. A long, hairline scar cut across the corner of his square jaw, giving him a lopsided look. He smiled at Bess as he shook her hand, his dark eyes glinting appreciatively. “Real glad.”
Nancy looked at Max closely. The voice on the phone could just as easily have been a man’s voice as a woman’s. In her experience, it was better to consider everybody a candidate for suspicion. And Max looked like a likely one. But then, so did Paula. Since she was the owner of White Water Rafting, she must have been responsible for the contest—and for that killer map. Nancy decided to watch both of them closely.
Paula glanced at the sleeping bags and packs that Ned was carrying. “Go ahead and stow your gear in Max’s raft,” she commanded. “The sooner we get started, the better.” She frowned at Max. “Did you check the batteries before you loaded the emergency radio?”
Max nodded. “Sure thing,” he said carelessly. “Can’t be out on the river with a radio we don’t trust, can we?”
“Hi! Let me show you where to put those.” A pretty girl walked over to Ned and took one of the sleeping bags from him. She was petite and willowy, and her ash-blond hair swept softly over her shoulders. “I’m Samantha,” she told him in a soft southern drawl. “But my friends call me Sammy.”
“Well . . . sure,” Ned said, with a shrug and a quick glance at Nancy. He followed Sammy to the raft. Paula went along, too, calling out instructions for stowing the gear.
Nancy looked at George. “Maybe we should meet some of the others,” she suggested, pointing to a group of kids standing beside one of the rafts.
“Okay,” George said. “I’m looking forward to—”
George didn’t get to finish her sentence. Suddenly the air around them exploded in a series of sharp, staccato sounds, like gunshots fired in rapid succession. Somebody was shooting at them!
Chapter Four
“Get down!” Nancy yelled, pulling George with her in a wild dash for the shelter of a nearby tree. The gunshots continued, echoing through the trees. Crouching low, Nancy waved frantically at several other kids who were still standing beside the rafts, out in the open. “Get down!” she yelled. “Somebody’s shooting!”
“Oh, come on,” one of the girls called back. “That’s not a gun. It’s just Tod and Mike shooting their dumb firecrackers.” The explosions stopped suddenly and there was absolute quiet, except for the sound of the falls.