Amber Beach

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “They weren’t stupid!”

  “Okay. Smart, spineless, and weak.”

  “They weren’t weak. Not really.”

  “Spineless and hesitant.”

  “Polite.”

  “Spineless.”

  “Sold.” Then she laughed sadly. “But I’ll never admit it to my brothers.”

  “Something tells me they already figured it out.”

  “Yeah, well, Jay whatshisname can stay in Kaliningrad and collect Neolithic amber. I don’t want another big, overbearing man in my life.”

  “I doubt if he’s all that bad,” Jake said blandly.

  “I don’t. Anyone who can fight Kyle and win is no fragile little flower of chivalry.”

  “They fought?” Jake asked, surprised. He didn’t think Kyle would have passed along the tale of the beer barrel, the barmaid, and the boy who bit off more than he could chew.

  “Sure did. Kyle ended up on his butt in a puddle of beer. Jay put him there. But Kyle really respects him. Talks about him like he was a stepbrother to God or another Donovan. Same difference, I suppose.”

  Jake didn’t know what to say. Apparently Kyle had conned his family as thoroughly as he had conned Jake; they believed Kyle liked and respected the very man he had betrayed.

  It should have made Jake feel better that he wasn’t the only one who had been fooled by Kyle. It didn’t. He found himself hoping that Honor would never have to know how different Kyle was from what he seemed. The discovery had been painful enough for him; he could imagine how terrible it would be for Honor.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “What else do you know about amber and your brother?”

  “Not much. He called about six weeks ago and told me to start designing some fantastic stuff, the kind museums and very rich collectors buy. He had just heard about some big pieces of clear raw amber, chunks of a size for tabletop sculptures rather than earrings or inlay.”

  Jake hoped his surprise didn’t show. Kyle hadn’t said a word to him about that kind of treasure trove. But then, Kyle hadn’t said anything about a lot of things that were on his mind, as Jake had found out too late.

  “Sounds expensive,” he said carefully.

  “It would be. Big pieces like that are really rare. When Kyle first started working in Kaliningrad, I asked him to bring me a cantaloupe-sized chunk of clear red amber. He laughed so hard he nearly dropped the phone. How was I to know I might as well have asked for a ten-carat diamond?”

  “Um,” was all Jake could think of to say.

  He was trying hard not to laugh himself. He looked at the bright blue screen of the fish finder and hoped his face was as blank as the screen.

  Not a fish showing. Not a bump on the bottom worth investigating. He cleared his throat and turned back to Honor. “Then we’ll assume we’re looking for something that is bigger than a man and smaller than, say, a room in Kyle’s cottage.”

  “Why?”

  Jake thought fast. “Logic. Would he bring it here if he couldn’t hide it?”

  “How did he get it here, then?”

  “Good question. I’ll be sure to ask him.”

  “First we have to find him.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “From here, it looks like you’re fishing. And not very well, I must say. Good thing I got some chicken for dinner.”

  “I’ll bring the wine.”

  Honor smiled and wished she knew Jake well enough to kiss his hard cheekbone just above his beard. She had been hoping not to spend the evening alone, waiting for the phone to ring, wondering if it would be bad news, worse news, or Snake Eyes on the other end of the line.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked, leaning close to the blue screen, needing to think about anything except the unnerving silence that came when she said hello and no one answered.

  Jake tried not to take an extra-deep breath, savoring the sweet smell of woman so close to him. Then he tried not to think how nice her chin-length hair would feel tickling his bare skin. Then he tried not to think about her lips doing the same thing, tickling so fine.

  “Jake? What are you hoping to find?”

  “I’m . . .” He stared at the screen for a few seconds while he tried to think of a nice way to say that he was looking for her brother’s dead body or a cache of stolen amber sunk to the bottom by the missing anchor.

  There was no nice way.

  “I’m looking for fish,” he said. “That’s all. Just fish.”

  “The screen looks blank to me.”

  “It is.”

  Jake hit one of the buttons on the bottom number pad. The view changed back to the chart. Trying to see more clearly, Honor shifted position until she was half standing in the aisle. He hit a few more buttons and the picture changed again. A new route was laid out.

  “Steer while I reel in,” he said, sliding out from behind the helm seat.

  There was no way he could avoid touching her quite thoroughly as he passed her in the narrow aisle. There was no way he could avoid noticing the way her breath broke and her lips parted at the contact. And there definitely was no way he could help his elemental male response.

  At least one thing was working well today, Jake thought ironically as he brought the fishing lines in. Rock hard and ready to go.

  “What now?” Honor asked when he came back into the cabin.

  “Now we find out if their gas tanks are as full as ours.”

  10

  TEN HOURS AND fifteen fishing spots later, Jake still had what he had started out the day with: unanswered questions and an ache in his crotch.

  It did nothing to improve his temper. He had pushed the speed hard getting to the sixteenth fishing hole, if only to watch the navy Bayliner scramble. Snake Eyes hadn’t made the cut. He had turned off to refuel at Fisherman’s Bay several hours before and hadn’t caught up again. The other Bayliner had dropped out for a time, but hadn’t had any trouble finding them again. A direct line to the Coast Guard no doubt helped.

  The only good news was that Honor had gotten so restless he had talked her into learning a few basics of fishing. He started by teaching her the fine art of casting a lure and buzz bombing on the retrieve. The buzz bombing part of it didn’t particularly interest her. What did was casting. She had a natural sense of timing and leverage that made her casts long and accurate.

  When Jake cut the speed back to an idle, Honor looked around. There were no other boats in sight. He had really burned up the water getting there.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Kyle entered a ‘hit’ in the log here. If the date is accurate—and I have no way of checking it—then this is one of the places he came to but didn’t record in his written log after he got back from Kaliningrad.”

  “Date? What do you mean? I didn’t know the Tomorrow’s electronics recorded dates.”

  There was a lot about the electronics that Honor didn’t know. Jake would just as soon it stayed that way. He didn’t want her to get any ideas about going off on her own if Ellen spilled the beans the next day. The way Honor had taken the helm and shot off over the water still haunted him. She had more guts than sense.

  “Some programs record all kinds of things,” he said. “In any case, Kyle tinkered with this computer the same way he fiddled with your alarm clock. All I know for sure is that this isn’t like any other chart plotter I’ve ever used. I’m still trying to figure out half the stuff I find.”

  That wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t entirely false, either. Jake supposed there was some kind of poetic justice in using a mixture of truths and half-truths, omissions and distractions on Honor Donovan. That was what a Donovan had done to him. There was no single thing that he could have pinned on Kyle, yet the proof surely was in the result: J. Jacob Mallory accused of theft and Kyle Donovan making off with the amber.

  Jake went out on the stern and looked around, ignoring the rods waiting to be used. He didn’t feel like setting up the trolling gear again.

  Hono
r slipped past him and grabbed a rod out of the holder. The rod tip bowed over with the weight of the lure. Once she had discovered that lures came in weights from a quarter of an ounce to sixteen ounces and up, she had gone right to the heavy stuff. Smiling like a kid with a new toy, she started casting.

  “What are you aiming for?” he asked.

  “Straight ahead of me, where that chunk of wood is floating.”

  She gripped the long rod with two hands, lifted the tip up and behind her right shoulder, then snapped the rod forward smartly. At the same time she released all restraint on the fishing line. The lure shot out straight in front of her, peeling off translucent line in a blur of speed.

  As though it had been on rails rather than monofilament line, the lure dropped into the water near the floating wood. The distance was at least fifty feet.

  Jake shook his head at the waste of talent—to cast like that and not care if you ever got a bite. In fact, he had the distinct feeling that Honor would welcome a fish like ants at a picnic.

  “Why are you shaking your head?” she asked. “I came pretty close.”

  “Pretty close? Hell, you’re better at casting right now than ninety percent of the people who ever picked up a fishing rod.”

  She reeled in as though there were a prize for highest speed through the water by a lure. “Really?”

  “Yeah. But your retrieval technique needs work. A lot of it.”

  She ignored him.

  He thought about setting up the trolling gear again and decided again that it wasn’t worth the trouble. They wouldn’t be there long; Kyle had marked only one “hit” on the chart plotter for this area.

  “I’m not going to bother with the trolling gear,” Jake said.

  “Fine with me.”

  “Reel in. I’m going to take a few slow passes over Kyle’s route.”

  “It won’t interfere with my casting.”

  “It would interfere with catching a fish.”

  “Like I said . . .”

  Jake gave up and went back into the cabin. He drove over the marked spot twice at idling speed. He saw nothing on the fish finder. Not fish, not bubbles, not even an interesting lump rising from the flat bottom.

  “Wrap it up,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re heading out.”

  Honor didn’t argue this time. She reeled in, put the rod in the holder by the door, and went into the cabin.

  “Do you think we lost our escort for good?” she asked, looking at the empty little cove.

  “No. Conroy never really lost me. He should be rounding the head any second now.”

  “Then why did we race here?”

  “If we’re predictable, we’re a lot easier prey.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that word.”

  “Little supermarket predator,” he said, smiling despite his edgy mood. “You’re one of a kind.”

  “Wait until you meet Faith.”

  Jake’s smile faded. All things considered, he didn’t think he would be meeting any more Donovans. Certainly not under friendly circumstances.

  He picked up the binoculars and studied the shoreline. It didn’t take long. The islet was not only small and uninhabited, it was pretty much sheer rock except for a ragged crown of fir trees.

  “Anything?” Honor asked.

  “The usual.”

  Switching his attention to the computer, he started punching instructions into the chart plotter. The picture on the screen changed and then changed again.

  Honor knew just enough to tell that Jake was looking at some kind of map—chart, she corrected herself silently. But she couldn’t figure out what kind of chart. It could have been the route back to Anacortes or it could have been the bottom of the South Pacific colored blue with little black dash marks going crazily in every direction.

  When the screen changed she peered over Jake’s shoulder. As usual, nothing made sense. She bent over to see more clearly. Being so close to him reminded her of the time before dawn, when he had looked at the hem of her nightshirt and risen like a phoenix from the ashes of a morning erection.

  Are you finished staring or were you planning to stuff money in my jock strap?

  Anger, embarrassment, and something hotter licked over Honor. She stepped back quickly and glanced around, trying to think of anything but Jake Mallory’s very male body.

  He called up the last route to be checked—or at least the last route he could find stored in the modified computer. The route was well off the normal run of fishing or sailing places. It led to a waterless, uninhabited cluster of small islets, reefs, and rocks whose presence was known but not marked by warning lights or beacons.

  It wasn’t the kind of place he wanted to tiptoe through in the late afternoon on a falling tide. In any case, there wasn’t enough daylight left to get to the next route, check it over, and still make it back to the cottage’s little dock before full darkness.

  Jake reset the radar to reach farther out. A tiny blip was boring in from the east. The Zodiac, no doubt. He glanced sideways at Honor. She was doing everything but putting her head in the bait bucket to avoid looking at him with her speculative, hungry eyes.

  He knew just how she felt. The more he looked at her, the better he liked what he saw. If something didn’t happen to lower the level of sexual heat in the boat real soon, he would do something really stupid.

  He could hardly wait.

  Jake hissed a disgusted word, furious with himself for not being able to get his mind off his crotch. He looked at the fish finder. Nothing was showing. He switched to the chart and gauged distances. He looked at his watch and then the sky. Still not enough time to do anything useful.

  Still plenty of time to do something really stupid.

  On the other hand, he could go fishing. Real fishing instead of just dragging lures through the water no matter what the time or tide.

  “I wonder if the kings are still running at Falcon Cliff,” he said aloud.

  “Kings?” Honor asked. “As in royalty?”

  “As in twelve to sixty-five pounds of pure dynamite waiting to bite on our freshly sharpened hooks.”

  “Kings are fish?”

  “Around here they are.”

  “Are you saying that we’re really going fishing?”

  “Right.”

  “Merde.”

  “Wrong answer,” Jake said, revving up the SeaSport, turning it about. “Enthusiasm, remember?”

  “Oh, I just can’t wait. Can we go there right now, please pretty please with sugar on it, et cetera.”

  “Your enthusiasm still needs work. But don’t worry, I’ll give you lots of chance to practice.”

  The Zodiac closed in quickly as the Tomorrow retraced part of its previous course. Jake waved as they passed. Conroy didn’t wave back. He didn’t try to board them, either. Apparently he was getting as fed up with the game as Jake was.

  Honor sighed and watched dark water whip beneath the Tomorrow’s bow. She tried not to worry about Kyle and the cold sea, missing amber, and a murdered man.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “Whatever is making you look so grim.”

  “No thanks. I’d rather talk about anything else.”

  “Okay. Do you live alone?”

  She looked over at him, startled.

  “Well, you did say you’d rather talk about—” he began.

  “—anything else,” Honor finished dryly. “Faith and I share a condo in Southern California, but one or the other of us is gone a lot of the time.”

  “What does your sister do?”

  “Turns my designs into breathtaking bits of art. While she does that, I’m usually on the road looking for new materials at gem and mineral shows across the country. When I’m home designing, she’ll take her turn rounding up raw materials.”

  “Is that where you got the amber I saw on your desk?”

  “No. Kyle sent it to us.”

  Jake’s hands tight
ened on the helm. He didn’t say a word.

  “All our brothers keep an eye out for interesting stuff for us to use,” Honor continued. “Even the Donovan collects for us.”

  “Are your father and brothers in business with you?”

  “With mere females?” she retorted. “Bite your tongue. Donovan International is the last of the Old Boy Clubs.”

  Though her voice was sardonic, there was no real anger in her words. She and Faith had learned to be grateful they were women. In some ways it made getting out from under Donald Donovan’s benevolent tyranny much easier. Archer had fought for his freedom with a ferocity that was still legend in the family. Lawe and Justin had double-teamed the old man and worn him down that way. Kyle was still struggling. He had the added burden of being the youngest male, which meant that sometimes he had to fight his older brothers, too.

  “Donovan International,” Jake said slowly, looking at the radar. Three boats showing now. Apparently Snake Eyes had managed to find the bright orange of the Coast Guard again. “I’ve heard the name somewhere . . .”

  As he had hoped, Honor took the bait.

  “On Wall Street, likely,” she said. “Dad’s company discovers, recovers, buys, and/or sells metals and rare minerals.”

  “Nice setup. Your brothers will never lack for a job.”

  “Lousy setup. They want to be boss.”

  “Every Eden has a snake.”

  “Well, my brothers bypassed the old serpent and started their own company, Donovan Gemstones and Minerals.”

  Jake smiled despite the raw male hunger prowling through his blood every time he thought about Honor’s soft mouth and softer body. “The sons went into competition with the old man, is that it?”

  Honor winced, remembering. “That’s it. The salsa really hit the fan when Dad discovered that he had been outmaneuvered by his own sons.”

  “Did he disinherit them?”

  She looked shocked. “Of course not. Dad is bullheaded and stiff-necked, but he’s not vicious. The Donovan males went head-to-head for a year on various mineral surveys and such. When Dad was convinced the boys would make it without him, he offered a palace alliance.”

  “Did they take it?”