Amber Beach

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “They don’t post want ads in hell.”

  There was nothing warm and reassuring about Jake’s eyes at the moment. They were winter cold and as unforgiving as the hell he had just mentioned. She swallowed and wondered for the first time if she shouldn’t be afraid of him.

  She wanted to be. It would make everything so much easier. But she wasn’t.

  Rather distantly she wondered what the IQ of a moron really was. Probably close to absolute zero, if her own so-called brain was any guide—she was the one who had been babbling about love to a man who hated her brother. Her only, bitter, comfort was that Jake had been too busy screwing her to listen.

  “What would you have done in my place?” he demanded.

  “My options would have been limited. I’m not as strong as you are. And I’m not a world-class liar.”

  His hand tightened on Honor’s thigh. “I haven’t lied to you. Not in the way you mean.”

  “Really? What way do I mean?”

  “I didn’t make love to you in order to get to your brother,” Jake said bluntly.

  “I believe you.”

  He let out a long breath. “Thank God.”

  “You didn’t make love to me, period,” she continued with a thin smile.

  “What would you call it?”

  “Sex.”

  “Whatever. As long as you know it didn’t have anything to do with the Kyle mess.”

  Honor stared at Jake and wondered which one of them was crazy. One of them had to be.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You came to me under false pretenses—”

  “You hired me under false—”

  “—and then you—”

  “—pretenses,” he said, talking over her. “You didn’t want to learn how to—”

  “—take advantage of my fear to crawl in bed and—” she continued relentlessly.

  “—fish and you’re afraid of—”

  “—then you have the balls to suggest that the sex and the Kyle mess have nothing—”

  “—small boats and—”

  “Stop yelling!”

  “I’m not yelling.” Jake’s breath came out in a rush that was also a disgusted curse. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “On that we agree. Let go of me.”

  “You’d rather finish this conversation on the floor?”

  “There’s nothing to finish. It was finished when Archer told me who you were.”

  “Just what did your brother tell you?”

  “That I was a little fool and you could be Kyle’s killer.”

  A stillness came over Jake.

  For the first time, fear breathed a chill over Honor’s skin.

  “Is that what you believe?” he asked softly.

  She made a trapped, frustrated gesture. “I don’t believe Kyle is dead, so I could hardly believe you killed him, could I?”

  “Talk about damned by faint praise.”

  “It’s more than you deserve and less than a smart woman would give you,” Honor said, her voice flat. “But then, you’ve already proved just how stupid I am, haven’t you?”

  “No. I proved how passionate you were. That’s a different thing entirely.”

  Honor closed her eyes and wished with all her soul to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. And with no memory of the past few days.

  The pain and humiliation beneath her anger made Jake wince. His hand on her thigh became less confining, more caressing. “Honor, sweetheart, I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but I’m not sorry about last night.”

  “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

  The softness of her voice made the hair on Jake’s neck stir in primal reflex. If he pushed her any harder, she would go for his throat like the cornered animal she was. Very gently he lifted his hand. She let out a shuddering breath and opened her eyes. He didn’t like what he saw in them any better than he had liked the tone of her voice.

  “Right now you don’t ever want to see me again—” Jake began.

  “Bingo.”

  “—but we don’t always get what we want.”

  “More salty philosophy?”

  Jake took a grip on his own uncertain temper. “Too bad Archer couldn’t have waited for a few more days.”

  “Is that how long you figured it would take to finish screwing my brains out?”

  “Last night has nothing to do with the rest of this mess!”

  The smile Honor gave him could have cured sharkskin, but she didn’t say a word. She simply waited and watched him with the wide, cold eyes of a cat. He looked at the clock on the bedside table. There wasn’t much time left.

  “You want to find Kyle, right?” Jake asked.

  She nodded her head slightly.

  “I want to find your brother, right?” he continued.

  She shrugged.

  “Believe it,” he shot back. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to have a chat with my good buddy Kyle Donovan.”

  Honor nodded. If she believed nothing else about Jake, she believed he wanted to get his hands on her brother.

  “You,” he said, “need me to run the boat and keep the rest of the players off your back.”

  “I’ll hire someone else.”

  “Too dangerous. Snake Eyes has friends. Besides,” Jake said smoothly, “you want to stay close to me. Real close.”

  “Like hell I do.”

  “Think. How else will you be sure Kyle doesn’t get hurt when I get my lying, cheating, murderous hands on him?”

  The phone rang.

  Honor didn’t even flinch. Nor did she make a move to answer it.

  “You know who it is,” Jake said. “You can do what Archer says and go home like a good little girl, or you can be a big bad girl and keep on looking for Kyle with me.”

  She didn’t so much as glance toward the phone.

  “Answer it,” he said tightly. “Or do you want to spend the rest of the day talking to cops? If you think you’re embarrassed now, wait until you tell them why we spent the night in the sack instead of calling in a burglary.”

  She snatched up the phone. “Hello.”

  “Are you all right?” Archer demanded.

  “Fine,” she said distantly.

  “You don’t sound like it. Does he have a gun on you?”

  For the first time Honor remembered Jake’s gun. If he had it, it wasn’t on him. There wasn’t one inch of him she couldn’t see.

  “Honor?” Archer asked urgently.

  “No. He’s not holding a gun on me. Why would he? I trusted him. As you pointed out, I’m a little fool.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed with barely leashed rage. Honor’s voice was so very calm, so completely reasonable. It was like dripping acid onto his raw conscience.

  He never should have touched her.

  But he had.

  There was no going back. He didn’t even want to. He wanted more of what he had found with her last night. A lot more.

  “You’re not a fool,” Jake said softly. “You’re a passionate woman with good instincts about when and who to trust.”

  Honor ignored him as though he were a stain on the sheets. She was ignoring Archer the same way, although her brother didn’t know it. She needed every shred of control she had just to think through the unholy tangle that passed for her emotions. If she could get past the humiliation and rage, then she might be able to use her brain for something besides silently screaming names at herself.

  Abruptly she realized that the line was open and silent. Archer was waiting for an answer. Unfortunately she couldn’t remember what the question had been.

  “Sorry,” she said in a clipped voice. “One way or another, it’s already been a hell of a day. What were you saying?”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Archer, I could be standing crotch-deep in crocodiles and there isn’t a damn thing you could do about it right now except yell at me for being so stupid as to wander into a swamp!” She took a jagged breath.
“Other than that, I’m fine. Peachy wonderful fabulous. Now, what haven’t you told me about Kyle and stolen amber and any other little thing that might seriously inconvenience or kill me between now and tomorrow?”

  “When I told you to go to Kyle’s cottage, I didn’t have any idea that he had returned to the States or that other people were after the amber or that the police had been alerted. If I’d known, I’d never have sent you there.”

  “Okay. It was April Fool all the way around. What else haven’t you told me?”

  There was silence, a few muttered words in a language Honor didn’t recognize, and then a pungent curse in English.

  “I know that one,” she snapped. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Amber Room?” Archer asked finally, reluctantly.

  “Sort of. It belonged to a czar, the walls of the room were covered in amber mosaics, and it’s supposed to be some of the most beautiful decorative art ever made.”

  “The Nazis stole it. No one has seen it since the end of World War Two. Or if they have, they’re not talking.”

  “So?”

  “A panel from the room was stashed with the shipment of amber Kyle supposedly took from Jay.”

  “Jay? Who is— Oh, you mean Jake.”

  “A son of a bitch by any other name is still a—”

  “Son of a bitch,” Honor finished, looking right at the naked stranger in her bed and trying to forget that she was equally naked herself. “So Jay/Jake got his hands on a chunk of the Amber Room, slipped it into a legitimate shipment of raw amber, and set up Kyle to look like the thief?”

  Jake’s eyes could have been borrowed from hell, but he didn’t say a word.

  “That’s the simplest explanation,” Archer said. “Unless you prefer to think that Kyle did it.”

  “Who is this Mar-you person?”

  “Marry-you? Oh, Marju. She’s the one Kyle lost his head over.”

  “The one he might have stolen for, except that Jake beat him to it?” Honor asked coolly, watching the thief in question.

  “That’s about it,” her brother said.

  “What does Marju say about this mess?”

  There was a pause.

  “Archer,” Honor said, biting off her brother’s name, “don’t hold out on me again.”

  “Hell, sis. All we have is second- or third-hand gossip.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Marju says that Kyle pretended to be in love with her in order to get his hands on the Amber Room.”

  Honor’s eyelids flinched. “What about Jake?”

  “She thinks he was in partnership with Kyle. Informally, if you get my meaning.”

  “A collaboration of crooks.”

  Silence.

  “What do you think, Archer?” she asked.

  “I think there’s more to this mess than we’ve been able to uncover.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “I’m given a choice of trusting Mallory, who I’ve known for less than a year, or I can trust Kyle.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Kyle?” Archer asked in disbelief.

  “No.”

  “Oh, Mallory.”

  “A son of a bitch by any other name,” she agreed bitterly.

  “Until the Amber Room came on the scene, I would have trusted Jay with my secrets, my business, and my life if it came to a fight in a dark alley. But every man has a price. The Amber Room was Mallory’s.”

  “But not Kyle’s.”

  “Kyle doesn’t need money and he’s not a serious collector of amber. His first love is jade. Jay doesn’t need money, but he loves amber the way some men love God. Love isn’t a particularly reasonable emotion.”

  Honor’s throat closed. She had a growing suspicion about just how irrational, unreasonable, and unruly an emotion love could be. She was, after all, the fool who had declared her love to a man who was merely an exquisite lover.

  “Do you think he killed Kyle?” she asked baldly.

  “I don’t think Kyle is dead.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the best answer I have. Hell, anyone can kill in the right circumstances, even you.”

  “No argument there,” she said, looking right at Jake.

  “What is this about Dimitri Pavlov?” Archer asked.

  “Dimitri who?”

  “Snake Eyes,” Jake said clearly, guessing the course of the conversation.

  “Oh, him,” she said. “I didn’t hire him.”

  “Stay away from him,” Archer said. “He’s the kind of person you hate to do business with but don’t have any choice if you want to work in the modern Russian Federation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Russian mafiya,” he said succinctly. “The new interface between capitalism and chaos in the old Soviet Union. They have the morals of a mink and the scruples of a shark.”

  “That’s how Snake Eyes struck me,” she agreed. “He’s following me whenever we go out fishing. So is the Coast Guard and at least one other private boat. Maybe two.”

  “Bloody wonderful,” Archer said under his breath. “Well, at least you’re safe on the water. Who ransacked Kyle’s place last night?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at Jake. “Do you know who was here last night?”

  “No.”

  “He doesn’t—” she began.

  “I heard,” Archer said. “Ask him if he has any guesses.”

  “You ask him. I’ve had it with being caught in the middle.”

  She threw the receiver at Jake. He caught it without taking his eyes off her. He watched while she got out of bed and stalked toward the bathroom. When the shower came on he let out a silent sigh of relief and lifted the receiver to his ear.

  “What?” he asked curtly.

  “Who was the guy last night?”

  “He wasn’t from this side of the ocean.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The U.S. government thinks it has an in with me, so they have no reason to do a dicey black bag job on a very private residence.”

  Archer absorbed that. “The government has already approached you?”

  “Yeah. Seems the Russians asked for help recovering the Amber Room.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No. I don’t expect to, either. I think it’s a wide load of fairy dust.”

  Archer grunted. “Is Honor in danger?”

  “From Uncle Sam’s players? Probably not. After that, all bets are off.”

  “Put her back on.”

  “She’s in the shower.”

  “Shower! Just how close are you and Honor?”

  “About ten feet.”

  “What?”

  “The phone is about ten feet from the shower.”

  “Mallory, you’re pissing me off.”

  “Do unto others and all that. Are you still in Kamchatka?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “If I get taken out, I’d like to think that help was on the way for Honor. The body that washed up here was former KGB. After the wall came down, he hired out his talents. He had a traveling partner. The partner hasn’t washed up yet. The good news is, neither has your brother.”

  “Christ, what a mess. Get Honor out of there! I’ll pay you more than the Amber Room is worth.”

  “I don’t want the Amber Room. I want the truth.”

  “That’s all the Donovans want.”

  “Like hell. What you want is to clear Kyle by hanging me.”

  “If you get Honor out of there, I’ll spread the word that you’re innocent.”

  “Then who’s guilty? Kyle?”

  Archer didn’t answer.

  “Nice try,” Jake said sardonically, “but I’m not buying any more Donovan bullshit. If you find out anything that might help keep your sister alive, don’t forget to call.”

  He hung up on Archer, listened to the shower, and tried to thin
k of how he could keep Honor safe. He was still sorting through possibilities when the shower shut off. A few minutes later Honor walked into the room wearing her baggy black sweat suit. Above the collar she looked fresh and sleek.

  Then Jake saw her eyes. He had been wrong when he told Archer that she was only ten feet away. The kind of distance he saw in her now couldn’t be measured.

  “Who was the guy last night?” she asked calmly.

  “I don’t know.”

  She ran her fingers through her chin-length hair in an automatic fluffing gesture and didn’t say a word.

  “I really don’t know,” Jake said angrily. “He didn’t exactly leave a business card.”

  “Anything else?”

  Her voice was like her expression, cold enough to leave frost.

  “You said you have a sister in Hawaii?” he asked.

  Honor spun toward him. “Why? Is something wrong with Faith?”

  “Archer wants you to visit her. It’s one of the few things we agreed on.”

  “Too bad. I don’t agree.”

  “Snake Eyes is a professional killer.”

  Her eyelids flinched. “All the more reason to keep Faith out of this.”

  “All right. Take a vacation on Tahiti or Easter Island until this is over. Donovan International can hire some bodyguards to haul your luggage. If they don’t know anyone up to the job, I do.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “As you so cleverly pointed out, I should be around when you find Kyle.”

  “I won’t hurt him. You have my word.”

  “That’s nice. I’m staying.”

  Jake played his last card—the famous Donovan temper. “Just can’t get enough of me, huh?”

  “Yeah, how’d you guess?” she said without interest. “Let’s go fishing.”

  For a few electric seconds Jake measured Honor. Everything he saw convinced him that fishing not only was the best offer he would get from her right now, it was the only one. She was fully capable of walking out and casting off in the boat herself, leaving him standing around with his fine intentions hanging out.

  He grabbed his clothes and started pulling them on.

  14

  THE WEATHER WAS better than Jake’s mood, which wasn’t saying much. Low clouds, lower clouds, fog, drizzle, rain, and choppy water could be seen along various parts of the strait. At one point there was a pool of sunlight glittering way out on the water, but it didn’t last long. Wind closed the hole in the clouds and a hundred shades of gray settled seamlessly over land and sea.