Amber Beach

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Don’t worry about him,” Kyle said hoarsely. “All he cares about is dragging air.”

  Jake took in a little air himself, then let it out.

  “Kyle!” Honor called. “Are you all right?”

  “Tired. Thirsty. Disgusted. Surprised. When did you learn how to cast?”

  “Jake taught me.”

  Kyle looked at the man who was shoving Marju’s pistol into his dive belt. “You got her to handle a rod? You must be some kind of, uh, teacher.” The tone of his voice said that Kyle had noticed every time Resnikov called Honor Jake’s lover.

  “Maybe she’s a hell of a student,” Jake said.

  He went to Resnikov and looked at him skeptically. Without warning the side of Jake’s hand shot out and connected with the Russian’s head. He made a stifled sound and went limp.

  “Tie them up with fishing line before they come to,” Jake said, turning toward the boat. “I’ve got a call to make.”

  “Ellen?” Honor asked.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll drive a hard bargain. By the time I’m done, your brother will be a bloody hero.”

  “What about Marju and Pete?” Honor asked. “What will happen to them?”

  “Who?” Jake said sardonically.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ll let Ellen explain it to you. She’s good at making people believe that what happened didn’t happen at all.”

  24

  “I STILL THINK you should have gone to the hospital,” Honor said, frowning down at Kyle. “You leaned on Archer all the way home from the clinic.”

  Kyle smiled up at her from the comfort of his own bed. “The view is better here and it’s going to be a gorgeous sunset,” he said, waving to the window. “The nurse is a real nag, though.”

  “Nurse?” she retorted, pulling the down comforter up to his chin. “I’m the doctor or I don’t play, remember? And as doctor, I think you should—”

  “Relax,” Archer interrupted. He set down a pitcher of juice and a glass on the bedside table. “Like the real doc said, Kyle is fine as long as he keeps guzzling fluids that don’t have alcohol or caffeine in them.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Honor said, glaring up-way up-at her oldest brother. “You’re not the one in bed.”

  Archer smiled wearily. “I’d like to be.”

  He looked it, with his rumpled outdoor clothes, dark beard stubble, and grim lines on either side of his mouth. He had his mother’s black hair and his father’s eyes, a mixture of gray and blue and green that changed with his clothes or his mood. At the moment Archer’s eyes were almost as dark as the circles beneath them.

  Honor fought against the sympathy she felt for him. Despite the smudges beneath his eyes, he was disgustingly fit and too quick for a little sister’s comfort. His big hands were deft and steady as he poured a glass of juice for Kyle.

  “Quit fretting over him,” Archer said again, setting the glass on the table and turning toward Honor. “He’ll be back to tormenting you in a day. Two, max.”

  “I can’t take it easy! Last night I went to sea in a small boat in a gale, picked my way through horrible little rocks shortly after dawn this morning, watched people holding guns on—”

  “It’s over,” Archer interrupted, giving her a hug that lifted her off her feet. He rocked her from side to side as though she were a little girl again. “Kyle is all right and so are you. Everything’s okay.”

  Honor wanted to keep on snarling at her older brother, but right then he looked every one of his thirty-four years.

  Normally she would have been sympathetic, but she was still simmering from the discovery that Archer, Lawe, and Justin had concealed Kyle’s disappearance from her for two weeks-for her own peace of mind, of course. The fact that he had been on her mind constantly during those very weeks didn’t impress Archer.

  Male logic was a bright red pain.

  “’Take it easy,’” she said scathingly. “’Everything’s fine.’ Yeah, right. Like you. You look like you’ve been pulled through a knothole sideways. When was the last time you slept?”

  Archer put her down, smiled crookedly, and turned away to talk to Kyle. “I got hold of Justin and Lawe. They’ll be here in a few days. The Donovan is flying in tomorrow. Mom dropped her latest project and will be here with paint spatters from hair to heels along with Dad.”

  “Maybe I’ll rethink the hospital,” Kyle said, only half joking. “Dad will be pushing stateside desk jobs again and I’m not up to arguing.”

  Archer handed the glass of juice to Kyle. “Drink up. You’ll need all your wit and reflexes in order to dodge the old man.”

  “Speaking of reflexes, where’s Jay?” Kyle asked. “I still can’t believe how fast he took care of Marju and Pete.”

  “Jay’s with Ellen Lazarus,” Archer said, yawning. “Dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  Kyle shot a quick glance at Honor. “Jay and Ellen are old history.”

  “You can quit but you can’t get out of the game,” Archer said.

  “You ought to know,” Kyle muttered.

  Honor turned to her oldest brother. “You know Ellen?”

  Without answering, Archer reached for the thermos of coffee Honor had made for him. Scolding him the whole time, of course, but still taking care of him.

  “No, Archer doesn’t know Ellen,” Kyle said. “But he knows the game.”

  “Which game?” Honor asked.

  Archer shook the thermos. Empty. He looked hopefully at his sister.

  “Nope,” she said. “I made the first. It’s your turn.”

  “Wait for Jay,” Kyle said instantly. “He makes great coffee.”

  “What do you care?” Archer retorted. “You won’t be drinking any for twenty-four hours.”

  “Just the thought of someone drinking your coffee will be enough to put me in the hospital for sure,” Kyle said.

  “In that case, I will personally feed you the first cup,” Archer promised.

  His easy-moving kind of stride reminded Honor of Jake’s. She frowned, remembering Archer’s description of Jake: . . . moves like a fighter.

  Kyle looked at Honor’s frown. “It really is ancient history with Jay and Ellen.”

  “Jake’s a big boy,” she said, shrugging. “Ellen’s a big girl. What they do is their own business.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I mean exactly that,” Honor said flatly. “I hired Jake to help me find you. Jake signed on with me to clear his name. We both got what we wanted. Now the job is finished and so are we.”

  “But—”

  A knock at the front door of the cottage interrupted Kyle.

  “I’ll get it,” Honor called to Archer.

  She hurried from the room before Kyle could say any more about Jake. It really was hard to tell your brother that the man he thought was just right for you didn’t happen to want you for anything more than a brief, sizzling affair.

  Sex wears off about three weeks after the ink on the marriage license is dry.

  Just as Honor’s hand touched the door handle, the lessons of the past few days caught up with old habits. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Company,” Jake said.

  Honor took a moment to smooth all expression from her face as she brushed futilely at toast crumbs on her black sweatshirt and tight, faded jeans. Then she took a steadying breath. She was thirty years old. Certainly she could look a former lover in the eye without flushing and remembering all the stupid things she had said to him about love.

  She opened the door. Jake, Ellen, and Resnikov were standing on the small front porch.

  “You might have mentioned the other two,” Honor said coolly to Jake.

  “I said ‘company.’”

  “Your point?”

  “I’m family, not company.” He turned to the other two. “Remember our deal. Five minutes apiece and no follow-up without the full might and majesty of the law.”

  Gently crowding
past Honor, Jake walked into the house.

  Moving like people with a big job and only a little bit of time to work, Resnikov and Ellen followed. Both of them looked freshly washed and pressed. Ellen was back in her clear red jacket.

  “Kyle is too ill to talk,” Honor said bluntly.

  “No, he isn’t,” Archer called from the kitchen. “You have five minutes each and no return trips without a subpoena.”

  “Sounds like a bloody tape recording,” Ellen said to Jake. “Did you two set this up in advance?”

  “Didn’t have to. Archer is like me-he knows the unwritten rules. Pete, you drew the short straw so you go first. And remember, Honor and I saved your ass.”

  “I didn’t hear about that,” Ellen said to Jake. “I heard you knocked Petyr on his ass.”

  “I did him a favor. With Marju, Pete was in the position of the male praying mantis courting a female,” Jake said ironically.

  “Meaning?” Ellen said.

  “The females have been known to eat the males during mating, saving the useful portion for last. In order to avoid being a tasty memory, a male brings the female a juicy bug to distract her. Then he hops on and prays he’s finished before she is.”

  Ellen looked speculatively at Resnikov. “So it was getting down to the short strokes with Marju?”

  The Russian was puzzled until Jake translated the idiom. Resnikov laughed, shrugged elegantly, and headed for the bedroom without waiting to be shown where it was.

  “So it was him,” Jake muttered.

  “What?” Honor asked.

  Jake didn’t answer.

  Resnikov opened the bedroom door and walked in, leaving the door open behind him.

  “The amber panel,” he said to Kyle without preamble. “How did you get it to Petropavlosk?”

  Kyle reached for the glass of orange juice and drank. Even when he was finished, he didn’t say anything.

  “We will find out who helped you,” Resnikov said.

  “Not from me.”

  “I can make doing business in the Russian Federation quite difficult for Donovan International.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “Your family might feel differently.”

  “His family,” Archer said, coming in as far as the doorway, “backs him to the last drop of blood, sweat, and tears.”

  Jake smiled sourly. No news there. “Next question, Pete. Time’s wasting.”

  “Did you approach Marju about stealing the panel?”

  “No.”

  “That is not what she says.”

  “Just because she was working for you doesn’t mean she can be trusted,” Kyle said.

  The weariness in his voice could have come from exhaustion, but Honor suspected it didn’t. Being used by someone on the way to another goal was enough to give a saint a sour view of humanity.

  Kyle wasn’t a saint.

  “Marju was not working for me in the way that you mean. Our collaboration came later, as a matter of mutual convenience,” Resnikov said. “How did she get the amber panel?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said.

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Why? Do you trust everyone you screw?”

  The Russian looked amused. “That would not be wise.”

  “Marju didn’t trust me. She used me. Big difference.”

  Honor flinched with silent sympathy for her brother.

  “What do you know that might help me?” Resnikov asked Kyle.

  “That depends,” Jake said before Kyle could answer. “If you’re working for the Russian government, we can’t tell you much that you don’t already know. Marju’s cousin, according to her, was her source for the amber.”

  Resnikov turned quickly toward Jake. “Do you believe that?”

  “I believe her cousin is a fast-rising mafiya star whose buddy tried to kill Kyle and ended up dead himself. If the Kaliningrad mafiya had the panel, then the cousin was Marju’s connection.” Jake looked at his watch. “My turn,” he said to Resnikov. “Were you the one who searched this place?”

  “Yes.”

  Honor stiffened.

  “Were you on the freighter that nearly ran us down?” Jake continued.

  “No.” Resnikov looked toward Honor. “I had nothing to do with that misunderstanding. The captain has contempt for little boats. As for Vasi, he received a harsh lecture delivered by me for his part. He has enough English to warn you, but he enjoys—how do you say it?”

  “Being an asshole?” Jake asked.

  “Yes. It is the reason he left Russia.”

  “He gets in my face with that seiner again and he’ll be looking for a new place to live.”

  Resnikov nodded. “I said something very similar to him.”

  “You weren’t aboard the seiner either, were you?” Jake said. “You were in Vasi’s Olympic, keeping us in sight by keeping the Coast Guard in sight.”

  The Russian smiled. “You nearly caught me at dawn.”

  “There were two people aboard. Who was the other one?”

  “Marju.”

  “Her again,” Jake said. “A real piece of work, that one.”

  “She has her uses,” Resnikov said. “When you refused my offer, I sent her to enlist her fiancé’s sister in our cause.”

  “Marju and I were never engaged in anything but sex,” Kyle said bluntly.

  “But Honor did not know that, did she? What would be more natural than a loving sister helping out a grieving fiancé?”

  Kyle’s expression went from disgust to anger. “It’s a good thing it didn’t work, Pete. I would have taken you apart for dragging Honor into this mess.”

  “Why? She was very much a part of the game,” Resnikov said matter-of-factly.

  “Honor had nothing to do with any of it!” Kyle said.

  “She had Jacob Mallory.”

  “You were the one who told me to get rid of Jake,” Honor said suddenly. “That’s why your voice seemed familiar.”

  “I did not succeed in separating the two of you,” Resnikov said, shrugging. The look on his face said that it wasn’t a defeat he accepted graciously.

  “Were you the silent caller, too?” she asked.

  Again, Resnikov looked puzzled. Jake spoke a few swift sentences in Russian. Before he was finished, Resnikov was shaking his head.

  “My guess is Pavlov,” Jake said to Honor. “He likes scaring women.”

  “Where is Marju?” Honor asked.

  Resnikov looked at Ellen. She looked right back at him.

  Jake looked at his watch. “One more, Pete.”

  “The panel,” he said instantly to Jake. “Is it genuine?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “You examined it.”

  “So did you.”

  “You are better,” Resnikov said impatiently.

  “I’m not good enough to look at a piece and say yes, no, or maybe. I would have to run some tests. To do that, I would have to have the panel. I don’t. Uncle does.”

  “The amber is genuine,” Resnikov said.

  “Genuine Baltic, Mexican, Dominican, or all three?” Jake asked evenly.

  “Baltic, solely.”

  “If you know that, you have a better idea where the panel came from than I do.”

  “But—”

  “Time’s up. Say good-bye, Pete. Ellen wanted privacy for her questions.”

  Resnikov hesitated, then gave in. He was in no position to push and he knew it. “There will be other times.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Jake said.

  Ellen waited until the front door shut behind Resnikov and his car headed out the driveway.

  “How did you get across Russia with the panel?” Ellen asked Kyle.

  “Dollars,” he said succinctly. “You would be amazed what hard cash buys in the former Soviet Union.”

  “Who did you buy?”

  “Same people you do-whoever is for sale.”

  Ellen gave Kyle a cool
look. “You’re not being much help, babe.”

  “Unless you owe someone more than money,” Jake said calmly to Kyle, “tell Uncle the method and keep the names to yourself.”

  Kyle hesitated.

  Archer came into the bedroom and leaned against the door frame. “That’s good advice. Don’t make any enemies until you have to.”

  “I used the Russian military in Kaliningrad,” Kyle said to Ellen. “They haven’t been paid in so long they’re selling everything from socks to fighter jets in order to eat. They got me and the shipment to Kamchatka. I gave the truck to someone who was my height and coloring. He drove to Russia and disappeared with the truck to draw people off my trail.”

  Archer and Jake exchanged swift looks.

  “Nice work on short notice,” Archer said simply.

  Jake nodded.

  The look on Kyle’s face said that he wished he had been smarter sooner-with Marju, for instance.

  For about ten seconds, the sound of Ellen’s red nails tapping against her leather purse was the only break in the silence.

  “Okay,” she said briskly. “You’re in Kamchatka. Then what?”

  “You saw the shipping carton for the amber,” Kyle said, his voice rough. “What do you think?”

  “I think you went to that fishing outfit on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Vlad Kirov got you out of there along with the amber panel.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “So that really was you who came in through SeaTac?” Ellen asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Hell. I owe that guy in Immigration a twenty. I really thought it was the DOA using your passport. How did you kill him?”

  Simultaneously Jake and Archer said, “No.”

  They didn’t say anything else. They didn’t have to. Ellen moved on to her next question without a pause.

  “If you were Marju’s dupe, why didn’t you call your family when you needed help?”

  The corners of Kyle’s mouth turned down. “I thought I could take care of it myself. I sure as hell didn’t want to put their necks on the line.”

  “Was Jake in on it with Marju?”

  Kyle stared at her.

  “Oh, come on,” Ellen said impatiently. “It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a best friend and the best friend’s girl get it on in the sack and then dump one corner of the triangle.”