Jade Island

by Elizabeth Lowell

  He might have felt less guilty if Lianne hadn’t lit up like a Christmas church the instant she saw him walking toward her. She wasn’t able to hug him because of the handcuffs, but she had burrowed against him like a small animal seeking shelter.

  Even while he had held her, wanting to comfort her, part of Kyle knew that he was using Lianne as much as he was setting her free. The knowledge had put a brutal edge on his temper. Telling himself that he had to find out what she knew in order to help her didn’t ease his guilt. Or his anger.

  Wind raked through his hair, the same wind that had surprised the weather guessers by clearing the skies, turning spring gloom into a luminous golden afternoon.

  Kyle slammed the passenger door and went around to the driver’s side, telling himself to take it easy every step of the way. Letting loose his anger wouldn’t help a bit. He had almost decked the officious prick who insisted on keeping Lianne in handcuffs until the last sheet of paper was signed. The bureaucrat hadn’t been in any hurry to get the paperwork done, either. It had taken an unreasonably long time to get Lianne her freedom.

  If Kyle had been a suspicious, untrusting, cynical sort, he would have thought the Feds were doing everything they could to drag out the process. Like maybe they needed time to set up a 24-7 tail on her. Even Uncle had to shuffle things around to put a watch on someone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  And even if Lianne didn’t end up dragging Uncle’s agents behind her like a ball and chain, she wasn’t really free. Set one foot beyond the boundaries of the U.S. and she would be back in jail again.

  But at least she wasn’t wearing handcuffs.

  Kyle just managed not to slam the car door after he got in. He jammed his seat belt on, shoved the key in the ignition, and looked over at Lianne,

  “Fasten your seat belt,” he said. His voice was too rough, but Lianne didn’t seem to notice. That bothered him most of all. She was too grateful to tell him to shove it when he chewed on her for no better reason than she was there and he was mad clear through.

  Lianne reached for the seat belt, then stopped, staring at her hands as though she didn’t recognize them. Despite a lot of scrubbing, the ink that had been used to fingerprint her still lay like a thin black moon along the undersides of her nails. She curled her fingers to hide the shameful stains.

  “Seat belt, Lianne.”

  When she simply kept on staring at her hands, Kyle reached over and fastened her belt himself. She smelled more institutional than fresh, more like disinfectant and fear than rain and flowers. The black pantsuit she had taken from her overnight case this morning at his cabin was crumpled from use and vaguely dusty, as though some of the places where she had been sitting lately weren’t very clean. Her hair was in disarray around her shoulders. Her jade hairpicks had been confiscated until their true ownership could be determined.

  Lianne looked at her hands. Fists, really. They ached from being clenched. Like her jaw. Like her throat, closed around screams of rage and pain and fear.

  The grandfather she loved and had worked so hard to please believed she was a thief.

  “I didn’t do it,” she said hoarsely.

  “That’s what we have to talk about,” Kyle said, turning on the engine. “Mercer can keep the Feds at bay for a while, but in order to mount any defense worth mentioning, she’ll need a lot of information from you.”

  Numbly Lianne nodded.

  Kyle started to ask a question, took another look at her, and decided to wait. She was quivering like a wild animal in chains. She probably felt like one. He certainly had in Kaliningrad, when a question arose about his passport and he was seized without warning and thrown in jail before Jake could straighten out the mess. To someone raised with the unquestioned belief that a good citizen’s freedom was as reliable as oxygen in the air, being grabbed off the street, handcuffed, put in a locked room, and treated like dogshit was as shocking as rape.

  With an effort, Kyle loosened shoulder muscles that were bunched for a fight. As he left the parking lot, he automatically glanced in the rearview mirror.

  A tan Ford Taurus pulled into traffic right behind him. The agent’s maneuver was about as subtle as turning on red lights and a siren. Obviously fifty grand and signed assurances about the rest of the bail hadn’t been enough to comfort the good guys. They planned to keep an eye on Ms. Lianne Blakely.

  And they were letting her know it.

  “That does it,” Kyle said through his teeth. “Time to talk, sweetheart. What the hell is going on?”

  Lianne turned and gave Kyle a confused look. “I told you, Wen Zhi Tang thinks I’m a thief.”

  “Not good enough.” Kyle goosed the accelerator and shot through a yellow-going-red light. Might as well make the tail work for his salary, benefits, and early pension. “You were accused of stealing—what, a million bucks’ worth of jade?”

  Lianne’s eyes squeezed shut, like her lungs, her throat, her hands, everything. She desperately wanted a bath, a cup of coffee, and the clock to turn back to a time when Wen had trusted her, when she had believed that someday she would be accepted by the Tangs as a member of the family.

  “Yes,” she managed. “A million dollars.”

  “Even if you sold all the jade at face value—not frigging likely, because hot goods are always heavily discounted—your bail is still way out of line.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bail is supposed to reflect the severity of the crime and the likelihood of flight. The theft was hefty, but not violent. You aren’t likely to flee for the simple reason that you have nowhere to go that you wouldn’t be extradited. Contrary to popular belief, a million bucks cash won’t buy freedom in a Third World country. Ten million, maybe. The price goes up every month.”

  Lianne opened her eyes and looked at the dazzling, late-afternoon sky. It had turned into the kind of yellow-and-blue spring day people prayed for and rarely got. “They took my passport,” was all she said.

  “And gave you a tail.”

  For a moment she didn’t understand. Then she glanced in the side-view mirror. An American car with a suit behind the wheel was locked on Kyle’s bumper like a tow job.

  “Not very subtle,” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s enough to make a tax-paying citizen wonder what the hell the Feds are really after.”

  Lianne’s expression told him that she didn’t understand.

  “Look,” Kyle said impatiently, “I know of murderers, child molesters, rapists, and drug traffickers who aren’t considered important or dangerous enough to warrant a full-time tail. So I’ll ask you again: what are the real stakes in this game?”

  “A million dollars in jade isn’t enough?” she asked in disbelief.

  “No.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Christ,” he muttered. “Lianne, I can’t help you unless you trust me. What in hell is really going on?”

  “I don’t know!” She took a broken breath and shook her head as though to clear it. “This morning I woke up smiling and you made love to me like I was a goddess. An hour later I’m in handcuffs and treated like a criminal. Happy thirtieth birthday.”

  “Today is your birthday?”

  “Yeah. Bake me a cake with a file in it.” Lianne started to laugh, didn’t trust herself to be able to stop, and shivered violently instead. She wished her mother wasn’t on the other side of the world with her lover. “God.” She shivered again. “The things you learn when you’re arrested.”

  “Like?”

  “How alone you are. I never thought I’d turn thirty with no one to care if I’m in jail and the key is lost. No husband, no children, no real friends, no lover, no—”

  “There’s me,” Kyle interrupted before he could think better of it.

  “One night.” Her smile trembled on the edge of turning upside down. “And what a night. But there are the days, aren’t there? All the days. I thought it was enough to be independent, owing nothing to anyone, building my own bus
iness so that no man could wave his hand and kick me out on the street if he got tired of me.”

  Kyle didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Lianne was talking about. “Johnny Tang and your mother have been together longer than a lot of married couples.”

  “I’m sure that comforts her when Johnny spends Chinese New Year with his family, shows up for their birthdays and christenings and misses ours, gets his wife pregnant as often as he likes…”

  Another violent shiver racked Lianne, the only outward indication of how hard she was holding onto her self-control. “How they hate me,” she whispered.

  “Your mother?” Kyle asked, shocked.

  “No. My father’s family. They would send me to hell with a smile.”

  “What about your father?”

  “What about him?” Lianne asked wearily. “His money raised me, clothed me, educated me. That’s more than some fathers do for their legitimate kids. As for the rest, it’s my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “Isolation. Building Jade Statements took every bit of my time and energy. While I was doing it, I didn’t regret it. I might have been alone, but I wasn’t lonely. Besides, I was always going to get to a point in the business when I would have time for a personal life. Someday. Now…” Lianne cleared her dry throat. “Now I’ll have time, all kinds of time. My business won’t survive the loss of my reputation.”

  “Assuming you’re guilty.”

  “Why shouldn’t people assume it? Wen does. Johnny’s youngest son does. And so do you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” Lianne turned away from the bright sunlight pouring through the windshield. “You just keep watching me with those cool, measuring eyes and asking me what really is going on.”

  “That’s—”

  “No,” Lianne cut in, lifting her hand abruptly as though to ward off an attack. “I’m not complaining. You barely know me, yet you got me out of handcuffs. It’s a lot more than I had a right to ask of a one-night fling.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “No. It’s how you feel.”

  “Right now, all I feel is pissed off.”

  For a time only random traffic noises disturbed the strained silence. Kyle drove with an unconscious expertise that left him plenty of time to think. Too much. He kept remembering Kaliningrad and how he had nearly died. Then he remembered how the Donovan family had closed ranks around him. He hadn’t asked for their help. In fact, he had been determined to go it alone. Yet he had always known that help was there, waiting.

  Then he thought of Lianne. You barely know me, yet you got me out of handcuffs. It’s a lot more than I had a right to ask of a one-night fling.

  Kyle let out a hissing breath. “My gut believes you’re innocent. My mind is asking questions.”

  And his dick still didn’t care.

  Lianne lowered the window and let the cool air wash over her. It wasn’t a bath, but it was the best she could do for now.

  “Ask away,” she said finally, pushing hair back from her eyes. “You might get lucky. I might know something useful. But I doubt it. None of the people who questioned me seemed happy with the answers I gave them.”

  Kyle’s mind said there were two explanations for that. The first was that she didn’t know anything, so she could hardly help. The more likely explanation was that she knew exactly what everyone wanted and had no intention of sharing.

  The Feds were a lot of things, but rock stupid wasn’t usually one of them. Unless politics were involved. Then everybody’s IQ dropped off the scope.

  The Jade Emperor’s Tomb made for a nasty bit of politics.

  “Did you get a list of pieces that are missing from Wen’s collection?” Kyle asked.

  “Ms. Mercer requested it.”

  “And?”

  “The Tangs are working on a complete inventory.” Lianne smiled brittlely. “That will be hard.”

  “Why?”

  “Other than me, Wen is the only person who knows each and every piece of the collection on sight. Or did. Now he can’t tell the real from an inferior substitute.”

  “Substitute? Are you saying that the pieces of Tang jade aren’t really missing, that the Feds just made up charges out of thin air?”

  “I don’t know what they’re doing. I do know that at least two pieces of Wen’s jade collection have been taken from the vault and similar, less valuable pieces have been left in their place.”

  Three, if she counted the jade shroud. Assuming that there had been a substitution at all.

  She didn’t know. The only way to find out would be to get inside the vault and have a look around. That would be hard to do when the Tangs didn’t trust her and the Feds would arrest her if she crossed the border into Canada.

  “Are you certain about the substitutions?” Kyle asked.

  “Yes,” Lianne said bleakly. “Turn left after the next light. My apartment is in the same building as the Jade Trader.”

  “Just two pieces have been substituted?” he persisted.

  “There could be others. I don’t know. I didn’t even know about those two until yesterday. That’s why I was so late meeting you for dinner. I kept waiting for Daniel to leave so I could do a fast check of a few other drawers in the vault. But he didn’t leave.”

  “Daniel?”

  “Johnny’s youngest son. Wen is teaching him about jade. I think Daniel must have been the one who put Wen up to filing charges.”

  Kyle filed that fact as he dodged a bicyclist, pulled around a stopped bus, and decided against pushing the stoplight. It was already red.

  The tan Ford stuck with him through all the urban maneuvers.

  “So Daniel believes you stole from Wen?” Kyle asked.

  Lianne remembered the hatred and contempt in Daniel’s eyes. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He knew about the Neolithic blade. It was Wen’s.”

  Kyle’s glance snapped away from the rearview mirror, where the Ford grew like a tumor on the BMW’s bumper. “The one at the auction?”

  Lianne nodded.

  “The one I bought?” he demanded.

  “Yes. That’s why I wanted to buy it. I was nearly certain it was Wen’s. Now I am certain. I’ve seen the drawer in the vault where the blade was kept. Another blade was in its place.”

  “An inferior one,” Kyle said.

  It was a statement, not a question. Any blade he had ever seen would have been inferior to the one he now owned.

  But he wouldn’t own it for long. By law, stolen goods were returned to the owner upon discovery. The buyer, however innocent, lost out.

  “It will be interesting to see if that blade turns up on the list of stolen jades,” he muttered.

  “I can’t imagine it not turning up.”

  Kyle accelerated quickly away from the light. The Ford caught up again halfway down the block.

  “What about the other piece of jade?” he asked. “You mentioned two that you were sure of.”

  “A recumbent camel from the Tang dynasty. The one that was substituted lacks the very subtle toe pads on the undersides of the feet. But Wen’s hands and eyes are too bad for him to notice the substitution.”

  “How much were the replacement pieces worth, the blade and the camel?”

  “It would depend on the collector. At a guess, I’d say perhaps one-third to one-half what Wen’s original jades were.”

  “A thousand each for the substitutes, maybe more?”

  “Probably a lot more. I can’t be certain. I didn’t examine them for sale.”

  “The Feds didn’t mention substitution, did they?”

  “They dropped some hints. I ignored them.”

  “So a million in jade is missing and a third to a half million in jade has been substituted?”

  Though Kyle’s voice was carefully neutral, Lianne sensed his skepticism. Why would a thief bother to spend money leaving decent substitutes? “I don’t know about the rest
of the missing pieces,” she said, “whatever they are. I only know about two.”

  “The camel and the blade?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’d damn well better find out about the rest, hadn’t we?”

  The word we went through her like a shot of neat whiskey, making her light-headed. Until that moment, she hadn’t admitted to herself how much she didn’t want to be alone in this tangle of family, lies, jail, and jade.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Because until we find out, we won’t have the faintest idea what’s going on with the Tang jades.”

  “No, not that. Why are you helping me when you don’t really trust me?”

  “Good question. I’ll let you know when I have a good answer.”

  It was less than Lianne wanted and more than she had any right to expect. It was much more than she should take from a man who had nothing in common with her but jade and great sex, a man she liked, respected, and could too easily love.

  That would be stupid of her and unfair to him. If she truly cared about Kyle, she would keep him as far away from this mess as possible. He had done nothing to deserve the grief that was coming her way.

  She took a slow breath and put away the temptation to lean on Kyle, and in doing so, drag him down into the mud with her.

  “This is the corner,” Lianne said quietly.

  Kyle turned and waited for a bus to get out of his way. He was frowning, because he was looking at Lianne’s neighborhood with new eyes. What he saw wasn’t good.

  Despite the rich, slanting sunlight and pigeons cooing and crapping everywhere, it wasn’t the kind of place where a good-looking single woman—or man, for that matter—should live. Pioneer Square might be a tourist attraction, but it was also smack in the middle of an area that could most charitably be described as colorful. Panhandlers, the homeless, and the not-so-gently insane lay in wait for marks who believed that a handful of change could turn someone’s life around, or at least make the mark feel like he had done penance for the sin of not being poor.

  “I hope you have good locks,” Kyle said.

  “The rent is cheap, the space is large, and you can’t beat the commute to work. But yes, I have very good locks.”