Nine
Before Hannah understood what was happening, she was facedown on the floor with something heavy covering her from head to heels. Even as she realized the weight was Archer, metal thudded and clanged around them.
She tried to look up. She couldn’t. She was completely wedged beneath him. There was barely enough room left over to breathe. Claustrophobia swept through her in a wave that stiffened her whole body.
“Easy, Hannah. Don’t fight me. I won’t hurt you, but what’s left of the roof sure as hell might.”
The calm voice reassured her at a level too deep for words. She made a questioning sound that wasn’t quite fear.
“It’s raining big chunks of metal,” Archer said against her ear. “I’ll let you up as soon as it stops. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Sure?” he asked.
“Yes. Sorry. I—”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
It was the brush of his mouth against her ear more than the words that silenced her. Like his fingertips had been, his lips were warm, gentle, demanding nothing of her. She let out a broken breath, and with it, most of her fear.
She waited, listening. The gritty tile beneath her body was cold and hard. The man covering her was hot and supple. The contrast was as disorienting as being thrown to the floor while the roof came down around her ears.
Archer shifted slightly on his elbows. Debris clattered and slid off his back. A piece of metal the size of a dinner table groaned. He arched his back, testing the weight of junk covering him. Metal grated against tile.
Footsteps retreated at a dead run.
It sounded like only one person, but Archer couldn’t be sure. For an instant he considered jumping up and running down whoever was fleeing. He shoved the impulse aside because it was the result of adrenaline, not thought. If he chased the intruder, Hannah would be left alone. Vulnerable. A woman who smelled like cinnamon and sunshine shouldn’t be left to face the darkness alone.
“Archer?” she whispered.
“Not yet.”
Silently she waited while he listened and listened and listened. She felt suspended, almost dazed. Then—ridiculously—sleepy. Sliding down a long slow tunnel, darkness going by at a greater and greater speed. Distantly she supposed she should be afraid, but she couldn’t work up the strength. Except for her nap earlier today, fear had kept her from sleeping more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time since Len had died. She simply didn’t have the energy to be afraid anymore.
Or the need. Archer wouldn’t kill her while she slept. And a little catnap would be a wonderful thing.
“Hannah? Hannah. Come back to me, sweetheart. Tell me where it hurts.”
When her eyes shot open, a white light sliced into them. Quickly she tried to turn her head and shield her eyes from the flashlight, but she was still pinned in place by Archer’s weight and strength. All she could do was close her eyes again. “I’m not hurt.”
“You fainted.”
Her mouth curved in an off-center smile. “Not quite. It was so quiet and dark and . . . safe. I just let go. Next thing I knew, I sort of fell asleep.”
Archer absorbed that while he checked her out. Her skin was flushed rather than bloodless. Her pupils both had contracted to black pinpoints beneath the relentless light. Smiling with a combination of understanding and amusement, he twisted the top of the flashlight, dimming the power. “Asleep, huh? On a cold tile floor with a falling roof for a blanket? You have to be one tired puppy.”
“I am. And it wasn’t the roof covering me. It was you. That’s how I knew I was safe. You were protecting me, not trying to hurt me.”
“Some protector. I nearly got you killed.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I took you for a walk in the dark. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Archer rolled off Hannah in a clatter, grind, and clash of metal debris. Braced on his side, he waited to see if the motion would send anything else raining down. Nothing of any size moved. The metal storm was over.
He shoved everything he could reach aside and came to his feet in a single motion. As soon as the adrenaline wore off, he would notice the cuts, bruises, and dents his body had taken when the roof fell, but for now all he cared about was that neither one of them was badly injured. They had been lucky.
“Can you stand up or do you need help?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Hannah scrambled to her feet. She winced once or twice, but didn’t stop or catch her breath in sudden pain.
“See? No damage,” she said.
“Stay here. I’m going to check outside.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You’ll stay here. I’m quieter in the dark than you are. Don’t move around. I’d hate to take you down by mistake.”
Hannah didn’t want to stay inside the shed alone, but she didn’t object. Being knocked to the ground and covered by his weight for her own safety was one thing. Being his target in the dark was quite another.
Her fingers curled around a piece of metal-tipped wood that was as long and thick as her arm. She hefted its weight and felt better.
“Hannah?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll stay here.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can. I know you don’t like feeling closed in.”
She almost laughed. “There’s not enough roof left anymore for me to feel claustrophobic.”
His smile gleamed faintly as he noticed the makeshift weapon in her hands. “I’ll warn you before I come back,” he said before he turned away. “I like my head right where it is.”
“Archer?” she called softly.
He spun toward her.
“Be careful,” she said.
Warm, callused fingertips brushed from her cheekbone to her mouth. Then he was gone.
Archer waited in the dense shadow behind a leaning wall, listening, listening. He heard nothing but the murmur of ocean and the soft exhalation of cooler air displacing warm. He toed out of his sandals and went barefoot. Without hard soles to grate over sand and crushed shell, he made virtually no sound.
After two complete circuits of the shed, he was convinced that no one else was nearby. He put on his sandals and went back inside the shed. All he could see was black debris standing raggedly against the slightly more pale sky.
“Hannah?”
A tiny, startled sound was his only answer, then a long sigh. “Here.”
“Can you see me?”
“Barely.”
He held out his hand, a lighter shade of darkness. “Come on. There’s nothing out there but the wind.”
She started to ask if he was sure, then almost laughed aloud. Of course he was sure. A man who could move that quietly, that quickly, must have eyes like a cat.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now you get some real sleep. If I’m still curious, I’ll look over the shed again in daylight.”
“Do you think . . .” Hannah’s voice died. Fatigue swam behind her eyes like another kind of night.
“What?”
“Was it intentional? Or did the wind just bring down more of the shed while someone was sneaking around trying to hear what we were saying and he panicked and ran?”
“If it wasn’t the wind, assuming that it was could get us killed.”
She tried to frame another question, but the cool gusts of air distracted her. Suddenly it was just too much effort to think, to walk, even to stand. It was all she could do to breathe the dark, wet air.
And then she was breathing that other kind of night, speeding down a long tunnel, free-falling into the deep sleep her body demanded.
Archer caught Hannah when her knees buckled. She didn’t wake up when he carried her into the house, put her on her small bed, and covered her with a sheet. She didn’t even stir while he took her pulse, counted the steady beat of her life, noted the warmth of her skin, and released her wrist with a slow caress.
“If you have dreams,” he said softly, “
don’t remember them.”
Quietly he walked out of her room, checked all the locks in the house, and set up some simple mechanical alarms at the doors and windows. Then he sat in the darkness.
Listening. Thinking. Planning.
Two hours passed in silence before Archer went to the cell phone that still lay next to Len’s computer. The data had long since been transmitted to Kyle. Archer doubted that his brother would have found out much more this quickly, but any information was better than none.
Archer punched in a string of numbers. The encoding function blinked.
Two seconds later Kyle answered. “Our recently deceased half brother was a paranoid son of a bitch.”
Archer grunted. “Problems?”
“Not with the wife. Hannah didn’t have any trapdoors or shunts or guards or cookies or anything at all on her computer, not even for banking,” Kyle said. “Her password is ‘Today.’ After that, it was in the clear all the way.”
Archer didn’t ask how his brother had teased private information out of the virtual world. The last time Kyle had tried to explain, Archer had listened, and listened, and listened, and come away as much in the dark as before. The talent Kyle took for granted was a mountain Archer could admire, but never climb.
“Our half brother is a different matter,” Kyle continued. “There are some boring files on Pearl Cove, a few scrambled files on pearls as the new miracle cure for everything from cancer to a limp dick, and then nothing but blank walls. He had lots of trips, traps, and bombs laid on for anyone trying to tiptoe through his virtual tulips. Completely toasted two hard drives before I gave up. Anyone who accesses his stuff will have to be a lot better than I am or have more than his entry code to work with. Can Hannah help?”
“She didn’t even know his entry code. Len wasn’t a sharing kind of partner.”
“No shit.” Kyle’s voice was ripe with disgust. “You sure he wasn’t working for Uncle Sam?”
“Recently?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you ask?”
“There are some very fancy ciphers out there, and Uncle has a lock on most of them. One of Len’s looked kinda familiar.”
“Have you been playing with Uncle’s ciphers?” Archer asked dryly.
“Somebody has to.”
“Don’t get caught.”
“So far so good. Any chance of Uncle helping us on this one?”
Archer thought of what April had said. Odds are we wouldn’t be on the same side. “No. Uncle would just as soon we dropped off the pearl scope.”
Kyle sighed heavily. “Gotcha. I’ll do what I can with the files you sent me. Nothing useful on any Pearl Cove employees yet.”
“Thanks. How’s Lianne?”
“Beautiful. She worries about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“She thinks you’ve shot more than your share of troubles.”
Weariness folded around Archer, darker than the night. “Give her a hug for me. A big one.”
He disconnected and sat in the darkness, thinking about Len’s cutting-edge ciphers and Uncle Sam.
Odds are we wouldn’t be on the same side.
Blue on blue on blue, shades and tints, hints and tones, blends and startling curls of a pure primary color; the ocean surrounded Archer and Hannah in a huge embrace. Above them the surface of the water was a shifting, incandescent silver. Below them it was a deeply radiant turquoise. As they drifted with the tide, the bottom took a very gradual slide off into indigo mystery.
Archer floated about thirty feet beneath the silver ceiling. One of his hands was wrapped around a long line that trailed down from the small lugger Nakamori was piloting through the calm sea. Hannah trailed off the other side of the lugger. Using long flippers, she positioned herself in the sea with the economical, almost lazy movements of a seasoned diver. Silver and crystal bubbles swirled up from her in easy, rhythmic puffs. The yellow and black of her wet suit made her look like an exotic fish hanging in a huge turquoise aquarium.
Bathwater-warm at the surface, the ocean was cooler the deeper a diver went. Even if it hadn’t been, divers still would have worn lightweight wet suits and protective gear for whatever flesh the wet suit didn’t cover. Australia’s warm, immense pearling grounds were home to Irukandji, a stinging jellyfish that injected nerve toxin into anything careless enough to get within range. Even though every dive ship carried an antidote, it wasn’t unusual for divers to end up in the hospital with a case of Irukandji poisoning.
The only reason Archer was diving with just half of a wet suit was that no jellyfish had been sighted. If that changed, he would be in the lugger just as fast as he could cover the thirty feet to the surface. The narrow strings and hand-sized pouch that was Western Australia’s standard swimwear for men didn’t offer much protection. The stretchy black cloth covered less than a jockstrap.
Nakamori had chosen the relatively calm part of the daily tidal race for the dive, which meant that the bottom wasn’t churned up and visibility was good. Yet after several drifts over the search area, they hadn’t found any man-sized rectangular baskets of oysters sitting on the bottom.
Archer shifted his grip and looked away for a moment, letting his eyes rest. When he looked back, he didn’t try to focus sharply. It was better to let the sea floor slide by with its shapeless lumps and liquid blue-green bouquets of life. Nature was fluid, quintessentially feminine; it was only man that created right angles and rectangles. An unfocused eye picked out the difference between nature and man more quickly than an intent, narrowed eye.
Perhaps thirty feet away from Archer, Hannah was also looking without focusing, floating, letting the sea flow around her. She loved the drifting, boneless feeling. It made her feel as supple as water, as weightless as sunlight, free all the way to her soul. Though her attention didn’t wander, a dreamy kind of peace filled her.
When she spotted the sinuous ribbons of three sea snakes swimming along at the edge of her vision, her heartbeat didn’t even pick up. The snakes were among the most deadly creatures on earth, but usually they were placid as milk cows. Some divers—Flynn among them—even amused themselves by handling the reptiles. The divers called the snakes Jo Blakes, using the rhyming Cockney slang that was impenetrable to outsiders. Jo Blake Roulette was a popular game among a certain stripe of diver. The fact that divers occasionally came across a cranky snake only made the game more interesting.
Hannah glanced over at Archer, wondering if he had seen the snakes or even knew they were poisonous. In the first instant of focusing on him, her stomach clenched: Len’s wet suit was unique. Like a predatory fish, Len’s dive suit was dark blue on the back and creamy silver along the belly. To a diver swimming above or below, the wet suit blended in with the lighter ceiling or the darker sea floor. She had seen Len swimming many times. In the water his strong arms made up for his useless legs. Diving gave him the freedom that he craved more than the morphine and booze that dulled the corrosive pain of his body. And his mind.
It’s not Len, Hannah told herself fiercely.
Len was dead, beyond the reach of her fear or pity or sad dreams of what could have been if only she had been able to reach into the man she had married and lance the abscesses on his soul. But she hadn’t been what he needed. Whatever chance there might have been for Len to heal the darkness within himself had vanished when he took pity on an innocent girl he had seduced and married her.
Forcing away the clammy veil of memory, Hannah looked again at the man who drifted nearby. Yes, there was a resemblance. Both men were broad shouldered, with unusual strength in their backs and shoulders and arms. Once, Len’s legs had been powerful, too. Once, he had eaten the ground with his long strides, pulling her along at a trot until breath was a knife in her ribs. Once, he—
Again Hannah wrenched her thoughts back to the here and now, to Archer and the vast turquoise sea. And murder. She never forgot that.
Yet in the blue-on-blue dream of the ocean, she had a hard time focusing
on death as an absolute evil. There were worse things than sliding into the radiant blue, feeling each shift of tone as a separate caress, shades of turquoise dissolving her slowly, slowly, until her eyes finally closed . . .
And opened as pearls, sightless and serene. No grave on earth could be more beautiful, no memorial more perfect.
And no man could be more compelling in her eyes than Archer, a man she shouldn’t want at all. Swimming in the serene womb of the ocean, she could admit to herself what had always been true: she wanted Archer Donovan. She wanted the strength and the gentleness that surprised her each time he revealed it. A gentleness that disarmed her, made her yearn . . . and then his ruthlessness would surface, sending a chill that went all the way to her soul.
She couldn’t risk her unborn children on a man who could shut off his emotions between one heartbeat and the next. Like Len, so much like Len.
And yet . . . and yet. . .
Different.
Len had made a naive girl dream. Archer made a woman hunger, even though experience had taught her how quickly such hunger vanished in the face of life’s demands. Like a comet across night, sexual desire was wild, beautiful, and utterly doomed. No one risked their future on a comet, but surely she could risk a few days, a handful of weeks, however long it took to drink the wine of passion to its last bittersweet drop.
Surely she could risk that much. All she would lose riding the comet with him was time, time that would pass in any case, with or without the blazing arc of passion.
The risk was hers. The choice was hers. She was no longer a girl whose possibilities were limited by her parents. She was no longer a wife whose possibilities were limited by her husband. She was a woman who answered only to herself.
She didn’t have to marry in order to enjoy passion. She was free.
An angular line at the edge of Hannah’s vision sliced through her reverie. She turned toward it, focusing eyes and mind. At first she saw only the graceful undulations of sea snakes. Then she saw what could have been a right angle.
Even before her eyes were certain, she yanked her tow line twice and released it. Above and ahead of her the ceiling churned as the lugger’s propellers kicked over, turning against the water rather than passively drifting. The signal to stop had been passed to Nakamori, who would attempt to hold the lugger stationary on the shifting surface of the sea.
Pearl Cove Page 13
