Frozen, she stood and stared. She hadn’t seen anything like it since Archer had fought their way through a riot. Then he had been burdened by Len. Today Archer was free. His speed and stamina were frightening.
“Whew,” Honor said. “Archer’s not wearing any padding. He must have really needed a full-adrenaline workout. Either that or Jake’s getting fat and lazy.”
“If Jake is the one fighting with Archer, he’s not fat or lazy.”
“Yeah.” Honor smiled and silently saluted Jake as he ducked under a blow and flipped Archer over his back. “Looking good, honey. Looking real good.”
Catlike, Archer landed fully balanced and ready to counterattack. Jake went down as his feet were scissored out from under him. More blows landed while the men scrambled to their feet and fought for position. Archer was protected only by his speed, his skill, and his partner’s unwillingness to do real injury. Though padding protected Jake, Archer still pulled his punches; he wanted to keep the edge on his fighting skills, not to hurt the man who was his best friend and his sister’s husband.
He threw Jake, followed him down, and set up for a killing blow. Jake could have dodged or counterattacked. Instead, one of his hands slapped the mat. “That’s it, Archer. This old boy is ready for breakfast.”
Instantly Archer stood, offered Jake a hand up, and then gave him a brief, rib-cracking hug. “Hell of a workout. Thanks.”
Jake stretched his shoulders cautiously beneath the padding, and said, “My pleasure. Like hell.”
Laughing, breathing hard and deep, sweat soaked from scalp to heels, the two men stood for a few moments longer on the mat, enjoying each other and the feeling of a good workout. When Jake began removing his padding, Archer turned toward the showers. The instant he saw Hannah, his smile vanished. So did his easy relaxation. Between one heartbeat and the next, he was fully on guard.
Honor saw the difference in him immediately. Archer’s distant, ruthless side was one that he rarely showed to his family. Or needed to. She looked from her brother to Hannah’s beautiful, shadowed eyes. Hannah, too, had lost her smile.
“I see you’ve met,” Archer said, striding across the gym floor toward the two women. “Hi, sis. Want a hug?”
With a wary eye on her oldest brother’s sweaty body, Honor blew him a kiss. “Consider yourself hugged.”
“Huh. Is that what you’re going to tell Jake?”
“Jake’s sweaty body is different from any other sweaty male body on earth. He’s sexy.”
“Not to me.”
“I’m soooo relieved.”
Grinning, Archer turned to Hannah. But it wasn’t her that he looked at. “Hey, Summer,” he said gently. “How’s the most beautiful angel in heaven?”
At the sound of her name, Summer lifted her head and looked around for one of her very favorite human beings. Archer held out his hands. She abandoned Hannah’s well-chewed ring and waved her arms happily.
“She’s teething again,” Honor warned. “The drool factory is working around the clock.”
“That’s my girl,” he said approvingly. “You need teeth in this world.”
Despite Summer’s eagerness, Hannah didn’t want to hand the baby over to a man who just moments ago had been fully focused on turning himself into a deadly weapon.
Archer saw the hesitation and simply lifted Summer into his own arms. “Don’t worry,” he said to Hannah. “If it comes to visitation rights, I won’t do any damage.”
The icy flick of his voice made her flinch.
Honor’s eyes widened. Visitation? She looked at Hannah speculatively.
Summer didn’t notice any of the emotional undertones. She cooed and bounced and made a grab at Archer’s nose. He could have ducked easily, but he didn’t. He just turned and made gobbling noises against her fat little arm until she giggled and let go. Then she grabbed a handful of his chest hair and pulled. Wincing, he gently opened her fingers and growled against her neck, careful of her tender skin and his growing beard.
“Who taught you to fight dirty?” he asked the baby.
Drooling blissfully, Summer chewed on whatever part of her uncle she could reach. Archer grinned as though she was offering him the rarest of pearls rather than teething drool. Without even a token struggle, he surrendered his little finger, a willing sacrifice to the god of sore gums. As a reward, Summer leaned against him, sighed dreamily, and peed her diaper right through.
“Oops,” Honor said, reaching for her daughter. “That warm stuff you feel running down your leg isn’t sweat. Sorry about that.”
“It’s not the first time.” Archer kissed Summer’s nose. “Come on, beautiful. You and your uncle are taking a shower. How about you, Jake?” he asked, turning back toward the mat.
“Go ahead,” Jake said. “I want to talk with Honor.”
Carrying his niece, Archer headed off for the showers.
“You spoil her,” Honor said to his broad, sweaty back.
“Yeah, ain’t it grand?”
Carrying sweaty pads, Jake came up to Honor, kissed her thoroughly, and said, “Introduce me to the woman who can make Archer mad enough to kill.”
Eighteen
Standing in the entryway of the condo with cloud-filtered sun all around, Hannah tried to ignore the disapproval Jake hadn’t bothered to conceal. All the way up in the elevator, his pale, cold gray eyes had measured her with a chill that reminded her of Archer at his worst. Dark hair, dark mustache, a height and strength to equal Archer’s; and a ruthlessness, too.
But not toward Honor. For her, Jake’s eyes went from ice to steamy mist. The passion and gentleness he felt for his wife were as clear as his dislike of Hannah.
Rubbing her arms as though to ward off cold, Hannah hurried into the living room, wanting to escape Jake’s oppressive dislike.
“Not yet,” Jake said, putting a hand on Hannah’s arm.
She froze. Though his touch was light, it wasn’t casual.
“Jake,” Honor said, frowning at her husband. It was unlike him to treat a stranger so coldly. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what the merry widow is going to tell us.”
Anger streaked through Hannah, burning away caution. She turned on him. “You’re half right. I’m a widow.”
“Are you in mourning?” Jake asked politely.
“Not since seven years ago.”
“Care to explain that?”
“No.”
“Okay. What did you do to Archer?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah? Then maybe you can tell me why he needed to whale the crap out of something this morning.”
Honor winced. “Uh, Jake . . . ”
“Yeah, I know. None of my business. Too bad I’m a nosy bastard.” He looked at his wife. “She hurt him, honey. I want to know why.”
“You’re wrong,” Hannah said, fighting to keep a grip on her temper. The contempt in Archer’s glance earlier—and in Jake’s now—raked over her. “I didn’t hurt Archer. He’s too ruthless to be hurt by anyone smaller or weaker than he is.”
Jake said something blasphemous.
Honor was too stunned to say anything at all.
“You’re blind, lady,” he said coldly. “Deaf, dumb, and fucking blind.”
“I’m sure you’re a good friend to Archer now,” Hannah shot back, “but you know nothing about Archer ten years ago. About what he did.”
“You might be surprised. Archer and I were in the same business.”
“I might not be surprised,” Hannah said, furious. In her own way, she needed a fight as much as Archer had. “I married his half brother!”
“What?” Honor demanded. “What did you say?”
Abruptly Hannah realized where her temper had led her. Jake’s dislike was uncomfortable, but she had lived with much worse. Yet none of it had gone as deep as Archer’s withdrawal and the fear growing inside her that she might have been terribly, terribly wrong about a man.
Again.
If yo
u wanted a child without complications, you should have gone to a sperm bank.
She rubbed her face with hands that were cold and told herself that she hadn’t been wrong in her assessment of Archer’s ability to love.
Don’t worry. If it comes to visitation rights, I won’t do any damage.
Tears burned behind Hannah’s eyes, tears she refused to permit. “I’m sorry,” she said tightly to Honor. “I had no business telling you that. Whatever you do, don’t mention it in front of your mother. She doesn’t know.”
“So it’s The Donovan’s son,” Jake said.
Distantly Hannah noticed that he had taken Honor’s hand and laced their fingers together tightly. The message was clear: whatever had to be faced, they would face it together. Envy stabbed through Hannah, surprising her with its cruel edge.
“Yes,” she said, her voice much calmer than her eyes. “Before he met his wife. Long before.”
“But Archer knew?” Jake asked.
“Yes.”
“And this half brother . . . he’s dead?”
“His name was Len, Len McGarry. And yes, he’s dead.”
“How?” Jake asked, but something in his tone told her he had already guessed.
“Murder.”
Honor made a low sound.
Jake squeezed her hand and kept on talking, pinning Hannah with eyes that were like a cat’s—pitiless and clear. “Are you a suspect?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
He looked at her a moment longer, then nodded. “Are you at risk?”
“I—” Her voice hitched, then steadied. “Yes. That’s why I called Archer.”
“You’ll be safe here,” Honor said.
“He told me the same thing,” Hannah said in a low, husky voice. “But I can’t stay.”
“Why not?” Honor asked.
Hannah looked at Jake and shook her head.
“My husband is protective of the people he loves, but he’ll be civilized about it in the future,” Honor said. “Right, Jake?”
“Sure.”
She turned toward Jake and gave her husband a level look. “I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Honor sighed, smiled, and went up on tiptoe to kiss him. “I love you.”
His whole body changed, loosening, sliding away from battle readiness. He returned the kiss and the soft words. Then he looked back at Hannah.
“Tell us about it,” he said. He managed to make it sound more like an invitation than a demand.
Just barely.
Kyle, Lianne, and Archer sat on the floor around Kyle’s computer. She was wearing a pair of dark jeans and one of Kyle’s sweatshirts. It stretched over the mound of her pregnancy with not much to spare. Her bare feet were small, narrow, and tucked neatly under her thighs. Kyle and Archer wore the preferred uniform of America—jeans faded nearly to white and sweatshirts that had been washed so often their colors were a memory. Like Lianne, the men had bare feet. Unlike her, their feet were big.
The thick Tibetan rug Lianne had added to Kyle’s suite after they were married made a comfortable mat and a timeless, colorful background to the pewter-colored laptop computer Kyle sat cross-legged in front of. Lianne had her tired back braced against Archer’s knees while her husband’s fingers raced over the keyboard. They waited for the screen to settle.
“Okay,” Kyle said, seeing the pattern instantly in the spreadsheet. “It’s pretty clear that Len was laundering Chang’s Tahitian pearls. He wasn’t getting jack for it, though. Wonder why he did it.”
“As a cover for his experimental shell,” Archer said. “Go back two screens.” He waited, then pointed to the bottom line on the screen. “See? Without those laundered pearls, he wouldn’t have had anything to show for his investment. The government was already unhappy with his claim of forty percent experimental shell. If experiments on that scale didn’t produce anything salable year after year, the government would have been more than unhappy. They would have been suspicious enough to come down on Pearl Cove like a hard rain to find out what the hell was going on. That was the last thing Len wanted.”
“So he told the Aussies he was experimenting with producing Tahitian-style pearls from Australian shell, and he used Chang’s laundered pearls to prove it?” Lianne asked.
“Right,” Archer said absently.
“You sound like an Aussie,” Kyle said, pronouncing it “Ozzie” in the Australian manner.
Archer thought of Hannah, who had adopted that particular linguistic mannerism. Right. Thinking of her made his whole body tighten in a combination of rage and hurt and need. Get used to it, he told himself savagely. That’s the way it is.
After ten years he should have learned that fighting the inevitable only wore him out. He might as well fight gravity by pretending that someday he would flap his arms and fly just because he wanted it so bad.
But he still kept wanting, still kept trying to fly. Still kept crashing.
“Go forward again, Kyle.” Lianne frowned at the screen. “That leaves forty percent of thousands upon thousands of oysters unaccounted for in terms of pearl production.”
“Closer to seventy,” Kyle said. “He was hiding more than he was admitting.”
“Were the experimentals all opalescent black pearls like the one you showed us?” Lianne asked.
Archer forced himself to focus on his sister-in-law’s clear, whiskey-colored eyes instead of on the indigo eyes that haunted and condemned him simply for being what he was. “From what Hannah has said, yes.”
“Then where are the pearls? Surely all of them couldn’t be as perfect as the ones in the necklace you described. Some of them had to be less valuable, even a noncommercial grade.”
“Hannah told me Len ground those to dust.”
Lianne’s eyes widened. She shifted against Archer’s knees, trying to balance against the freewheeling, agile twins she was carrying.
Absently Archer widened the space between his legs just enough to reach through and rub Lianne’s lower back, relieving the stress of pregnancy.
“Thanks.” Sighing, she leaned into his long, soothing fingers. “They’re in kick-boxing mode today.”
Kyle looked up, grinned, and put one hand on his wife’s stomach. He loved feeling the heat and urgency of life growing in her. “Want to go back up on the couch?”
“Archer and the floor are more comfortable. Your couches are too tall.”
“Nope, you’re just a Munchkin,” Kyle said.
Lianne shot him a sideways look from under thick, black eyelashes. “This Munchkin dumped you on your butt the last time we got on the exercise mat together.”
“You had just told me we were having twins!”
“Excuses, excuses. A little more down and to the left,” she said to Archer. “Ahhhh . . . ”
“Let me know if I push too hard.”
As an answer, she made murmurous sounds of pleasure and leaned into the massage. But her mind was still working. “So Len launders pearls to keep the Australian government off his back. Chang gouges Len on the illegal goods to the point that Len barely has enough to survive on and keep Pearl Cove going. Sounds like Len had more reason to kill Chang than vice versa.”
“That’s not the way it happened,” Archer said. “Chang wasn’t even at Pearl Cove when the cyclone hit. As far as I can find out, neither were any imported surrogates.”
“Surrogates?” Lianne asked.
“Hit men,” Archer said succinctly.
“As in the Red Phoenix Triad?” she muttered. “God knows they have a full roster of killers.”
Kyle remembered when Lianne had been the target of triad assassins. He ran his hand down her arm as though to assure himself that she was alive. “What about the Aussies?” he asked. “They have my vote as the guy on the ramming end of the knife that got Len.”
The memory of Broome’s impromptu morgue flashed in Archer’s mind, Len’s body so white, so still, so cold, the bruised mouth between his ribs grinning . . . .
<
br /> “Why would the Aussies kill Len?” Lianne asked.
Archer shoved the memory down into the darkness along with other, similar memories. Too many of them. Bitterly he acknowledged that Hannah was right. He had seen and done too much. He wasn’t fit for the tender intimacy of love.
“They’re worried about the Chinese,” Archer said. His voice was completely neutral despite the pain twisting through him.
Lianne rolled her eyes. Being half-Chinese, she had dealt with subtle racism and the more overt kind—from both Chinese and Caucasians. “The Yellow Horde garbage again?”
“That’s part of it,” Archer said. “The Australians don’t have much tolerance for non-Caucasians. But bigotry isn’t the only driving force in world politics. Often it isn’t even the most important. Pull up that world map again, Kyle.”
The screen changed to a map showing the continents on either side of the Pacific Ocean.
“See the lines and shadings Len added?” Archer asked.
Lianne leaned forward. “They don’t overlap with political or geographic boundaries.”
“Right. They’re showing who controls what percentage of the various kinds of pearl farming.”
Kyle looked at the screen, put the cursor on one of the icons, clicked, and waited. The information reappeared as a graph. He clicked again. The bar graph shifted. “Six years ago.” Click. “Four years ago.” Click. “Two years ago.” He whistled musically. “The Chinese are coming on strong. They’re going to own the pearl trade in the next decade.”
“Exactly.”
“Except,” Lianne said, pointing to one column, “here.”
“The luxury trade,” Archer said. “The kind of gems Tahiti and Australia produce. Big. Very rare. Very expensive. The Chinese beat the Japanese at the freshwater pearl game and at the Akoya pearl game. Then they moved on to Tahiti for the high-end South Seas game. If you fish around in Len’s hard drive long enough, I’m sure you’ll find a projection for the future of pearl farming. It will be Chinese all the way.”
“When you say the Chinese . . . ” Kyle began.
Pearl Cove Page 25
