Pearl Cove

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Anger whipped beneath Archer’s control, but control won easily. It was too late in the game to lose it. “Just keep that damn street sweeper out of sight. You’d give the beat cop a heart attack if he saw that barrel poking out of your jacket.”

  “Roger.”

  Archer headed toward the Dragon Moon with the long strides of a wolf pursuing game.

  “Who would call at this ungodly hour?” Hannah asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  Lianne started so severely that she nearly dropped the cell phone on the table. “Hannah! You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  “My body still doesn’t know which way is up,” she said, yawning. “Four A.M. or high noon, all the same to me. What are you doing up? Are the twins restless?”

  “Not wildly. I’m just, um, a morning person.”

  “It’s hardly morning,” Hannah said. “Unless you think that four—” Her words stopped abruptly. She rubbed her eyes and looked again at the kitchen clock. “Six A.M.? The clock in my room said four.”

  “Want some coffee?” Lianne asked, changing the subject.

  It didn’t work.

  “Six o’clock,” Hannah said, appalled. “Ruddy hell! I’m supposed to be—”

  “He’s here. Ready?”

  Both women jumped when the cell phone spoke.

  “That’s Ar—” Hannah began.

  “Quiet!” Lianne interrupted in a fierce, low voice. She snatched up the phone. “Ready.”

  “Yin is alone at a table about fifteen feet from the street entrance. There’s a box big enough to hold the pearls sitting in front of him.”

  “Thank God.”

  Archer decided not to mention the table of young toughs sitting between Yin and the front door. Despite their trendy Hong Kong clothes—heavy on colorful silk shirts and black leather jackets—the men might have been just day laborers sitting around drinking tea until it was time to go to work.

  And Archer might have been Tinkerbell.

  “Get ready to tell Yin a few things,” Archer said into the cell phone. “One: I have one hundred and twenty-five thousand in cash for the pearls. Two: I’m not alone. Three: If his hands go under the table, he’s a dead man. Four: If anyone else’s hands go under the table, he’s a dead man. Five: He should pass the word to anyone who might get twitchy. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go.”

  When Lianne started speaking Chinese, Hannah knew where Archer was. Spinning around, she ran to her room. There she dressed in a frenzy, yanking on her jeans, jamming her nightgown—Archer’s silk shirt—inside the waistband of her jeans, kicking into her sandals. Still buttoning the jeans, she bolted for the front door. She didn’t even notice the cold rain as she ran flat out toward the Dragon Moon. Fury and fear drove her flying feet. Even she couldn’t have said which goaded her more—anger at being shut out or the memory of her dream, Archer bleeding and dying in horrible pain.

  Poised for whatever might happen, Archer waited, watching Yin while Lianne spoke in rapid Chinese. Yin listened impassively, but he was looking around, trying to spot anyone who might be on Archer’s side. No one was sitting in the dreary café but Red Phoenix men.

  The front door to Archer’s right opened, setting small bells to jingling. He spotted Jake immediately.

  “Shit.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jake said.

  He took a position that put him between Archer and the table where five gang members drank tea. It wasn’t the seat that Jake would have preferred, for it didn’t command a view of the whole cafe. But it was the best he could do when it came to getting between Archer and the obvious trouble waiting to happen.

  Yin started explaining to the five men what was expected of them.

  Without taking his eyes from the gang members, Jake worked the pump on the concealed shotgun. The distinctive rack-rack of a short-barreled pump shotgun being readied to fire was a lot more effective than any verbal warnings—or orders to attack—that Yin might be relaying.

  Five pairs of hands came out onto the tabletop. Though the nails were too long for Western taste, they were clean and nicely buffed. Jake watched them, knowing that whatever the triad members might have on their mind, as long as their hands were still, they couldn’t do anything but fume. At a gesture from him, the men scooted together until they sat in a semicircle, facing him across the circular table.

  Archer beckoned Yin over to a table closer to the front door. That seat still left part of the café in a blind spot that neither he nor Jake could cover, but there was nothing to be done for it.

  Reluctantly Yin sat still, his hands in plain sight, the box between them. Archer sat down, keeping Yin between him and the table of men. Close up, Yin’s black eye and the bruised, oozing gash on his chin looked painful, but Archer didn’t waste any sympathy on the man. Triad life was almost as tough on its members as it was on the community of immigrants that were the triad’s prey.

  Watching Yin every moment, Archer picked up the cell phone and spoke into it. “Tell him if he answers my questions, I’ll pay him another twenty thousand in cash, right now. If I find out later that he lied, I’ll take it out on the Red Phoenix Triad and let them worry about evening the score with him. Then tell him to translate my message for his friends.”

  “Hannah got up early,” Lianne said. “She—”

  “Later,” Archer interrupted curtly. “I’ve got the Red Phoenix boys on the front burner right now. Talk to Yin.”

  Archer didn’t doubt that Lianne’s translation would be accurate, but it was nice to see Yin’s pallor increase and his glance flick nervously toward the table of men who were pretending to sit casually under Jake’s unflinching eyes. Carefully Yin handed the phone back to Archer and nodded several times to indicate that he understood.

  When Yin was finished speaking, so did the other men in the room. They looked at Yin speculatively, wondering how much bad luck he could bring down on the triad that was their livelihood, their brotherhood, and their home. One of the five men looked right at Archer and said, “Donovan.”

  He smiled like a wolf and nodded curtly. The Red Phoenix Triad and the Donovans had clashed before, indirectly. Archer had won.

  Knowing that Yin would feel better if he saw money on the table, Archer rapidly counted out a stack of well-used one-hundred-dollar bills. Yin’s dark eyes widened and his lips twitched as he kept his own tally. His eyes widened with simple avarice when the count went above one hundred thousand. Not until the stack of bills totaled one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars did Archer put the much-reduced wad of cash in his back jeans pocket. When his hand came into view again, the nine-millimeter was in it. The safety was off. The muzzle was pointed right at Yin’s heart.

  “Your turn,” Archer said, gesturing to the cheap wooden box and then to the table in front of him. “Open the box and hand it over slow and easy.”

  Yin was working on the box before the translation came through the cell phone. He took off the thick, dirty rubber band and opened the lid wide on its hinges. Then he slowly pushed the box toward Archer.

  Without taking his eyes off Yin, Archer ran his fingertips over the contents. Cool, smooth, round, heavy. He picked one pearl at random and brought it into his line of sight.

  Black rainbows gleamed.

  “The pearls are right,” Archer said into the phone. “Tell him to put the rubberbands back around the box and give it back to me.”

  While Yin worked, Archer pulled money out of his back pocket. As soon as Yin pushed the securely wrapped box back across the table, Archer pulled another thick stack of cash from his jacket pocket.

  Yin’s eyes widened with simple greed. Archer fanned ten hundred-dollar bills on the table. The wad in his hand said that there was more where that came from. A lot more. Yin looked at the money hungrily as Archer picked up the cell phone.

  “Ask Yin where he got the pearls,” he said to Lianne.

  Then he held the phone so that the other man could hear. As he lis
tened, Yin’s expression shifted, then shut down. He shook his head.

  Archer added ten more bills to the fan. Two thousand dollars. Three thousand. Ten thousand.

  Twenty thousand.

  Thirty.

  Fifty.

  Yin began to sweat.

  “Now,” Archer said to Lianne, “tell him he has a choice. He can answer my question or I’ll ask his buddies at the next table. If they answer, they get the prize.”

  Sweat trickled down Yin’s cheeks as he listened. He swallowed and said hoarsely, “Klistin Frin.”

  Before Archer could sort through the heavy accent, Kyle’s voice was rasping in his ear. “Christ, she’s going in the front door!”

  Archer didn’t have time to ask who “she” was. Breath sawing, Hannah yanked open the front door and glanced wildly around the room. When she saw Archer—and Jake off to the side, keeping a table full of thugs seated with their hands in sight—she sagged in relief. The nightmare hadn’t come true.

  “Get out,” Archer said flatly.

  The five men at the table shifted, but nothing had really changed for them. Jake was still watching them with eyes that gleamed like cut glass. Archer was still seated, his gun on Yin. Unhappily the men settled down.

  Hannah squared her shoulders and turned toward Archer. “Not until I see if the pearls are what we’re looking for.”

  “Take the pearls and get out,” Archer said through his teeth, throwing the box at her.

  She caught it and kept walking toward him, needing to be certain that he was all right. A flicker of movement along the wall behind his back caught her eye. Even as her brain registered the fact that there was a gun barrel glinting through a narrow slit, she screamed and launched herself at Archer’s shoulders, knocking him over and out of harm’s way. Hundred-dollar bills flew up like startled birds.

  Though there was no sound of a shot, plaster exploded across the room before Archer hit the floor. Still falling, he pulled Hannah beneath him and brought his gun up, figuring angles on where the hidden shooter might be. It certainly wasn’t Yin on the trigger—he had grabbed what cash he could and bolted toward the alley door.

  Tile exploded as bullets whined across the floor. Archer grunted, then grunted again as lead thudded against Kevlar. He rolled over and over into the room, taking Hannah with him, trying to get beyond the shooting radius of the gun slit.

  “He’s in the wall behind you!” she screamed, her voice muffled by his chest.

  Archer heard anyway. “Jake! Middle of the east wall, man-high.”

  Before Archer finished, Jake lifted his foot to the edge of the table and slammed it into the gathered triad members with a quick pump of his leg, scattering them like bowling pins. The instant Archer and Hannah scrambled out of the way, Jake pointed the shotgun toward the wall and began firing.

  Buckshot-chewed wood exploded out in clumps of jackstraws, then fell in eerie silence, because the shotgun blasts had deafened everyone, leaving a violent ringing in their ears. Before the first bits of wood hit the floor, Jake racked two more rounds into place and searched for another target.

  Archer yanked Hannah to her feet and all but threw her at the front door. “Out.”

  This time she didn’t argue.

  Quickly Archer took stock. A stunned silence followed the thunder of the shotgun, but he couldn’t count on that lasting. Nothing moved along the ruined wall but a shred of dull red wallpaper. If the sniper had survived, he wasn’t giving away his position. Off to one side, five of the Red Phoenix Triad’s finest thrashed around on the floor, trying to suck in air through diaphragms that had been paralyzed by the flying edge of a table.

  “You go next,” Jake said, watching the wall and the struggling gang members.

  Archer was already at the front door, his gun trained on the fallen men and his eyes alert for any motion along the walls. “You’re covered. Pull out.”

  Jake shoved the shotgun under his jacket and went through the front door like a man who had nothing more on his mind than digesting a breakfast of dried fish and green tea. He got into the passenger seat of the vehicle that waited, doors open. Hannah was already in back. She clutched the box of pearls in her hands.

  Archer slid in next to her and shut the door. “Go.”

  Then he watched out the back window while Kyle drove quickly into the rain.

  Twenty-five

  Streetlights whipped by, sending pulses of light over the faces in the car. Jake spoke into the cell phone, reassuring Lianne and Honor.

  With fingers that shook, Hannah reached for Archer. He caught her wrists with one hand and held her where she was, across the seat from him. Blood oozed slowly down the collar of his jacket. Adrenaline was an icy fire in his veins. It fed an equally cold rage, a rage born of fear. Hannah could have died. So quickly. So easily.

  So finally.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said hoarsely.

  “Cuts from flying tile.” His voice was as hard as the fingers gripping her wrists.

  “I heard bullets hitting you. I felt them.”

  Kyle’s head whipped around. “Archer?” The word was raw with the love of brother for brother.

  “Drive. I’m fine.” With his free hand, Archer yanked open both his jacket and his dark flannel shirt. Black Kevlar showed through like a wedge of midnight. “Body armor,” he said curtly to Hannah. “Jake and I are covered from neck to knees.”

  “We’ll have some bruises,” Jake said. He rubbed his shoulder where a dull ache kept time with his heart. “But not to the bone. A silencer really slows down the bullets.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said, still shaken. “You could have told me.”

  “Why? You have less sense than a kid sucking on his thumb. You—”

  “That’s not—”

  “—weren’t wearing any armor, didn’t have so much as a pocketknife, yet you walked into that triad den like it was a fucking Tupperware party. What in hell were you thinking of? Do you think they wouldn’t kill a woman?”

  “You!” she said in a low, harsh voice. “I was thinking of you!” Her voice broke as the nightmare bit into her again. “I saw you covered in blood. And the pain in your eyes . . . God, the unspeakable pain.” She turned away as far as her captive wrists would let her. Then she stared out her window while shivers went through her like bullets, jerking her.

  Archer made a rough sound. Knowing he would regret it, unable to stop himself, he pulled her close, then closer still, wrapping her in his arms. He took a deep, shuddering breath as he drew in the rain fragrance of her hair and let go of the bitter scent of gunfire. “It’s all right, Hannah. All of us made it.”

  She burrowed deeper into his arms and hung on, just hung on, her fingers digging into the Kevlar that had kept her nightmare from coming true. The depth of her relief, of her caring for a man as hard as Archer, should have terrified her.

  It didn’t. The pulsing horror of the Dragon Moon was still too real to allow room for any other fear.

  Lianne and Honor were waiting by the front door of the condo. They held their men for a long, urgent kiss, and only reluctantly released them. Then they stood even closer together than usual, needing the reassurance of physical touch.

  “Next time,” Honor announced baldly, “I’m going with you.”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” Jake said. The downward slide off an adrenaline jag was no time to argue with a woman you loved. “Is Summer up?”

  “She’s sleeping like an angel.”

  He smiled down at his wife. “Help me take a shower, honey.”

  Honor looked at the grim weariness in Jake’s eyes and wanted to cry. Instead, she smiled at him and put her arm around his waist. “Adrenaline overload?”

  “Yeah.” He hooked an arm around her shoulders. “Too much Seattle coffee will wire you every time.”

  “Jake,” Archer said.

  He looked away from Honor. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Wha
t for? Hannah’s the one who knocked you out of the line of fire.”

  Honor and Lianne both stiffened.

  “I should have been the one with the shotgun,” Archer said simply.

  “Bullshit. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  “What?”

  “No one’s Superman. Not even you.”

  Archer’s laugh was as grim and weary as Jake’s eyes. He went and brushed a kiss over Honor’s cheek. “I knew you had a good man, sis. I just didn’t know how good. Take care of him.”

  Honor let go of Jake long enough to give Archer a hard hug. “I love you.”

  He ran the tip of his finger down her nose. “I love you, too. Now get out of here before Summer wakes up and spoils your shower.”

  Honor waited long enough to give Kyle a hard hug and get one in return. Then she and Jake walked away, arms around each other, talking in low voices.

  Watching with something close to envy, Hannah leaned wearily against the entry wall. She wondered if the wild hum of adrenaline in her blood would let her sleep before she fell down.

  Archer turned to Lianne. The sight of his petite, fierce sister-in-law brought a gentle smile to his lips. “I owe you a big one, Lianne. Thanks.”

  “As Jake put it so succinctly—bullshit.” She stepped close and hugged Archer. “I wish I could have done more. I hated being here, waiting. Listening. Waiting.”

  “On any operation, communications is the hardest job of all. I was lousy at it.”

  She glanced up at Archer. The black stubble on his face made him look harder than ever. “I can’t imagine you sitting back and relaying messages.”

  “Like I said, I was lousy at it.” He looked at Kyle over Lianne’s dark hair.

  “Next time,” Kyle said bluntly, “I’m wearing the Kevlar and one of you is sitting on his thumb in the car.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “Does that mean you aren’t going after Len’s killer anymore?” Kyle’s voice was pleasant, but his gold-green eyes were as hard as stone.

  Hannah straightened and pushed away from the wall. “That’s exactly what it means,” she said, but it wasn’t Kyle she spoke to. It was Archer. She had come too close to watching him die, watching and knowing that she had put him in the path of the bullets that killed him. “Whatever you thought you owed Len died with him. Take off that armor and go back to your family. Be . . . safe.”