“Two big white guys walked into the Dragon Moon shortly after six this morning,” April said calmly. “Yin is drinking tea, counting money in his tiny little mind, and holding stolen black pearls. Five of his triad brothers are sitting around a nearby table scratching their balls. A few minutes later, a tall white woman walks in and throws herself at one of the white men’s head. If she’d done the smart thing and jumped the other way, his head would have been blown off and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You hear me, slick?”
“I hear you.” He glanced at Chang. “You look like you’ve heard it all before. Do you like green tea and dried fish for breakfast?”
Chang simply watched him with clear, clever black eyes.
“The man and the woman go down in a tangle while someone keeps firing a pistol,” April said. “Jake Mallory—excuse me—the second white guy rams a table down the throats of the five triad goons and cuts loose with a sawed-off shotgun. It chews up a wall and a good chunk of Yin’s brother, Ling, who was too stupid to know the difference between cheap paneling and body armor. The white folks leave, taking the pearls and leaving the money—unmarked, nonsequential hundred-dollar bills, by the way. The getaway car is driven by another big white guy. A blond. No plates on the car. No prints on anything at the café. No tracing the money. A clean job all around. You still with me, slick?”
He nodded casually, but he pulled Hannah closer. The fine trembling in her body made him angry. She had been through enough in the past week. She didn’t need April’s caustic summary of the few bloody moments in the Dragon Moon café.
“Okay,” April said. “Uncle doesn’t give a rat’s fried green ass about what happened in some dirtbag triad cave. Even if Ling dies, he wasn’t that useful. We wanted to have a show-and-tell with Yin, but he grabbed the first westbound plane he could and headed straight for Hong Kong. The Chang family is going to find him for us.”
“I’m happy for you,” Archer said blandly.
“I want those pearls.”
“Why?”
“That’s not on the table.”
“What is?”
“Hand over the pearls and Uncle will be deaf, dumb, and blind on the subject of what happened in the Dragon Moon this morning.”
“As you pointed out,” Archer said, “it was a clean job. Put something more on the table.”
April’s eyes narrowed to fierce slits. “One of these days, big boy, you’re going up to your lips in fresh shit.”
“I’ve been there. That’s why I’m here. If you want me to find those pearls for you, you’ll have to pass the word that Hannah McGarry is off the table. No exceptions. Not even Uncle.”
April raised sleek, black eyebrows. “The only way she’s taken off the table is if she tells all she knows about making those damned pearls.”
“I don’t know anything,” Hannah said curtly. “If you knew Len, you know how secretive he was.”
“You were his wife.”
“I was his color matcher. I wrote out the bills. I ordered supplies. That’s it.”
April started to say something cutting, then looked at Archer. He had the appearance of a man thinking hard and deep. “Think out loud, slick.”
He shrugged. “I’m trying to imagine Len having the patience, the training, and the vision to breed and then clone a special strain of oysters.”
“So?” April demanded.
Hannah was shaking her head. Patience and finicky techniques hadn’t been Len’s style.
“Not Len,” Archer said simply. “As for cloning . . . no. He never even finished junior high. He wouldn’t have had the first idea how to begin cloning anything. At least, he wouldn’t have before the accident that put him on wheels for the rest of his life.”
“He didn’t develop patience, kindness, or a curious mind after the accident,” Hannah said. “If anything, it was the opposite. He shut down, not opened up.”
April didn’t argue the point. Len’s file had been brutally clear on his limitations as an agent and human being. “Ian?” she asked.
“I didn’t know Len before his accident. After, he was a very clever bastard with the devil’s own genius for making trouble. He could play people off against each other better than any diplomat. People didn’t like him, but they damn well paid attention to him. Including me.”
Hannah made a weary gesture. “Len hadn’t finished junior high, but that didn’t mean he was stupid. Especially about what made people tick.”
“Yeah,” April agreed. “He had a hell of a jugular instinct.”
“From you, that’s quite a compliment,” Archer said.
Her smile showed a lot of neat white teeth. “I could say the same of you.”
He turned back to Hannah. “Beyond the usual machinery needed for running a cultured-pearl operation, did you have any lab equipment at Pearl Cove?”
“Nothing different from anyone else in the business.”
“You’re certain?” April asked.
“I did all the buying. I would have noticed if we had exotic equipment.”
“How about the experimental oysters?” Chang asked. “Did you see any difference in them?”
“Just the pearls they produced. There were normal in every other way. In fact, it was a problem.”
“What do you mean?” April demanded.
“When you breed your own shell—oysters—you have to keep breeding back to wild shell or the strain goes bad and dies out. But when Len bred back, he lost the mutation that made rainbow pearls. At least, he must have. It’s the only explanation for the fact that he let the strain go weak when it should have been easy to fix by breeding back.”
April looked at Chang, who nodded. “Every pearl farmer knows that strains of captive shell go bad after a few years,” he said. “We’re working on the problem in Tahiti and Australia, but we’re not making much progress.” He turned to Hannah. “So, whether induced or natural, it was a mutation that made the rainbow shell?”
Hannah shivered at the intensity in Chang’s eyes. Like Len. Obsessed. “That’s my guess. There’s a huge natural color variation in oyster nacre. The black rainbows are just one more color on the spectrum. It would be more surprising if the mutation hadn’t occurred.”
“Did Len ever say how he got onto the rainbows?” Chang asked.
“He was chasing them when I first found him ten years ago,” Archer said. “He was the reason I became interested in pearls.”
“Chasing them how?” April said.
“Following rumors. Twisting informants. Buying secrets when he couldn’t get them any other way.”
“Where?” Chang asked.
“From the Gulf of Siam to the Arafura Sea. The riot that injured Len started when he trashed a smuggler who operated outside of Kupang. The man was a raider, not a pearl farmer. He didn’t want to tell Len where he got the special black pearls.” Archer shrugged. “My guess is he finally told. By the time I got to Len, the smuggler was dead and Len was damned close to it. But he had a smile on his face and a black rainbow clenched in his fist.”
“That fits,” Hannah said. “Sometimes, when Len got really drunk, he would scream that the bloody black rainbows had put him in a chair and the bloody things would put him right again.”
“How?” April asked.
“He believed in miracles,” Archer said simply.
April muttered something under her breath.
Chang thought about miracles and Len, and nodded slowly. “Pearls have a long tradition of being used as medicine. Even today, in India, ground pearls are used to cure rickets. Quite effective, I’m told.”
“Paraplegia is a long way from rickets,” April said sardonically.
Archer looked at her. “What would it take to convince you that Hannah doesn’t know how to grow black rainbows?”
April glanced at Chang.
Suddenly he appeared both weary and impatient. “I told you. I told my father. The more I looked at it, the less I thought that Hannah knew Len’s s
ecrets. Not before he died. Not after. He didn’t trust her, and she isn’t clever or devious enough to hide a secret that big.”
Hannah wondered if she had been insulted or complimented. Both, probably.
Silence stretched while April considered and rejected various scenarios. It didn’t take her long to choose one. “Okay, slick. Here’s the deal. Chang will set a price and both of you will sign over everything you own at Pearl Cove to a person I’ll name. Lock, stock, and barrel. Stuff you know about and stuff you don’t. I’ll put out the word that you and Hannah are off the table.”
“You’ll do more than that,” Archer said evenly. “You’ll make it clear that anyone who goes after Hannah goes after Uncle Sam.”
April didn’t like it, but she accepted it. “Agreed.”
“Hannah?” Archer asked.
“I’ll sign over everything except the Black Trinity.”
“So it’s real,” Chang said eagerly. “I’ll buy it from you. Top price.”
“It’s real,” Hannah said. “I don’t have it to sell.”
“Why not?”
“Len hid it. We’ve found other rainbows, but we haven’t found the Black Trinity.”
“Did he bury it somewhere in Pearl Cove?” Chang asked her.
“If his murderer didn’t take it, it’s still in Pearl Cove. Except for one trip to Roti just after we bought Pearl Cove, Len never left home.”
Silently Archer noted that neither Chang nor April appeared surprised by the statement that Len had been murdered. Nor were they interested. But both of them were quietly making plans for a trip to Roti, which wasn’t that far from Kupang, which might, just might, hold the secret of the black rainbows.
“Buried treasure,” April said, her voice ripe with irritation. She looked at her watch, mentally reshuffling demands for the rest of the day. One of her agents was about to get a rude awakening and a ticket to one of Indonesia’s less delectable seaside villages. “Fine, whatever, keep the Black Trinity if you dig it up. The rest is Uncle Sam’s. That includes Len’s computer.” She looked straight at Archer.
He nodded. “You’ll get it after we sign the papers.”
“I’ll have them to you in an hour,” April said.
“And you’ll put out the word right now,” Archer said.
“You’re pushing, slick.”
“It’s what I’m best at.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “True fact. I’ll put out the word.”
“Done,” Archer said, holding out his hand.
April hesitated, then gripped his hand hard. “Don’t disappoint me on this one. I’d hate to cut off your cock just when you’re enjoying it again.”
Twenty-seven
One does not learn the skills involved
At the drop of a hat.
It’s the slow-learned skills in the depths of love
That I’m working at.
LADY NAKATOMI
JAPAN, EIGHTH CENTURY
BROOME, AUSTRALIA
Though Hannah felt as if she had been away for months, Pearl Cove hadn’t changed. The ocean was still a restless turquoise that was sculpted by wind. The sun still piled clouds upon clouds until the afternoon sky became a sullen quicksilver lid holding in the summer’s tropical heat. Stripped down to shorts, tank top, and sandals, she and Archer looked very much at home on the sultry margin where salt water met land.
Hannah didn’t feel at home. All the workers had left except Coco, who had stayed on to pack up some of the things in the main house. Hannah couldn’t wait to leave Pearl Cove. Every time she looked at the beach, she saw Len there, his ruined legs drifting like pale ribbons on the water.
Shivering, she turned away from the sea.
Archer guessed her thoughts from the grim line of her mouth. “You should have stayed in Seattle. There’s nothing in Pearl Cove for you but bad memories.”
Then there was Christian Flynn, who had murdered Len. But Archer wasn’t talking about that anymore. He was tired of arguing with Hannah. The time he had left with her could be measured in hours. He didn’t want to spend them wrangling over the past that shadowed his present life like a curse echoing through time.
“I’m with you every step,” Hannah said. “Until it’s finished.”
“Stubborn,” he muttered.
“And you aren’t?”
“I’m soft as the inside of an oyster.”
“Soft?” She laughed and wanted to reach out to him, but she kept her hands clenched at her sides. If she asked, he would do . . . anything. If she didn’t ask, he did nothing.
At your service.
She told herself that was what she wanted, all she could accept, that there was no future for her with Archer. Yet every time she repeated the words in her mind, time bent back on itself and she was standing on a street corner in Rio with no money, no hope, nothing but night coming down on her like thunder. The flashback was so intense she could smell the cooking fires and hear the liquid syllables of Portuguese as prostitutes called out to men. Staring out over the wild Australian land, she saw only cardboard shanties clawing up Rio’s steep sides.
She wondered if she was finally going crazy. Smoke from city fires shimmered and twisted, and settled in a plume of red dust raised by Christian Flynn’s car as he roared down Pearl Cove’s road.
Savagely, futilely, Hannah wished that she had the power to change what would happen next. But she didn’t. Like Len, Archer did what he pleased no matter what other people wanted.
With eyes the color of steel, Archer watched dust boil up as Flynn’s car raced toward Pearl Cove.
“Did April say anything more when you sent Yin’s pearls along with the computer?” Hannah asked. Her voice was like her body, tight, held against a blow that she couldn’t see but knew was coming anyway.
“April was too busy trying to get a grip on the Red Phoenix Triad to make polite conversation.”
“Is that why she helped us?”
“It sure as hell wasn’t charity. That’s also why she took the Chinese side in the trade. The Chang family doesn’t know it, but they’ll be her door into the triad. Or they may know it and figure they’ll find out more from her than they’ll give away. Either way, my money is on Ms. Joy. Anyone who rides that tiger will get eaten alive.”
Hannah almost smiled despite the chills that kept rippling over her skin. In her mind, bullets echoed and she woke up screaming that Archer couldn’t die, she couldn’t bear it, she never meant to kill him.
But in the dream he died, she had to bear it, and she had killed him.
Without really intending to, she went to Archer, put her arms around him, and just held on. Fearing him, fearing for him, needing him . . . she was being torn apart. Only when he held her did she feel anything like hope.
He stroked her hair and wished to the soles of his feet that he could take away the pain of the past. But he couldn’t. All he could do was bring Len’s killer to justice and then walk away, giving Hannah the peace she had earned at such cost. In time she would get over the nightmares that included both Len and himself.
In time, maybe he would even get over her. But he didn’t believe it. He had spent years loving her without knowing it. Now he knew. Knowing didn’t help the pain.
“It’s almost over,” he said softly.
She nodded against his chest, but she didn’t let go until she heard a car door slam.
“If it turns nasty,” Archer said, “remember your promise. Whatever you do, don’t get between us.”
“But—”
“Hannah.”
She looked up at him with eyes that were full of fear and just as determined as his. “Let it go,” she said harshly. “Just let it go. Len’s dead. You can’t bring him back.”
“No. I can only live with myself. He was my brother and I couldn’t help him when he was alive. Now he’s dead. Murdered. I can’t walk away from that.”
“And I can’t live with knowing I was responsible for your death!”
&nb
sp; “I don’t plan on dying.”
“Do you think Len did?”
“Whatever happens is my choice, my responsibility. Not yours. Go up to the house.”
“Go to bloody hell,” she said between her teeth. “Christian might be able to explain away your dead body, but not mine.”
Archer’s mouth thinned into a bleak line. He had hoped to get Hannah out of here. He didn’t want to give her another nightmare, another close-up look at the part of him that reminded her of Len. But the time for arguing was over. Flynn was walking down the path toward them with the easy, ground-devouring stride of a strong, very fit male.
He wasn’t alone. Tom Nakamori came along about thirty feet behind, losing ground with every step.
“All right, mate,” Flynn said, walking up to Archer. “What’s so bloody important that—”
Archer took him down with two blows that were as ruthless as they were measured.
Hannah made a muffled sound of shock. There had been no warning. Between one heartbeat and the next, Flynn was on his back, gasping, trying to figure out what had happened to him. The prick of a pocketknife in the tanned skin just over his jugular told him. His eyes cleared and his body tensed.
“Show me how bright you are,” Archer said. “Don’t try it. If you do, I’ll cut your jugular so that no one will be able to stop the bleeding. You know just how it’s done, don’t you?”
Flynn’s expression said that he knew the technique. He lay in the dirt without moving. But he watched, waiting for an opening.
“You’re too close to his feet, Hannah,” Archer said calmly. “Step back.”
Without a word she retreated. “Far enough?”
“Yes.” He never looked away from Flynn. “How did you kill Len?”
“What?” Automatically Flynn tried to sit up. A stiff shot to his diaphragm changed his mind.
Archer waited until the other man could breathe again before he repeated the question. “How did you kill Len?”
“Bugger you,” Flynn said hoarsely.
Pearl Cove Page 37
