Donovans - Pearl Cove Part 8

"When do you leave?"

"After dawn. One hour."

"Is there extra dive gear?"

Nakamori looked at Archer from head to heels. "Mr. McGarry gear fit chest. But bottom..." The j.a.panese shrugged. "Sorry. No fit."

"If I get too cold, I'll sit up top until I'm warm again. Make sure there's room for Hannah, too." Archer looked at her. "I a.s.sume you dive."

She smiled, thinking of the hauntingly beautiful ocean beneath the surface, where colors flowed into a thousand shades of blue and all was grace. "I haven't really been diving since the storm. Christian said there wasn't room, and I didn't want to get in the way of salvage work. Then the engine started having problems. It's fixed now?" she asked, turning to Nakamori again.

"Not now," he corrected. "Tomorrow."

"Right," she said. "Tomorrow."

"If calm," he added.

She looked out at the sky. No huge clouds loomed or gathered in a solid western wall. "It will be fine."

Nakamori went through the front door, paused on the verandah, and looked back. "Mrs. McGarry?"

"Yes?"

"My divers must feed families. They ask if need find more work."

"Everyone who works for Pearl Cove will be paid," Archer said, understanding the question Nakamori was too circ.u.mspect to ask outright. "Tell your men."

Nakamori's black eyes scanned Archer with shrewd intelligence. "Flynn say Pearl Cove ffft no good. Banks not build again."

"If you work, you get paid," Archer repeated.

"How?" Nakamori's voice was polite but insistent.

"By a check drawn on a Hong Kong bank."

"Mr. Donovan," Hannah said quickly, "is a partner in Pearl Cove. He is underwriting what needs to be done."

Surprise flicked like a whip over Nakamori's face, followed by no expression at all. "Pearl Cove okay?"

"Pearl Cove is a mess," Archer said, "but you'll be paid for every hour you work."

"Okay. I tell." Nakamori bowed slightly and went out into the yellow violence of the sun.

"I don't want to leave you alone while I dive," Archer said. "Are you comfortable diving?"

"Is an ama?" she asked, smiling slightly, thinking of the famous female pearl divers of j.a.pan.

A smile split the darkness of Archer's beard. "An ama? Do you wear what the amas wear, too?"

"White blouse and trousers? No."

"They only wear that for the shows put on by the big j.a.panese pearl growers for tourists and government officials," he said. "The amas of old wore nothing but a G-string. They wanted to slide like fish through the water while they dove for sh.e.l.l."

"Must have been chilly."

"In j.a.panese waters, it was d.a.m.ned cold," Archer agreed. "But they worked hour after hour anyway. They kept up their energy by taking breaks to grill and eat whatever they found on the sea floor during their dives. And they gave a haunting, whistling cry when they surfaced after a long dive...."

Though he spoke to Hannah, his eyes were on Tom Nakamori, who was walking down the path to the pearling sheds. One more name to give Kyle to run through his computer. The j.a.panese man might be nearly sixty, with joints that screamed each one of his years as a diver, but he was plenty strong enough to slam an oyster sh.e.l.l between Len's ribs. Especially if he whacked him over the head with a board first.

"Any other players I should know about?" Archer asked, turning back to Hannah.

"What do you mean?"

"Flynn and Nakamori both have the strength and the access to murder Len. Who else benefited?"

She closed her eyes and fought a sharp battle with her stomach. "I don't see how either Christian or Tom benefited from Len's death. If Pearl Cove goes under, they both lose their jobs."

"Jobs aren't hard to find along this coast, especially for experienced pearl men." And unless he was badly mistaken, the young Aussie had more than one job in any case. Archer turned away from the verandah and watched Hannah with eyes that showed only a ghost of green and no blue at all. "Who else?"

"Ian Chang wants to buy Pearl Cove. Or seventy-five percent of it, anyway. He wasn't here during the cyclone, so he can hardly be a suspect, but he does know about the special pearls. I don't know how. Maybe Len told him."

"Secrets are hard to keep, especially one like that. Even Len couldn't have done it year after year after year," Archer added absently. He was running through his mental file marked "Chang." Nothing that came back was good news. Maybe Ian belonged to a different branch of the Changs. Maybe... but somehow Archer didn't think he would be lucky on this one. Not the good kind of lucky.

"This past year was the worst," Hannah said. "Len told me he was certain someone had stolen some of the experimental oysters just before we started harvesting."

Archer shrugged. "If Len hadn't been so d.a.m.ned clever playing off one group against another, he would have been stolen blind years ago. Ian Chang, for instance. Would that be Sam Chang's Number One Son? The Changs of Chang Enterprises International? The Changs who own a hefty slice of the Pacific Rim pearl trade and are looking to acquire more?"

She looked at Archer warily, sensing the intensity beneath his neutral voice. "Ian's father is called Sam and is a businessman. Otherwise, you seem to know more about the Changs than I do."

"What do you know about Ian Chang?" Archer asked.

"He works for the family business, has interests from mainland China to New Zealand, and single-handedly helped Australia pry the pearling industry's technology away from the j.a.panese monopoly. From what Christian has said, Ian with Australia's help is now working on ending j.a.pan's pearl soles monopoly."

"Married?" he asked, surprising Hannah.

"Yes. Five children. And if gossip can be believed, a mistress. Several, actually."

"Sounds like Sam's Number One Son," Archer said dryly. "How much did Chang offer for Pearl Cove?"

"The Changs would a.s.sume all debts and rebuild the farm operation."

"Millions, I a.s.sume."

She closed her eyes for an instant. The thought of how much Len had allowed Pearl Cove to slide into debt did nothing to settle her nerves. "Yes. Millions."

"Did you turn Chang down?"

"For Pearl Cove?"

It didn't take Archer a heartbeat to figure out what other offer Chang might have made. "Pearl Cove and anything else he might have put on the table."

"I turned down all of his offers."

"Why?"

The calm question startled Hannah. "Because Pearl Cove isn't mine to sell."

"And the rest?"

"Ian is married. End of discussion."

"But not for him."

"His problem, not mine."

"I'm not married, Hannah." Before she could manage a response, Archer asked another question. "Did you tell Chang* you had a partner?"

She nodded.

"And?" Archer asked.

"He didn't like it. Said it changed everything." She paused, gave a mental shrug, and decided it would be interesting to see Archer's response. "Ian thinks you killed Len."

"Did he say why?"

If Archer was irritated or surprised by the accusation, nothing showed. Part of the reason was his short, smooth beard, which concealed small s.h.i.+fts of expression. But most of the reason nothing showed was the self-control that Hannah found herself wanting to ruffle, and to h.e.l.l with all the warnings about still waters and sleeping dogs. The longer she was with Archer, the more she remembered other things from the past, like the way heat had rippled through her the first time she saw him. She had been too innocent then to understand her elemental response to this one man. She wasn't innocent now.

"What Ian said to me was that Len finally b.u.g.g.e.red the wrong man," she said flatly. "That you were as ruthless as they came."

"He's half right. I didn't kill Len."

"Yes." She let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. "And neither did I."

He nodded as though she had said the sun would set later in the day. "I know."

"How? Do you think I'm not capable of murder because I'm a woman?"

He laughed, but it wasn't a humorous sound. "Anyone is capable of murder, given the right incentive."

"Then why are you so certain I'm innocent?"

"Simple. You asked me for help."

She blinked and watched him with eyes darker than indigo. "I could have killed Len and then asked for your help."

"You're not that stupid. You didn't need Chang to tell you that I wasn't a nice guy."

The look in Archer's eyes reminded Hannah of the night he had appeared on her doorstep with Len's beaten, b.l.o.o.d.y body in his arms. At the time, they had lived on the outskirts of a dirty village on a hidden bay, a place where men made their living smuggling contraband or by outright piracy. Archer had fought their way to the potholed dirt strip that pa.s.sed for an airport, loaded them aboard a stolen plane, hotwired it, and kicked it into the sullen tropical sky while fights and fires raged all around and people fled in all directions as the plane pursued them down the runway.

That night Archer had been everything Chang said he was: utterly ruthless.

Abruptly Hannah was glad that all she was guilty of was failing Len as a wife. The bond between the two men was frighteningly strong. Archer had stayed with Len through all the endless rounds of surgery, all the physical and mental agony. Feeding Len, bathing him, giving him water, holding him like a child while he shrieked through drug-enhanced nightmares and cursed men who had lied to him, men he wanted to kill, men he had killed.

Until finally Len had turned on Archer, screaming at him for wanting Hannah. The idea had shocked her, but not as much as the realization that she was drawn to Archer as she had never been to her husband.

"Hannah? What is it?"

For a moment she couldn't speak. Ghostly emotion rippled over her skin as she watched Archer's eyes, their bleak shadows and pitiless clarity, as though he was seeing everything she remembered, everything she had tried to forget.

"I was thinking," she managed.

"About what?"

"The time Len screamed at you to leave. It was wrong," she whispered. "You never would have touched me."

"No. I never would have. But I wanted to, Hannah. I wanted you until I couldn't breathe."

"I..." Her voice died. "I can't believe..." Yet when she looked at Archer's eyes now, she believed. He had felt the same sensual heat that rippled through her unawakened body. "I didn't know."

"I made sure of it. But Len knew me. He saw what you were too innocent to see." Archer glanced down at his watch. If he drove like a maniac, there was enough time. Since everyone in Western Australia drove like a maniac, he wouldn't stand out. "I'll help you gather our dive gear. I want to look it over and the boat before we use it."

Hannah asked the one question she wasn't afraid to ask, and ignored the one she was very much afraid of: Do you still want me? "Don't you trust Tom?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet? I don't trust anyone."

"What about me?"

"You're family."

"Family," Hannah said slowly, tasting the word. It was more than she had any right to expect, yet somehow much less than she wanted.

And she hadn't known that until this instant. Ten years ago she had been innocent and infatuated with a handsome mercenary who was fifteen years older than she was. Yet even then, Archer had tugged at her senses just by being alive. If she had met him first, before Len...

"You don't feel like family to me," she said.

"Give it time."

"Time." She laughed abruptly.

"Do you keep the diving gear here or on the boat?" Archer asked.

"I keep it here." Then, before she could think better of it, "And I don't feel anything like your sister."

He didn't move, but he changed. She could see it, the flare of intensity in him as vivid as the corona of the sun.

"What do you feel like?" he asked.

Unease and something more p.r.i.c.ked through her. She wanted him with a rus.h.i.+ng force that made her lightheaded. But fear was greater. Just barely. Just enough to bridle her tongue. Years ago she had learned that s.e.xual hunger led straight to bad judgment, which led straight to h.e.l.l on earth.