Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Lianne walked quickly to the small room that held Wen’s greatest prize. As always, the door was locked. She looked at the dial suspiciously, then at Archer. “I may need you again.”
“I’ll be right here, wiping Kyle’s drool marks off the merchandise.”
With fingers that were cold despite the warmth inside the vault, Lianne began turning the dial. She worked carefully, then let out a relieved sigh when the lock clicked open. As always, the door itself was stubborn. She tugged at it once, then again, harder.
“Let me,” Kyle said, reaching past her.
The door opened with a grumble, as though awakened from sleep. Holding her breath without realizing it, terrified that she would see only emptiness, Lianne reached in and turned on the light.
A stone shroud lay on top of the coffin-sized table: motionless shades of green, the muted flash of gold threads beneath the overhead light.
“Well?” Kyle asked.
“It’s not Wen’s,” Lianne said simply.
“How good is it?” Archer asked.
“It’s perfect,” she said on a rush of breath. “Just plain
perfect.
”
Kyle smiled like a wolf. “I’ll get the suitcases.”
Lianne watched Jake, Kyle, and Archer stow the last of the heavy suitcases aboard Kyle’s boat, which was chuckling and rumbling with power as the big engine warmed. All twenty-seven feet of the
Tomorrow
rocked and tugged at the lines tying it to the dock below Kyle’s cottage, which stood on a bluff. Strapped on top of the boat’s white cabin, overhanging at both ends, a Zodiac lay facedown. The inflatable boat was blacker than the night.
The moon hadn’t yet risen. Nothing brightened the dense lid of clouds except for two distant, separate glows where the city lights of Victoria and Vancouver bounced off the bottom of the clouds. The strait was a dark, subtly shimmering presence alive with the rush of wind.
There were no other boats at the dock, no other houses nearby. Kyle had chosen the cabin for two things: solitude and the private dock. It wasn’t the first time that both had come in handy.
He stepped up out of the boat to the dock beside Lianne. He used only the colored reflections of the boat’s running lights to find his way. No one had turned on the
Tomorrow
’s cabin lights. No one would. If anyone really wanted to see, there were night-vision goggles aboard.
Putting an arm around Lianne’s waist, Kyle turned her toward him and tipped her face up to his. A ribbon of wind curled around them, bringing with it the scent of fir trees and the sea.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly.
“I’m going. Nothing you can say or do will change my mind.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Damn it, I know.”
He bent and kissed her, ignoring the stiffness that only slowly loosened beneath his caressing mouth.
But loosen it did. No matter how many times Lianne told herself that all she and Kyle had going was hot sex and cold business, she couldn’t help responding to him. Adrenaline, nerves, plain old hormones, whatever. She didn’t know. Right now, she didn’t really care. She was
hungry for him in ways she didn’t even want to think about.
The intensity of her emotions frightened her more than anything else that had happened so far.
“You’re shivering,” Kyle said. He breathed warmth across Lianne’s temples, her eyelids, her lips, her stubborn chin. “Do you want my jacket?”
She shook her head. Once she had changed out of the little red stretch dress and put on real clothes, she had warmed quickly enough.
“Scared?” he asked.
“About tomorrow? No.”
“Then what?”
“It doesn’t matter. This will all be over soon. And then…then it won’t matter. I’ll go back to my business and you’ll go back to yours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Business,” she whispered. “Just business, that’s all.”
Archer’s voice rose from the stern of the boat. “We’re at operating temperature. Jake says if we don’t leave pretty quick, we’ll run into some real chop in the passes.”
“I’m ready,” Lianne said.
Kyle started to hand her down into the stern well, but she pulled away from him, slipping like warm water through his fingers, leaving him cold. She went into the boat cabin without looking back to see if he was following.
Anger and an uneasy chill curled along Kyle’s spine. Something was wrong. Not with the jade or tomorrow’s dicey raid on Farmer Island, but with Lianne herself. She was acting as though she couldn’t wait to say good-bye to him.
It doesn’t matter. This will all be over soon. And then…then it won’t matter.
He wanted to go after her and find out what the hell was going on in her quick, intensely intelligent, maddeningly female brain, but he didn’t. Jake was right. They had to get going or they would hit wind against an ebbing tide
in some of the passes. In terms of speed, it didn’t matter; the SeaSport had plenty of power to outmuscle the tide. But if they got caught in razor waves, it would be a nasty bitch of a ride.
Kyle bent down and began undoing the
Tomorrow
’s lines. Voices floated out from the open door of the cabin.
“How long will it take to get to Jade Island?” Lianne asked Jake. He was standing in the aisle, calling up a program on Kyle’s electronic chart plotter.
“Depends on what the water is like in the passes,” Jake said, “and if the wind stays below fifteen knots.” He punched another button on the plotter. “But unless it really sucks, we should anchor at Jade Island in time to get a decent night’s sleep.”
“Speak for yourself,” Archer said. “I lost the toss for the bed. Such as it is.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, looking at the dinette, which converted into a bed of sorts. “Even if I sleep fetally, it will be a crunch.”
“You can always sleep up in the notch with me,” Archer offered. “Kyle said it was kind of comfortable.”
“The last time Kyle camped out on Jade Island,” Jake retorted, “he was wounded and half out of his mind with dehydration. I’ve seen the little ravine where he hid. If it rains, you’ll be up to your ears in runoff.”
“Maybe I’ll just cut to the chase and sleep in my wet suit,” Archer said.
The sound of the engine changed as Kyle throttled it down to idle. Archer stuck his head out the cabin door. Kyle was standing at the aft station, his hand on the gas lever.
“Want me to get the lines?” Archer asked.
“I got them,” Kyle said. “Sit at the forward helm. I’ll be along as soon as we’re clear of the cove.”
The dock began to fall away as Kyle eased the
Tomorrow
backward, turned, and put her bow toward Thatcher Pass.
“Take it,” he called to Archer.
“I’ve got the helm,” Archer answered.
While Kyle came forward and closed the door, Archer took the speed up to about fourteen knots. The boat could easily have done twice that, but there was no need. Too many logs, deadheads, and clumps of seaweed floated around the waters of the San Juan Islands for anyone to race off in the dark unless it was really necessary. Since no one was shooting at them, fourteen knots was plenty of speed.
Lianne pressed against the built-in dinette table to let Kyle pass by in the narrow, sunken aisle that ran from the rear of the cabin to the V berth. But instead of passing by her, he stopped, pinning her between the hard table and his equally hard body. His hands shot forward and gripped the edge of the table, caging her, cutting off any possibility that she could move aside.
She could barely breathe as she stared up at him. Rain spattered across the windows. Running lights turned the rain into melting green-and-red gems. His eyes glittered like shards of ice with slices of colored shadows caught between the sharp edges.
“I don’t know what’s gnawing on you,” he said flatly, “but it will have to wait until we’re finished getting Uncle off our backs. Understood?”
“No problem,” she said, her lips stiff.
He just looked at her. “I don’t believe you.”
“You think I can’t hold up my end of this?”
“You can do whatever you put your stubborn mind to,” Kyle said in a low voice. “What worries me is what might be going on in what passes for your brain.”
“Kyle,” Archer said. “Is the back eddy along the point still loaded with trash from the high tide?”
“Yes. Want me to take the helm?” Kyle asked without taking his eyes off Lianne.
“Good idea. It will give you something to do besides intimidate our jade expert.”
“Our? I hate to break it to you, brother dear, but Lianne isn’t
ours.
She’s mine.”
Archer glanced over his shoulder. “Only if she wants to be. Right now, she looks like what she wants is to kick you in the balls.”
“Save it,” Jake said before Kyle could retort. “I’ve got better things to do than bruise my knuckles on you two hardheads. Hell, Archer, you know better than to pick a fight with a team member at this point.”
“Yes,” Archer said. “But apparently Kyle doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Kyle snarled. “I wasn’t the one talking about—”
“You were baiting Lianne,” Archer interrupted. “Like it or not, she’s a member of our team.
Ours,
little brother. Not yours.”
Kyle hissed a searing word and brushed past Lianne to take the helm. Before he got there, Archer crossed the aisle to the pilot seat and settled in next to Jake. Their wide shoulders overlapped, but otherwise the bench seat was quite comfortable.
Lianne let out a quiet breath and stepped up to one of the bench seats along the dinette. Kyle was too quick, too accurate in his reading of her. No sooner did she try to put some distance between them than he reached out and dragged her back.
It’s business. Just business.
Only for her, it went deeper than business, deeper than lust. She was in danger of giving too much of herself to a man who didn’t want anything more than sex. Closing her eyes, she wondered if she had been born to be stupid about men or if it was something she had perfected in the past thirty years.
Lianne folded her arms on the table, laid her head on them, and listened to the masculine rumble of voices discussing the weather, the water, and the occasional tugboat passing in the night. Gradually the subdued, muscular growl of the engine overcame the voices. She slept, but her dreams were fitful swirls of jade and accusations, fear and the black heart of an approaching storm.
“Is it time to go ashore?” Lianne asked, her voice foggy from sleep.
“No,” Kyle said. “It’s time to go to bed.”
Before she could argue, he lifted her out of the dinette nook, put her on her feet, and half guided, half pushed her toward the bow. Behind him, Jake started muscling the table off its pedestal so that he could make up his bed.
“Watch your head,” Kyle said.
Even with the warning, Lianne bumped her forehead as she stepped down into the V berth. She was so sleepy she didn’t care. She just peeled off her shoes, jacket, and jeans and crawled beneath the specially made, V-shaped blanket.
Kyle stripped off everything and crawled in next to her.
“What are you—” she began.
“Scoot over,” he said.
Lianne moved so far away from him that the blanket couldn’t cover her, but even that wasn’t far enough. Although plenty wide at one end, the pie-shaped bed didn’t leave a lot of room for privacy at the other. The section of foam mattress she was lying on gave beneath Kyle’s weight as he settled into the bed. Searching fingers of cold, damp air slid under the blanket.
She shivered and wished she hadn’t taken off her jacket and jeans. The thong-bikini underwear and blouse she wore didn’t offer much in the way of cover or warmth. But she made no move to get closer to the nearest source of heat—Kyle Donovan.
He made an impatient sound, rolled onto his side, and pulled Lianne close against his chest.
“I’m not cold,” she muttered.
“I am.”
It was a lie. The man radiated heat like the sun. She tried not to let his warmth seep into her, but it was impossible. Slowly her body began to soften against his.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he said against her hair. “Sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
She sighed, relaxed more, then stiffened as her hips brushed against him. He was fully aroused.
“Don’t worry,” Kyle murmured against her ear, the words a bare thread of sound. “Much as I’d like to, Jake has ears like a fox. So just snuggle in here and we’ll both make the best of a cold bed.”
No longer worried about revealing his own arousal, he pulled her hips against his, wrapped his arms around her, and told himself he wasn’t really torturing himself, he was just keeping her warm. The fact that one of his hands ended up tucked between her breasts was an accident.
The fact that her nipples were hard was a revelation.
Gently he skimmed them with his thumb, first one nipple, then the other, just for the sheer pleasure of hearing her breathing change, of having her body acknowledge the desire she wouldn’t speak aloud. He didn’t mean to spread his hand wide, to caress, to stroke, to unbutton and tease and arouse; but he did each of those things, over and over, while she remained motionless but for the wild beating of her heart.
Very, very slowly, his touch moved down her body like the sun sliding over a mountain peak and then down to the darkest valley, probing every shadow, even the deepest one. Especially the deepest one, the one that only his aching flesh could fill, the one that gave softly, generously as he parted her and pushed into the endless heat, the wellspring of feminine mystery that pulsed slowly, rhythmically, soundlessly around him even as he spilled into her, and they gave themselves in a prolonged, silent unraveling that was like nothing either had ever felt before.
They fell asleep that way, silent, motionless, joined.
T
he wind blew hard all morning, churning the water, bringing unpredictable bursts of rain. By the time the wind began to die down, it was raining steadily. Neither wind nor rain kept Kyle from showing Lianne how to handle the Zodiac, operate the short-range location system the divers would wear, and breathe underwater using the government’s high-tech equipment.
While Kyle ran Lianne through her paces, Archer and Jake took turns scrambling up the narrow ridge that separated Jade Island into two unequal halves. The top of the ridge gave them a view of Farmer Island, just over three miles away. Braced against the wind, shielding the lenses from the rain, Archer and Jake traded off keeping watch through powerful binoculars.
They saw no unusual activity, no sign that Farmer was planning a party or hosting an unpublicized conference. Even after the wind dropped to a whisper, no boats arrived and no planes landed. Nor was there a plane tied down along the private runway. Apparently Dick Farmer was still in Seattle playing hardball with China and Uncle Sam.
“No change,” Jake said, sliding down the last few feet of the slope and handing the binoculars to Archer. “If anyone noticed us coming in last night, or the Zodiac zipping around earlier today, they’re not worried enough to come looking.”
Archer glanced at the angle of the sun and then at Kyle,
who was methodically testing the rebreathers one last time. Unlike standard scuba gear, the rebreathing apparatus didn’t let loose a stream of air bubbles every time the diver exhaled. It was a useful feature; if you happened to be diving in hostile waters on a clear, calm night, a trail of bubbles could get you killed.
“How does the water look between here and there?” Kyle asked Jake.
“Lively, but no problem.”
Kyle looked at the sky. With luck, there would be a nice, steady drizzle to conceal the Zodiac while they played hide-and-seek with Farmer’s guards.
“The gear is ready,” Kyle said, standing and stretching.
“What about the electronics?” Archer asked.
“In a dry bag clipped to my dive belt.”
“You sure that damned key works?” Jake asked.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Archer said.
“Have a little faith,” Kyle told his brother. “Remember the gizmo snitch. Not to mention Honor’s alarm clock.”
“Please,
don’t
mention it,” Jake muttered. “The first time I heard it go off, I thought someone was murdering her. I came running up from the dock to your cabin buck naked and waving my gun.”
Kyle snickered. “I wish I could have seen Honor’s face.”
“It was dark.”
Kyle looked at the sky again. The west was incandescent with colors. The east was a peaceful twilight blue condensing into night. “Let’s suit up.”
It was easier said than done, especially for Lianne, who had had little practice pulling on the clinging, stubborn neoprene. Even with the minimum underneath—a bikini swimsuit—she didn’t think she would make it this time. But with a generous amount of talcum powder and a lot of wriggling, she finally got the suit on.
When she turned to take the path to the narrow, rocky strip of beach where the Zodiac had been hauled out of
the water, Kyle was standing there, watching her with laughter and frank desire in his eyes.
“Sweetheart, that would make a hell of a nightclub act.”
She ignored him. “Where’s my rebreather?”
“In the Zodiac. But you won’t have to use it. The rain will give us plenty of cover to beach the boat so you can walk ashore.”
“You hope,” she muttered.
And so did she. Driving the Zodiac around was a cinch. Climbing back into it after a dive wasn’t. Karate training had given her coordination, but hadn’t done much for the upper-body strength required to lever herself out of the water and into the Zodiac while wearing diving gear.
Jake and Archer were waiting by the Zodiac. Enough rain spit down to darken the sky, dampen the land, and dimple the surface of the water. In the late-day gloom, the men loomed huge in their unmarked black wet suits and scuba gear. Finding a pure black wet suit for Lianne had been impossible, so Kyle had taken black shoe polish to the bright coral slices of neoprene.
Lianne went to the bow, perched on the fat gunwale, and wrapped her neoprene-covered fingers around the straps, which would keep her from bouncing out at the first wave. She hoped.
The men waded into the dark gray ocean, taking the Zodiac with them. Archer and Jake rolled aboard with the ease of men who had done it hundreds of times before. Kyle quickly followed. Sitting on the flat red metal gas tank, he revved up the engine, checked that everyone was set, and headed for Farmer Island.
By the time they got there, it was dark and Lianne’s hands ached from hanging onto the straps. Despite the sulky rain dribbling over his night goggles, Kyle didn’t even need a compass to show the way. The rugged shape of Farmer Island was like a black beacon.
He checked his dive watch. Quarter of seven. Well
within their time limits. Walker wouldn’t even take off from Seattle until ten.
Kyle throttled the outboard back to a bare mutter and crept closer to the island. They were at the opposite end to the marina and the compound. Here there were no buildings, no lighted paths, no voices calling. The headland looked like a wall, which it was, unless the tide was out. Then a boat with a very shallow draft could reach one of the thin, rocky beaches that clung to either side of the headland.
The landing spot the men had chosen was lost in darkness, unless you happened to be the man wearing the night goggles. Just beyond the rocky rubble of the beach, the black mass of the forested headland rose steeply against the barely lighter sky.
“You’re up,” Kyle said to Archer in a voice that carried no farther than his brother.
“Sixty minutes,” Archer answered in the same voice.
“Check the locator.”
Archer switched on the miniature transmitter that would tell Kyle exactly where to pick him up in an hour.
The small receiver in Kyle’s hand stirred to life and pointed toward Archer.
“It’s hot,” Kyle said. “Go.”
Archer turned off the transmitter, lowered himself into the water, and began swimming toward the beach with powerful, invisible motions of his dive flippers.
Kyle turned the Zodiac and headed for the next drop-off point. It began to rain in earnest. No one in the open boat noticed. Wet suits were hard to get on or off, but they made world-class rain gear.
A light blinked on the console. When that wasn’t enough to get the guard’s attention, a beeper complained in rapidly rising tones.
“Now what?” the guard muttered, setting aside his magazine. “If that moron gardener is sneaking out in the
bushes to ball the maid again, I’m going to personally rip off his cock and stuff it down her throat.”
But the warning light wasn’t in the servants’ sector. It came from the dirt road at the far end of the island, near the runway. It could be deer. They had some on Farmer Island. Or it could be something on two legs.
The guard hit an intercom switch that connected him to staff quarters. When there wasn’t a conference or a party scheduled, there were only two guards for the whole island. Usually it didn’t matter, because the place was so quiet that the only danger was falling asleep on the job. The guards split the day into twelve-hour shifts, 6
A
.
M
. to 6
P
.
M
. When Murray was on duty, Steve was off—unless something happened.
Something had just happened.
“Steve!” Murray snapped. “Get your ass up here. We got a live one on the east side, sector six.”
“Hell, Murray. You sure it isn’t Lopez humping that lazy slut again?”
“Not unless they took a walk to the far end of the runway to do it.”
“Five to one it’s a deer.”
“Five to one you’re fired if you don’t haul ass out there and take a look.”
With a disgusted curse Steve pulled on a rain jacket and headed for the Jeep. Five minutes later he roared up to the far end of the island. His headlights and searchlight showed nothing but empty road and rain. He picked up the radio mike.
“Murray, this is Steve,” he said curtly. “Nothing on the road. Not even deer tracks.”
“Try the beach.”
“It’s raining cats and dogs.”
“That’s why you’re getting paid fifteen bucks an hour.”
Steve got out of the Jeep, slammed the door, and went to the point where the road fell away to the tiny beach thirty feet below. Using a powerful flashlight and slow, methodical sweeps of his arm, he lighted up swath after
swath of night. Rocks gleamed wetly in the rain. A stunted pine clung to a ledge just out of reach of the salt water. No boat was hauled up on shore or anchored within reach of his light.
Rain trickled coldly down his jacket collar. His shoes were wet. So was his face. His leather gloves were getting clammy. He climbed back into the Jeep, slammed the door, and picked up the mike again. “Murray, Steve. Nothing but rain and rocks.”
“That’s what I figured. C’mon back.”
As the lights of the Jeep vanished into the rain, Archer surfaced invisibly on the black breast of the sea. He checked the dial of his dive watch. Jake should be landing on the other side of the headland in a few minutes.
“I’ve got you on the grid,” Kyle said softly to Jake. “Go.”
“Fifty minutes.”
“Check.”
Jake rolled off the gunwale and into the water on the southwest side of the island, perhaps a roundabout thousand feet from the point where Archer had gone ashore. Even as Jake vanished into the rainy darkness, Kyle turned the Zodiac and headed out into the strait to watch the fun from a safe distance.
When the intercom came on again, water was still dripping off Steve’s jacket, which was hung over the shower rod in his small quarters.
“Got a light again, Steve.”
“Where?”
“Same sector.”
“Same piece of it?”
“Nope. Other side of the headland. Southwest. Unless the sensors are getting cute. They do that sometimes in the rain.”
Which, in the Pacific Northwest, meant the equipment wasn’t really reliable.
“It’s probably more of what was there the last time,” Steve said. “Nothing.”
“Fifteen bucks an hour, remember?”
“Crap. I’ll call you when I get there.”
Nervously Lianne watched Kyle prepare to go into the dark water. She clutched the receiver with its odd-shaped aerial and small, lighted dial.
“Test it,” she said.
Kyle switched his transmitter on.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re on the grid.”
He switched off.
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
Kyle grabbed the back of Lianne’s neck and swiftly kissed her mouth. It was the one part of both of them that wasn’t covered with black neoprene. Then he rolled out of the Zodiac and into the cold water.
Lianne drove the Zodiac farther out into the sound. Alone on the restless, mysterious water, she settled in to wait for the longest twenty minutes of her life. Night-vision goggles helped her to make out the island. Once she even thought she might have seen something move across a patch of winter-killed grass that looked pale against the darker rocks and forest.
From her right came a sudden
whoosh-gasp,
as though a nearby diver had surfaced, blown out air suddenly, and sucked it back in just as fast. She turned toward the sound so quickly that she nearly lost her balance in the rocking Zodiac.
She saw nothing except the smooth surface of the water, oddly luminous through the night goggles. She heard nothing except the slap of water against the boat. Just when she thought she had been imagining things, the sound came again, closer this time. Her heart beat wildly as she imagined a diver stalking the Zodiac.
Silently a black shape rose out of the water, climbing higher and higher until it was a triangular fin taller than Lianne. The rapid gust and suck of air pulsed in the night.
A twist of vapor, a whisper of white markings on black, and the killer whale disappeared into the sea with the same immense, mysterious power as when it had appeared.
Awe prickled over Lianne in a shower of tiny needles. She held her breath, listening, but the whale didn’t surface again.
Headlights swept down the island toward the shallow, rocky cove where Kyle had gone ashore. Lianne strained forward, waiting for the headlights to stop. But the vehicle kept going to the far end of the island, where Jake and Archer were taking turns setting off sensors.
She let out her breath in a relieved sigh. Archer had guessed right. Dick Farmer hadn’t thought the bleak little cove was inviting enough to be worth putting sensors in to warn of trespassers. After all, Farmer was worried about kayakers, bird-watchers, and picnickers parading around the island, not an armed invasion.
Twenty minutes after Lianne had dropped Kyle off, the locator lit up. She turned the Zodiac and headed at a sedate speed for the invisible piece of flotsam that was Kyle Donovan.
She came so close to him that she nearly ran him down and had to circle back, cut the engine, and drift. The Zodiac hesitated, then rocked hard as Kyle pulled himself aboard. Salt water cascaded off him.
“I’ll take it,” he said, reaching for the steering arm of the outboard. “Go to the bow.”
In an hour the sensors recorded eleven hits, three of them while Steve was still parked on the headland. Nothing ever showed up when he ran his searchlight or flashlight over the landscape. By the time he got fed up with running back and forth, he was wet to his underwear, cold, and thoroughly disgusted.
When he returned to the compound, he didn’t bother to go to his quarters. He went straight to the security room, where Murray sat dry and warm and watched Farmer’s idiot electronics go
ftzz
in the night.
“There’s gotta be a bug in the system,” Steve said in disgust. “Water, probably. I’m sopping wet and haven’t seen anything but rain.”
“Get a cup of coffee. I’ll have a report to Maintenance first thing in the morning.” A light flashed on the console in front of him. “Well, shit.”