Jade Island (27 page)

“Who is Uncle’s expert?” Kyle asked.

“Me,” April said, still looking at Lianne.

Somehow Kyle wasn’t surprised.

“We’re going to Farmer’s private island the day before the museum opens,” April added.

“Day after tomorrow?” Kyle asked.

“Yes. I’ll arrange for Lianne to come with me on the appraisal,” April said, turning to him. “I’m good, but she’s better. That’s assuming she’s still out of jail. Big assumption.” April turned back to Lianne. “Kyle got you close to the suit before the guards tossed you out.
Was it real?”

“If you stay out of our face until the appraisal,” Kyle said before Lianne could answer, “the shroud won’t be a problem.”

“What are you going to do?” April demanded again.

“You still don’t want to know.”

April put her fists on her hips. “If you get caught, we don’t know you from skid marks on underwear.”

Kyle nodded. “When will I get the equipment?”

“It will be delivered to your condo by eighteen hundred.”

“Six P.M.,” he translated before Lianne could ask. “What about her passport?”

“I’ll get it,” April said.

“Take her off the immigration shit list, too. Just in case.”

“I’ll try, but…” April shrugged and headed out of the room. “This is a bureaucracy, Donovan. Better that her name never gets punched into a border computer in the first place.”

As soon as the door closed behind April, Lianne said, “I don’t need a passport to—”

The words ended in a muffled sound when Kyle kissed
her firmly, shutting her up. After he lifted his mouth, all he said was, “Are you through here?”

Lianne looked down at the sculpture she still held. As eager as she was to see the last of the building where she had been handcuffed and locked in a room, she still was reluctant to part with Bride Dreaming.

Kyle took the sculpture from Lianne’s hands. As he set it on the table, he looked at the jade for the first time. He whistled in a sliding, musical tribute to the artist’s skill. The entire piece had been designed to take advantage of the remarkable chatoyance of the jade that lay between the woman’s thighs, the physical door to a metaphysical experience.

“Is this the one you called Bride Dreaming?” Kyle asked without taking his eyes off the shimmering, gleaming jade.

“Yes.”

“I see what you meant. This is much superior to the version Han Seng owned.” As Kyle lifted his hands, he skimmed the ball of his thumb over the focus of the sculpture. “Extraordinary. But…”

“What?”

“Yours is prettier.”

T
wo hours after the meeting with April, Lianne felt like a lion tamer without a whip or a chair. Everywhere she looked there were large, healthy, potentially dangerous animals sprawled on the floor of the Donovan condominium. The mass of muscle and bone made her feel beyond petite. She felt miniature.

“How does Susa stand it?” Lianne muttered. “All these big, overwhelming, overbearing
males.
”

The males in question ignored her. They were debating various approaches to Farmer Island.

Faith looked up from a jewelry auction catalog and smiled. “You should see it when Dad, Justin, and Lawe are here.”

“Frightening.”

“Only if they’re not on your side.” Faith’s mouth drew down in a frown. Her family’s restrained dislike of her fiancé gnawed at her. Even Honor, who normally could be counted on for support, had to make an effort to look happy when Tony showed up.

As though Honor understood exactly what her twin was thinking, she asked Faith about Tony.

“Still in Tahiti,” Faith said. “He’s doing PR—oops, image consulting—for one of the new pearl houses. When he called this morning, he said it might be another week before he could come home.”

“Bet you wish you had gone with him,” Honor said.

Faith’s smile was strained. She had wanted to go, but she hadn’t been invited. Tony was furious that she wouldn’t approach Donovan International about switching its business to her future father-in-law’s advertising firm. “Not much point in going,” she said. “He’ll be working sixteen-hour days.”

That left the nights, but no one in the room mentioned it.

“Kyle,” Lianne said, “what if—”

“No,” he interrupted without looking up. “You’re not going.”

“Describe Farmer’s jade shroud,” she said.

“Green.”

“What will you do if he’s switched bad for good to fool China’s expert?” she challenged. “We’ll be back where we started as soon as the museum opens. Or what if I was wrong? What if the suit isn’t Wen’s? Then there would be a whole different can of worms to untangle and I’d be back in jail. You’ve never seen Wen’s suit. I have.”

One by one, three male heads came up. Lianne had their undivided attention. It wasn’t comforting.

“You need me,” she said.

“No,” Kyle said flatly.

Archer and Jake looked at each other.

“Why shouldn’t she go?” Honor asked Kyle with wide-eyed interest. “You and Jake have spent the last two hours telling me how
safe
this little jaunt will be. ‘Just a walk in the park,’ was what you said, Jake. Right?”

Jake grunted.

Archer rolled onto his side and faced Kyle, “She has a point.”

“The hell she does,” he said without looking away from Lianne. “Do you know how to dive?”

“No, but—”

“Exactly,” Kyle cut in. “You’re staying here.”

“—the jade shroud isn’t on the bottom of the ocean, either,” Lianne said, talking over him.

“We can take the inflatable boat and run it up on the
shore here,” Archer said, pointing on the map to the east side of Farmer Island. “With the Zodiac, she won’t even have to get her feet wet. By the time we go ashore, the guards will be tired of watching little lights go off on their consoles.”

“No,” Kyle snarled.

“Why?” Archer asked mildly.

“For God’s sake, she’s a—”

“GIRL,” Lianne, Faith, and Honor chorused. Then they smiled at one another, pleased by their timing.

Kyle looked hunted. “If it was Honor,” he said to Jake, “would you let her go?”

Amused, Jake smiled at his wife. “Would I let you go, honey?”

“I wouldn’t ask,” Honor retorted. “I’d just go like I did the last time you wanted me to stay ashore.”

“That answer your question?” Jake asked Kyle.

“Shit.”

“You were there when that thug jumped her,” Jake pointed out. “Did she panic?”

“No. But she was damn near killed anyway!”

Archer sat up and watched Lianne with steady, silver-green eyes. “Running the Zodiac up on shore increases our risk,” he said to her. “If necessary, could you suit up and swim for a hundred yards in dark water?”

“Yes.”

He watched her for a few moments longer, nodded, and returned his attention to the map. “Four will fit in the Zodiac without a problem.”

“Archer,” Kyle said tightly, “don’t do this to me.”

“Think with your brain, not your dick,” Archer said in a calm voice. “We need someone who can make a fast, expert appraisal of jade using only a trained eye, a flashlight, and nerve. You’ve got the nerve, I’ll hold the flashlight, but we still won’t be sure of the goods. We can’t afford to fuck this one up. Uncle isn’t in a forgiving mood.”

“Which brings up another point,” Kyle said. “Can we trust Uncle to stay out of this?”

“Once we get the jade suit off the island,” Archer said, “it’s open season. Uncle wants that suit. If some eager government boys steal it from us, who do we complain to?”

“That’s what I thought.” Kyle closed his eyes, thought of a few truly awful oaths, and asked, “Who do we have on the payroll that can fly small planes and keep his mouth shut?”

“Walker,” Archer said instantly.

“Where is he?”

“Seattle. Just back from Australia. He was flying geologists around the outback for Donovan International.”

“Okay, he can handle a plane,” Kyle said. “What about the rest of it?”

“Are you talking about Owen Walker?” Jake asked.

Archer nodded.

“No worries,” Jake said, turning back to the chart. “Walker used to bodyguard VIPs for Uncle. If it goes from sugar to shit, he’ll know what to do.”

“Aren’t you going to ask what I want the plane for?” Kyle said to Archer.

“I’m more worried about getting a wet suit small enough for Lianne. Does that dive shop down on Fifth Street outfit kiddies?”

Lianne made an outraged sound and dove for Archer’s back, but he had already rolled aside. Kyle caught her and tucked her along his side on the rug. “You’ll get used to him, sweetheart. We have.” He wrote quickly on a piece of paper before he looked up at Honor. “Okay, sis. It was your bright idea. You have three hours to shop for Lianne. Here’s the list.”

Faith, Honor, and Lianne walked into the condo, their arms overflowing with sacks.

“Took you long enough,” Kyle said. “I was about to send out a search party.”

“Listen, buttercup,” Honor said sweetly. “You try getting a full set of acrylic nails and buying a wet suit, a Dolly Parton wig, size five shoes with five-inch heels, and sexy clothes in the kiddie department of Nordstrom, and see how fast
you
get home.”

“It wasn’t the kiddie department,” Lianne said loudly. “Petite. Repeat after me.
Petite.
”

Faith winked at Lianne. “Honor’s just jealous. Next to you and Susa, we feel like telephone poles.”

Lianne looked at the tall, unmistakably female twins and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

Archer came into the entryway wearing tan slacks and a black, silk-weave jacket. He looked casual and very, very expensive. “Twenty minutes.”

As one, the women turned and rushed down the hall to Faith’s suite.

“No perfume,” Kyle called after them. “If I could recognize Lianne in the dark by her scent, someone else could.”

“Sniffing around in the dark,” Faith muttered. “Men are so primitive.”

“Yeah,” Honor said. “Isn’t it grand?”

Nineteen minutes later, Lianne emerged from Faith’s suite. The click of her high heels on marble was the only sound in the condominium.

Three men stared at her with a combination of shock and automatic male lust.

A red tube dress hugged Lianne like a hungry lover. Long sleeves and a V neck called attention to the shape of her breasts. The skirt cupped her rear and barely teased the top of her thighs. Smoky stockings made a long, sexy mystery of her legs. Faith’s deft touch with makeup turned Lianne’s eyes into a tawny challenge and gave an X-rated pout to her lips. She flipped back her curly, shoulder-length, frosted bronze hair, put one dagger-nailed hand on her hip, and said, “Ready when you are.”

“Holy Christ,” Kyle murmured. “That’s the last time you go shopping with my sisters.”

“You don’t like the color?” Lianne asked innocently. “It matches my nails.”

“There’s more of it on your nails than on you! Where’s the rest of the outfit?”

“What are you talking about? This is it.”

“Wrong. You forgot the skirt.”

“Quit bitching,” Archer said, smiling as he looked Lianne over thoroughly. “She’s supposed to be my date, not yours.”

“That’s what worries me,” Kyle said sourly, glaring at his brother.

“Ignore him,” Archer said, holding out his arm to Lianne. “I think you look good enough to eat. Twice.”

“That’s it,” Kyle said flatly. “Lianne is sitting in the backseat with me.”

“What are you complaining about?” Faith asked as she walked up with Honor. “You told us to make her over so that her own family wouldn’t recognize her. We did. So put a sock in the rant and get going.”

“You tell him,” Honor said. And privately wished that Faith would show half as much sass with Tony. The man led her around like a poodle on a pink leash.

“Is Johnny here?” Lianne asked.

“Waiting in the lobby,” Archer said. “Let’s go.”

As Archer’s Mercedes pulled up to the Tang compound, light the color of Lianne’s dress spilled across the sky. Johnny got out, spoke into the gate microphone, and climbed back in next to the driver. As he did, he glanced at the siren in the backseat and shook his head. Even at sixteen, Anna hadn’t looked like that.

“Wen will see me in the family quarters,” Johnny said. “I told him that I was taking the Donovan brothers to dinner in Chinatown, that you were staying in Vancouver for a few days, and that you had made overtures on the subject of jade trading. Wen suggested a tour of the Tang vault, but it seems that Daniel is out on a date tonight.
Wen’s hands aren’t up to opening the main vault door, and nobody else in the house knows the combination.”

“That will make it easier,” Archer said. “Unless he wants to see us along with you?”

“No. Daniel told me the exact truth. Wen hasn’t left his bed for three days.”

“How ill is he?” Lianne asked tightly.

“Not ill. Just old. Exhausted. This…all of it has been very hard on him.”

Her chin lifted. “Go to him. I’ll take Kyle and Archer to the vault.”

No servants hovered in the kitchen. None were in the long hall leading to the vault wing of the compound. Lianne hadn’t expected any. After five P.M., the servants went home to their rooms above Chinatown’s shops and restaurants, or to one of the old apartment buildings where three families lived in space designed for one.

The men’s footsteps and the click of Lianne’s five-inch heels were the only sounds in the long hall. Kyle had a hard time taking his eyes off the twitch and sway of her butt. The short coat she wore left too much to the imagination.

And not enough.

Despite Lianne’s distracting costume, Kyle made a low sound of appreciation when he saw the elegant jade screen that concealed the vault door. “I know museums that would commit grand theft to get their hands on a piece like that.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time museums accepted stolen goods,” Lianne said dryly. She bent over the dial on the old vault door. “Every time another Old Master goes on display, some grandchild of World War Two claims that Hitler stole it from their family.”

“Chances are he did,” Archer said, watching Lianne spin the dial once, twice.

“Of course. But at what point do you say the statute has run out? One generation? Two? A century? Never? Pretty soon we’ll be in the position Hong Kong—damn,”
she muttered and started over again on the combination. “We’ll be in the position Hong Kong was when it reverted to China. Businesses, collectors, owners of all kinds of Chinese artifacts simply packed them up and shipped them to Vancouver or Seattle, San Francisco or L.A. or New York. Anywhere the mainland Chinese and their new rules couldn’t confiscate them.”

Frowning, Lianne fiddled yet again with the dial. “Incredible cultural treasures are simply gone, in hiding, because the rules of the game of provenance changed.” She looked up. “Like now. Somebody has changed the rules. Or in this case, the combination.”

“Excuse me,” Archer said, gently pushing Lianne aside.

“Get out of his way, sweetheart,” Kyle said. “This is why I let him come along.”

Perplexed, she watched Archer reach into his jacket and pull out what looked like a very small tape player with earplugs attached. He tucked the plugs into his ears and pressed the box onto the vault door, near the dial. Eyes closed, face intent, he bent over the dial like a man over a lover, closing out everything else, living only for the next motion, the next sound, the next soft stirring that would tell him that his lover was responding.

In the silence, even Lianne’s hushed breathing sounded loud. Archer caressed the dial with small movements of his fingertips, listening, listening, listening for the tiny noise that came when a tumbler fell into place and it was time for him to turn the dial the other way, find another number, another tumbler, and then another, until the last secret was known.

Ten minutes later the vault door softly opened.

“And I thought you were just another pretty face,” Lianne said to his back.

“Live and learn.” Archer wiped off the dial with a clean handkerchief. “After you, Lianne.”

She looked at the Donovan brothers, one light, one dark,
both alike in all the ways that mattered. “You two should come with a government warning label.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Kyle said. “Right, brother?”

“Yeah.”

Kyle nudged her into the vault. Archer was on their heels. As soon as they were inside, Lianne pulled the heavy door shut and turned on the light. Kyle took one look at the white jade bowl sitting on the small mahogany table, let out a reverent oath, and went closer.

“Don’t touch anything,” Archer warned.

“Suck eggs,” Kyle said absently. Hands in his pockets, he circled the table, devouring the bowl with his eyes.