Pearl Cove (9 page)

seeing Len, brought it all back in savage clarity. He didnt want to go there again.

But there he was.

The only thing he could do was wrap this mess up as soon as possible, then get out before
all the sad, dark echoes of his past deafened him to the possibilities of the present.
That had nearly happened once.

He had nearly gone under, lured by the siren call of adrenaline and danger, until nothing
was real but a world where treachery was the norm, multiple identities were the rule, and
death was the sole judge of who won and who lost. Some people thrived on that life. He
wasnt one of them. But he had left Len mired in that brutal, covert world. He hadnt been
able to pull his half brother out until it was too late. Len had gone under, and Archer
felt a guilt at escaping that was as irrational as it was powerful.

How much warning did you have before the storm? he asked neutrally.

Hannahs steps hesitated, as though she was startled to find herself not alone. Or maybe it
was the emotions she sensed battling just beneath Archers level voice that made her pause.
We had several days, she said, but we were expecting just a tropical blow, nothing to get
excited about. The storm was supposed to hit land about two hundred kilometers north of
here. That changed in a matter of hours. Even then, the force of the wind caught everyone
off guard. No one was expecting a big one.

Archer came alongside Hannah as the path widened down toward the beach. So Lens murderer
didnt have a lot of time to plan.

Though his voice was low, carrying no more than a foot or two, Hannah looked around
hastily to make certain no one could overhear. Dont, he said. What?

Keep checking to see if anyone is nearby. Youre just showing your partner the storm damage
so I can assess what can be salvaged and whats junk, remember? Why would you care if
anyone overheard us?

But what if-

No worries, he cut in ironically. I have eyes in the back of my head. If people are
watching us, they re doing it at a distance.

Hannah hesitated, then strode forward again, matching strides with Archers longer legs. We
could see better in daylight, she pointed out.

We do that tomorrow, if necessary. And if they were still at Pearl Cove, which Archer
doubted. But he didnt want Hannah to know they were leaving until they left. April Joys
warning had been quite clear. Dont trust anyone. In any case, he didnt want people to know
Hannah was going until she was gone.

We can see things in darkness that full light hides. You sound like youve done this
before. Done what? Look for murderers.

Ive looked for a lot of things.

When he said nothing more, she glanced up at his face. Moonlight and the abrupt tropical
night had turned his hair to absolute black and his eyes to silver. Beneath the short,
sleek beard, the line of his mouth was hard enough to cut glass. He looked like what he
was, moved like what he was, like Len once had been: a man trained to kill other men.

The ruined shell of the sorting shed appeared almost welcoming by comparison. She hurried
forward, only to feel Archers hand wrap around her upper arm, pulling her to a stop.

Wait, he said, his voice as soft as the breeze lifting off the coal-dark sea.

Why-

A curt shake of his head cut off her words. Talk in a normal tone about Pearl Cove, how it
works, what you do. Dont mention Lens death.

For a moment Hannah could only stare at Archers face, her thoughts scattering like
moonlight on water. His fingers squeezed gently.

Start with winter, he suggested softly. What do you do then?

I we She took a breath. Um, in June, July, and August, we harvest shell that was seeded
two years ago.

Why do you harvest in winter?

Because nacre is laid down thin in colder water, and thin nacre has the greatest luster.
She fell silent.

How was the harvest this year?

I dont know. Len always handled that end of the job while I seeded new oysters. He didnt
trust anyone but me with his experimental babies. And sometimes Coco.

Adrenaline licked in Archers blood. Experimental. Maybe those oysters held the secret of
the extraordinary melted rainbows shimmering beneath black glass. But that wasnt a
conversation he wanted to share with whoever was cat-footing through the ruined shed right
now.

Two years from seed to pearl? he asked, as though he didnt know.

Right. It can be done faster some of the Japanese Akoya oysters are harvested after only
six months but to get a top-quality pearl, the nacre has to be thick enough so that
ordinary use wont dull the pearls luster. That means the ratio of nacre to the bead has to

Bead? Archer cut in, trying to slow the nervous rushing of her words.

The round piece of American mussel shell we use to seed the oyster is called a bead once
its surrounded by nacre. That is, once its a pearl.

He made a small sound of understanding and waited. Hannah didnt take the hint and resume
talking. He squeezed her arm again, silently asking her to focus on the here and now,
rather than on whatever shadows haunted her voice, her mind. The ratio of nacre to the
bead...? he invited. Um, she said, distracted by the gentle pressure of Archers fingers on
her arm. They felt firm, warm, almost caressing. The contrast between the tenderness of
his touch and the remote mercury sheen of his eyes was disorienting. The, um, the nacre
should be ten to fourteen percent of the total diameter of the pearl. Natural pearls are
one hundred percent nacre, of course, except for the original irritant. The finest, most
costly cultured pearls have forty to fifty percent nacre. Those pearls are worth much,
much more than a pearl of similar size and shape that lacks the fine orient that only many
layers of nacre can give.

Lightly Archer stroked his fingers over Hannahs smooth skin, telling himself he was only
soothing her and at the same time reminding her to keep talking.

He didnt believe it. Fooling himself was something a smart man didnt do. But his
fingertips kept on moving anyway, sipping lightly at the silk and warmth of her skin.

If an extra eighteen months in the water makes for high-end pearls, Archer said calmly,
why doesnt everyone just leave the oysters in the drink and make a lot more money?

The longer you wait to harvest, the greater the chance that youll get a pearl that is
blemished or off round in shape. Two years is what Len decided was the best return on our
investment.

Which still makes Pearl Coves harvest a very high-end product, Archer said.

The her voice hitched best.

Gooseflesh rippled up Hannahs arm and shivered down to the pit of her stomach. Archer was
making tiny, tiny circles on the sensitive underside of her arm. She would have pulled
away, but she couldnt move. She was having enough trouble just breathing. It had been a
long time since a man had touched her so gently.

Even as the thought came, she knew it wasnt true. It hadnt been a long time. It had been
forever. She hadnt even guessed a man could have such tenderness in him.

Breath held in something that was closer to anticipation than anxiety, Hannah looked up to
Archer

s eyes. He wasnt watching her. He was watching tropical night sweep over the land in a
dark, silent rush of extinguished light. The intent stillness of his body told her that he
was waiting for... something. If it hadnt been for the slight, continuous caress of his
fingertips, she would have said that he didnt even know she was there.

Keep talking, he said very softly.

Hannah filled her lungs as though she was going to dive below the warm surface of the sea
to the shadowed depths. After we seed and harvest, and even during, were constantly
turning all the oysters in their cages.

He made a sound that meant only that he was listening.

She didnt doubt it. She just wondered what he was listening to, because she didnt think it
was her. At least, she hoped not. In the darkness and reflected light, Archers eyes looked
predatory.

Then Hannah heard a small noise from the shed she had turned her back on. Fear raced icy
over her skin and slicked her spine with sweat.

No, Archer said softly.

But even before he spoke, his hands clamped around Hannahs upper arms, preventing her from
turning toward the sound.

Theres some

I know, he cut in, his voice still soft. Talk to me. Tell me about Pearl Cove. Or else Ill
have to kiss you. Either way will work as a cover for standing around out here, but its
your call.

Hannah realized two things at once. The first was that Archer had known a prowler was in
or around the shed from the moment he asked her to talk about Pearl Cove. The second was
that the idea of kissing him sent heat chasing after the chill of fear. She told herself
she was losing it, that the last thing she needed in her life was another Len.

Yet she wanted Archers kiss. She wanted the heady combination of his gentle touch and
dangerous eyes, his cool restraint and a body that radiated vital heat.

Im crazy. Absolutely crackers.

Hannah took a deep breath and began talking. Fast. We turn the oysters to improve our
chances of getting a round pearl. We also clean the shells to get off whatever is clinging
to them. Later, in October, we move the rafts so that the water temperature will stay as
close to ideal as possible.

How big are your rafts? Standard size. He gave her a look that reminded her to keep
talking or start kissing.

A raft is made up of ten parts, she said hurriedly. Um, each part is about twenty by
twenty feet, and has a hundred separate baskets which hold a thousand oysters total. Ten
per basket. She swallowed and thought quickly. The rafts are held in place by anchors and
kept afloat by big metal drums.

A regular farm, he said, telling himself that he wasnt disappointed by her choice of
talking over kissing. It was better this way, much better. He forced himself to look past
her to the shed. Do you feed your oysters, too?

The ocean takes care of it for us. The huge tidal shifts send a lot of water over the
oysters. Thats why the west-coast oysters are so big. Lots of nutrients. Oysters are
filter feeders. All they have to do to eat is suck the tasty bits out of the big saltwater
smorgasbord that rushes by them as the tide moves in and out.

Archer smiled slightly, a white gleam in the night. Hannah thought of the kiss she had
turned down and told herself she didnt regret it.

After the operated shell um, the oysters we just seeded rest for about a month, she
continued huskily, we move the survivors to the growing-out area.

Survivors? Do you lose a lot?

The norm is somewhere between twenty and thirty percent, but Pearl Cove loses only eleven
percent. Coco and Tom are very, very skillful. Its rare for them to injure the tiny pea
crab that lives inside each healthy oyster.

So youve seeded and the crabs are happy. Now what?

Prayer, she retorted. Oysters would much rather reject foreign bodies than make pearls.
Thats why we slip in a tiny bit of living mantle tissue from a donor oyster of the
preferred color. It grafts onto the mantle near the seed and You lost me. Color?

Hannah doubted she had lost Archer, but she wasnt going to argue the point. Not when his
eyes were

narrowed, intent on something over her shoulder. She cleared her throat against the fear
that kept crowding in.

The pearls color reflects the inner shell color of the oyster. Her voice frayed, then
steadied. Some oysters make silver-white gems. Some pink. Some gold. Some black, and so
on. The mantle the outer surface of the living animal is the nacre factory. Mantle from
an oyster with pink nacre on its inner shell will produce a pink pearl, even if its put
into an oyster with a black shell. Len also did some biogenetic sleight-of-hand with the
mantle so that

Right, Archer cut in, heading her off from dangerous territory. So we have a seed and a
bit of mantle that is actually a biological work order for a certain color of pearl.

Close enough, she muttered. Most people lose about twenty percent of the grafts. We lose
just over seven percent.

Good hands?

The best.

Silently Archer doubted if even a fantastically skilled technician could lower the odds
that much. Waving the flag of skill and biogenetics was a way of explaining how a
medium-sized operation such as Pearl Cove ended up with more than its share of pearls. But
he didnt get the feeling that Hannah was lying. Wherever the truth lay, she believed what
she was saying.

Len had always been a very smooth liar. Where he came from, it was a survival skill.

We also do well on the quality of the pearls, Hannah said. More than sixty percent of our
pearls are good. The average for other farms is thirty-five percent. Another ten percent
produces junk. Our percentage of junk is just under six.

Archer grunted. Len must have loved throwing his pearls on the table and daring any of the
other farmers to prove that they were the result of anything other than exceptional skill.
Len was always working on our percentages, Hannah continued. He said they were good, but
not good enough. Even for us, pearl farming wasnt a sure thing.

Absently Archer nodded, but his eyes were looking past her. She took another breath and
tried to think where she had left off in describing the yearly cycle of pearl farming.

Growing-out area, he said so softly that she barely heard.

Oh. Um. Growing out. Thats where we have long lines snaking through rows of buoys. Panels
of oysters hang down off the lines. They dangle there and grow while we begin the year
fishing for wild shell oysters in January and February.

Wild oysters. He smiled slightly. You make it sound like something you have to chase down
and lasso.

Hannahs laugh was as soft as the air. And like the air, it rippled over Archer, bringing
all of his senses alive.

Almost, she said. Behind a ship the men dangle off long ropes, towed only a few feet off
the bottom. The trick is to stay close enough to the bottom to see the wild shell and
oysters could teach a chameleon how to hide but not so close as to stir up the silt
because then you cant see anything at all.

So you just go out there and grab what you can?

This time her laugh wasnt soft or amused. Not a chance. The government licenses growers to
take a certain amount of wild shell and to raise a certain amount of domestic shell. Some
growers get a higher quota than others, according to a formula only the government can
understand.

Politics. Its a government, isnt it? Which, translated, means that the licenses can be
used to reward or punish. The bureaucrats will deny it to the last breath.

Did Pearl Cove have trouble getting wild shell licenses? he asked.

We didnt get quite enough to survive, much less to grow. Thats why Len had to find other
ways to bring up our production in relation to other pearl farms.

Why was the government giving you a hard time?

They thought Len was holding back the best of his pearl production and selling it outside
the Australian-Japanese cartel.

Silently Archer wished he had never raised the question. But having done so, it would seem
odd to an eavesdropper if he just let the matter drop.

Was he? Archer asked, but the sudden pressure of his fingers on Hannahs arm said, Be
careful.

No.

He relaxed his grip and returned to the tiny, hidden movements on her skin that pleased
his fingertips. Governments are always suspicious.

They had reason to be. Less than half of our oysters were for normal sales. The rest were
experimentals. Experiments fail a lot more often than they succeed.

After you collect wild shell, what do you do? Archer asked, wanting to move on to safer
topics.

We let it rest for a month or two, to recover from the trauma of being handled and moved
to a new place. The shells have to be watched and cleaned. And the shells we seeded the
previous year have to be X-rayed to see if the bead has been rejected. If so, we seed
again.

One shell, one bead, one pearl? Some of the farmers use several beads, but the result is
almost always inferior to just one. Whats wrong with them?

The pearls or the farmers? Hannah asked dryly. The pearls. Ive given up trying to
understand people. She smiled and laughed softly. Archers fingers stilled for a moment,
then began moving again, enjoying. Caressing.

The Japanese started multiple seeding with their little palm-sized Akoya oysters. Hannahs
voice hitched at the feel of his hands moving lightly on her skin. They can get lots of
pearls from one shell, but the pearls just arent good. Even big oysters like the ones we
have in the South Seas dont seem to be able to produce more than one quality pearl at a
time. The nacre gets too thin or the shape is off or the beads are rejected by the oyster.
Len was working on the problem. So is the government. As far as I know, no one has found a
solution.

So youve lassoed wild shell, pampered it, seeded it, pampered it some more, repeat as
necessary. Now what?

Now its around April, the water temperature is dropping with the onset of winter, and were
letting the shells rest. Thats when engines are overhauled, hulls are cleaned, rafting
equipment is checked out, and whatever has to be built or repaired is taken care of. In
May its back to the grindstone, cleaning shells, turning them, checking the long lines and
the cages for damage, gearing up for the harvest and seeding time, and so on. Before you
know it, its June again, harvest time. Full circle.

Sounds intense.

It is.

You like it?

Hannah hesitated. She had never thought about liking or not liking; it was just the way
life was. Pearl farming is relentless, but it kept me sane. Yes, I guess I like it. I know
I needed it.

Archer heard the emotions tightening her voice, felt them in the tension of her arms
beneath his hands. He wanted to pull her closer, soothe her, and then kiss her blind.

Slowly he lifted his hands from her tempting flesh and looked past her to whoever was
prowling through the ruined shed. Or had been. The sounds had slowly receded, as though
someone had used

their voices to cover any small noises he made retreating from the shed. Archer had heard
that kind of furtive shuffling too many times before, in too many places where

violence prowled in the shadows of civilization. He had vowed never to go there again. And
here he was. Full circle. Show me the shed where all this hard work paid off, Archer said.

Hannah stared at him for an instant, then turned away quickly. If she had felt cool when
he took his warm hands from her arms, she was thoroughly chilled by the quality of his
voice. It was Lens voice, the voice of her nightmares, utterly neutral, inhuman in its
absence of emotion.

She stumbled over a piece of debris, caught herself, and hurried on. She didnt have to
look over her shoulder to know that Archer was following her. He was like Len. Nothing
would turn him away him from what he wanted.

And what Archer really wanted was Lens killer, not Lens widow. She would have to remember
that the next time she found herself close enough to feel Archers heat, close enough to
taste his breath, close enough to see his pupils dilate when her breasts brushed against
his chest. Way too close.

Not nearly close enough.

Rather bitterly Hannah wondered if she shouldnt have used Cocos approach to sex screw
Archer on the ground, then jump up and dust herself off, ready to go back to whatever she
had been doing before she was distracted by a clitoral itch. But it was too late to
acquire the years of experience and nonchalance that Coco had. Hannah was stuck with being
what she was, a woman who had had sex with only one man, and only for a few years.

Her choice, she reminded herself. She paid her way out of the rain forest with her
virginity. And while sex was exciting at first, it wasnt worth the rest of it.

Nothing was worth the rest of it.

She stumbled over a broken board, recovered, and wished that she had thought to bring a
flashlight.

Whats the rush? Archer asked behind her.

Only then did Hannah realize that she was all but running through the darkness toward the
ruined shed, fleeing as though every mistake she had ever made was chasing her. She forced
herself to slow down.

The door was here, she said, pointing toward a gap in a wall.

Silently he measured the distance from the shed to the place where the steel door lay
crumpled next to the path. That was one hell of a blow you had here.

It was as big as I ever want to see. Actually, seeing is the wrong word. Once the rain
hit, I couldnt see beyond the porch. But I could feel it. The house shivered and jerked
like a Tahitian dancer.

Hannah stepped through the gap that had once been a door leading into the shed. Even
though almost half of the roof was gone and one of the corner pilings had sheared off,
taking down most of the two walls nearest the door, she felt like she was stepping into a
coffin. The claustrophobia that had begun with Lens death rose up and filled her throat
with raw fear. She froze, unable to take another step into darkness.

To Archer, her sudden stillness was like a warning scream. Swiftly he pulled her behind
him. It wasnt much protection, but it was all he could do until he knew the source of the
danger. Legs slightly braced, body relaxed, weight poised on the balls of his feet, he
waited for whatever might come.

Nothing came but the silent, intangible blending of tide and time and night. No movement,
no furtive scuff, no rush of breath held too long.

Its all right, Hannah said, belatedly realizing why he had shoved her behind him. The hell
it is. You froze like you had been shot. Just nerves. Since Len died... claustrophobia,
thats all.

Archer heard what she didnt say, all the things that had come crashing down around her in
a few short hours. The devastation of the cyclone tearing Pearl Cove out by its roots. The
horror of finding Lens ruined body. The certainty that his murderer would kill her as soon
as he discovered that she didnt know the secret of the experimental pearls.