Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

touch with me for years. In fact, you never did. When you say good-bye, you mean it.”
    Jake waited, knowing he wasn’t going to get rid of her easily. What he was afraid of was that he wouldn’t get rid of her at all. U.S. government intelligence types—no matter what part of the alphabet soup of agencies they might work for—didn’t bother honest citizens unless the professionals were up to their lips in shit and the devil was coming by in a speedboat.
    “I could appeal to your patriotism,” Ellen said.
    He smiled.
    “Mother,” she muttered. “Reformed idealists are the worst. Once the fairy dust gets out of their eyes, they don’t want to play anymore.”
    “We’ve had this conversation before.”
    She tapped a manicured nail against her little leather purse and looked at the unfenced woods beyond Jake’s truck. A bald eagle soared overhead, its pure white head turning as it looked for prey. Though the bird’s shadow whipped over her face, Ellen didn’t look up.
    “All right,” she said, deciding. “You want to find Kyle Donovan. So do we. We can help each other.”
    Jake’s impassive expression didn’t change. He had been expecting something like this since he had seen Ellen get out of her car.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Why what?”
    “Why are you after Kyle?”
    “You know why. He stole a million bucks in amber.”
    Jake knew the amber was worth only half that. But if that’s what the Donovan family was claiming on the insurance, no one would listen to him anyway. The Donovans had wealth and friends in high places—same thing, really.
    “So Kyle stole some amber,” Jake said. “So what? People steal ten times a million bucks and our dear Uncle doesn’t break a sweat unless taxes aren’t paid.”
    “Kyle stole this money from a foreign country.”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Wrong.”
    “Get real. This is me you’re talking to, not some freshman politician hoping to get in your pants. You’ll have to come up with a better reason for chasing Kyle. A lot better.”
    Ellen considered her remaining options. Option, really. The truth. The only question was how little she could get by with—and how to shade it to the best advantage. But not too shady. Jake could be an abrupt bastard.
    “Kyle was involved with Lithuanian separatists,” she said. “We’re afraid he took the amber to them to finance some grassroots terrorism.”
    Jake hoped she was wrong, but he doubted it. Even so, it still didn’t explain why Uncle Sam cared.
    “Still not good enough,” he said. “When it comes to geopolitics, Lithuania is very small beer. So where’s the damage to Uncle?”
    She didn’t want to answer but she knew she was going to. “I told them you would get to the bottom line.”
    Jake waited.
    “Kyle’s driver added something to the shipment before he was killed,” Ellen said.
    “What was it?”
    “No answer.”
    “Don’t know or won’t tell?”
    “Same difference. No answer.”
    Jake tried another direction. “I don’t buy it. Kyle wasn’t stupid enough to get involved with nukes.”
    “If it was nukes, we wouldn’t be asking for anyone’s help. We’d be demanding it.”
    He didn’t disagree. “So it’s more than raw amber and less than nukes, but still enough to bring Uncle running. Must be damned valuable. I don’t think Kyle is that stupid.”
    “Idealism, fairy dust, and a piece of ass,” Ellen said succinctly. “Makes ’em stupid every time.”
    “Are you talking about Marju?” Jake asked.
    Ellen nodded. “She’s the granddaughter of a hard case left over from World War Two. He fought the Germans. He fought the Russians. He fought the Soviets. He fought his own countrymen when they wanted peace.”
    Jake bit back some searing words of disgust. He knew full well how a woman could lower a man’s IQ. “I told Kyle that Marju was more trouble than she was worth, but no, he was in love. He was going to be her bold knight in bright armor.”
    “I don’t know about bright, but he’s a bold son of a bitch. He killed the Lithuanian driver, got in the truck with the amber and headed off into the night.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “Tell me what you know and I won’t bore you with repetition,” Ellen shot back.
    “Where did you lose Kyle?”
    “We never had him to lose. He wasn’t ours.”
    Jake wondered whether to believe her, then decided it didn’t matter. “I managed to track him out of Kaliningrad and through Lithuania. I