Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

shrugging. “Ellen’s a big girl. What they do is their own business.”
    “You don’t mean that.”
    “I mean exactly that,” Honor said flatly. “I hired Jake to help me find you. Jake signed on with me to clear his name. We both got what we wanted. Now the job is finished and so are we.”
    “But—”
    A knock at the front door of the cottage interrupted Kyle.
    “I’ll get it,” Honor called to Archer.
    She hurried from the room before Kyle could say any more about Jake. It really was hard to tell your brother that the man he thought was just right for you didn’t happen to want you for anything more than a brief, sizzling affair.
    Sex wears off about three weeks after the ink on the marriage license is dry.
    Just as Honor’s hand touched the door handle, the lessons of the past few days caught up with old habits. “Who is it?” she asked.
    “Company,” Jake said.
    Honor took a moment to smooth all expression from her face as she brushed futilely at toast crumbs on her black sweatshirt and tight, faded jeans. Then she took a steadying breath. She was thirty years old. Certainly she could look a former lover in the eye without flushing and remembering all the stupid things she had said to him about love.
    She opened the door. Jake, Ellen, and Resnikov were standing on the small front porch.
    “You might have mentioned the other two,” Honor said coolly to Jake.
    “I said ‘company.’”
    “Your point?”
    “I’m family, not company.” He turned to the other two. “Remember our deal. Five minutes apiece and no follow-up without the full might and majesty of the law.”
    Gently crowding past Honor, Jake walked into the house.
    Moving like people with a big job and only a little bit of time to work, Resnikov and Ellen followed. Both of them looked freshly washed and pressed. Ellen was back in her clear red jacket.
    “Kyle is too ill to talk,” Honor said bluntly.
    “No, he isn’t,” Archer called from the kitchen. “You have five minutes each and no return trips without a subpoena.”
    “Sounds like a bloody tape recording,” Ellen said to Jake. “Did you two set this up in advance?”
    “Didn’t have to. Archer is like me-he knows the unwritten rules. Pete, you drew the short straw so you go first. And remember, Honor and I saved your ass.”
    “I didn’t hear about that,” Ellen said to Jake. “I heard you knocked Petyr on his ass.”
    “I did him a favor. With Marju, Pete was in the position of the male praying mantis courting a female,” Jake said ironically.
    “Meaning?” Ellen said.
    “The females have been known to eat the males during mating, saving the useful portion for last. In order to avoid being a tasty memory, a male brings the female a juicy bug to distract her. Then he hops on and prays he’s finished before she is.”
    Ellen looked speculatively at Resnikov. “So it was getting down to the short strokes with Marju?”
    The Russian was puzzled until Jake translated the idiom. Resnikov laughed, shrugged elegantly, and headed for the bedroom without waiting to be shown where it was.
    “So it was him,” Jake muttered.
    “What?” Honor asked.
    Jake didn’t answer.
    Resnikov opened the bedroom door and walked in, leaving the door open behind him.
    “The amber panel,” he said to Kyle without preamble. “How did you get it to Petropavlosk?”
    Kyle reached for the glass of orange juice and drank. Even when he was finished, he didn’t say anything.
    “We will find out who helped you,” Resnikov said.
    “Not from me.”
    “I can make doing business in the Russian Federation quite difficult for Donovan International.”
    “Shit happens.”
    “Your family might feel differently.”
    “His family,” Archer said, coming in as far as the doorway, “backs him to the last drop of blood, sweat, and tears.”
    Jake smiled sourly. No news there. “Next question, Pete. Time’s wasting.”
    “Did you approach Marju about stealing the panel?”
    “No.”
    “That is not what she says.”
    “Just because she was working for you doesn’t mean she can be trusted,” Kyle said.
    The weariness in his voice could have come from exhaustion, but Honor suspected it didn’t. Being used by someone on the way to another goal was enough to give a saint a sour view of humanity.
    Kyle wasn’t a saint.
    “Marju was not working for me in the way that you mean. Our collaboration came later, as a matter of mutual convenience,” Resnikov said. “How did she get