Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

like they’re expecting you to pick up something.”
    “Fairy dust.”
    “What?”
    Jake just shook his head. “Someone upstairs has been bitten by the lost treasure bug.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “You know what the Amber Room is?”
    “No.”
    “With luck, it will stay that way. Good-bye, Bill. And thanks. From now on stay as far away from this foul-up as you can.”
    “Hey, what are friends for?”
    “To keep,” Jake said softly. “When the suits question you about our little chat, tell them what they already know.”
    “What’s that?”
    “We’re old friends, and you’re the kind of stiff-necked, honorable man who doesn’t like screwing friends on orders from men in suits. So you met me, we had a beer, and I told you I thought Kyle might be hiding out in the San Juan Islands but I hadn’t found any trace of him or the amber. Then Honor Donovan showed up and I signed on with her, figuring she had a better line on Kyle—dead or alive—and the missing amber than I did. You listened to me and decided that whatever I was doing was nothing you wanted any part of. You left. End of story.”
    “What happens when I tell them that you’re every bit as stiff-necked and honest as I am?”
    “Save us both a lot of trouble. Don’t tell them. And don’t shake my hand when you leave.”
    Conroy looked at his glass. The remains of the cigarette floated facedown among ashes. As he watched, the butt began sinking. He looked up. “I’d like to help you.”
    “You have,” Jake said. “Now help yourself. Stay away from me until the fairy dust settles.”
    For a moment Conroy hesitated. Then he turned and walked out of the bar. He didn’t look back.
    Jake forced himself to sit and drink a few more swallows of beer before he stood up and left. Once he was outside, he walked swiftly around the corner. Then he stopped, turned just enough so that he could see behind him, and bent down to tie his shoe.
    Though he fiddled with the laces for more than a minute, no one came around the corner to follow him.
    Alone in Kyle’s cottage, Honor rubbed her eyes, sighed, and wished she had a second brain to hold all the new information. She hadn’t worked so hard since she had slogged her way through genetics on her way to a liberal arts degree. Muttering to herself, she went back to poring over a chapter in the oversize book her fishing guide had insisted she read before they went out the next day at dawn.
    Summer fog wrapped around the cottage like a hungry cat hoping to be fed. She barely noticed. Chapman Piloting, Seamanship & Small Boat Handling had her full attention. The page she was reading, and rereading, described the “danger quarter”—how to find it, how to tell whether you and another vessel were on a collision course, and who had to give way under the law of the sea.
    “Only for you, Kyle, would I do this,” she said into the silence. “Only for the brother who talked me through endless variations of the old algebra problem about the train leaving at noon and averaging twenty-two miles per hour, and how long will it take me to catch up with the blasted thing at thirty-nine miles per hour.”
    She sighed and rubbed her forehead wearily. She hadn’t been sleeping well since she came to the cottage. In truth, she hadn’t been sleeping particularly well since she turned thirty and realized that the men she dated always turned out to be too . . . quiet. She came from an outgoing, rough-and-tumble, shouting and hugging and laughing sort of family.
    When she was growing up, the Donovan men often drove her nuts. Bigger, quicker, stronger, arrogant in the way of healthy animals, they were true believers in “might makes right.” After losing too many contests of strength to her brothers, she had vowed she would never go out with anyone who reminded her of the large, confident, forceful males of her childhood.
    She had kept her vow. Now she wondered if she had done the right thing.
    Twice she had made the mistake of taking one of her clean-shaven, quiet, reserved gentlemen home. The first time her brothers got her date so drunk he couldn’t find the floor with anything but his face. The second time Kyle had handled the intrusion alone. He quietly, relentlessly baited her date until the nice man fled in confusion.
    Honor hadn’t fled. She had stayed behind and ripped a strip off Kyle from heels to forehead. He had laughed and laughed until she was tempted to hit him with a skillet. Then he told