Donovans 02 - Jade Island

is it?” Archer asked.
    “It’s perfect,” she said on a rush of breath. “Just plain perfect. ”
    Kyle smiled like a wolf. “I’ll get the suitcases.”
     
    Lianne watched Jake, Kyle, and Archer stow the last of the heavy suitcases aboard Kyle’s boat, which was chuckling and rumbling with power as the big engine warmed. All twenty-seven feet of the Tomorrow rocked and tugged at the lines tying it to the dock below Kyle’s cottage, which stood on a bluff. Strapped on top of the boat’s white cabin, overhanging at both ends, a Zodiac lay facedown. The inflatable boat was blacker than the night.
    The moon hadn’t yet risen. Nothing brightened the dense lid of clouds except for two distant, separate glows where the city lights of Victoria and Vancouver bounced off the bottom of the clouds. The strait was a dark, subtly shimmering presence alive with the rush of wind.
    There were no other boats at the dock, no other houses nearby. Kyle had chosen the cabin for two things: solitude and the private dock. It wasn’t the first time that both had come in handy.
    He stepped up out of the boat to the dock beside Lianne. He used only the colored reflections of the boat’s running lights to find his way. No one had turned on the Tomorrow ’s cabin lights. No one would. If anyone really wanted to see, there were night-vision goggles aboard.
    Putting an arm around Lianne’s waist, Kyle turned her toward him and tipped her face up to his. A ribbon of wind curled around them, bringing with it the scent of fir trees and the sea.
    “You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly.
    “I’m going. Nothing you can say or do will change my mind.”
    “I know,” he whispered. “Damn it, I know.”
    He bent and kissed her, ignoring the stiffness that only slowly loosened beneath his caressing mouth.
    But loosen it did. No matter how many times Lianne told herself that all she and Kyle had going was hot sex and cold business, she couldn’t help responding to him. Adrenaline, nerves, plain old hormones, whatever. She didn’t know. Right now, she didn’t really care. She washungry for him in ways she didn’t even want to think about.
    The intensity of her emotions frightened her more than anything else that had happened so far.
    “You’re shivering,” Kyle said. He breathed warmth across Lianne’s temples, her eyelids, her lips, her stubborn chin. “Do you want my jacket?”
    She shook her head. Once she had changed out of the little red stretch dress and put on real clothes, she had warmed quickly enough.
    “Scared?” he asked.
    “About tomorrow? No.”
    “Then what?”
    “It doesn’t matter. This will all be over soon. And then…then it won’t matter. I’ll go back to my business and you’ll go back to yours.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Business,” she whispered. “Just business, that’s all.”
    Archer’s voice rose from the stern of the boat. “We’re at operating temperature. Jake says if we don’t leave pretty quick, we’ll run into some real chop in the passes.”
    “I’m ready,” Lianne said.
    Kyle started to hand her down into the stern well, but she pulled away from him, slipping like warm water through his fingers, leaving him cold. She went into the boat cabin without looking back to see if he was following.
    Anger and an uneasy chill curled along Kyle’s spine. Something was wrong. Not with the jade or tomorrow’s dicey raid on Farmer Island, but with Lianne herself. She was acting as though she couldn’t wait to say good-bye to him.
    It doesn’t matter. This will all be over soon. And then…then it won’t matter.
    He wanted to go after her and find out what the hell was going on in her quick, intensely intelligent, maddeningly female brain, but he didn’t. Jake was right. They had to get going or they would hit wind against an ebbing tidein some of the passes. In terms of speed, it didn’t matter; the SeaSport had plenty of power to outmuscle the tide. But if they got caught in razor waves, it would be a nasty bitch of a ride.
    Kyle bent down and began undoing the Tomorrow ’s lines. Voices floated out from the open door of the cabin.
    “How long will it take to get to Jade Island?” Lianne asked Jake. He was standing in the aisle, calling up a program on Kyle’s electronic chart plotter.
    “Depends on what the water is like in the passes,” Jake said, “and if the wind stays below fifteen knots.” He punched another button on the plotter. “But