Donovans 02 - Jade Island

tonight,” Kyle said.
    “Depends.”
    “On what?”
    “If the tail’s license plate goes back to Uncle, I’ll be on time.”
    “Why would the government be following Lianne?”
    “To find out where she goes.”
    “Kiss mine, Archer. You know what I mean.”
    Archer shrugged. “Maybe they want to know if she’s clean or dirty. I sure as hell would.”
    Kyle started to say that Lianne was clean. Then he shut up. Just because his gut said she wasn’t a thief didn’t mean dick to the rest of the world.
    And it shouldn’t mean dick to him.
    “What if the license plate doesn’t come back to Uncle?” Kyle asked evenly.
    “Then life gets interesting.”

Chapter 11
    L ianne slowed at the U.S.-Canada border, pulled into the Pace Lane, and slid across the international boundary with no more ceremony than a nod and a wave. Cars that didn’t have frequent-entry stickers on their windshields were stacked four across and twenty deep at the customs booths while people answered questions about plants, pepper spray, tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and other forbidden fruit.
    She checked her watch as her car bumped over the thick “sleeping policemen” that slowed traffic coming away from the border booths. Off to the right side of the wide asphalt area, unlucky Canadian drivers stood around with trunks and doors open while Canadian customs officers went over their vehicles. The most frequent violation was undeclared U.S. merchandise, whether socks or cigarettes. The high taxes in Canada made personal-use smuggling by otherwise honest citizens not only tempting but inevitable.
    The trunk full of jade artifacts in Lianne’s red Toyota wasn’t “dutiable.” No taxes or declaration required. Nor did she need guards, armor plate, guns, or any of the other hoopla essential to people whose cargo was money, plain and very spendable. The jade she carried was priceless, which wasn’t the same as easily converted into cash.
    Even so, Lianne kept watching her mirrors. After the auction last night, she was more than a little jumpy. Yet, despite the restlessness that made her edgy, she didn’treally believe she was being followed. No car had latched onto her bumper and stayed with her no matter what she did. Several other cars got off I-5 with her at Blaine to gas up, but that meant nothing. Gas in Canada was easily twice the price it was in the States. Smart motorists planned ahead.
    Beyond the Canadian border buildings, traffic was quickly shunted onto B.C. 1. Painfully new housing tracts—bedroom communities for the booming city of Vancouver—competed with milk cows for possession of the salt-grass flatlands that lay between the international border and the muscular curves of the Fraser River. The city itself was on the far side of the river, a dense band of white buildings sandwiched between bold black mountains and cold blue sea.
    As always, Lianne was struck by the beauty of Vancouver’s physical setting. San Francisco bragged about its scenic wonders, but Vancouver had more, and more spectacular, scenery, up to and including a breathtaking bridge spanning the entrance to a deep, protected harbor. All the city lacked that San Francisco had was the San Andreas Fault. On the whole, people in Vancouver got along quite nicely without the extra adrenaline provided by earthquakes.
    As for Lianne, she didn’t need adrenaline at all. Her dreams last night had been a tangle of ageless jade shrouds and the immediate sexual reality of Kyle Donovan. If she hadn’t been so determined to speak alone with Wen, she would have broken a lifelong rule about first dates and sex and gone home with Kyle.
    Her mouth turned down in a wry, unhappy line. For all the good it had done her to stay alone, she should have accepted the invitation in Kyle’s beautiful eyes and spent the night with him. She wouldn’t have gotten any less sleep than she had, and she would have had a lot more fun. She was certain of it.
    That was one of the reasons she hadn’t slept well. The other was Harry’s curt refusal to let her drive Wen backto Vancouver when she returned the jade to the Tang vaults. Instead, Harry had driven his father home after the party.
    The Tang family compound fronted on the heavy traffic of Grenville Street. From the exterior, the compound was as inviting as a jail. All the way around a city block, high, solid, windowless residential walls of varying color and composition came right out to the sidewalk. Though it looked like there