Donovans 02 - Jade Island

your charade.”
    Lianne’s heart raced and her hands tingled with adrenaline. She wanted to claw the sneer off her half brother’s face, but didn’t even try. She had been called worse names in the past, when her schoolmates had found out from their parents that Lianne’s mother was a married man’s whore.
    “You’re very brave hiding behind the fortress of your grandfather,” she said evenly. “Grow up, little boy. Come out in the real world, the world that neither one of us made, but we have to live in it just the same.”
    “You—”
    “Get out of my face,” Lianne interrupted with quiet savagery.
    Wen made a querulous sound. “I am waiting.”
    Daniel looked at his grandfather and stepped out of her way.
    Shielding the trembling of her hands with her body, Lianne opened the drawer wide. An array of exceptional Neolithic blades gleamed beneath the overhead lighting. Her first thought was how much Kyle would have loved to see these jades.
    Then a vise closed around her heart. The moss-green blade with the fine stains was gone.
    She spun around and found herself staring into Daniel’s murderous black eyes, eyes that were horrifyingly like her father’s.
    “Girl, why are you so slow today?” Wen said in a raspy voice. “Are my requests not simple? A buried blade, that is all. You know my favorite. Bring it.”
    “Yes,” Daniel whispered in English. “Take it to him, little bastard girl. If you can.”
    Chills coursed through Lianne. Daniel knew the blade was gone.
    His hand shot past her shoulder so fast that she flinched aside, expecting a blow. He grabbed a piece of jade out of the drawer, holding the blade as though it was indeed a weapon.
    “The third blade from the left, second row, is that not correct, Grandfather?” Daniel asked in Cantonese.
    “Yes, yes. Have you forgotten, Lianne?”
    She shook her head before she remembered that Wen couldn’t see. “No, Uncle. I have not forgotten.”
    She looked from the drawer to Daniel’s hands. He had taken the third blade from the left, second row, but it was not the blade Lianne remembered putting there. Numbly she walked away from the drawers while Daniel placed the false blade in Wen’s contorted hands.
    Lianne didn’t recognize the jade, except that it was the same size and likely the same weight as the blade that Kyle had bought last night. This blade’s color was a shade or two off the fine green of the auction blade. It was translucent, but not particularly luminous. It had burial stains, but they weren’t pleasing. Its carving was clean and distinct. What she could see of the jade’s surface appeared unblemished, with neither cracks nor chips nor gouges to mar the even flow of stone.
    “Ah,” the old man said. “Smooth, neither warm nor cool, satin. A clean weight. Another old, old friend. Describe it to me, Lianne.”
    She opened her mouth but no words came. The blade Wen held was a very good artifact, but not an excellent one, much less a great piece.
    And Wen could no longer tell the difference.
    “I will describe it, Grandfather,” Daniel said.
    With triumph rippling through his voice, he began talking about the Neolithic blade in ancient, almost poetic terms. Wen nodded and made murmurous sounds of pleasure, as though communing with an old friend.
    If Lianne closed her eyes, she, too, could see the blade Daniel described. It was the one Kyle Donovan now owned.

Chapter 12
    K yle paced around the small waiting area of Jade Statements, Lianne’s business. She had set up shop in a third-story loft fronting Pioneer Square. Other than a discreetly lettered sign in Chinese and English on the door at the top of a flight of well-worn stairs, there was nothing to announce a commercial presence. Plainly, clients came to Lianne through word of mouth.
    If potential clients weren’t sold on her talents to begin with, the waiting room decor wasn’t intended to impress the undecided. The walls were bare of framed certificates of expertise or self-congratulatory plaques listing awards won or civic virtue rewarded. The room was clean and furnished with a restrained, Pacific Rim flair. The small tables held Sotheby’s catalogs or auction catalogs in Chinese, rather than slick Hong Kong color portfolios touting jade collections that Lianne had appraised or bought or sold.
    Yet if the harried receptionist was any sample, Jade Statements didn’t lack for clients. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing in the fifteen minutes that Kyle had