Donovans 02 - Jade Island

nowhere fast. He glanced at the mess of electronics on the kitchen table, where Kyle had been working when Lianne called. “Looks like you dropped something.”
    Kyle refused the chance to change the subject. “Listen to me, Archer. I know how it feels to be set up, on the run, not knowing who to trust except family. But Lianne doesn’t have any family.”
    “What about her mother?”
    “Anna and her lover are on the way to Tahiti. Lianne is all alone. Even if I wanted to, I can’t just turn my back on her. She’s alone. And she’s scared.”
    “Shit,” Archer hissed. He raked lean fingers through his thick, already unruly hair and reined in the desire to give Kyle the fight he was begging for. “Okay. Who set her up?”
    “Whoever stole the jades.”
    “Breathtaking,” Archer said sardonically. “Any other brilliant insights?”
    “I need to talk to Lianne.”
    “So do it. You know where she is.”
    “Not in a cell. Here.”
    “I thought you said she didn’t have the fifty grand cash against the bail.”
    “She doesn’t,” Kyle said, heading for the front door. “But I do.”
    “Take the money to Vegas. Your odds of coming out a winner are much better.”
    Kyle’s answer was a middle finger over his shoulder.
    Archer’s fist hit the table at the same instant the front door slammed behind Kyle. The lamp jerked, shivered, and settled back into stillness.
     
    “So,” Wen said in his dry yet strong voice, “the ungrateful female has been arrested.”
    Harry and Joe exchanged looks. Neither one of them was in a hurry to speak. Lianne’s treachery had hit Wen harder than they had expected.
    Daniel was young enough not to understand the risk of being the bearer of bad news. “She is in custody. I am sorry, Grandfather. Not for the arrest, but for the pain of having given so much ancient, honorable knowledge to a dishonorable slut.”
    Saying nothing, Wen shifted on the garden bench and tilted his face toward the afternoon sun. He felt the light more clearly than he saw it. The increasing darkness of age was difficult enough; having Lianne use his failing sight to dupe him was a pain approaching agony.
    He had trusted her with the Stone of Heaven. She had betrayed him.
    “You were correct in insisting that Johnny and his concubine be far away when this happened,” Wen said, turning toward his Number Two Son. “There is enough pain. I would not have a daughter’s treachery turn son against father. Against family.”
    “Thank you,” Harry said quietly. “We would have spared you, Father. We would have waited until you joined our ancestors. Such waiting was not possible.”
    “She was too greedy,” Daniel said. “In a few more years she would have bled us dry. Our jade treasury would have been plundered down to the velvet lining of the drawers.”
    Wen said nothing. He simply sat with his face tilted up to the sun he could see only as a faint lessening of darkness.
    “When Daniel came to me and told me about the substitutions,” Harry said, “I waited until Joe returned. Then we decided that no good would come of pretending that nothing had happened. You are the head of the family of Tang. It is your right to be informed.”
    Wen’s gnarled fingers settled on the cool jade carving that was the head of his walking stick. He had never felt so old, so weak, so foolish.
    “She will be jailed,” he said. “She will enter the house of Tang no more. Ever. See to it.”
    “Yes, Father,” Joe said, speaking for the first time. He was glad his father’s eyes were hazed with age. Wen had always been too shrewd, too clever, too quick to find fault in his sons. He never allowed for errors or simple humanity. He would never forgive Johnny’s bastard daughter. “I will see to it. If she so much as looks toward Vancouver, I will know.”
    Wen sat motionless for so long that the others thought he had fallen asleep. Then he lifted one hand and dismissed his sons and grandson with a jerky motion.
    The three men left. Wen sat in the spring sunshine, head tilted back. There was no one to see the slow tears coming from his blind eyes.
     
    “What do you mean?” the man said, squeezing the other man’s arm like it was an enemy’s throat. Everything had gone so well up to now. Jade flowed out, money flowed in. Nothing threatened him or his pleasures. “She was arrested!”
    “Kyle Donovan arranged bail,” the second man said simply.
    “I was assured that bail was impossible.”
    “The