Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

the two men. She only knew that it existed. Perhaps it extended beyond the grave. Perhaps Archer Donovan would care enough to do what no one else would—find Len’s murderer.
    If revenge wasn’t enough to move Archer, there was always money. Even the most ruthless man might be persuaded to search for Pearl Cove’s vanished treasure if he was promised half of something that was worth three million dollars wholesale.
    The Black Trinity.

Three
    W ith reflexes left over from the years he couldn’t leave behind, Archer came from deep sleep to full wakefulness. Lean fingers snatched the phone from its cradle before he even looked at the clock.
    Two A.M.
    Visions of all that could have gone wrong with the family sleeted through his brain. Faith was first in his mind. The man she had just broken up with had knocked around his first wife and at least one of his girlfriends. The Donovan brothers had told Tony what to expect if he laid a hand on Faith, but Tony’s memory wasn’t reliable when he started drinking.
    Archer looked at the display on the phone that gave incoming numbers. It was blank. That left out the family, and let in Uncle Sam.
    Shit.
    “What,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
    “Is this Archer Donovan?”
    “Yes.”
    “This is—”
    “Hannah McGarry,” he interrupted, wondering if he was still asleep. That smoky voice of hers had haunted too many of his dreams.
    “How did you know?”
    “I have a good memory. What’s wrong, Hannah?”
    “Len’s dead.”
    Archer didn’t try to sort out the boil of emotions those two words brought him: disbelief, relief, guilt, anger, sadness for all that might have been. He didn’t say anything about his own feelings. The tension in Hannah’s voice told him that she had more to say, none of it good.
    “When?” he asked.
    “Just . . . days.”
    Old habits were hard to break. Especially when he could all but taste the fear in Hannah’s desperately level voice. The quality of the connection told him that she was using a cellular phone, open to anyone who cared enough to eavesdrop. So he didn’t ask her where or how or why Len had died.
    “I’m sorry,” Archer said softly. “That’s not adequate, but in the face of death, no words are. I’ll be there no later than noon tomorrow, your time, earlier if at all possible.”
    Hannah’s fingers loosened a bit on the thin, vaguely oblong plastic body of the cellular phone. All she could think of was that Archer understood everything she hadn’t said. “I . . . thank you.”
    Archer knew he shouldn’t ask, but the words were out before he could stop them. “Are you all right?”
    She shivered, remembering Len’s stripped, battered body and sightless eyes, and Chang’s warning: Cyclone season is coming. Don’t follow Len into the grave.
    “Hannah?”
    “Hurry, Archer. I’m getting . . . sleepy.”
    The quality of the sound changed, telling him that she had disconnected. He didn’t bother cursing the empty line. If someone had a lock on her cellular, she was safer not talking at all.
    He punched in one of Donovan International’s unlisted numbers, the one Donovan executives called when things started to go from sugar to shit. No matter what time it was, someone would answer this number.
    “This is Archer Donovan,” he said. “Put me through to someone who can get me to Broome, Australia, no later than noon tomorrow. Shave every minute you can.”
    “Noon U.S or Australian time?” asked a woman’s voice.
    “Australian.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “Seattle.”
    “Thank you. One moment, please.”
    It was more than one moment, but at least he was spared any canned music. He waited quietly, not showing the urgency riding him or the adrenaline licking in his blood, called by the fear that even Hannah’s smoky voice couldn’t conceal. He simply held the phone and made a list of things that had to be done before he landed in Australia. Some could be handled from the plane. The important things couldn’t.
    Kyle Donovan was in for a rude awakening.
    “Thank you for waiting,” said a man’s voice. “None of the Donovan International aircraft can get you from Seattle to Australia in your time frame. We have chartered a jet from Boeing Field to Hawaii. A company jet will meet you there. Our files show that your Australian visa is up-to-date.”
    Archer’s passport was never mentioned. People in Donovan International would sooner take up nude ice-climbing than let their