Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

another. Has Uncle decided which side of the pearl table you’re on yet?”
    Silence.
    Archer hit the power button on the phone and mentally ran his probabilities again. Knowing that Yin wasn’t a U.S. government agent improved the odds of getting out clean.
    Uncle made a bad enemy.
    A block away from the Dragon Moon, Archer pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, then tugged at his jacket to keep it out of the way of the pistol at the small of his back. The front of the jacket sagged. A spare magazine for the pistol was in one pocket. Cash was in the other. The wad of money was bulkier than the extra ammunition and weighed a lot less.
    When Archer was a few buildings down from the Dragon Moon, he punched in the number of the cell phone he had left behind on the kitchen table. This time he turned on the scrambler.
    Lianne answered on the first ring. “Archer?”
    “Right here. How’s the reception?”
    “Fine. Or four-by-four or whatever I’m supposed to say.”
    “ ‘Loud and clear’ works. Stay close.”
    “I’d like to be closer,” she retorted.
    “I hear you loud and clear.” Archer pocketed the phone and glanced again at his watch. Five fifty-seven. Time to go. He tapped the throat mike to turn it on. “I’m moving.”
    “One is in place,” Kyle said.
    “Ditto two,” Jake said. “But I’m on the front.”
    “What?” Archer snarled.
    “Kyle’s gut liked it that way. So does mine.”
    Anger whipped beneath Archer’s control, but control won easily. It was too late in the game to lose it. “Just keep that damn street sweeper out of sight. You’d give the beat cop a heart attack if he saw that barrel poking out of your jacket.”
    “Roger.”
    Archer headed toward the Dragon Moon with the long strides of a wolf pursuing game.
    “Who would call at this ungodly hour?” Hannah asked as she walked into the kitchen.
    Lianne started so severely that she nearly dropped the cell phone on the table. “Hannah! You’re supposed to be asleep.”
    “My body still doesn’t know which way is up,” she said, yawning. “Four A.M. or high noon, all the same to me. What are you doing up? Are the twins restless?”
    “Not wildly. I’m just, um, a morning person.”
    “It’s hardly morning,” Hannah said. “Unless you think that four—” Her words stopped abruptly. She rubbed her eyes and looked again at the kitchen clock. “Six A.M. ? The clock in my room said four.”
    “Want some coffee?” Lianne asked, changing the subject.
    It didn’t work.
    “Six o’clock,” Hannah said, appalled. “Ruddy hell! I’m supposed to be—”
    “He’s here. Ready?”
    Both women jumped when the cell phone spoke.
    “That’s Ar—” Hannah began.
    “Quiet!” Lianne interrupted in a fierce, low voice. She snatched up the phone. “Ready.”
    “Yin is alone at a table about fifteen feet from the street entrance. There’s a box big enough to hold the pearls sitting in front of him.”
    “Thank God.”
    Archer decided not to mention the table of young toughs sitting between Yin and the front door. Despite their trendy Hong Kong clothes—heavy on colorful silk shirts and black leather jackets—the men might have been just day laborers sitting around drinking tea until it was time to go to work.
    And Archer might have been Tinkerbell.
    “Get ready to tell Yin a few things,” Archer said into the cell phone. “One: I have one hundred and twenty-five thousand in cash for the pearls. Two: I’m not alone. Three: If his hands go under the table, he’s a dead man. Four: If anyone else’s hands go under the table, he’s a dead man. Five: He should pass the word to anyone who might get twitchy. Got that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go.”
    When Lianne started speaking Chinese, Hannah knew where Archer was. Spinning around, she ran to her room. There she dressed in a frenzy, yanking on her jeans, jamming her nightgown—Archer’s silk shirt—inside the waistband of her jeans, kicking into her sandals. Still buttoning the jeans, she bolted for the front door. She didn’t even notice the cold rain as she ran flat out toward the Dragon Moon. Fury and fear drove her flying feet. Even she couldn’t have said which goaded her more—anger at being shut out or the memory of her dream, Archer bleeding and dying in horrible pain.
    Poised for whatever might happen, Archer waited, watching Yin while Lianne spoke in rapid Chinese. Yin listened impassively, but he was looking around, trying to spot anyone who might