Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

worked, Archer pulled money out of his back pocket. As soon as Yin pushed the securely wrapped box back across the table, Archer pulled another thick stack of cash from his jacket pocket.
    Yin’s eyes widened with simple greed. Archer fanned ten hundred-dollar bills on the table. The wad in his hand said that there was more where that came from. A lot more. Yin looked at the money hungrily as Archer picked up the cell phone.
    “Ask Yin where he got the pearls,” he said to Lianne.
    Then he held the phone so that the other man could hear. As he listened, Yin’s expression shifted, then shut down. He shook his head.
    Archer added ten more bills to the fan. Two thousand dollars. Three thousand. Ten thousand.
    Twenty thousand.
    Thirty.
    Fifty.
    Yin began to sweat.
    “Now,” Archer said to Lianne, “tell him he has a choice. He can answer my question or I’ll ask his buddies at the next table. If they answer, they get the prize.”
    Sweat trickled down Yin’s cheeks as he listened. He swallowed and said hoarsely, “Klistin Frin.”
    Before Archer could sort through the heavy accent, Kyle’s voice was rasping in his ear. “Christ, she’s going in the front door!”
    Archer didn’t have time to ask who “she” was. Breath sawing, Hannah yanked open the front door and glanced wildly around the room. When she saw Archer—and Jake off to the side, keeping a table full of thugs seated with their hands in sight—she sagged in relief. The nightmare hadn’t come true.
    “Get out,” Archer said flatly.
    The five men at the table shifted, but nothing had really changed for them. Jake was still watching them with eyes that gleamed like cut glass. Archer was still seated, his gun on Yin. Unhappily the men settled down.
    Hannah squared her shoulders and turned toward Archer. “Not until I see if the pearls are what we’re looking for.”
    “Take the pearls and get out,” Archer said through his teeth, throwing the box at her.
    She caught it and kept walking toward him, needing to be certain that he was all right. A flicker of movement along the wall behind his back caught her eye. Even as her brain registered the fact that there was a gun barrel glinting through a narrow slit, she screamed and launched herself at Archer’s shoulders, knocking him over and out of harm’s way. Hundred-dollar bills flew up like startled birds.
    Though there was no sound of a shot, plaster exploded across the room before Archer hit the floor. Still falling, he pulled Hannah beneath him and brought his gun up, figuring angles on where the hidden shooter might be. It certainly wasn’t Yin on the trigger—he had grabbed what cash he could and bolted toward the alley door.
    Tile exploded as bullets whined across the floor. Archer grunted, then grunted again as lead thudded against Kevlar. He rolled over and over into the room, taking Hannah with him, trying to get beyond the shooting radius of the gun slit.
    “He’s in the wall behind you!” she screamed, her voice muffled by his chest.
    Archer heard anyway. “Jake! Middle of the east wall, man-high.”
    Before Archer finished, Jake lifted his foot to the edge of the table and slammed it into the gathered triad members with a quick pump of his leg, scattering them like bowling pins. The instant Archer and Hannah scrambled out of the way, Jake pointed the shotgun toward the wall and began firing.
    Buckshot-chewed wood exploded out in clumps of jackstraws, then fell in eerie silence, because the shotgun blasts had deafened everyone, leaving a violent ringing in their ears. Before the first bits of wood hit the floor, Jake racked two more rounds into place and searched for another target.
    Archer yanked Hannah to her feet and all but threw her at the front door. “Out.”
    This time she didn’t argue.
    Quickly Archer took stock. A stunned silence followed the thunder of the shotgun, but he couldn’t count on that lasting. Nothing moved along the ruined wall but a shred of dull red wallpaper. If the sniper had survived, he wasn’t giving away his position. Off to one side, five of the Red Phoenix Triad’s finest thrashed around on the floor, trying to suck in air through diaphragms that had been paralyzed by the flying edge of a table.
    “You go next,” Jake said, watching the wall and the struggling gang members.
    Archer was already at the front door, his gun trained on the fallen men and his eyes alert for any motion along the walls. “You’re covered. Pull out.”
    Jake