Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

locker doors inside were open, as though to prove that nothing of value lay beyond. “What about the car?”
    “He couldn’t handle it alone. Certainly not in the last two years. He was losing strength. It was slow, very slow, but it was real.”
    In the slanting light, Archer’s eyes were almost gold. He measured the vault that had once held a king’s ransom in pearls and the key to a man’s dark soul. “Where would Len have hidden the Black Trinity?”
    She shrugged. “Somewhere in this shed.”
    Silently he looked at the ruins.
    “It’s gone, Archer. Accept it. I have.”
    “If it had been anyone else but Len, I would,” he replied evenly. “But Len always had one more layer than anybody expected, one more move, one more trick.”
    All of the lockers that were beyond the reach of a long-armed, seated man were closed. Even standing, the highest rank of lockers rose almost four feet above Archer’s head. The slanting sunlight picked out every nick and scratch with unnatural clarity. Several lockers in particular showed scratches. All of them were on the right-hand side of the vault.
    The image of Len’s ugly, wicked ring flashed in Archer’s mind. Maybe Len had used it for more than slicing up a man’s face in a fight.
    “You’ve opened all the drawers,” he said.
    Fighting for breath, Hannah forced herself to think of the present, not the corrosive past. She couldn’t afford to make another mistake like Len. She simply wouldn’t survive it. She knew it as certainly as she knew that it hurt too much to breathe right now. “Everything that was beyond Len’s reach, I opened.”
    Remembering Len, Archer wondered just how much had truly been beyond his half brother’s grasp. “The handles are too big for the lockers.”
    “Len’s design, not mine.”
    “What about the locksmith? That many combination locks must have needed maintenance, especially in the tropics.”
    “Len did it.”
    “How did he reach the top locks?”
    “He didn’t. I did.”
    Archer turned toward Hannah. “How?”
    “On a ladder.”
    “No, how did you open the locks?”
    “He only had me work on one,” Hannah said, pointing toward the vault. “The center one.” Even as Archer spun toward it, she added, “But I already checked that locker. The Black Trinity wasn’t in any of the trays.”
    Ignoring the closed lockers, he grabbed one of the lower trays at random and pulled it all the way out. The tray was almost as long as his arm. He measured the tray against the depth of the vault, then mentally added on the thickness of the open doors.
    “Too short,” he muttered. “But not by much.” He pushed the tray back in place and measured other drawers that were waist level or lower. They were all the same size.
    Two inches too short.
    He grabbed a flashlight and shined it into the hole where a tray had been. Nothing showed but the thick steel sheathing the vault. He pulled out more trays, put his arm between the multiple rails, and felt around. There was no hint of a hidden seam, a hinge, a panel, a button, a lever, anything that might open a compartment that held more pearls. No matter which rank of trays he tried, he didn’t find anything but blood-temperature steel.
    No sign of wires, either, which was a relief. Not that he had expected Len to risk a booby trap so close to his delicate Black Trinity. Len had hated explosives. He had learned the hard way that even C-4 degraded and became unreliable in the tropics.
    One by one, Archer replaced trays and closed the locker doors. When everything but the outer door was sealed up, he simply stood and looked at the rank of lockers.
    “What?” Hannah asked. The intensity in Archer was almost tangible.
    “The vault has a false back.”
    “How do you know?”
    “The drawers are about two inches too short for the depth of the vault, even when you figure in the shielding.”
    Silently she watched while he went over the exterior of the vault and then the interior locker doors with his fingertips.
    “You’re looking too high,” she said finally. “Len couldn’t get to the top two ranks of lockers.”
    “That’s what he wanted everyone to believe.”
    “How would he get up there to unlock everything?”
    Instead of answering, Archer reached into his pocket, took out his key chain, and removed Len’s heavy ring. Ignoring Hannah’s hoarse sound of surprise, he put the ring on his right index finger, where Len had worn it. Then he crouched down until he was