Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

years. You’re going to marry me, Hannah. Like you, I want it all.”
    She snuggled closer to him.
    “Hannah? Will you marry me?”
    She kissed the skin just above his tank top. Hair tickled her lips. She smiled and kissed him again. “Yes.”
    “Where do you want to honeymoon?”
    “Here. Now.”
    He laughed softly against her hair. “Here it is.”
    It was now, too.
    Elizabeth Lowell’s next dark and stunningly sensuous novel in the Donovan series
MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU
SEATTLE
    February
    O wen Walker lived in a bare-bones efficiency apartment overlooking Pioneer Square, one of Seattle’s less upscale tourist attractions. The front door was unimpressive, no happy barks or impatient kitty yowls greeted Walker’s approaching footsteps. The closest thing he had to a pet was the refrigerator mold that grew while he was overseas on assignment for Donovan International. Lately that had been most of the time.
    Other than installing a new, stronger dead bolt when he took over the apartment, Walker had spent little effort making the place into an urban cocoon. The bed was big enough for his six-foot frame. It also served as a couch to stretch out on and watch TV if he was home long enough to get involved in the misfortunes of the Seahawks or the Mariners or the Sonics.
    Recently he had been lucky to keep up with his own problems, much less those of the teams whose members were traded around faster than hot gossip. Today hadn’t been any different. Even the problems had problems. The latest one was the assignment Archer Donovan had dropped on him this afternoon.
    See if the rubies Davis Montegeau sent Faith match any on the international hot list. I don’t want my sister’s reputation as a designer ruined by using stolen goods. Montegeau sent what she described as fourteen superior rubies, between one and four carats. They’re loose now, but could have been part of a single piece of jewelry.
    Since Archer didn’t want his little sister to know that he was sticking his nose in her business without her invitation, Walker didn’t have the actual rubies to work with. All he had was a verbal description.
    Walker had spent the past four hours on Donovan International’s phones with various global cops. He hadn’t accomplished anything but to make his injured leg stiffen up. So far the rubies had come up clean. He had the callused ear to prove it. Tonight he would check them out on the Internet.
    But first, food.
    Automatically he threw the locks on the door behind him, hung his cane over the doorknob, and limped to the refrigerator to see if anything looked like a late lunch or an early dinner. Whichever.
    His body still wasn’t certain which continent it was on. Despite the clean black slacks, crisp dark blue shirt that matched his eyes, and close-cut black beard, he felt like something the cat had dragged in and the rat refused to eat. Jet lag—or the beating that some eager Afghani bandits had given him last week—made him feel every one of his thirty-odd years like a separate insult.
    Thoughts of the near disastrous Afghanistan trip fled when the smell of garlic sausage from last night’s take-out Italian hit him in a wave. After the second breath he decided that the sausage wasn’t from last night. More like three nights ago. Or four. Maybe five. He’d had a real craving for Italian when he returned from Afghanistan, but he hadn’t wanted to gimp through Pike Place Market looking for fresh ingredients. Instead he had eaten way too much take-out food since he had climbed stiffly down the steps from the company plane into the Pacific Northwest’s February gloom.
    Cautiously he opened the lid of the nearest leftover box. Nothing looked green, and there probably wasn’t enough left to poison him anyway. With a mental shrug he put the sagging box in the microwave and nuked it. While invisible energy tried to breathe new life into old takeout, he decided to call the meal an early supper. For that, he could open one of the long-necked beer bottles that had waited patiently during his absence.
    By the time the microwave cheeped, he was on the Internet, requesting a global search for stolen loose rubies bigger than one carat or for stolen jewelry that contained fourteen rubies of more than a carat. While the computer chewed on his request, he walked back to his pocket-sized kitchen, opened the microwave, and grabbed a fork from a nearby drawer.
    He took his first bite of lukewarm supper on the way to the