Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

find?”
    “Tell your brother his gut hunch was wrong.” Kyle Donovan’s gut was famous, or infamous, among the Donovans. As an early warning system for danger, Kyle’s lower tract lacked precision, but it was too often right to be disregarded. “If anyone is looking for the rubies Davis Montegeau gave Faith to set in a necklace, they aren’t looking in any of the usual places, or even the unusual ones.”
    Archer pushed back from the desk and absently stretched his big body. “Okay. Thanks. It was the easiest thing to check.”
    “Easy for you, sure enough. My ear still aches from all those international calls.”
    Archer snickered. “I’ll make it up to you.”
    “The raise?”
    “In your dreams,” Archer retorted easily. “Dinner tonight at the condo. I’ve got another job to run by you. Stateside this time.”
    “My jet-lagged body thanks you. Who’s cooking dinner? You or Kyle?”
    “Me. Fresh salmon, compliments of brother-in-law Jake. And my sister Honor, if you believe that the one who nets the fish gets half the credit. She does.”
    “I’ll believe whatever it takes to get fresh salmon on my plate. Anything else?” Walker asked hopefully.
    “My wife did mention chocolate chip cookies.”
    “Hot damn! I’m on my way.”
    Archer was still laughing when Walker hung up. Although Walker had begun as an employee, he had become a friend.
    Within moments of reading his e-mail, Archer’s expression settled into its usual hard lines. Donovan International’s winning bid on developing a Siberian silver mine had been undercut after the bidding was supposed to be officially closed. The fact that the successful bidder was a local gangster’s brother-in-law just might have had something to do with it.
    He reached for the intercom. “Mitchell, get me Nicolay. Yeah, I know what time it is there. In a few minutes, so will he.”
    Faith Donovan set aside the block of tripoli she used to add polishing grit to the buffing wheel. Flexing her aching hands, she bent over and examined the piece of eighteen-karat gold that made up one of the thirteen segments of the Montegeau necklace. Although barely polished, the arc of gold was both elegant and seemingly casual, almost randomly curved.
    The curve was neither casual nor random, but the result of a design process that was as exacting as it was rewarding. That was why Faith’s fingers and back ached, yet she wanted to smile in spite of the early winter darkness. Even with all the pressure of an impossibly short deadline—barely two weeks for a process that should have taken three months—the necklace was coming together beautifully. Her old friend Mel would have a unique, extraordinary piece of jewelry to wear when she married Jeff Montegeau on Valentine’s Day.
    And Faith would have a showstopper for the Savannah jewelry exposition the weekend before the wedding. She very much wanted that. Though the expo only lasted a few days, it was one of the most important modern jewelry shows in the nation. She needed to make a stir. The Montegeau necklace would certainly do that.
    At least it would if she found a way to insure the necklace between now and four days from now, when she flew to Savannah. Her other pieces were insured, because she had had plenty of time to plan for the expo. There just hadn’t been time to leave the rubies with a qualified appraiser and still create a necklace.
    Frowning over the insurance problem, she picked up the segment of gold and bent over the buffer again. Beyond the windows of her shop/studio, ice-tipped rain swirled across Pioneer Square on the wind. The streetlights sent out glistening circles that did little to brighten the winter evening.
    Eventually the rattle of sleet on the windows increased until she could hear it above the whirring of the buffing wheel. With a guilty start she straightened and looked at her watch. Almost five-thirty. She was supposed to be at the Donovan condo with three of her five siblings, planning a surprise party for their parents’ fortieth anniversary. Or trying to plan one. Archer and his wife, Hannah, Kyle and his wife, Lianne, and Honor and her husband, Jake, had been at it for several days already, but they hadn’t even been able to agree on a site.
    Of course, they all enjoyed the noise and laughter of family dinners at the Donovan condo, where every Donovan had a full-time or part-time residence. Keeping track of Donovan International’s global enterprises meant that someone in