Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

a total loss?”
    Again Flynn looked uneasily at Hannah.
    “Tell him,” she said without looking away from Archer.
    “Sixty-five percent. Maybe more.”
    “How much more?” Archer asked.
    “Worst case?” Flynn asked.
    Archer smiled like a wolf. “It’s the only case that matters, isn’t it?”
    “Ninety-five percent,” Flynn said.
    Hannah made a harsh sound. She had been told fifty-five percent loss, sixty percent tops.
    “Total loss, in other words,” Archer summarized.
    Flynn hesitated, looked at Hannah’s drawn face, and wished Archer Donovan was the kind of man who could be intimidated into not asking uncomfortable questions.
    “It could be a write-off,” Flynn admitted finally. “Frankly, we’re not recovering as many of the rafts as we hoped.”
    “Why?”
    Archer’s cool, neutral question made Flynn wish that Hannah’s partner was someone else. Anyone else. He was certain his bosses would feel the same way. The cyclone had seemed like such a perfect solution to a sodding impossible problem.
    “Bloody big wind, bloody big mess,” Flynn said, his voice clipped. “This one was a destructive bitch.” He looked at Hannah. “Sorry, luv. I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain.”
    “What about next year’s oysters?” Archer asked. “How did they fare?”
    “We haven’t finished our recce yet, so we don’t know.”
    “Guess.”
    The cool command irritated Flynn. He started to push right back in automatic response to another man testing him. Then he looked at Archer’s measuring eyes and remembered the ridges of callus on the side of his hand. It might come to a fight with Archer, but before it did, Flynn would have to have permission from his own bosses. The thought grated worse than crushed shell.
    “They’re probably better off,” Flynn said. “The worst hit were the rafts of experimental shell. I told Len we should put them in a less exposed place, but he wanted them close enough to watch. He was a paranoid bastard.” He heard his own words and winced. “Sorry, luv. I—”
    “Hannah knew her husband better than you did,” Archer cut in. “What of the pearls in the sorting shed?”
    “There’s an American book,” Flynn said with a thin smile. “Gone With the Wind.”
    “Pearl Cove isn’t Tara. I find it hard to believe that every last pearl vanished in the wind.”
    “Believe it anyway.”
    “Oh, I believe the pearls are gone,” Archer drawled. “I just don’t believe the wind took them.”
    “What do you think happened?” Flynn asked angrily.
    “I think they’ve been . . . salvaged.”
    “Are you trying to tell me something, mate?”
    Hannah touched Flynn’s arm. “Archer isn’t accusing anyone.”
    The Australian looked at Archer with unfriendly eyes. “It doesn’t sound that way to me.”
    “I’ll need a written summary of what was lost, what was found, and what you’re doing about the missing,” Archer said.
    “I don’t have time for—”
    “Make time,” Archer cut in.
    The command took Flynn right up to the edge of his self-control. Archer watched the process with cool interest. Even eagerness.
    “I don’t take orders from you,” Flynn said. He turned to Hannah.
    “Wrong,” Archer said. When Hannah would have intervened again, he confronted her. “Changed your mind?”
    “What does that mean?” she demanded.
    “You made a call. I came. I can leave just as fast.”
    Anger snapped along nerve endings that were already frayed raw. Hannah started to tell Archer to leave if he wanted, and go to hell while he was at it. Then she glanced at her foreman and saw his barely concealed satisfaction.
    Divide and conquer. The oldest game of all.
    Because it worked.
    Hannah faced Flynn with a smile that would have frozen fire. “The Yank is a bit overbearing, but he has a point. I’ll need that report for my own records. By supper should do it.”
    “By supper?” Flynn said in disbelief. “I can’t do a proper job in that short a time!”
    “Then do an improper one. You had answers quick enough when Archer asked.”
    “That was different.”
    “Because he’s a man?” Hannah’s smile widened to show lots of teeth. “No worries, mate. I wear pants, too. I’ll see you before supper.”
    Flynn made a rough sound and stared down at his employer. Whatever the situation might have been when Len was alive, Hannah was in charge of Pearl Cove now. And she knew it. Flynn hadn’t expected things to turn out this way when he