Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

that until this instant. Ten years ago she had been innocent and infatuated with a handsome mercenary who was fifteen years older than she was. Yet even then, Archer had tugged at her senses just by being alive. If she had met him first, before Len . . .
    “You don’t feel like family to me,” she said.
    “Give it time.”
    “Time.” She laughed abruptly.
    “Do you keep the diving gear here or on the boat?” Archer asked.
    “I keep it here.” Then, before she could think better of it, “And I don’t feel anything like your sister.”
    He didn’t move, but he changed. She could see it, the flare of intensity in him as vivid as the corona of the sun.
    “What do you feel like?” he asked.
    Unease and something more pricked through her. She wanted him with a rushing force that made her light-headed. But fear was greater. Just barely. Just enough to bridle her tongue. Years ago she had learned that sexual hunger led straight to bad judgment, which led straight to hell on earth. Now she was learning her own unexpected weakness for this one man.
    It terrified her.
    “I don’t know what I feel like,” she said distinctly.
    Archer watched Hannah for the space of a long breath, saw her fear of him, and accepted it. He didn’t blame her. She was no longer nineteen, with hope in her eyes and excitement in her smile. She had discovered that life was always unexpected and often cruel. She had learned to pull back, shut down.
    To survive.
    He wanted to argue that there was more to life than pain and death, that the Donovan family would take her in and accept her. Yet he didn’t say a word. He had no right to demand that she step out of her protective shell and share her life, her laughter, her love. He was the one who had left her to heal a man who couldn’t be healed.
    But Len could hurt whoever tried to help him. And he had. The fear in her eyes was proof of it.
    “Wouldn’t life be grand if kindness outlived cruelty?” Archer asked with a neutrality that didn’t quite hide the weariness in his soul. “But it doesn’t.”
    He turned away, listing what had to be done in his mind. The sooner he found out what had happened to Len and Pearl Cove, the sooner he would be out of her life.
    Broome was first on the list.
    “So Mad Dog Len had a partner?” the cop asked, watching Archer skeptically. The big Yank with the sweaty dress shirt, faded jeans, and a worn rucksack slung over one shoulder looked hard and much too controlled for a constable’s peace of mind.
    Archer nodded.
    “That’s good news for his widow,” the cop said, dragging a match across the metal nameplate that said “Dave” and lighting a cigarette. “No one here will lend her a dollar to rebuild.”
    “Why? Pearl Cove isn’t a license to print money, but it looks better than a lot of businesses around Broome.”
    “Hey, Dave,” someone called from the back of the hot, humid, tin-roofed cave that passed for a police station. “Your wife is on the other line.”
    “Tell her five,” the cop called back. Then his faded green eyes focused on Archer with a show-me-something-new weariness. “You want prosperous, mate? Try Cable Beach outside of town. That’s where the rich tourists go.”
    “I’m not a tourist and you haven’t answered my question.”
    “You’re not a native, either, or you’d know that people around here wouldn’t piss on Len McGarry if he was on fire.”
    “No worries,” Archer said neutrally, using a favorite Aussie response. “He’s dead. An accident, I’m told.”
    “Too right.” Dave blew out a stream of smoke that did nothing to improve the thick, close air of the station house. “McGarry drowned when a cyclone tore open a pearl-sorting shed and shucked him out of it like an oyster out of its shell.”
    “Was there water in his lungs?”
    “He was found floating facedown in six inches of ocean.”
    “With a piece of oyster shell rammed between his ribs. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
    Dave looked bored. “You don’t have many cyclones in Seattle, do you? I’ve picked up blokes that had soda straws shoved through their groin or arteries cut by flying palm leaves. At two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, a lot of normal things turn lethal. Bloody hell, a piece of paper will slit your throat.”
    “I know. The U.S. might be short on cyclones, but we’re long on hurricanes and tornadoes.”
    The cop grunted. “A bit of oyster shell was the least of McGarry’s problems. He