Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

partner in the enterprise. She had even told him her personal code before she gave in and went to bed.
    On very quiet feet, he went to Hannah’s bedroom and looked in. She was lying on her stomach, one hand under her chin and the other buried under the pillow. Lemony light filled the room. So did heat. Neither one interfered with her deep sleep.
    Archer went back to the kitchen, picked up his backpack, and reached for his cell phone. His brother answered on the first ring.
    “Took you long enough,” Kyle said curtly.
    “I had to go back to Broome.”
    “Why?”
    “Len’s body was there.” Archer stared through the screen and wished that the air whispering through the verandah could wash away the stink of the meat locker. But it couldn’t. Nothing could except time.
    A lot of it.
    The quality of Archer’s voice told Kyle that whatever his brother had found in Broome wasn’t pretty. “How bad?”
    “Bad enough.” He closed his eyes, trying to banish the memory of Len laughing, of Len wounded, of Len raging against his useless legs, of Len lying mangled and murdered in a beef locker. He shifted his grip on the cellular that scrambled outgoing calls and decoded incoming ones from other Donovan phones. “What do you have for me?”
    “Are you alone?” Kyle asked.
    Archer thought of Hannah in the next room and of her deep, exhausted sleep despite the tropical brilliance of the afternoon. Yet even in the bottomless well of sleep, she twitched and moaned as though pursued.
    He had told her about Len’s knife wound.
    He hadn’t wanted to add to the horror of the nightmares that undoubtedly stalked her sleep, but he had done it just the same. She had flinched once. Just that. No more. A flickering of the eyelids, a sudden pallor around her lips, the clenching of narrow fingers into a fist. Then she had turned and walked into her bedroom. He had wanted to follow, to comfort her. He hadn’t. He didn’t trust himself to stop with a brotherly hug.
    Nor was his own mind, his own sleep, free of nightmares. Some people weren’t affected by naked violence. Many simply got used to it after the first few times. For others, a lifetime wasn’t enough. Archer was one of them.
    He hoped that Hannah wasn’t another.
    “For now, it’s just me,” he said. “If I get elliptical, you’ll know what happened.”
    “Damn, Archer, you sound whipped.”
    “I am. Hannah is worse off. She’s been living on catnaps for five days.”
    “Ouch. She must be hallucinating.”
    “Edging right up to it.” He glanced toward the open bedroom door and spoke softly. “That’s one gutsy, tough lady. She didn’t let go until she knew someone was here to stand guard.”
    “So who’s going to guard you while you sleep?”
    “The Tooth Fairy.” Archer swallowed another yawn and reached for the lethal cup of coffee that was sitting on a small table next to the graceful, sensual sculpture. “Talk to me. What do you have on her?”
    “I sent a lot of stuff to your coded e-mail, if you want more details. Otherwise, I’ll just hit the high points.”
    Archer grunted and shifted in the rattan chair, making it creak. The verandah’s hammock chair tempted him, but he wasn’t certain it was up to his weight.
    “Hannah McGarry didn’t exist in any files I could find from the time she was five until she married Len McGarry and applied for a passport,” Kyle said. “Her parents were U.S. citizens who lived overseas except for five years in Maine, presumably to give birth and get Hannah through the most dangerous years for a kid’s survival. Her mother is dead. Her father’s passport is still current, so I presume he’s alive.”
    “They were missionaries who lived with the Yanomami in Brazil. Or did ten years ago. He probably still does. It was what he loved more than he loved his daughter. They disowned her when she ran off with Len.” Archer swallowed some more bitter coffee. “Before that, Hannah was raised in the Brazilian rain forest in a Yanomami hunting camp.”
    “That would explain the lack of documentation. Her marriage was recorded in Macao. Civil ceremony. You were the only witness.”
    No news there for Archer. The memory of that day wasn’t one of his favorites. Savage heat, acrid smoke from street vendors’ grills hazing the air, the hurry and stink of poverty chasing wealth, the dreams in Hannah’s eyes and the emptiness in Len’s.
    “Archer? You awake?”
    “Keep talking,” he said, because it was