Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

transformation from a vital, virile husband to a bitter, crazy shell of a man.
    Hannah wouldn’t be the first one to shoot the bad-news messenger. Archer understood too well how she felt, nerve and resentment all tangled up, the child beneath the adult crying, I don’t want to go there! He had spent years trying to put his past where it belonged. Behind him. Coming here, seeing Hannah, seeing Len, brought it all back in savage clarity. He didn’t want to go there again.
    But there he was.
    The only thing he could do was wrap this mess up as soon as possible, then get out before all the sad, dark echoes of his past deafened him to the possibilities of the present. That had nearly happened once. He had nearly gone under, lured by the siren call of adrenaline and danger, until nothing was real but a world where treachery was the norm, multiple identities were the rule, and death was the sole judge of who won and who lost.
    Some people thrived on that life. He wasn’t one of them.
    But he had left Len mired in that brutal, covert world. He hadn’t been able to pull his half brother out until it was too late. Len had gone under, and Archer felt a guilt at escaping that was as irrational as it was powerful.
    “How much warning did you have before the storm?” he asked neutrally.
    Hannah’s steps hesitated, as though she was startled to find herself not alone. Or maybe it was the emotions she sensed battling just beneath Archer’s level voice that made her pause.
    “We had several days,” she said, “but we were expecting just a tropical blow, nothing to get excited about. The storm was supposed to hit land about two hundred kilometers north of here. That changed in a matter of hours. Even then, the force of the wind caught everyone off guard. No one was expecting a big one.”
    Archer came alongside Hannah as the path widened down toward the beach. “So Len’s murderer didn’t have a lot of time to plan.”
    Though his voice was low, carrying no more than a foot or two, Hannah looked around hastily to make certain no one could overhear.
    “Don’t,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Keep checking to see if anyone is nearby. You’re just showing your partner the storm damage so I can assess what can be salvaged and what’s junk, remember? Why would you care if anyone overheard us?”
    “But what if—”
    “No worries,” he cut in ironically. “I have eyes in the back of my head. If people are watching us, they’re doing it at a distance.”
    Hannah hesitated, then strode forward again, matching strides with Archer’s longer legs. “We could see better in daylight,” she pointed out.
    “We do that tomorrow, if necessary.” And if they were still at Pearl Cove, which Archer doubted. But he didn’t want Hannah to know they were leaving until they left. April Joy’s warning had been quite clear. Don’t trust anyone. In any case, he didn’t want people to know Hannah was going until she was gone. “We can see things in darkness that full light hides.”
    “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
    “Done what?”
    “Look for murderers.”
    “I’ve looked for a lot of things.”
    When he said nothing more, she glanced up at his face. Moonlight and the abrupt tropical night had turned his hair to absolute black and his eyes to silver. Beneath the short, sleek beard, the line of his mouth was hard enough to cut glass. He looked like what he was, moved like what he was, like Len once had been: a man trained to kill other men.
    The ruined shell of the sorting shed appeared almost welcoming by comparison. She hurried forward, only to feel Archer’s hand wrap around her upper arm, pulling her to a stop.
    “Wait,” he said, his voice as soft as the breeze lifting off the coal-dark sea.
    “Why—”
    A curt shake of his head cut off her words. “Talk in a normal tone about Pearl Cove, how it works, what you do. Don’t mention Len’s death.”
    For a moment Hannah could only stare at Archer’s face, her thoughts scattering like moonlight on water. His fingers squeezed gently.
    “Start with winter,” he suggested softly. “What do you do then?”
    “I—we—” She took a breath. “Um, in June, July, and August, we harvest shell that was seeded two years ago.”
    “Why do you harvest in winter?”
    “Because nacre is laid down thin in colder water, and thin nacre has the greatest luster.” She fell silent.
    “How was the harvest this year?”
    “I don’t know. Len always handled that