Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

Hannah rather than the freeway. In the muted golden glow of the car’s interior lights, her face was an ever-changing arrangement of light and shadow. Just when he decided she couldn’t be more beautiful, he found another angle, another blending of light and dark that squeezed his heart.
    He was still watching her when Amy pulled up to the low-rise condominium building that served as the Donovan family headquarters in Seattle. She punched in numbers on a piece of hand-held electronics that was about the size of a hefty cellular phone.
    With a half smile, Archer waited to see if they passed the electronic scrutiny of Kyle’s latest invention. After a few seconds the garage door rolled up, allowing the black car to pass. He let out a long breath when the heavy steel links lowered again, shutting out the rest of the world.
    Home.
    The one place where the nape of his neck wouldn’t prickle each time he turned his back on someone.
    His past had taught him that no place was perfectly safe, but the Donovans’ Seattle residence came very close. He needed that safety, that relaxation of the merciless inner alertness that had begun with Hannah’s call and wouldn’t end until he found Len’s murderer.
    As he looked back at the heavy steel grid, headlights flashed by on the street. He smiled coldly. At 3 A.M. , Seattle didn’t have much in the way of freeway traffic. Even the surface streets were nearly deserted. The cars that tailed them had tried to be discreet, but there wasn’t enough traffic to hide in.
    Amy eased the big Mercedes to a stop near a lighted entrance. Before she could stir from her seat, Archer opened his car door. A tug on Hannah’s hand sent her sliding over the seat toward him. He waited, watching her without any sign of the fatigue and rising hunger that gnawed at him.
    The expensive outfit she wore might have looked wilted and travel-worn around the edges, but her legs were as smooth and supple as ever. Desire turned like a knife in him as he thought of how she had wrapped those long legs around him on the plane, opening herself completely. He had pushed into her the same way. Completely.
    None of his thoughts showed on his face or in his touch as he took her arm. He knew she was too tired to be tearing up the bed with him for what was left of the night. Certainly he should be too tired to be thinking about it.
    He turned to his parents’ chauffeur. “Thank you, Amy. Is anyone else still awake?”
    “I don’t think so, sir. Jake, Honor, and Summer came in just after dinner. Faith is at a designer’s symposium in New York, but will be back soon.” She glanced at the electronic device in her hands. “Kyle might be up tinkering with this, er, thing again. He has something else he wants it to do.”
    “Pray for us,” Archer said under his breath.
    Amy laughed. “I’ll do that, sir. Good night.”
    Only family members knew the code that opened the entrance from the garage. He punched in the numbers on a lighted pad. Instantly the lock retracted and the door swung open. Hannah watched curiously as he repeated the process to get in an elevator, then again to get out of the elevator.
    “Different codes each time?” she asked. “I didn’t think Seattle was that dangerous.”
    “Kyle is that inventive,” Archer said easily. “And I’m that paranoid.”
    “I’m going to need a native guide to get around here. For me, numbers are like names. You say them, I listen, and fffft, gone.”
    Smiling, he tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ears. The hair was soft and smelled lightly of cinnamon. “Honor threatened to take a very sensitive part of Kyle’s anatomy and feed it to her cat unless he switched to voice recognition or retina patterns or something that doesn’t require learning new codes at random intervals.”
    “She has my vote.”
    Laughing softly, he unlocked the door to the suite and gestured her inside. The entryway was marble; the white rug recently had been replaced with hardwood. Over the wood lay carpets from India, China, and vanished Persia. The city view from the wall-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the room was magnificent, but couldn’t overcome the uncanny power of the landscape paintings that hung along one wall.
    Hannah walked forward, lured by the elemental presence of art. Even if she had lived all her life among the mountains and sand dunes and plateaus in these paintings, she would have been compelled. She rubbed her eyes as though waking up from