Jade Island (14 page)

“Ah, that is just so,” Wen said to Lianne in his whispery voice, nodding. “You make my eyes live again.”

“It is a small thing for all that you have given to me.”

Wen grinned, revealing yellowed teeth that were still strong despite their ragged spacing. “Replace the camel and bring me something truly archaic, something as old as Chinese memories, older, something…”

“Buried jade?” Lianne suggested.

“Yes. Bigger than the palm, but not too big for my old hands.”

“A blade, then,” she said quickly. “I know just the one. It is magnificent.”

“Ah, the emperor’s blade.” Wen nodded. “Bring it to me, that I may know again its excellence.”

Hurriedly Lianne put away the camel with the mysteriously smooth feet and went to the north wall of shelves, the ones reserved for Neolithic jade. Even before she pulled out the fifth drawer from the top, Daniel was all but standing on top of her, watching her.

“Get out of my way,” she said in curt English, pushing past him.

“I have more right to be here than you do.”

“Take it up with your grandfather. He’s the one who gives orders around here, not you.”

Daniel’s full lips curled in a smile that was more insulting than a raised middle finger. “You think you’re invulnerable. But I know just how vulnerable you are, and why.” He gestured to the drawer with the back of his hand. “Go ahead, you silly bitch. Play out your charade.”

Lianne’s heart raced and her hands tingled with adrenaline. She wanted to claw the sneer off her half brother’s face, but didn’t even try. She had been called worse names in the past, when her schoolmates had found out from their parents that Lianne’s mother was a married man’s whore.

“You’re very brave hiding behind the fortress of your grandfather,” she said evenly. “Grow up, little boy. Come out in the real world, the world that neither one of us made, but we have to live in it just the same.”

“You—”

“Get out of my face,” Lianne interrupted with quiet savagery.

Wen made a querulous sound. “I am waiting.”

Daniel looked at his grandfather and stepped out of her way.

Shielding the trembling of her hands with her body, Lianne opened the drawer wide. An array of exceptional Neolithic blades gleamed beneath the overhead lighting. Her first thought was how much Kyle would have loved to see these jades.

Then a vise closed around her heart. The moss-green blade with the fine stains was gone.

She spun around and found herself staring into Daniel’s murderous black eyes, eyes that were horrifyingly like her father’s.

“Girl, why are you so slow today?” Wen said in a raspy voice. “Are my requests not simple? A buried blade, that is all. You know my favorite. Bring it.”

“Yes,” Daniel whispered in English. “Take it to him, little bastard girl. If you can.”

Chills coursed through Lianne.
Daniel knew the blade was gone.

His hand shot past her shoulder so fast that she flinched aside, expecting a blow. He grabbed a piece of jade out of the drawer, holding the blade as though it was indeed a weapon.

“The third blade from the left, second row, is that not correct, Grandfather?” Daniel asked in Cantonese.

“Yes, yes. Have you forgotten, Lianne?”

She shook her head before she remembered that Wen couldn’t see. “No, Uncle. I have not forgotten.”

She looked from the drawer to Daniel’s hands. He had taken the third blade from the left, second row, but it was
not
the blade Lianne remembered putting there. Numbly she walked away from the drawers while Daniel placed the false blade in Wen’s contorted hands.

Lianne didn’t recognize the jade, except that it was the same size and likely the same weight as the blade that Kyle had bought last night. This blade’s color was a shade or two off the fine green of the auction blade. It was translucent, but not particularly luminous. It had burial stains, but they weren’t pleasing. Its carving was clean and distinct. What she could see of the jade’s surface appeared unblemished, with neither cracks nor chips nor gouges to mar the even flow of stone.

“Ah,” the old man said. “Smooth, neither warm nor cool, satin. A clean weight. Another old, old friend. Describe it to me, Lianne.”

She opened her mouth but no words came. The blade Wen held was a very good artifact, but not an excellent one, much less a great piece.

And Wen could no longer tell the difference.

“I will describe it, Grandfather,” Daniel said.

With triumph rippling through his voice, he began talking about the Neolithic blade in ancient, almost poetic terms. Wen nodded and made murmurous sounds of pleasure, as though communing with an old friend.

If Lianne closed her eyes, she, too, could see the blade Daniel described. It was the one Kyle Donovan now owned.

K
yle paced around the small waiting area of Jade Statements, Lianne’s business. She had set up shop in a third-story loft fronting Pioneer Square. Other than a discreetly lettered sign in Chinese and English on the door at the top of a flight of well-worn stairs, there was nothing to announce a commercial presence. Plainly, clients came to Lianne through word of mouth.

If potential clients weren’t sold on her talents to begin with, the waiting room decor wasn’t intended to impress the undecided. The walls were bare of framed certificates of expertise or self-congratulatory plaques listing awards won or civic virtue rewarded. The room was clean and furnished with a restrained, Pacific Rim flair. The small tables held Sotheby’s catalogs or auction catalogs in Chinese, rather than slick Hong Kong color portfolios touting jade collections that Lianne had appraised or bought or sold.

Yet if the harried receptionist was any sample, Jade Statements didn’t lack for clients. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing in the fifteen minutes that Kyle had been waiting for Lianne to appear. Most of the time the telephone conversation was in Chinese. The few times it had been in English, all he could overhear were descriptions of jade and repeated denials that the owner of the establishment knew anything about the discovery of the Jade Emperor’s Tomb.

Kyle looked at his watch. Seven o’clock. Lianne had told him to be here at six-thirty to pick her up for dinner at the Donovan penthouse. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his dark, casual slacks and made another round of the waiting room. Nothing new. He would give her three more minutes before he sent up a flare to Archer.

The telephone rang again. The receptionist picked it up, resettled his glasses on his nose, and barked into the receiver in English. Then he looked up and motioned to Kyle.

“For you.”

Kyle crossed the room in a few swift strides and took the phone. “Yes?”

“She there yet?” Archer asked.

“No. Maybe you better check with Uncle, see if something unexpected came up.”

“I did. Her car license was put into the computer as a southbound entry through the Pace Lane at three forty-eight.”

Kyle thought quickly, balancing distances with time of day. “She’s probably stuck in traffic on I-Five north of the Ship Canal Bridge.”

“That’s what I figured. I called the condo and told them you would be late and I’d be later.”

“I’ll save a bone for you to gnaw on.”

“If that’s all you save me, you’ll be gnawing on my knuckles.”

Smiling, Kyle handed back the phone, picked up an auction catalog, and began thumbing through it. The Burmese jade choker featured in the catalog was very beautiful, almost mesmerizing with its inner light. Its sale price was also mesmerizing: more than seven million dollars U.S. Burmese jade seemed overpriced to someone raised in a culture that valued clear gemstones such as rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds. Yet for Asians, no stone was as prized as jade.

Kyle looked at the glossy pages of the
Highly Important Jadeite Jewelry
catalog without a desire to possess any of
it. For him, beauty came from history, worth came from history, and rarity came from history. The rest was simply pretty.

The door opened just behind Kyle. He didn’t need to look up to know that Lianne had arrived. The clean scent of lilies, rain, and woman curled around him like a caress.

“Sorry,” she said tightly. “My appointment ran overtime.”

“No problem.” Kyle’s swift glance took in the sleek lines of her teal business suit, the no-nonsense clip holding her hair at the nape of her neck, and the tension around her eyes and mouth. “Long day?” he asked.

“Very.”

“We can call off tonight.”

For an instant Lianne was tempted. She was still raw from Daniel’s contempt. Worse than that was the fear that just kept growing the more she thought about the Neolithic blade, the pale Tang camel, and the jade burial suit. Though she had stayed several hours longer than she had planned, hoping to do a fast check of the inner vault and the burial shroud—or at the very least to open drawers to see if anything else was missing or replaced by less valuable goods—there had been no opportunity.

Every time she got close to a drawer, Daniel had loomed over her like a vulture. As much as she had wanted to inventory the vault, she hadn’t wanted to explain her actions to a man who watched her with hatred and contempt crackling in his black eyes. Nor could she open the room with the jade suit as long as he was there.

Grimly Lianne locked away in her mind what she couldn’t change and concentrated on the present. “Just give me a minute to comb my hair and put on some lipstick and I’ll be ready to go.”

Staying home wouldn’t do her any good. She had had more than three hours to think during the drive from Vancouver to Seattle. Plenty of time.

Too much.

The more she thought, the more certain she became that
something was horribly wrong. Then there was the fear she couldn’t deny and couldn’t ignore; Daniel either blamed her for the missing jade or was planning to put the blame on her.

Lianne’s stomach clenched as she fought back tension and a surly nausea that wouldn’t be banished. She had worked a lifetime to prove her worth to the family of Tang. Now she was being treated like a thief.

Little bastard girl.

Kyle watched the tight lines around Lianne’s mouth deepen as her mouth thinned. Her skin was pale, almost waxy. When she wasn’t gripping her black briefcase, her fingers trembled.

“Lianne?” he said, touching her shoulder.

She jerked.

“Why don’t we just get a quiet dinner at the Rain Lotus?” he asked. “You don’t look up to a Donovan family brawl.”

Her nostrils flared as she took a quick, deep breath, forcing the iron bands around her lungs to loosen and allow air in. “No. I had all the quiet I can take on the drive down from Vancouver.” And it hadn’t done her a bit of good. She turned to the receptionist. “Anything that can’t wait, Fred?”

“Mrs. Wong wants to know when you’ll be available to appraise her father’s collection for insurance purposes.”

“You have my calendar. Put her on it.”

“That’s the problem. Mr. Han—”

“Not again,” Lianne muttered.

“—has edited his collection and brought with him the pieces he wants to sell. Mr. Harold Tang, uh, requests—”

“Requests? Harry?” she interrupted. “That would be a first.”

“Yeah,” Fred said, sighing. His thin white hair was a stark contrast to his unlined face. His employment records said he was fifty-five. His face looked at least a decade younger. His eyes were much older. He had been a U.S. government liaison in Taiwan until he put in his twenty
years and decided there was more to life than bureaucracy. “However, the Tangs are your best clients, and they know it. Mr. Tang wants you to pick up the Han jades soon as possible. The Jade Trader has pieces ready to swap for whatever parts of his collection that Mr. Han wishes to deacquisition. They will be brought to you.”

“Deacquisition?” Kyle said. “Is that a word?”

“Only among museum types who have trouble with the truth,” Lianne said.

“Which is?”

“Some acquisitions just don’t hold up well over time. Or perhaps you find a better piece and you don’t want both. You keep the better one and—”

“Deacquisition the inferior one,” Kyle finished.

“Yes.”

“
Unload
has fewer syllables,” he pointed out.

Lianne smiled for the first time since she had left the Tang compound. “That’s why
unload
isn’t used in these circumstances. The more syllables the word has, the more important the object, and the more important, the bigger the price.”

“
Junk
is a one-syllable, four-letter word, is that it?”

“In my business, yes.” Lianne’s smile became laughter. She felt like giving Kyle a hug for no other reason than being glad to see him. He looked at her with approval rather than contempt.

Fred cleared his throat and looked up from the calendar he had opened. “Mr. Tang was a, um…”

“A pain in the ass?” Kyle suggested.

The receptionist tried not to smile. “You could say that. I couldn’t.” He looked at his boss. “Mr. Han is expecting you tomorrow at six o’clock.”

“In the morning?” she asked, startled.

“Evening.”

“But the ferries don’t run after—”

“Arrangements have been made for you to stay overnight,” Fred said quickly. “You’ll take the ferry to Orcas Island. A boat from the institute will pick you up, shuttle
you out to the institute, and take you back in the morning.”

Lianne’s amusement vanished. The memory of Seng’s greedy eyes crawled over her skin like insects. “No.”

“Mr. Tang said it was vital to—” Fred began.

“No,” she broke in, her voice flat. “Make another appointment, one that will allow me to go home for dinner.”

“I tried. Mr. Han’s calendar is filled.” Fred flipped a steno notebook open and referred to his notes, which were a mixture of Chinese ideographs and Western script. “He leaves for China the day after tomorrow, and has meetings tomorrow from five
A
.
M
. until eight
P
.
M
. He’ll try to join you sooner, but is confident of your ability to deliver the Tang jade, just as he—Han Seng—is confident that Mr. Wen Zhi Tang will choose appropriate pieces for the trade.”

Closing her eyes, Lianne thought hard about what Fred had told her. Obviously Harry and Seng were continuing to finesse the problem of taxes, money transfers, currency exchange, and the like by trading jade for jade. It wasn’t an uncommon thing. Dealers did it all the time. Trading up, trading down, trading sideways; none of that was taxed.

More important, if Seng was in meetings, he wouldn’t be rubbing up against her like a tomcat with a rash.

Even as Lianne told herself that Seng’s overbearing manner didn’t mean that he had a little forced sex in mind, she knew she didn’t want to be alone with him. Period.

“Which island is Seng on?” Kyle asked.

“It used to be called Barren Island,” Lianne said. “Now it’s called Farmer.”

Kyle knew the place. It was close to Jade Island, where he sometimes camped and once had almost died. “Guest of Farmer’s Institute of Asian Communications?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Not hard. Seng is one of the best-connected capitalists in mainland China. Farmer is a multibillionaire who is
slavering to get a foothold in a market that holds one-quarter of the world’s population.”

“How about Donovan International?” Lianne asked. “Is it ‘slavering’ for a piece of the Chinese market?”

“Interested, not slavering. We don’t handle electronics resale the way Farmer does. Why don’t I come with you?”

She blinked. “You want to see Seng’s jade rejects?”

“Dying to,” he said laconically. “We can tie up at the institute’s dock, you can do your thing with jade while I watch, listen, and learn, and then we can come back.”

“Minus a ferry?”

“I have a boat.”

“Oh.” Lianne thought about it, then smiled with a combination of relief and malice. The relief came from being able to placate Harry at a time when she was afraid she would need all the Tang goodwill she could muster. The malice came from the thought of Seng’s disappointment when she appraised his jade and walked off into the night on Kyle Donovan’s arm. “This is above and beyond the call of duty, even for a stuffed-elephant escort service.”

“Any excuse to get aboard the
Tomorrow.
”

“Is that your boat’s name,
Tomorrow?
”

“I called her that because I was always going to have more time to go fishing—”

“Tomorrow,” Lianne interrupted, smiling.

“Yeah. Then a few months ago, I realized that tomorrow would never come unless I made plans for it today.”

“You’re sure it isn’t too much trouble to take your boat?”

“To Farmer Island? Hell, no. I’ll have to check the tides, but if we leave early enough, we might be able to catch some fish for dinner along the way.”

The light in Kyle’s eyes and the sudden eagerness in his expression made him look years younger than thirty-one.

“You catch it, I’ll cook it,” Lianne said.

“How about cleaning it?”

“How about eating out?”

He snickered. “Go put on your lipstick. We’ll argue on the way to the condo.”

As soon as Lianne closed the door of the inner office behind her, Kyle turned to Fred.

“Confirm that Lianne will be at Farmer Island tomorrow at six,” Kyle said. “Don’t say anything about me, my boat, or not staying the night.”

Fred started to ask why, decided it was none of his business, and picked up the phone.

“Wait,” Lianne said as Kyle reached for the door to the Donovan condo. “I’m a mess.”

“Quit fussing,” he said as she smoothed her teal skirt and tugged at her jacket bottom in a futile attempt to get rid of wrinkles. “You’re gorgeous.”

“Oh, right,” she muttered. “You’d never guess I spent twelve hours in these clothes, seven of them sitting in a car.”

Ignoring her complaints, Kyle started to push the door open. “Susa will probably be wearing paint-crusted jeans and one of Archer’s old sweatshirts.”

“Susa isn’t here yet,” Honor said, pulling the door wide open and giving Kyle a big hug. “If you get any better-looking, I’ll have to buy you a guard dog.”

“You’re thinking of Archer,” Kyle said, returning his sister’s hug with interest. “He’s the one who needs a guard to protect him from women.”

Lianne looked at the tall, slender woman who had Kyle’s unusual eyes and a smile that could light up a cave. She was wearing a thick, soft, sage-green sweater that was just like the one Kyle had on, size included. Unlike him, the black pants she wore fit like another skin, showing off long, long legs beneath the baggy sweater. On Kyle, the sweater didn’t bag, but his shoulders were at least half again as wide as Honor’s.

“Lianne Blakely, this is Honor Donov—oops. Mallory. I’m having a hard time getting used to the new name.”

“Hi, Lianne,” Honor said. “The name isn’t that new, Kyle is just that slow.”