“I’m letting go to get the net,” Kyle said. “Okay?”
Only then did Lianne realize that he had been wrapped around her like a lover, helping her to keep her balance while the fish moved from one side of the boat to the other. Heat shot through her, the same fire that had prowled through her all the long, restless night.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m braced.”
Unwillingly, he removed his arms. He stepped back just a little, steadied her, and reluctantly accepted that he had no more excuse to touch her. She was doing just fine on her own.
“Watch the weight,” Kyle said suddenly. “Stop reeling!”
Lianne stopped, looked, and saw that the weight was at the rod tip, stuck in the eye of the first line guide. The tip was only a few feet above the water. Four more feet of line was underneath. At the end of that was a hook and a very unhappy salmon.
From the corner of her eye she saw Kyle take a big black salmon net out of its holder. Slowly he wetted the net in the sea, watching the tired turning of the salmon just out of his reach. The fish was big, deep, its scales shimmering with life.
“He’s a beauty, twenty pounds if he’s an ounce,” Kyle said. “When I tell you to, back up and keep your—”
“Rod tip up,” Lianne finished with a breathless laugh. “I have that part memorized.”
“Don’t stumble on the engine cover when you back up.”
“Are you going to net my fish or order me around?”
“I’m an older brother. I can do both at the same time.”
“Kyle, hurry up,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to lose it!”
“You won’t. Back up some more. A little more. Keep going. Good!”
A quick swoop and flex of Kyle’s arms, a rush of seawater pouring through the net, and the fish was aboard.
Lianne made a husky sound and dropped to her knees, reaching for the salmon. It was blue-black on top and burning silver underneath. Except for the net, the fish was free. It had thrown the hook the instant the pressure of the line was off.
She touched the salmon. It was as cold and elemental as the ocean itself.
“You aren’t going to go all sentimental on me, are you?” Kyle asked warily.
Lianne didn’t say anything, just looked at the fish.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I had fresh salmon last night. I’ll throw it back.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“I thought you were having a round of fisherman’s, er, fishersan’s regret.”
Lianne licked her lips. “Actually, I was thinking of how many ways I know to prepare salmon.”
“You sure? You looked—”
“I’m sure,” she cut in. “When I’m in Vancouver or Hong Kong, I go to restaurants where the fish are swimming in a tank. You pick out your dinner and it’s killed and cleaned while you watch. That’s how you know the fish is fresh. As for this salmon, the only regret I have is that I can’t eat the whole thing right now, while it’s so shiny and fresh and beautiful.”
He glanced at his watch. “If we hurry, we can eat a hunk of it before we go see Seng.”
“What are we waiting for? Hand me the cosh.”
“I can do it.”
“And I can learn.”
“Cleaning, too?”
She sighed. “Yeah, cleaning, too.”
“You’re in luck. Salmon are a lot easier to clean than rockfish.”
Kyle watched Lianne dispatch the salmon with a few quick strokes of the cosh. He wished that all of life’s little problems could be solved so neatly. But they couldn’t.
Even so, the thought of taking a cosh to the lecherous Mr. Han Seng had real appeal.
Chapter 14
The guard at the Institute of Asian Communications dock was unarmed, polite, and immovable until an invitation came from Han Seng for the Tomorrow to tie up. Then the guard escorted them to the executive pavilion, rang the bell, and waited for someone to come and take the visitors off his hands.
Gleaming in the twilight, the pavilion was a surprisingly successful combination of glass walls, cedar pillars, and Oriental rooflines. The evergreen-scented air was clean and crisp, with a delicious tang of ocean. The view to the south was two hundred degrees of salt water, complete with commercial shipping lanes, navigation buoys, pleasure craft, and rugged, fir-covered islands. The closest islands were uninhabited; Jade Island was one of them. Other than passing ships and a few houses on the shores of distant islands, little light showed except the moon rising through slate-colored clouds.
“Nice view,” Kyle said, resettling a heavy carton of jade in his arms.
The guard didn’t answer.
Neither did Lianne. She was wondering just where Seng was throwing his party. The executive pavilion had a few lights on. So did another part of the institute’s complex, but there was none of the noise that she had expected. Either the soundproofing was as spectacular as the view or the party was a dud.
A middle-aged man whose clothes weren’t up to the expensive standards of the institute cracked the pavilion’s heavy cedar door and peered out. As the door swung fully open, the smell of Chinese tobacco rolled over Kyle and Lianne. There was another man sitting ten feet inside the door, a younger man, Chinese, unsmiling. Even though his clothes were flamboyantly expensive, the tailor hadn’t been able to conceal the cannon under the man’s left arm.
“Entry here is pleasure,” the middle-aged man said in barely recognizable English. “I to Mr. Han are cousin.”
Lianne answered in Mandarin. “Thank you. There is no need to disturb Mr. Han. I know he is very busy tonight and we are early in any case. Just take us to the room where he has set out his jade for me to see.”
“No possibly,” the man said in English, turning away. “Stay.”
Lianne tried Cantonese, but he just kept walking.
The other man, the one with the badly concealed gun, didn’t move from his chair. He simply watched them with black, unflinching eyes.
“No common language with the cousin?” Kyle asked Lianne quietly.
“Several,” she said in a clipped tone. “That’s Han Ju, Han Seng’s shirttail cousin and personal assistant. Ju speaks Mandarin and understands Cantonese. He’s simply being rude.”
“Does that mean Seng isn’t thrilled that you came on your own boat with a colleague?”
“Probably.”
“Tough.”
Lianne glanced up at Kyle. The open pleasure he had shown in her and the salmon was gone. Now his expression was shuttered, measuring everything and everyone with a probing intelligence that made no allowances for human frailty. He seemed older, harder, colder. Like Archer, who had been the only Donovan not to accept her with real warmth last night.
“You look like your brother,” she said.
“Archer?”
“Yes.”
“Hardly. He’s drop-dead handsome.”
“And you aren’t?” Lianne retorted before she could think better of it.
Kyle gave her an amused, sideways glance. “No, I’m not. Trust me on this. I have the word of dozens of women on it.”
“That’s what comes of hanging around the Braille Institute,” Lianne muttered, shifting the small box she carried. “Not handsome? What a crock. Your smile would stop traffic. Archer’s would stop clocks.”
“You didn’t like him.”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to like somebody who doesn’t like you.”
“It takes time for him to warm up.”
“It would take a blowtorch.”
A burst of Chinese kept Kyle from having to answer. Seng came striding up to the pavilion entrance wearing a scarlet brocade smoking jacket, a Rolex Oyster, a world-class jade ring, Gucci loafers, and black silk slacks. He was combed, buffed, and perfumed like a gambler or a bridegroom.
Lianne took one look and was grateful to the soles of her feet for Kyle’s presence. Unconsciously she moved closer to him, so close she was standing hip to thigh.
“The complete party animal,” Kyle said under his breath.
“You’re half right,” she said quietly.
“Animal?”
“I’m afraid so.” It was the simple truth. Part of Lianne was afraid of Han Seng. She knew that he was a very important contact for the Tang family. If she insulted him, Harry would be furious.
And if Seng made a hard pass at her, she would insult him and then some.
A curt order from Seng had his assistant taking the box from Lianne. The bodyguard stayed where he was, but he no longer watched Kyle with predatory interest.
Chattering in Chinese, Seng grabbed Lianne’s arm and started down the hall without so much as a look in Kyle’s direction. Kyle didn’t mind the rudeness for himself, but Seng’s grip on Lianne was hard enough to leave dents.
Just as Kyle started after them, she stumbled against Seng and caught herself in a flurry of hands and elbows. He made a whooshing sound, grabbed his stomach, and bent over. With a smooth motion Lianne recovered her balance and stepped beyond Seng’s reach.
Before the bodyguard could get off his chair or Seng could straighten up, Kyle was standing between Seng and Lianne and she was apologizing in rapid Chinese for her clumsiness. Seng was too busy trying to breathe to listen.
“While the boss is gasping and flopping like a beached fish, maybe his assistant wouldn’t mind showing us where the jade rejects are,” Kyle said. “This carton is getting heavy.”
Seng’s cousin gave Kyle a glittering black look that suggested the man understood English a lot better than he spoke it. Seng barked something and gestured to Kyle.
“He wants you and his assistant to take the jade to Seng’s suite. Then you’re to wait aboard your boat.”
“What about you?”
“Seng will personally show me his jades in the main conference room. He has everything set up.”
“Where’s this party of his?”
“Good question. I don’t have an answer.”
“Do you want me to wait on the boat?”
“No,” Lianne said distinctly. “It’s been a long few days. Very long. I want to wrap this up and go home.”
“Sounds good to me. This way.”
Kyle started down the hall as though the Hans and their bodyguard didn’t exist.
“Where are we going?” Lianne asked.
“To the conference room.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Down the hall, turn left, third room on your right. Move it, sweetheart. The host is hell-bent on his own agenda, but I don’t think he’s prepared to be nasty about it.”
Lianne didn’t need to ask what Seng’s agenda was. She had a very good idea. Too good. Despite all cultural bias, subtlety just wasn’t Seng’s long suit. It wasn’t even his short one. He had made it quite clear that she was expected to lick his feet and any other part of his anatomy he generously bared to her.
Seng gave curt orders to his assistant, told Lianne with equal curtness that he had other matters to attend to, and turned on his heel. Lianne breathed a silent thanks that Seng was leaving and started after Kyle. Ju hurried to join them.
“How do you know the institute’s layout?” Lianne asked when she caught up with Kyle.
“Farmer is big on hands-across-the-water functions. One way or another, the Donovans have come to lots of IAC conferences here in the past four years. Dad even rated the executive pavilion. That was when we had more clout in China than Farmer did. SunCo was courting us at the time.”
“What happened?”
“Archer talked The Donovan out of an exclusive alliance with SunCo.”
“Why? Wasn’t the corporate mix right?”
Kyle was very aware of the assistant’s footsteps behind them, and the fact that Han Ju’s English was much better than he wanted his guests to believe. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Did you ask?”
“You met Archer, what do you think?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“There’s the conference room,” was all Kyle said. “The one with the solid gold lotus on the door.”
Lianne beat the assistant to the door, opened it, and walked in. On a long, massive conference table, pieces of jade gleamed beneath muted overhead lights. An inventory sheet listing the number and characteristics of each artifact also lay on the table.
“Put the carton over there,” she said to Kyle, gesturing to the table. Then she repeated the order in Mandarin.
Impassively, Seng’s assistant put the second carton on the table.
“Do you want me to open them for you?” Kyle asked. The heavy twine and white paper wrapping, complete with many red wax seals, had intrigued him from the moment he saw Lianne carrying the boxes down to his dock.
“No,” Lianne said. “The wrapping is Wen’s way of assuring that what someone takes out at this end is what he packed in the Tang vault.”
“Trusting soul.”
She shrugged. “He’s no worse than others I’ve worked with.”
“I meant you. How do you know what’s in the boxes?”
“It’s not necessary for me to know,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “But in this case, I know several of the pieces that will be offered in trade. Joe left instructions that I give a written appraisal of those items before they were packed.”
“What about the rest of them?”
“I wasn’t asked to appraise them.”
“Odd.”
“Chinese methods of doing business often seem odd to Americans.”
Kyle looked at the boxes. There was no way to get into them without destroying at least one of the many red seals. It was an ancient, low-tech, highly effective way to prevent tampering.
“I’ll need more light to examine the jades,” Lianne told Kyle as she set her shoulder bag on the table.
“It is not necessary,” Han Ju said in blunt Mandarin. “All is as agreed. The honorable Han Seng merely wished to display for you the quality of the jades. If you would wait, he will generously share his knowledge of the finer points of appreciation with you.”
“I am flattered,” she said indifferently, “but like the honorable Han Seng, I am caught in many conflicting demands.” Then, in English: “Do you see any light switches?”
Kyle went over to a wall panel that would have looked right at home on a rocket ship and dialed up the illumination. The result was like sunrise in the tropics—quick, hard, and eye-hurting bright.
“Enough?” he asked Lianne blandly.
“I should have brought my bathing suit,” she said, pulling out a pen and a tablet from her bag. “I could tan while I work.”
“I’ll dial down the ultraviolet. How about music?” Kyle suggested, turning back to the panel. “Classical, Celtic, Chinese opera, country, blues, New Age, classic rock, reggae, rap, European opera. Or natural sounds. Rain, thunder, surf, river, more birds than Audubon, jungle at dawn.”
“Silence works for me.”
“Tropic scents, then? Orchids and waterfalls?” Kyle offered. “Heat and sand from the eternal desert? Noon in the jungle? Afternoon in a field of flowers? Twilight in an evergreen forest with snow coming on? Good old salt air?”
Lianne made a noise that could have meant anything and bent over the first piece of jade. The closer she looked at it, the less she was impressed by what she saw.
“If the neutral walls don’t appeal,” Kyle said, “I can give you everything from murals of Xi’an and the Forbidden City to Manhattan at night and the Rocky Mountains at any time. If you’re feeling academic, I can dial in paintings from every museum on earth. If you’re feeling kickback, there are movie posters and scenic wallpaper. If you’re feeling kick-butt, there’s a selection of sports clips from every country in the world, including Mongolian goat roping.”
Lianne glanced away from the jade. “What are you, a tour guide?”
“I’ve hardly begun.”
Beneath Ju’s black gaze, Kyle strolled over to Lianne, lea
ned his hip on an Australian jarrah-wood conference table the size of an aircraft carrier, and crossed his arms on his chest.
“If we were real guests instead of peons,” he drawled, “we’d be wearing lapel pins that would instruct the computer in each room to change the lighting, temperature, music, fragrance, and decor according to our preprogrammed preferences.”
“What if our preferences didn’t agree and we were in the same room?” she asked.
“Then we’d find out who’s a VIP and who’s butt-wipe. The highest-ranking lapel pin rules the computer.” Kyle turned to Seng’s assistant. “Good-bye, Han Ju. If we need anything, you’ll know as soon as we do.”
The man looked at Kyle for a long count of three, then walked out of the room. The door closed softly behind him.
Kyle leaned down until his lips were very close to Lianne’s ear. “Don’t do or say anything you wouldn’t in Han Seng’s presence. The place is wired and taped.”
Lianne’s eyes widened but she didn’t say a word. She didn’t even nod. She simply went back to the jades. The sooner she was out of Farmer’s high-tech playpen and away from Han Seng, the happier she would be.
As she bent over the first jade again, she wondered if pepper spray would put the guard out of commission before he could draw his gun and shoot. Somehow she doubted it.
“Did you hear me?” Kyle breathed into Lianne’s ear.
She nodded, then jerked slightly when she felt the faint, brushing warmth of his fingertips as he tucked in the strand of hair that insisted on coming free of her bone hair clip.
“I’m going to have to get a better barrette,” Lianne said.
“Not on my account.”
“You’re distracting me.”
“Should I apologize?”
“Only if you’re sincere,” she retorted.
He laughed.
Lianne gathered her fragmenting thoughts and concentrated on the jades Seng was offering in trade to the Tangs. Although the light looked good, she had a more reliable index than visual memory. She reached over to her purse, took out several examples of jade whose color was known to her, and set them on the table to see what the lighting did to them.