Part 42 (1/2)

”Not wildly. I'm just, um, a morning person.”

”It's hardly morning,” Hannah said. ”Unless you think that four-” Her words stopped abruptly. She rubbed her eyes and looked again at the kitchen clock. ”Six a.m.? The clock in my room said four.”

”Want some coffee?” Lianne asked, changing the subject.

It didn't work.

”Six o'clock,” Hannah said, appalled. ”Ruddy h.e.l.l! I'm supposed to be ”

”He's here. Ready?”

Both women jumped when the cell phone spoke.

”That's Ar ” Hannah began.

”Quiet!” Lianne interrupted in a fierce, low voice. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the phone. ”Ready.”

”Yin is alone at a table about fifteen feet from the street entrance. There's a box big enough to hold the pearls sitting in front of him.”

”Thank G.o.d.”

Archer decided not to mention the table of young toughs sitting between Yin and the front door. Despite their trendy Hong Kong clothes heavy on colorful silk s.h.i.+rts and black leather jackets the men might have been just day laborers sitting around drinking tea until it was time to go to work.

And Archer might have been Tinkerbell.

”Get ready to tell Yin a few things,” Archer said into the cell phone. ”One: I have one hundred and twenty-five thousand in cash for the pearls. Two: I'm not alone. Three: If his hands go under the table, he's a dead man. Four: If anyone else's hands go under the table, he's a dead man. Five: He should pa.s.s the word to anyone who might get twitchy. Got that?”

”Yes.”

”Go.”

When Lianne started speaking Chinese, Hannah knew where Archer was. Spinning around, she ran to her room.

There she dressed in a frenzy, yanking on her jeans, jamming her nightgown Archer's silk s.h.i.+rt inside the waistband of her jeans, kicking into her sandals. Still b.u.t.toning the jeans, she bolted for the front door. She didn't even notice the cold rain as she ran flat out toward the Dragon Moon. Fury and fear drove her flying feet. Even she couldn't have said which goaded her more anger at being shut out or the memory of her dream, Archer bleeding and dying in horrible pain.

Poised for whatever might happen, Archer waited, watching Yin while Lianne spoke in rapid Chinese. Yin listened impa.s.sively, but he was looking around, trying to spot anyone who might be on Archer's side. No one was sitting in the dreary cafe but Red Phoenix men.

The front door to Archer's right opened, setting small bells to jingling. He spotted Jake immediately.

”s.h.i.+t.”

”You're welcome,” Jake said.

He took a position that put him between Archer and the table where five gang members drank tea. It wasn't the seat that Jake would have preferred, for it didn't command a view of the whole cafe. But it was the best he could do when it came to getting between Archer and the obvious trouble waiting to happen.

Yin started explaining to the five men what was expected of them.

Without taking his eyes from the gang members, Jake worked the pump on the concealed shotgun. The distinctive rack-rack of a double-barreled pump shotgun being readied to fire was a lot more effective than any verbal warnings or orders to attack that Yin might be relaying.

Five pairs of hands came out onto the tabletop. Though the nails were too long for Western taste, they were clean and nicely buffed. Jake watched them, knowing that whatever the triad members might have on their mind, as long as their hands were still, they couldn't do anything but fume. At a gesture from him, the men scooted together until they sat in a semicircle, facing him across the circular table.

Archer beckoned Yin over to a table closer to the front door.

That seat still left part of the cafe in a blind spot that neither he nor Jake could cover, but there was nothing to be done for it.

Reluctantly Yin sat still, his hands in plain sight, the box between them. Archer sat down, keeping Yin between him and the table of men. Close up, Yin's black eye and the bruised, oozing gash on his chin looked painful, but Archer didn't waste any sympathy on the man. Triad life was almost as tough on its members as it was on the community of immigrants that were the triad's prey.

Watching Yin every moment, Archer picked up the cell phone and spoke into it. ”Tell him if he answers my questions, I'll pay him another twenty thousand in cash, right now. If I find out later that he lied, I'll take it out on the Red Phoenix Triad and let them worry about evening the score with him. Then tell him to translate my message for his friends.”

”Hannah got up early,” Lianne said. ”She ”

”Later,” Archer interrupted curtly. ”I've got the Red Phoenix boys on the front burner right now. Talk to Yin.”

Archer didn't doubt that Lianne's translation would be accurate, but it was nice to see Yin's pallor increase and his glance flick nervously toward the table of men who were pretending to sit casually under Jake's unflinching eyes. Carefully Yin handed the phone back to Archer and nodded several times to indicate that he understood.

When Yin was finished speaking, so did the other men in the room. They looked at Yin speculatively, wondering how much bad luck he could bring down on the triad that was their livelihood, their brotherhood, and their home. One of the five men looked right at Archer and said, ”Donovan.”

He smiled like a wolf and nodded curtly. The Red Phoenix Triad and the Donovans had clashed before, indirectly. Archer had won.

Knowing that Yin would feel better if he saw money on the table, Archer rapidly counted out a stack of well-used one-hundred-dollar bills. Yin's dark eyes widened and his lips twitched as he kept his own tally. His eyes widened with simple avarice when the count went above one hundred thousand. Not until the stack of bills totaled one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars did Archer put the much-reduced wad of cash in his back jeans pocket. When his hand came into view again, the nine-millimeter was in it. The safety was off. The muzzle was pointed right at Yin's heart.

”Your turn,” Archer said, gesturing to the cheap wooden box and then to the table in front of him. ”Open the box and hand it over slow and easy.”

Yin was working on the box before the translation came through the cell phone. He took off the thick, dirty rubber band and opened the lid wide on its hinges. Then he slowly pushed the box toward Archer.

Without taking his eyes off Yin, Archer ran his fingertips over the contents. Cool, smooth, round, heavy. He picked one pearl at random and brought it into his line of sight.

Black rainbows gleamed.

”The pearls are right,” Archer said into the phone. ”Tell him to put the rubberbands back around the box and give it back to me.”

While Yin worked, Archer pulled money out of his back pocket. As soon as Yin pushed the securely wrapped box back across the table, Archer pulled another thick stack of cash from his jacket pocket.

Yin's eyes widened with simple greed. Archer fanned ten hundred-dollar bills on the table. The wad in his hand said that there was more where that came from. A lot more. Yin looked at the money hungrily as Archer picked up the cell phone.

”Ask Yin where he got the pearls,” he said to Lianne.

Then he held the phone so that the other man could hear. As he listened, Yin's expression s.h.i.+fted, then shut down. He shook his head.

Archer added ten more bills to the fan. Two thousand dollars. Three thousand. Ten thousand.

Twenty thousand.

Thirty.

Fifty.