"The man and the woman go down in a tangle while someone keeps firing a pistol," April said. "Jake Mallory excuse me the second white guy rams a table down the throats of the five triad goons and cuts loose with a sawed-off shotgun. It chews up a wall and a good chunk of Yin's brother, Ling, who was too stupid to know the difference between cheap paneling and body armor. The white folks leave, taking the pearls and leaving the money unmarked, nonsequential hundred-dollar bills, by the way. The getaway car is driven by another big white guy. A blond. No plates on the car. No prints on anything at the cafe. No tracing the money. A clean job all around. You still with me, slick?"

He nodded casually, but he pulled Hannah closer. The fine trembling in her body made him angry. She had been through enough in the past week. She didn't need April's caustic summary of the few b.l.o.o.d.y moments in the Dragon Moon cafe.

"Okay," April said. "Uncle doesn't give a rat's fried green a.s.s about what happened in some dirtbag triad cave. Even if Ling dies, he wasn't that useful. We wanted to have a show-and-tell with Yin, but he grabbed the first westbound plane he could and headed straight for Hong Kong. The Chang family is going to find him for us."

"I'm happy for you," Archer said blandly.

"I want those pearls."

"Why?"

"That's not on the table."

"What is?"

"Hand over the pearls and Uncle will be deaf, dumb, and blind on the subject of what happened in the Dragon Moon this morning."

"As you pointed out," Archer said, "it was a clean job. Put something more on the table."

April's eyes narrowed to fierce slits. "One of these days, big boy, you're going up to your lips in fresh s.h.i.t."

"I've been there. That's why I'm here. If you want me to find those pearls for you, you'll have to pa.s.s the word that Hannah McGarry is off the table. No exceptions. Not even Uncle."

April raised sleek, black eyebrows. "The only way she's taken off the table is if she tells all she knows about making those d.a.m.ned pearls."

"I don't know anything," Hannah said curtly. "If you knew Len, you know how secretive he was."

"You were his wife."

"I was his color matcher. I wrote out the bills. I ordered supplies. That's it."

April started to say something cutting, then looked at Archer. He had the appearance of a man thinking hard and deep. "Think out loud, slick."

He shrugged. "I'm trying to imagine Len having the patience, the training, and the vision to breed and then clone a special strain of oysters."

"So?" April demanded.

Hannah was shaking her head. Patience and finicky techniques hadn't been Len's style.

"Not Len," Archer said simply. "As for cloning... no. He never even finished junior high. He wouldn't have had the first idea how to begin cloning anything. At least, he wouldn't have before the accident that put him on wheels for the rest of his life."

"He didn't develop patience, kindness, or a curious mind after the accident," Hannah said. "If anything, it was the opposite. He shut down, not opened up."

April didn't argue the point. Len's file had been brutally clear on his limitations as an agent and human being. "Ian?" she asked.

"I didn't know Len before his accident. After, he was a very clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d with the devil's own genius for making trouble. He could play people off against each other better than any diplomat. People didn't like him, but they d.a.m.n well paid attention to him. Including me."

Hannah made a weary gesture. "Len hadn't finished junior high, but that didn't mean he was stupid. Especially about what made people tick."

"Yeah," April agreed. "He had a h.e.l.l of a jugular instinct."

"From you, that's quite a compliment," Archer said.

Her smile showed a lot of neat white teeth. "I could say the same of you."

He turned back to Hannah. "Beyond the usual machinery needed for running a cultured-pearl operation, did you have any lab equipment at Pearl Cove?"

"Nothing different from anyone else in the business."

"You're certain?" April asked.

"I did all the buying. I would have noticed if we had exotic equipment."

"How about the experimental oysters?" Chang asked. "Did you see any difference in them?"

"Just the pearls they produced. There were normal in every other way. In fact, it was a problem."

"What do you mean?" April demanded.

"When you breed your own sh.e.l.l oysters you have to keep breeding back to wild sh.e.l.l or the strain goes bad and dies out. But when Len bred back, he lost the mutation that made rainbow pearls. At least, he must have. It's the only explanation for the fact that he let the strain go weak when it should have been easy to fix by breeding back."

April looked at Chang, who nodded. "Every pearl farmer knows that strains of captive sh.e.l.l go bad after a few years," he said. "We're working on the problem in Tahiti and Australia, but we're not making much progress." He turned to Hannah.

"So, whether induced or natural, it was a mutation that made the rainbow sh.e.l.l?"

Hannah shivered at the intensity in Chang's eyes. Like Len. Obsessed. "That's my guess. There's a huge natural color variation in oyster nacre. The black rainbows are just one more color on the spectrum. It would be more surprising if the mutation hadn't occurred."

"Did Len ever say how he got onto the rainbows?" Chang asked.

"He was chasing them when I first found him ten years ago," Archer said. "He was the reason I became interested in pearls."

"Chasing them how?" April said.

"Following rumors. Twisting informants. Buying secrets when he couldn't get them any other way."

"Where?" Chang asked.

"From the Gulf of Siam to the Arafura Sea. The riot that injured Len started when he trashed a smuggler who operated outside of Kupang. The man was a raider, not a pearl farmer. He didn't want to tell Len where he got the special black pearls." Archer shrugged. "My guess is he finally told. By the time I got to Len, the smuggler was dead and Len was d.a.m.ned close to it. But he had a smile on his face and a black rainbow clenched in his fist."

"That fits," Hannah said. "Sometimes, when Len got really drunk, he would scream that the b.l.o.o.d.y black rainbows had put him in a chair and the b.l.o.o.d.y things would put him right again."

"How?" April asked.

"He believed in miracles," Archer said simply.

April muttered something under her breath.

Chang thought about miracles and Len, and nodded slowly. "Pearls have a long tradition of being used as medicine. Even today, in India, ground pearls are used to cure rickets. Quite effective, I'm told."

"Paraplegia is a long way from rickets," April said sardonically.

Archer looked at her. "What would it take to convince you that Hannah doesn't know how to grow black rainbows?"

April glanced at Chang.

Suddenly he appeared both weary and impatient. "I told you. I told my father. The more I looked at it, the less I thought that Hannah knew Len's secrets. Not before he died. Not after. He didn't trust her, and she isn't clever or devious enough to hide a secret that big."

Hannah wondered if she had been insulted or complimented. Both, probably.

Silence stretched while April considered and rejected various scenarios. It didn't take her long to choose one. "Okay, slick. Here's the deal. Chang will set a price and both of you will sign over everything you own at Pearl Cove to a person I'll name. Lock, stock, and barrel. Stuff you know about and stuff you don't. I'll put out the word that you and Hannah are off the table."

"You'll do more than that," Archer said evenly. "You'll make it clear that anyone who goes after Hannah goes after Uncle Sam."

April didn't like it, but she accepted it. "Agreed."

"Hannah?" Archer asked.

"I'll sign over everything except the Black Trinity."

"So it's real," Chang said eagerly. "I'll buy it from you. Top price."

"It's real," Hannah said. "I don't have it to sell."

"Why not?"

"Len hid it. We've found other rainbows, but we haven't found the Black Trinity."

"Did he bury it somewhere in Pearl Cove?" Chang asked her.

"If his murderer didn't take it, it's still in Pearl Cove. Except for one trip to Roti just after we bought Pearl Cove, Len never left home."

Silently Archer noted that neither Chang nor April appeared surprised by the statement that Len had been murdered. Nor were they interested. But both of them were quietly making plans for a trip to Roti, which wasn't that far from Kupang, which might, just might, hold the secret of the black rainbows.

"Buried treasure," April said, her voice ripe with irritation. She looked at her watch, mentally reshuffling demands for the rest of the day. One of her agents was about to get a rude awakening and a ticket to one of Indonesia's less delectable seaside villages. "Fine, whatever, keep the Black Trinity if you dig it up. The rest is Uncle Sam's. That includes Len's computer." She looked straight at Archer.

He nodded. "You'll get it after we sign the papers."

"I'll have them to you in an hour," April said.

"And you'll put out the word right now," Archer said.

"You're pushing, slick."

"It's what I'm best at."

She smiled in spite of herself. "True fact. I'll put out the word."

"Done," Archer said, holding out his hand.

April hesitated, then gripped his hand hard. "Don't disappoint me on this one. I'd hate to cut off your c.o.c.k just when you're enjoying it again."

Twenty-seven.

One does not learn the skills involved At the drop of a hat.

It's the slow-learned skills in the depths of love That I'm working at.

Lady Nakatomi j.a.pAN, EIGHTH CENTURY.

BROOME, AUSTRALIA.

Though Hannah felt as if she had been away for months, Pearl Cove hadn't changed. The ocean was still a restless turquoise that was sculpted by wind. The sun still piled clouds upon clouds until the afternoon sky became a sullen quicksilver lid holding in the summer's tropical heat. Stripped down to shorts, tank top, and sandals, she and Archer looked very much at home on the sultry margin where salt water met land.

Hannah didn't feel at home. All the workers had left except Coco, who had stayed on to pack up some of the things in the main house. Hannah couldn't wait to leave Pearl Cove. Every time she looked at the beach, she saw Len there, his ruined legs drifting like pale ribbons on the water.

Shivering, she turned away from the sea.

Archer guessed her thoughts from the grim line of her mouth. "You should have stayed in Seattle. There's nothing in Pearl Cove for you but bad memories."

Then there was Christian Flynn, who had murdered Len. But Archer wasn't talking about that anymore. He was tired of arguing with Hannah. The time he had left with her could be measured in hours. He didn't want to spend them wrangling over the past that shadowed his present life like a curse echoing through time.

"I'm with you every step," Hannah said. "Until it's finished."

"Stubborn," he muttered.

"And you aren't?"

"I'm soft as the inside of an oyster."

"Soft?" She laughed and wanted to reach out to him, but she kept her hands clenched at her sides. If she asked, he would do... anything. If she didn't ask, he did nothing.

At your service.

She told herself that was what she wanted, all she could accept, that there was no future for her with Archer. Yet every time she repeated the words in her mind, time bent back on itself and she was standing on a street corner in Rio with no money, no hope, nothing hut night coming down on her like thunder. The flashback was so intense she could smell the cooking fires and hear the liquid syllables of Portuguese as prost.i.tutes called out to men. Staring out over the wild Australian land, she saw only cardboard shanties clawing up Rio's steep sides.

She wondered if she was finally going crazy. Smoke from city fires shimmered and twisted, and settled in a plume of red dust raised by Christian Flynn's car as he roared down Pearl Cove's road.

Savagely, futilely, Hannah wished that she had the power to change what would happen next. But she didn't. Like Len, Archer did what he pleased no matter what other people wanted.

With eyes the color of steel, Archer watched dust boil up as Flynn's car raced toward Pearl Cove.