Read Donovans 01 - Amber Beach for Free Online Page A

better reason for chasing Kyle. A lot better.”
    Ellen considered her remaining options. Option, really. The truth. The only question was how little she could get by with—and how to shade it to the best advantage. But not too shady. Jake could be an abrupt bastard.
    “Kyle was involved with Lithuanian separatists,” she said. “We’re afraid he took the amber to them to finance some grassroots terrorism.”
    Jake hoped she was wrong, but he doubted it. Even so, it still didn’t explain why Uncle Sam cared.
    “Still not good enough,” he said. “When it comes to geopolitics, Lithuania is very small beer. So where’s the damage to Uncle?”
    She didn’t want to answer but she knew she was going to. “I told them you would get to the bottom line.”
    Jake waited.
    “Kyle’s driver added something to the shipment before he was killed,” Ellen said.
    “What was it?”
    “No answer.”
    “Don’t know or won’t tell?”
    “Same difference. No answer.”
    Jake tried another direction. “I don’t buy it. Kyle wasn’t stupid enough to get involved with nukes.”
    “If it was nukes, we wouldn’t be asking for anyone’s help. We’d be demanding it.”
    He didn’t disagree. “So it’s more than raw amber and less than nukes, but still enough to bring Uncle running. Must be damned valuable. I don’t think Kyle is that stupid.”
    “Idealism, fairy dust, and a piece of ass,” Ellen said succinctly. “Makes ’em stupid every time.”
    “Are you talking about Marju?” Jake asked.
    Ellen nodded. “She’s the granddaughter of a hard case left over from World War Two. He fought the Germans. He fought the Russians. He fought the Soviets. He fought his own countrymen when they wanted peace.”
    Jake bit back some searing words of disgust. He knew full well how a woman could lower a man’s IQ. “I told Kyle that Marju was more trouble than she was worth, but no, he was in love. He was going to be her bold knight in bright armor.”
    “I don’t know about bright, but he’s a bold son of a bitch. He killed the Lithuanian driver, got in the truck with the amber and headed off into the night.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “Tell me what you know and I won’t bore you with repetition,” Ellen shot back.
    “Where did you lose Kyle?”
    “We never had him to lose. He wasn’t ours.”
    Jake wondered whether to believe her, then decided it didn’t matter. “I managed to track him out of Kaliningrad and through Lithuania. I lost him when he crossed over into Russia.”
    “That’s where we lost him,” she agreed.
    “And if I said I’d tracked him to Tallinn . . .?” Jake asked sarcastically.
    “I’d be on the phone right now. We’re being chewed up one side and down the other to get results. Did you?”
    “Track him to Estonia? No. He went east, not north. I lost him about three hundred kilometers inside the Russian border. Before I could find him again, I started running into bureaucratic walls and some nonbureaucratic types with nasty guns. Officially, I was invited to leave the country and not come back.”
    “And unofficially?”
    “I was offered permanent residence in a three-by-six-foot slice of Mother Russia.”
    She shook her head. “Whatever happened to Byzantine subtlety?”
    “Same thing that happened to Byzantium. It lost.”
    “So about ten days ago you came back here to lick your wounds. And maybe to have a late-night look around Kyle’s cottage?” Ellen asked.
    Jake shrugged and said nothing. It was close enough to the truth to be uncomfortable.
    “Then you noticed one of those cards tacked up all over Anacortes asking for a fishing guide and signed by H. Donovan,” Ellen continued.
    He waited, watching her.
    “And then you turned on that Jake Mallory slow grin and got hired,” she concluded.
    “Half right. I got hired, which was more than your man did.”
    “How did you know about—hell,” she said in disgust at falling into his trap.
    “No harm