See How She Dies

  Deftly, she wiggled away and as her eyes met those of Zach, she twisted her hand around and turned the blade on herself. “You know, Zachary,” she said as she plunged the knife into her abdomen. “You always were the smart one. My best and brightest.”

  “No!”

  Zach wrestled the knife free and blood smeared his hands, pooling red through Eunice’s jogging suit.

  “Oh, God, why?” he cried as the door burst open and thundering footsteps pounded through the house. “Police!” one hoarse voice cried. “Drop your weapons!”

  Usually, Anthony Polidori didn’t like to be awakened from sleep, but when the informant called and told him that Eunice Danvers Smythe had been taken to the hospital and was charged with the kidnapping of London Danvers, Anthony thanked the man for his information. Too bad Eunice had been the culprit.

  He felt more than a little sense of guilt thinking of her, for he knew that she’d fallen in love with him thirty-five years before. He’d cared for her, yes, but he hadn’t loved her with the same passion she’d felt for him, and, in truth, he’d only bedded her to get back at Witt. Eunice had guessed his reasons. They’d been kindred spirits in that sense, enjoying each other at Witt’s expense.

  The bastard.

  So Eunice had decided to destroy Witt’s life. Although for years his family had been blamed for the deed, Anthony respected her gall. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hasty to drop her once Witt had discovered their affair.

  He climbed out of his bed and found a striped robe that was worn in the sleeves and tattered at the hem. His wife had bought it for him nearly half a century before and though it was now a rag, he had never had the heart to get rid of it.

  He wondered if Mario was home or if he was with some woman—not that it mattered. Shuffling down the tiled hallway, he thought back over his life and was surprised that the deep-seated hatred he’d felt for the Danvers family had seemed to dim over the years.

  He rapped on the door and waited. Nothing. Knocking harder, he scowled, then tried the knob. It was locked. “Mario, son, open up.”

  He heard a groggy response.

  “Come, open the door.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Growling and kicking things in his way, Mario finally appeared, his hair wild, his beard dark “Wha—?”

  “We need to talk?”

  “Are you out of your mind? It’s four in the morning!”

  “Get up and come downstairs.”

  Mario rubbed a hand over his face and yawned. As he stretched, his back popped. “Let me get my cigarettes and slippers,” he said, then turning, tripped over something else and swore under his breath.

  The boy would never grow up.

  Anthony made his way downstairs and had uncorked a bottle of champagne by the time his only son stumbled into the kitchen. “What the hell’s going on?” Mario said. He rubbed his teeth with his tongue and shuddered.

  “We’re celebrating.”

  “Shit, couldn’t it have waited until a decent hour—you know, six or seven in the morning?”

  “No. And this is no time for sarcasm.”

  “Whatever you say, Pop.” Mario clicked a lighter to the end of his cigarette. “Okay, I’m dyin’ to know. What’s up?”

  “Several things. Come, come.” Anthony patted the arm of his chair and indicated that Mario should sit on it as he had when he was a boy. Spewing smoke from the corner of his mouth, he obliged the old man. “Good. Here—” Anthony held a glass to his son; then, after Mario had taken the crystal goblet, touched the rim of his to his son’s. “To the future.”

  “Yeah. Right. The future.” Mario, thinking the old man had really lost it and was one step away from the loony bin, began to drink, but his father’s hand stayed him. “And to the end of the feud.”

  “Christ!”

  “All right. To God as well,” Anthony said magnanimously.

  “What’re you talking about? The fucking feud is over? How can that be? You crack out the best champagne and just make some sort of statement that it’s over and all the shit that’s gone on for nearly a hundred years is forgotten? Just like that?” Mario snapped his fingers loudly. Then he rubbed his eyes. “I’m dreaming. That’s what this is—some kind of nightmare.”

  “There’s one more thing we’re celebrating.”

  “Oh, great. What’s that?”

  “Your marriage.”

  “Now I know I’m dreaming.”

  “No, Mario. It’s time. You need a wife. I need grandchildren. We have to think of the future and not the past. You’ll be married and have children and we will all be happy.”

  “Oh, sure, right. What happened tonight, eh?” Mario asked. “When I went to bed everything was the same and now you’re dragging me out of bed, talking like a fortune-teller. Did you get knocked over the head or what?”

  Anthony ignored his son’s ravings and clicked his glass yet again to the rim of Mario’s. There were many possibilities for a wife for his son and he hadn’t ruled out Adria Nash—London Danvers—as a potential candidate. She was beautiful and rich and smart. Who could ask for anything more from a daughter-in-law? Of course there was the chance she wouldn’t want him. Well, there were other eligible young women. Fertile women, beautiful, but not necessarily as smart as this London.

  “There’s only one woman I’ve ever wanted to marry,” Mario said, suddenly sober, and Anthony had to tamp down his old feelings of disgust. “Trisha.”

  Gritting his teeth, the old man swallowed his last bit of false pride. “I won’t stand in your way.” Then, he took a sip of his champagne, stared up at his son’s disbelieving face and laughed, long and hearty, as he hadn’t laughed in years. He patted Mario on the knee with a fondness that he’d forgotten—a fondness he’d once felt when his wife was still alive, and Mario was four or five and hardly any trouble at all. “Drink up. Enjoy. And let me tell you what happened tonight….”

  Zach was grim as they walked out of the hospital near downtown Portland. He’d watched without a word as the police, Eunice’s lawyer, and Nelson had arrived, all arguing and shouting. Jason had shown up and his mood had been sour. Trisha, when she’d deigned to appear—in a full-length ermine coat, no less—had breezed past Adria and said to Zach, “Now look what you’ve done.”

  A crowd of reporters was clustered near the door. Voices shouted over one another, trying to capture her attention.

  “Ms. Nash? Is it true that you’ve finally proven yourself to be London Danvers?”

  “It looks that way, yes.”

  “How does it feel to finally know your natural family?”

  “I haven’t sorted it all out yet.” She felt odd about it all. Though Eunice was expected to live, she was still in the hospital under police guard.

  “You’re inheriting a great deal of money, aren’t you? What are your plans?”

  “I don’t have any yet.”

  Zach looked about to step in, but Adria placed a hand on his arm. “Look,” she said, speaking into the microphones thrust in her direction. “I’m very tired right now. Of course I’m glad to know that I’m London,” she said, refusing to meet Zach’s eyes, refusing to listen to the pain in her heart, knowing that he was her half-brother, “and I’ve no immediate plans for the future.”

  “Will you move to Portland permanently?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about the charges pending against Eunice Smythe?”

  “I can’t comment on them.”

  “Is it true she attacked you in that motel in Estacada?”

  “I have nothing more to say at this time.”

  “But now that you’re one of the wealthiest women in the state, surely you—”

  “Excuse me.”

  She shouldered her way through the crowd and Zach was with her every step of the way. She couldn’t meet his eyes, didn’t want to think about her future. For nearly a year she’d thought that if she could prove that she was London, if she could find her real family, her life would change
for the better. She could make a difference. She’d fantasized about the money, of course, and seen herself as a shrewd businesswoman who would sit on the boards of charities as well as handle the affairs of Danvers International. Witt Danvers’s little lost princess. The treasure he’d loved above all else, including his other children.

  She’d been a fool. A silly fool with girlish dreams.

  And she hadn’t planned on falling in love with Zachary.

  They climbed into his Jeep and Zachary nosed the Cherokee into the street. Half a dozen cars followed his lead. “Great,” he muttered, eyeing the rearview mirror. “Just great.” He glanced at Adria. She was dead-tired, leaning against the window, staring at him with eyes that seemed to see straight to his soul. “They’ll be at the hotel,” he said, turning abruptly and watching the headlights follow him.

  He drove crazily, changing lanes at the last minute and turning corners abruptly. She sensed the change in direction, saw the towering lights of downtown fade behind them.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace private.”

  “Just the two of us?”

  He hesitated, his fingers curling over the steering wheel until his knuckles showed white, then nodded curtly. Something inside her—something she’d rather not acknowledge—began to awaken. “Just the two of us.”

  Jack Logan was too old to be driving like a wild man, chasing a lunatic in a Jeep. He was tired and grumpy and if it wasn’t for the bottle of Irish whiskey that kept him going, he would have called Jason Danvers and told him to follow his own damned family. But he’d been paid and paid well and he figured that later he could sleep all day if he wanted to.

  Retirement hadn’t settled well with him; he missed the action and excitement of the department. True, his arthritis was bad enough to make him limp and he wasn’t as quick as he used to be, but his mind was sharp and he could spend only so much time gardening or fiddling at the workbench his daughter, Risa, had insisted was so therapeutic. No, he missed the sport of it all, the feeling alive, and hated the notion that just because he’d reached a certain age, he’d been put out to pasture.

  So he kept taking Danvers’s money, not so much to supplement his social security and pension, but to keep his blood pumping, to make him feel alive again. He followed the Jeep, hanging back, turning off at different streets, nearly losing the rig several times, but always finding it again.

  He had an uncanny sense about these things and he guessed where the rig was heading in its crazy, zigzagging course that always led north, toward the interstate bridge, toward the huge body of water separating the southern boundary of Washington from Oregon: the Columbia River and the marina where the Danvers yacht was berthed.

  The Jeep turned off the interstate and Logan continued on driving, across the bridge, barely noticing the wide black abyss that was the Columbia. On the far side of the river, in Vancouver, just over the Washington border, he turned his car around and headed back to the freeway, this time heading south. To celebrate, he took a little nip from his bottle and drove unerringly back to the marina. Flashing his outdated badge at the guard manning the gate, he drove quietly into the parking lot and saw Zachary’s Jeep tucked in a darkened space.

  Bingo.

  “You still got it, Logan,” he told himself, and uncapped his bottle yet again before taking a long swallow that warmed the pit of his stomach and spread through his blood. He didn’t have a cell phone, but he knew there was a Safeway store nearby with a couple of phone booths near the front doors. He’d let Jason sweat awhile, have himself a couple of drinks at a topless bar not all that far away, then call the bastard. While he was at it, he might just ask for a raise. Hell, he deserved it.

  25

  The smell of the river rose off the water and tickled Adria’s nostrils as she walked along the wooden pier that rimmed the dark water. Her footsteps echoed loudly over the rush of the river and the wind that raced down the gorge from the east. Expensive boats, moored at the marina, lay empty, their masts spindly, their sails furled, their engines silent as they undulated with the ever-shifting water.

  She let Zachary help her onto the Danvers yacht, a gleaming vessel that, she supposed, was now partially hers. It was all such a waste, she thought, considering Eunice and her hatred of Katherine. Adria didn’t doubt that Eunice had not only terrorized her, but killed Kat and Ginny Slade, despite Nelson’s vehement claims otherwise.

  She glanced at Zachary. Tall. Rugged. Troubled. The kind of brooding, dark man she should run from. She was alone with him for what was to be the last time in her life. It just had to be.

  The wind tugged at her hair and she told herself this was the price she had to pay for the truth. She’d gotten everything she wanted, and more than she’d bargained for. A heavy weight had settled deep in her heart and she thought about her future—so bright to the outside world, so barren and bleak without Zach’s love.

  Don’t even go there. Get over it, for crying out loud. It’s not life-or-death. Just heartache. You’ll live.

  “Drink?” he asked, once they climbed down a short staircase and entered the main salon, a long room decorated in gleaming teak and brass.

  “Why not?” She dropped onto a navy blue sofa that was attached to the wall. What would one drink hurt? It had been a long couple of weeks and she was dead tired, but too wound up to fall asleep. She watched him sort through the bottles and felt a pain slice through her heart.

  He’s forbidden.

  Off limits. Way off limits.

  “What do you want?”

  How could he act like nothing was wrong? “That’s the problem,” she admitted. “I have no idea what I want.”

  “How about a glass of brandy?”

  “I wasn’t talking about the drink.”

  “I know, but I thought we should keep the conversation light.”

  “Impossible, considering.” She leaned back against the cushions.

  “Listen, the way I see it, you’ve got it all, London—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “It’s your name. The one you worked hard to have pinned to you. You’d better get used to it.”

  “I know.” She flung herself to her feet and scowled. “But not from you, okay? Just…not from you.”

  He paused, poured the drinks, and shook his head.

  “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  He walked across the salon and stopped so close to her she could feel his heat. Tall. Rugged. Unshaven. His jeans riding low on his hips. Like a damned cowboy.

  He handed her a glass and their fingers brushed for a split second, but Adria felt it. That same electricity that seemed to sizzle whenever her skin touched his.

  Damning the fates, she sipped, scowled as the liquor hit the back of her throat, then tossed back the whole damned drink. Maybe the alcohol would dull her senses so that when she looked at him she wouldn’t feel this painful agony ripping through her heart, she’d forget the erotic feel of his hands on her, wouldn’t get lost in his gaze.

  She held up her glass for a refill and he cocked an interested eyebrow. But his gaze was unreadable. “Getting drunk?”

  “Maybe.

  “Not a good idea.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “But you’re not going to reconsider.”

  “No.”

  “Adria, I don’t think—”

  “Don’t lecture me, okay? I don’t need it from you or anyone else.” She marched to the bar and poured herself another stiff shot. Already she felt the mellow warmth of alcohol running through her blood and as she swirled another couple of shots in her glass, she felt bolder. “So what’re you gonna do now, Zach? You know, now that you know I’m your half-sister.”

  “Run like hell.”

  She laughed, but felt a secret longing, deep and forbidden, begin to uncoil and stretch within her. “You’re still here,” she observed.

  “Because I’m not certain that there isn’t a murderer still on the loose.”

/>   “I thought you believed your mother is the culprit.”

  “I do…but there’s something that doesn’t ring true to all of it.”

  “So now you’ re buying her story.”

  “Just part of it.”

  She decided to play devil’s advocate. “So because of this other threat—another killer—you’re going to what? Stick around me until he’s behind bars. Be my personal bodyguard?” She sipped a little more brandy.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Maybe I don’t want a bodyguard,” she said, giving in to the impulse to say exactly what was on her mind. “Maybe I want a lover.”

  “Then you’ll have to find yourself one, won’t you?” He downed his drink and ignored the urge to pour himself another. Getting shit-faced wouldn’t help the already volatile situation. Adria—no, London. Remember, she’s London. Keep that in mind!—was already losing control, not that he blamed her. They’d both been wound tight as watch springs.

  But he wasn’t convinced the danger had passed. Something just didn’t seem right.

  Or is that just an excuse to be with her? To be close to her? To hope that you’ll forget who she is long enough to make love to her?

  His gut tightened as she regarded the bottom of her glass sullenly, then pinned him with her erotic blue eyes. “But I want you, Zach. Just you.”

  He closed his eyes and swore under his breath. “You can’t. You know it’s impossible.”

  “Is it?”

  Finishing her drink in a flourish, she took a bold step toward him and shook her head. Black hair feathered around her face. “You want me, too.”

  “Christ, Adria, don’t do this,” he said, his voice strained.

  She didn’t stop until she reached him then stood on her tiptoes, ran her fingers up his chest, and pressed her full, anxious lips to his. “We’ve done it before.”

  “Not when we knew—oh, God.”

  She nuzzled his neck, then touched the seam of his lips with her tongue. His bones threatened to melt and with all the willpower he could gather, he grabbed her quickly by both wrists.