by Lisa Jackson
The images of a healthy, sleek woman changed to the pathetic creature Kat had become. A skinny, scared, naked woman who had lost most of her beauty and perhaps part of her mind. How easy it had been to push her off the balcony.
This one would be more difficult.
Adria Nash was young. Vibrant. Strong. Not broken because of the loss of a child. Not dependent upon pills to get through the day. Not depressed and frail.
And yet she had to be destroyed.
At the traffic light, the car idled and Katherine’s killer checked the glove box. A tiny light illuminated the knife, its blade gleaming through the plastic bag.
Sharp.
Deadly.
Ready.
For anyone who pretended to be London Danvers, including Adria Nash.
She was an enemy.
And all enemies had to die.
12
He wasn’t cut out to be a detective. Zach shoved his hands deep into his pockets and watched Adria run up the steps to the library. Though she hadn’t agreed to take the family’s offer of a free room at the hotel, Zach figured it was only a matter of time before she caved in and gladly accepted the first of what would be a string of gifts-bribes, really-to get rid of her. He’d thought, well, at least he’d hoped that she was smarter and had more integrity than that.
Of course she hadn’t. She was a gold digger, for Christ’s sake-a gold digger who looked a helluva lot like his dead stepmother.
Clouds were beginning to gather again when he jogged back to the street where he’d left his Jeep. He had more important things to do than chase after Adria Nash and yet a part of him was reluctant to leave her. She was an interesting creature-sly and beautiful, shrewd and fascinating. He wondered just how much like Kat she was. For an instant he imagined what she would feel like writhing beneath him in bed.
“Stop it!” He was as bad as the rest of the family. Slamming the door on those dangerous thoughts, he drove toward the river, pulled into the parking garage under the hotel and told himself that he’d stay a couple more days. That was all. Just until things with Adria were settled. It shouldn’t take long. A little game of cat and mouse, money offered and declined until the family reached a number she liked or until someone dug up the dirt on her and threatened to expose her for a fraud.
Either way, the end result would be the same. She’d be gone. He sat in the Jeep for a minute and listened to the engine tick as it cooled. Sightlessly he stared into the middle distance but was unaware of other cars or people emerging from the elevator. Adria was getting to him and he didn’t like a woman-any woman-starting to turn his thinking around.
Snapping back to the present, he hoisted his bag from the back of the Jeep, then walked to the service elevator and rode to the main lobby. Three clerks in green jackets were working at computer terminals at the front desk and bellboys ducked in and out of the front door. Several people loitered in the lobby and one woman was angrily arguing with a clerk about the telephone charges on her bill. Though the Hotel Danvers had passed final inspection and was up and running, there were a few bugs left to iron out. Cable television trouble on the upper three floors, plumbing leaks in the basement, faulty locks on the doors on the sixth floor, a chlorine problem with the pool, and a touchy stove in the kitchen were just a few of the minor headaches that his crew was fine-tuning.
He found Frank Gillette in the kitchen, with one of the ovens pulled away from the wall. He frowned and checked the wiring. Glancing up, he spied Zach. “Whatever we paid for this, it was too damned much.”
“You ordered it.”
“So I made a mistake,” Frank grumbled. “Give me a minute-” He twisted to look over his shoulder. “Okay, Casey, let’s give this bitch some juice!”
Within seconds there was a whir and more lights in the kitchen blinked on. Frank stood and, with Zach’s help, shouldered the oven back into place. “It’s a heavy bastard,” he said. “Fire it up!” he told the cook, who was a thin Chinese man with a small goatee. With a skeptical glance at Frank, the cook did as he was told. The lights on the face of the oven winked on and when the cook switched on the gas, after a series of clicks and a whoosh, blue flames eagerly licked upward. “How about that! Looks like it’s fixed,” Frank said. “Sometimes I amaze even myself.”
“Why don’t you tell me everything else that’s gone wrong.” Zach said.
“Got a few hours?”
“All the time in the world,” Zach said as they walked out of the kitchen, along a short hallway that opened to a small office located behind the lobby desk. “Good,” Frank said. “Let’s start with the security system-”
Oswald Sweeny prided himself on being everything Jason Danvers was not-well, almost everything. Short, with a thickening waist, and dark eyes that could see nearly a hundred-and-eighty degrees without moving, Oswald had spent a decade with army intelligence before being dishonorably discharged over a small matter of beating up an enlisted man who’d made the mistake of trying to pick him up. Oswald had knocked out his two front teeth and the kid had taken offense. He’d had enough balls to file charges against Oswald. In the end, they were both kicked out of the service.
Which was fine with Oswald. Just as it was fine that he wasn’t a stuffed shirt like Danvers. They were as opposite as two men could be.
Jason was rich, Oswald was always sweating out his next paycheck. Jason was educated, Oswald thought academics were for idiots. Jason was married and kept a mistress. Oswald took his pleasure in thirty-dollar streetwalkers and never asked their names.
His only vices were unfiltered cigarettes, cheap women, and fast horses. Sometimes, unfortunately, the women were faster than the nags he picked.
Despite their differences, however, Oswald and Jason had a common trait: they both were willing to do whatever it took to get what they wanted.
Right now, Jason wanted the dirt on some woman named Adria Nash, a woman who claimed she was London Danvers, and Jason was willing to spare no expense. It seemed that this woman was the spittin’ image of his stepmother-a beautiful woman who managed to kill herself with booze and pills. Few people understood the reason Katherine LaRouche Danvers took a flyer. Sweeny was one of the privileged who thought he knew that particular piece of information. He should write a book. He could make a fucking fortune in a “tell-all” about the Danvers family.
“I don’t care what it takes,” Jason said as he paced restlessly on the cracked linoleum in Oswald’s hole-in-the-wall office. The single room contained a few army-surplus file cabinets, an answering machine hooked up to a phone he never picked up, a desk in which every drawer stuck, and two chairs.
Oswald didn’t trust anyone; he did his own books and typed his own letters. He paid his rent month to month for the little cubicle overlooking Stark Street-in case he had to blow town quick. No need to be tied into a yearly lease. Oswald needed to keep mobile and though this old concrete building didn’t have an uptown address, it served his needs just fine. He kept his money in a safe-deposit box and figured he had nearly fifty thousand tucked away. Not a fortune, but a nice little nest egg. He squashed out the stub of his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“Find out everything you can about her, and here”-Jason snapped open his leather briefcase and withdrew a videotape-“this is a copy of her ‘proof,’ which is some guy who’s supposed to be her father making a tear-jerking confession that he thinks she could be Witt Danvers’s long-lost daughter. It’s schmaltzy enough to turn your stomach.”
“You think she’s in this alone?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” Jason slid the tape across the desk. “All I know is she’s trouble. If she runs to the press with this, it could hang up probate another couple of years.”
“You give a copy to the police?”
Jason frowned. “Not yet. Too many leaks in the department.”
So Danvers was trying to avoid the press. Oswald fingered the black plastic case holding the videotape. “Couldn’t you get Watson to handle this?�
�� Oswald needled and was rewarded with a look that would melt steel. Bob Watson was the private investigator sometimes used by Danvers International. Bob wore three-piece suits and eighty-dollar ties and had more secretaries and flunkies than Kellogg’s had cornflakes.
“You know why I want you.”
Oswald knew, all right. He was willing to push the limits of the law, go a little further than anyone else, including Watson. Oswald Sweeny was only called in when Jason was desperate and needed more than a simple surveillance job.
“I want you to follow Ms. Nash. Find out if she’s working alone or if she has any accomplices. Also, dig up everything you can about her. She says she’s from some hick town in Montana-Belamy, I believe-and that uncle of hers, Ezra, practiced law in Bozeman. See what you can find on him and everyone else in the family.”
“How much do you want?” Sweeny asked, resisting the urge to rub his hands together in anticipation of his payment.
“Everything. All the dirt on this woman, enough so we can discredit her and force her out of town. Everyone has a secret or a weakness. Just find out what hers is. I’ll handle the rest.”
Sweeny couldn’t help but smile as he flipped the cassette over and studied it. He enjoyed seeing Danvers sweat, and right now Jason Danvers seemed more desperate than ever. Good news for Oswald Sweeny. “Any chance there’s some truth to this?” He tapped the case with a nicotine-stained finger.
“Of course not. But she worries me. She’s working this differently from anyone else.” With a scathing look at the cracked seat, Jason settled into the single worn chair for visitors and clients. “Instead of making harsh demands, threatening to go to the police and the press, she’s playing it cool. Too cool.” He tented his hands and stared at Sweeny, but the detective guessed his mind was miles away. With Adria Nash.
“She still wants to score. She’s just in it for more bucks,” Oswald said.
Jason seemed to snap back to the present. His lips pinched together. “It’s up to you to prove it. Unfortunately, this may take some time.”
Sweeny grinned, showing off a gap between his front teeth. “You’re in luck. I got nothing pressing.” He grabbed a legal pad from under the desk and a pencil that had been chewed repeatedly, then plopped a recorder onto the desk, as a backup. “Let’s go over it. From the top. Your old man, he hired a PI when London was kidnapped.”
“Phelps-but he came up with nothing. He was supposed to be the best and he couldn’t find anything. You can talk to him if you want, but he’s retired. Lives with his daughter up in Tacoma.”
“I’ll talk to him and put a tail on Ms. Nash,” Oswald said. Though he didn’t like the idea of having someone else following her, he couldn’t be two places at once and he felt he should shag out to Montana, find out what he could about her while she was away from her hometown. He had a couple of men he could trust to stick to her like glue and report back to him.
“I just don’t want any fuckups.”
“There won’t be.” Sweeny smelled money and he wasn’t about to let it slip between his fingers.
As Jason gave him the particulars, Sweeny scribbled the information and decided if nothing else, this Adria Nash had balls. Hard to find on a woman.
Two hours later, Jason stood, brushed a little lint off the sleeve of his jacket, and left Sweeny with a retainer of ten thousand dollars. Oswald stuffed the check into his shirt pocket and moved to the window, tipping the blinds. He watched Jason, bareheaded in the rain, slide into the expensive interior of his Jaguar before firing the engine and nosing the sleek car into traffic.
Bastard. Filthy-rich bastard.
Noticing the dead insects and cobwebs on the window ledge, he frowned and let the blind snap back to cover the brittle little carcasses. Yes, this place was a dump, but it suited him just fine. He reached into a lower drawer of his desk, pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and screwed off the cap. Wiping the greasy cuff of his jacket over the top of the bottle, he grunted, then took a slug. The whiskey hit the back of his throat and seared all the way to his belly.
He loved it when Jason Danvers came crawling to him. It wasn’t just the money, but the satisfaction of having that rich, arrogant son of a bitch begging for his services. He’d seen the disdain in Jason’s eyes as his gaze traveled over the bleak furnishings, the unswept floors, the full ashtrays, and the grimy window. Oswald remembered the flare of Jason’s aristocratic nose at the smells of sweat and stale cigarette smoke.
Chuckling to himself, Oswald slid a Camel from the pack he kept on the desk and lit up. Still holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he took another tug on the bottle. Yep, things were definitely looking up.
Zach hung up the phone in his suite and swore under his breath. Despite assurances from Manny the ranch foreman that everything was running smoothly and that his presence wasn’t needed, Zach felt restless and short-tempered. All because of that damned woman.
He’d tried to reach Jason and tell him to do his own legwork, but he’d been informed by a secretary with no inflection that Mr. Danvers was in a meeting and would be unavailable all day. She assured Zach that Mr. Danvers would get back to him.
The phone rang and he snatched up the receiver.
Adria’s voice drifted like smoke over the wires. “You said you wanted an answer.”
“Right.”
“I’ve decided to accept the Danvers hospitality.”
His hand clenched tighter over the receiver and he felt a shot of disappointment, though he’d known this was the way things would turn out. She’d take the handouts, one by one, until she had what she wanted, or a neat little compromise thereof.
Zach checked his watch. “Meet me here at six.”
She hung up and Zach told himself it didn’t matter what she did. So she was taking a room in the hotel. Why not? He wondered what she’d discovered in the library, checking old newspaper clippings and magazine articles about the family. While Witt was alive, he’d managed to keep most of the Danvers secrets locked tightly away from the press. After the old man’s death, Jason had taken over that responsibility. But Adria would dig deep-she wouldn’t be content to just scratch the surface; she was too thorough.
So how had she been fooled into thinking she was London? Or was that all an act? There was a chance, and a damned good one, that she was lying through her beautiful teeth.
They must really be worried, Adria thought as Zach unlocked the door to the suite on the top floor of the hotel. With a sitting room complete with a fireplace, two bedrooms, two baths, Jacuzzi, French doors opening onto a flagstone veranda, and a view of the city that stretched for miles, the suite was spacious and decorated in hues of soft peach and ivory. The furniture looked to be antique, though Adria guessed the highboy, Queen Anne canopied bed, tea table, and Chippendale side chairs were all modern imitations, not authentic pieces. The carpet was plush, the bar stocked with the best labels, and a vase filled with pink roses rested on a glass-topped coffee table.
“Is this a bribe?” she asked as Zach hung her garment bag in one of the closets.
He lifted a shoulder. “Call it anything you want.”
She’d only agreed to stay in the hotel as a gesture of good faith. Though she suspected that the family just wanted to watch her closely, she decided to accept their offer. “Any strings attached?” she asked.
“Not to me.” His eyes narrowed on her. “You’ll have to ask Jason what he expects of you.”
“If he thinks he can buy me off-”
“He does.” Zach cast her a look that silently called her naive. “But it’s just his nature. Don’t take it personally. And don’t be fooled. This little bit of generosity isn’t because the family has all of a sudden decided to welcome you with open arms.”
“I know that.”
“Good.”
She tossed her jacket onto the back of a chair. “You don’t much like your family, do you?”
He snorted and didn’t bother hiding his sarcasm. “What’s n
ot to like?” Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the hotel key and flipped it through the air. “You’re now a guest of the Danvers family. I’m not really sure what, exactly, that entails, but I’m sure my brother will let you know.”
He started for the twin doors of the suite, but she laid a hand on the crook of his arm. “Look…is there a reason we have to be at each other’s throats?”
He turned and stared into eyes as blue as a summer’s day. Glancing at the throat in question, he felt his gut tighten and sultry memories clouded his mind. He’d too often been mesmerized by Kat’s treacherous and seductive eyes. Just as he could be with this woman. “You want to be what…well, I mean besides brother and sister, you want to be friends?” he asked, unable to hide the cynicism in his words.
“Why not?” she asked. Her smile was sincere and cracked open a dark corner of his heart, a corner he preferred to keep locked. “I don’t know a lot of people in town.”
He waited, his face a mask, not daring to move a muscle but singularly aware of the smooth hand upon his forearm. “Christ.”
“I thought maybe you’d let me buy you dinner.”
“Why?”
“Because it would be easier on both of us if we weren’t always looking to kill each other.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“Sure it is,” she said and her breath seemed to catch for a second. “Trust me.”
He knew he should just walk away. Yank the door open and slip through. Instead he stared at that vulnerable face and wondered how anyone who looked so guileless could be considered dangerous.
“This isn’t a good idea,” he said and saw the edge of her teeth dig into the soft flesh of her lower lip. Desire curled in his guts. It was suddenly hard to breathe and between his legs he felt the stirrings of an erection.
“What are you afraid of?”
He could barely speak. The room seemed suddenly hot. He had to get away. “It’s not a matter of fear.”