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“I wish I knew,” he said, frowning as they stepped outside where darkness had fallen. The wind blowing in off the ocean was cold, cutting in icy gusts that climbed the steep hills of the city; it swept through her jacket and cut her to the bone.
Zach took her hand in his. She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened over hers as they walked the three blocks to the space where he’d parked the rental car.
Once inside the Ford, he checked the mirror, then melded with traffic. “Watch in your side-view,” he said, moving from one lane to the other.
“You think someone is following us.”
“Good guess, don’t you think?”
“Here in San Francisco?” she asked, but she’d leaped to the same conclusions as he, the same one drawn by the police.
“You think that we led the murderer…” Her voice trailed off and she stared hard in the mirror, watching other cars switch lanes, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
“Obviously there was a conspiracy of some kind years ago,” Zach said, his brows drawing together. “And it didn’t involve your mother or…or Witt. So we have to assume that whoever wanted you out of the picture then, was willing to kill Ginny to keep his secret.” His fingers tapped upon the steering wheel. “It makes me wonder about Kat. Was it suicide or murder.”
“Oh God.” Adria shivered. “You think the two deaths, Ginny’s and Kat’s, were linked.”
“Not just linked but committed by the same killer.”
“But who?” she whispered.
“Could be anyone.”
“Someone in the family.” Her stomach knotted. Someone she was related to.
“Maybe.”
“Or someone from the Polidori family,” she said, though the list of suspects was shrinking. True, Anthony Polidori could have been behind the kidnapping and she was certain that he was having her followed, but the Danvers heirs as well could have been a part of the kidnapping. Jason was power-hungry, Trisha, a wounded animal wanting to hurt her father as much as she was hurt by him. Nelson would have been too young, only about fourteen at the time, and Zach, he had been a kid, too.
Satisfied that they weren’t being tailed, Zachary drove to Chinatown and parked in an alley. The restaurant was small, noisy, dimly lit, and packed nearly to capacity. Dishes rattled, people spoke in sharp foreign phrases, and grease sizzled through the open window to the kitchen. They were offered a table for two near the kitchen and Adria didn’t object, though she could barely understand the waitress or any of the patrons who all seemed to speak rapid-fire Chinese.
Still, she was grateful for the crowd. It made things easier. Being alone with Zachary was the difficult part. They ate hot-and-sour soup, spicy chicken, and some shrimp dish that was so hot her nose ran, and washed it all down with Chinese beer. But the food seemed tasteless and she couldn’t forget Ginny Slade’s ashen face, her unseeing eyes, and all the blood in the small bathroom.
After the meal, she drank a thin tea with a flowery aroma that filtered up her nose and brought back a memory—harsh and ugly. The night of the attack, she’d smelled something sweet as this blend—the underlying scent of jasmine. Her fingers slipped. The cup slid to the table and rolled, spilling tea across the varnished surface. Hot tea dripped from the table to her thighs.
“Adria?” Zach asked.
She knew the instant the smell of jasmine reached her nostrils who had attacked her.
“What is it?” Zach demanded, staring at her with harsh gray eyes.
“Everything.” She started wiping up the tea, refusing to look at him, telling herself over and over again she had to be wrong. But she knew. She knew. He grabbed her hand, squeezing it, refusing to let her keep mopping the spill with her napkin.
“What?”
“I think I know who attacked me in the motel,” she said unevenly, wishing she didn’t know the truth.
“What?”
“The person who sent me the nasty notes.”
“How?”
“This tea.” She motioned to the cups on the table. “It’s jasmine, the same scent that was on the person who attacked me.”
A knot formed at the hinge of his jaw and he sniffed the brew. Denial seemed about to fall from his tongue before he shoved the cup of tea away, sloshing hot tea onto the table. “Eunice,” he bit out, his eyes mere slits.
Adria nodded mutely, unable to form the words that hovered between them—that Zachary’s mother had killed Ginny Slade.
