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She was up against the entire Danvers clan. The proverbial brick wall. And that wall was covered with spools of barbed wire
, the kind that was certain to cut a person to ribbons if they tried to scale the barricade.
So who would take the locket she’d gotten from her adoptive father on her thirteenth birthday? Or a pair of panties. A sick feeling curled inside her stomach and her skin crawled. What kind of a creep was she up against?
It may not be as bad as you think. Someone may be just trying to freak you out, to force you to back off.
Or whoever took the objects was a real whacko. Someone with several screws loose.
Either way, she’d decided to move out of the Hotel Danvers, away from curious glances, raised eyebrows, and the feeling that she was being spied upon. Away from the chance that whoever had been bold enough to break into her room would return.
Putting some distance between herself and the family was just as well, she told herself, as she found a room in the Orion Hotel just a few blocks away. The Orion intrigued her because it was the hotel where Zachary was supposed to have been beaten up and left for dead on the night London had been abducted.
The Orion had changed hands several times in the last few years and had been updated. Whereas the Hotel Danvers had been refurbished to offer a charming glimpse of Victorian Portland, the Orion was modern with plush beige carpeting, recessed lighting, and walls tinged a subtle shade of gold. What it lacked in character, the Orion made up for in convenience with three restaurants, a pool, weight room, and sauna.
She pored over her notes until two in the morning and tried to shove all thoughts of her meeting with the family out of her mind. At least she knew where she stood and she didn’t have an ally in the lot of them.
Even Zachary. Some rebel he’d turned out to be. When it came to the Danvers fortune, he was as greedy as the rest. He seemed anxious to be out of town and rid of her and away from the problems of the estate.
As she curled up on the queen-size bed, she wondered about him. He’d kissed her as if he meant it, and yet it had been nothing more than a test. She’d nearly been duped into thinking that he cared for her, but that notion was foolish. If she were London Danvers, then he was her half-brother and a romance was out of the question. If she wasn’t London, then he’d expose her as a fraud and a romance would be out of the question.
Not that she wanted a romance, she told herself. She’d learned that lesson the hard way and she wasn’t going to fall for Zachary. Not even if he wasn’t related to her.
No, all she wanted was to find out who she was. She’d fight tooth and nail to discover the truth, no matter how deeply the Danvers kin had buried it.
As his Jeep crested the Santiam Pass, Zachary reached into his pocket for a cigarette, then frowned at himself and scowled at the twin beams his headlights threw on the asphalt slipping beneath the rig’s tires. He’d stopped smoking years ago, but since he’d first set eyes on Adria, he’d felt a growing restlessness gnawing at him—a restlessness nicotine wouldn’t satisfy. Nothing could drive away the feeling except one thing—sex with Adria Nash. His lips tightened at the thought and his jeans felt suddenly tight.
She was definitely off limits.
For Christ’s sake, she could be your half-sister!
He gnashed his teeth and shifted into fourth.
The truth of the matter was that Adria or London or whoever the hell she was just happened to be the most attractive woman he’d seen in a long, long while. Beautiful, sexy as hell, with a quiet confidence and sharp tongue that should have repelled him, he found her more fascinating than any of the women he’d known. Even Kat. There had been a predatory edge to his stepmother that he hadn’t liked and during the time she’d set out to seduce him, Zachary had felt manipulated. While in Kat’s bed he’d felt primal and lost himself in her eroticism, but after the hot sex was over, he’d been empty, emotionally drained and left with the uneasy sensation that he was being used.
He’d tried to avoid women after Kat, but it had been difficult as the more aloof he’d become, the more female attention he attracted. The hell of it was, he loved sex. It was just that simple. He just didn’t need the emotional entanglements that came with a night in a woman’s bed, so he’d made a stab at celibacy. It hadn’t worked and he’d eventually married.
He’d met Joanna Whitby shortly after Kat jumped to her death. In retrospect, the relationship had been doomed from the beginning. Zach, carrying a truckload of guilt around with him, had been devastated when Kat had committed suicide and Joanna had been there. With her magical hands, soothing words, and compliant body, she’d helped him forget. He’d married her. He hadn’t even suspected that she was after her slice of the Danvers family pie, but of course that had been her motive. When he’d told her he wasn’t interested in the fortune, she hadn’t believed him. “You can’t be serious,” she’d said with one of her beautiful smiles. “Zach, that’s crazy!”
“No more crazy than it is to sit around here and kiss up to the old man, just hoping that he cuts me into the will.”
When she’d finally figured out that Zach wasn’t going to beg Witt to leave him so much as a dime, she’d found a reason to divorce him and had moved on. Word had it that she’d remarried an older man in Seattle, a widower with no children, and now she was fixed for life.
Zach hoped so. He’d learned his lesson about what women really wanted out of life and it seemed to revolve around dollar signs. Adria wasn’t any different. And she looked so damned much like Kat it was scary.
Jack Logan wouldn’t give Adria the time of day. Retired from the police department, he lived in Sellwood, a small community wedged between southeast Portland and Milwaukie. His cottage was one block off Thirteenth, behind a warehouse that had been converted into one of the antique shops for which Sellwood was famous.
Adria had called and left messages on his answering machine and, when he hadn’t called her back, she’d decided to visit him. But she couldn’t get past the gate at the front walk where a snarling German shepherd stood guard.
Obviously the ex-police detective wanted his privacy.
She didn’t have any better luck with Roger Phelps, a private investigator Witt had used in trying to locate his daughter twenty years ago. Phelps was retired, living in Tacoma, and when Adria had reached him by phone, he told her he never discussed his clients’ cases. She’d explained who she was and he’d laughed, telling her to “join the club.” Apparently he’d seen more than his share of would-be London Danverses when Witt had posted the million-dollar reward.
“Strike two,” she told herself as she hung up the phone in her hotel room. Another reason she’d stayed at the Orion was in the hopes that there might be someone working in the old building who would remember back to the night when London Danvers had been kidnapped and Zachary Danvers had been nearly killed.
Most of the people who had worked there had long since left the employ of the hotel. Only a middle-aged Thai woman and a man who ran the magazine shop in the lobby remained. The maid wouldn’t talk to her, explaining in halting English that she didn’t understand, but the man who sold candy, cigarettes, and magazines enjoyed reminiscing.
“Sure, I remember,” he said when she approached him. “Hell, I was right here in this very booth when I saw Witt’s kid stumble out of the elevator. I knew right away somethin’ was wrong with him. ’Course, I didn’t realize who he was at the time, not until the next day, when the word hit the street.” With a gnarled hand, he slapped a stack of newspapers under the counter. “The talk was fast and wild about a kidnapping or a murder of some big heist, but no one knew the real scoop.
