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“Rumor had it that the Danvers kid had been with some call girl. Room 317—no, that ain’t right. 307. That was it, 307. The manager took the police up there and I guess they found booze and drugs and a pool of blood stainin’ the carpet, but no whore and no sign of the two guys who were supposed to have roughed Danvers up.”
“Who was the room registered to?” she asked, leaning over the counter.
“That was the hell of it. Get this. The name on the guest register was Danver
s. Witt Danvers.”
“Witt?” she said, stunned. “But—”
“Isn’t that a hoot?” He cackled. “While Witt’s up at his own hotel havin’ the time of his life, someone steals his name and uses the room as a damned whorehouse.” He scratched his head above one ear and turned his attention to a man in a dark suit who wanted a copy of the Wall Street Journal. After handing the guy his change, he turned back to Adria. “If ya ask me, Anthony Polidori was behind the whole setup. There was always bad blood between the Polidoris and the Danverses. Had been for generations. It just seemed to explode about the time Witt lost his little girl, and Zach Danvers, if you can believe what he says, claims the guys who roughed him up worked for Polidori.”
The man’s silvery eyebrows lifted behind the thick rim of his glasses. “Seems like it was more than coincidence.”
She knew there had been some sort of feud between the wealthy Italian family and the Danvers clan, but didn’t understand how the feud affected the kidnapping. After asking a few more questions and getting nowhere, she purchased a couple of candy bars and two magazines about Portland, then checked with the clerk at the desk for messages before heading up to her room.
On impulse, she stopped at the third floor and walked the corridor, pausing at room 307. So this was Zach’s alibi. A tryst with an Italian prostitute. Adria smiled. He’d been little more than a kid at the time—seventeen. What was he doing with a whore?
Stupidly, she felt a touch of jealousy for the woman he had planned to meet. What could it possibly matter to her—she’d been only five at the time! And his half-sister! Damn it all, this was more complicated than she’d thought. She hadn’t planned on being attracted to Zachary. She’d hoped he would become her friend, perhaps even her accomplice, and eventually prove to be her blood kin…but nothing romantic, nothing dangerous, nothing so sinful. For a second she thought of her mother and what she would have said had she known the path Adria had taken. The wages of sin are—“Stop it!” she whispered harshly to herself. She’d already convinced herself to forget Zachary. Aside from the fact that he might be her half-brother, he wasn’t the kind of man to get involved with, a rawhide-tough man who dared cross the line to the wrong side of the law, who didn’t give two cents about what other people thought, who ran the world the way he thought it should be run, rather than the way it was. A good man to avoid.
Except that she needed him. If she were ever going to get to the truth.
Refusing to dwell on Zachary, she twisted the doorknob and turned, but the bolt was drawn and she couldn’t peek inside. Not that it would help. The room had probably been redecorated three times over since the night Zach was beaten to a pulp. How much of this story was true? How much fabrication? How much exaggerated by the old man in the lobby?
Zach seemed to hold the key to what happened that night, but he’d been evasive with her, suspicious of her motives. Somehow she had to gain his trust. Not an easy task, she thought, as she stepped into the Orion’s mirrored elevator car and slapped the button for the door to close.
As agreed, Jack Logan sat in the darkened booth of the Red Eye Café, a small dive near the airport. It was a smoky bar that he’d used before when he didn’t want to be recognized. He spied Jason Danvers and swore under his breath. The man was dressed in a double-breasted suit, for crying out loud, and he’d pulled up in his Jag.
“Why didn’t you just put a neon sign on your back?” Logan growled, nursing his glass of McNaughton’s.
“What?”
“You stick out like a fucking sore thumb.”
Danvers frowned. “I don’t intend to be here very long.”
“Neither do I.”
Jason ordered a whiskey on the rocks and waited until the waitress left the drink and picked up the bills. Ignoring the drink, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the tape, which he slid across the table to Logan.
“What’s this?”
“I hope nothing.” Jason filled Logan in on all the details.
“How many copies of this are floating around?”
“God only knows. She gave me one, and I gave a copy to Sweeny.”
“None to the police?”
“Not yet. I thought you could check it out.”
“Should go to the station.”
“Too many leaks. I turn it in and it’ll be on the six o’clock news.”
Logan grunted. He couldn’t argue with that logic. “I’ll see what I can do, but she’s been nosing around.”
Jason froze. “What do you mean?”
