See How She Dies (20 page)

“Don't you ever touch me again!” she said, backing outside.

“I'm sorry. Christ, Katherine, I swear, I'd never do anything to hurt you—”

He took one step toward her but she kept backing up. “Stay away from me, Witt. I mean it,” she said, before turning and running into the grayish dawn. Witt's great shoulders slumped and he sagged against the wall. He turned damning eyes up at his son. “Now look what you've done, Zach,” he said, barely able to breathe. With an expression straight from hell, he loosened his tie then reached for his belt buckle. Zach remembered the times he'd been whipped by a thin leather strap. Not again. He wouldn't suffer like he had when he was eight, leaning over the bed and biting his lower lip until it bled to keep from crying out as his father flayed him with the stinging leather. No way.

“Leave now and don't ever…” Witt, suddenly ashen, reached into his pocket, fumbled for a vial of pills and popped the top. He stuck one of the tablets under his tongue. “Don't ever come back here.”

“I won't,” Zach promised, jaw clenched in determination. Injustice burned through his veins and he held his father with his remorseless stare. “You'll never see me again.”

Witt's blue eyes were cold, his fury evident in the white lines of strain near his mouth. “That's the way I want it, boy.” He took one menacing step toward his son. “However, if I find out that you had anything to do with your sister's kidnapping, I swear I'll personally hunt you down like the lying dog you are and rip you apart with my bare hands.”

Zach stumbled back toward the door. His head throbbed, his jaw ached, and he glared at the man he'd called father all his life. He had to leave. Now. Run as far and fast as he could. And if he never saw Witt Danvers alive again, it would be much too soon.

Adria woke up to the squeal of hydraulic brakes and the thrum of a huge engine as a truck idled in the parking lot. With a groan she rolled out of the bed and surveyed her shabby surroundings. It certainly wasn't the Ritz, or the Benson, or the Hotel Danvers, for that matter. But it would have to do.

The pipes were rusty, the drain of the tub stained, but she closed her eyes to the flaws of the Riverview and quickly showered under tepid water. She towel-dried her hair, tamed it by snapping a rubber band around a ponytail, and ignored her makeup bag. She didn't need to look glamorous when she planned to spend the day in the library, the offices of the
Oregonian
, the historical society, and the Portland Police Bureau if need be. But as she glanced in the mirror, she remembered the family portrait and her heart began to thud. All night long she'd tossed and turned, thinking of the portrait and of Zach as he'd stared so intensely at Katherine, as if he wanted her approval.

“Dysfunctional,” she told herself. “The whole family. And you want to be a part of it. Stupid, stupid girl.”

With an eye on the silk dress in its plastic casing, she yanked on a sweatshirt, a pair of worn jeans, and slipped into ancient Reebok running shoes. She grabbed an oversized purse that doubled as a briefcase and was out the door.

Reading an old city map, she drove to the drive-in window of a McDonald's and while waiting for her coffee, reacquainted herself with Portland.

Basically the city was divided by the river, and the east side spread away from the banks of the Willamette in a careful grid that was infrequently interspersed with winding streets or slashed by a freeway. The west side, however, was more difficult. Though the streets ran north-south and east-west, they were older, more narrow, and tended to follow the contour of the Willamette River, or meander through the hills that rose steeply from the water's shore.

She paid for the coffee, took a sip, and drove steadily westward, through the low-rising office buildings and shops toward the river and the twin spires of the Convention Center. As she drove she wondered what her half-brothers and-sister were doing.

At that thought, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Worried blue eyes stared back at her. Was she really London Danvers, or was this all a fierce joke that her father had played on her? Well, it was too late to start second-guessing herself. For now, she was London Danvers and Jason, Nelson, Trisha, and even Zachary were not only her enemies, but her closest blood kin.

She studied the traffic behind her and had the crazy notion that she was being followed. But no car seemed to be tailing her, at least none that she could identify. She stepped on the accelerator. Tires singing on the metal grid, her Nova sped across the Hawthorne Bridge. Unfortunately, she had to drive downtown again, close to the Hotel Danvers, to the building only three blocks down the street from where the offices of Danvers International were housed.

She parked her car in a corner lot, finished the coffee, and grabbed her bag. Though the sun was making a valiant effort to warm the wet streets, the wind was cold as it blew down the Columbia River Gorge, rolled across the Willamette, and whistled through the narrow streets of the city.

She hurried up the steps to the library doors and felt a chill against the back of her neck, as if someone were watching her. “You're just being paranoid,” she told herself, but couldn't shake the feeling.

 

“Something happened last night at the grand opening.” Eunice Danvers Smythe had the uncanny ability to read Nelson like a book. He was edgy and restless and chewed at the corner of his thumbnail. Dressed in a sloppy T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days, he hadn't shaved or bothered to comb his unruly blond hair and his lips were pinched. “Something went wrong,” she guessed again, shooing her Persian cat off one of the chairs.

“You could say that.” Nelson was slouched in a chair across the table from her in the morning room of her home in Lake Oswego. He'd called from his condo and been on her doorstep in less than the fifteen minutes it took to make the drive within the speed limit.

“What is it?”

“Another imposter.” Nelson ignored the newspaper sitting next to his plate.

“London?”

“So she claims.”

Sighing, Eunice sipped from her coffee cup and stared past Nelson and through the bay window over his shoulder. The lake, reflecting the clouds that had moved quickly in from the west, was a desolate, steely gray. A rough winter wind caused a few whitecaps to surface. On the opposite shore, like bony fingers, empty boat slips jutted into the cold water.

“She's a fake,” Eunice surmised.

“Of course she's a fake, but she's trouble just the same. When the press gets wind of this, the shit's really going to hit the fan. It'll start all over again…the speculation and dredging up of the kidnapping. Reporters, photographers…just like before.” He plowed both hands through his thick blond hair.

“It's always going to be a problem,” Eunice said with a little smile that she reserved for her children. “But it's something you have to deal with. And it might help you. If you're really interested in running for mayor someday—”

“Governor.”

“Governor.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “My, my, but aren't we ambitious.” She didn't mean to sound scathing, just concerned.

His eyes crinkled a bit at the corners, but he wasn't laughing. “I suppose
we
are. We'd both go through hell and back to get what we wanted, wouldn't we?”

She ignored that little dig. “You could use the adverse publicity to your advantage, if you're smart.”

“How?”

“Welcome her with open arms,” she said, and Nelson stared at her as if she'd suddenly lost her mind. “I'm serious, Nelson, think about it. You, defender of the downtrodden, you, seeker of truth, you, the one-day politician—listen to her story, try to help her and then…well, when she's proved a fraud…you don't even denounce her, not really, just explain to the press that she was an opportunist.”

“You're not serious.”

“Something to think about.” She added cream to her coffee—not too much, as she prided herself on working out and keeping her body in shape, then watched the clouds swirl to the surface. “Come on now,” she encouraged, blowing across her cup before she took a sip. “Tell me about her.”

Cradling the warm porcelain between her fingers, Eunice waited. Nelson would tell her everything. He always did. It was his way of trying to be special to her. After the divorce from Witt, all the children suffered and she felt an incredible sense of guilt for their pain. She'd never wanted to hurt the children—they were her most precious possessions. Never would she intentionally wound any of them. It had been Witt she had hoped to cripple, but he seemed to have survived the divorce, even thrived as a businessman, and had taken that slut of a young girl for his second wife. Suddenly her special blend of French roast seemed to curdle in her stomach.

Nelson scraped his chair back and stood near the windows. Throwing out a hip, he gazed through the glass. Though he'd called her, begged to come by and unburden himself, she sensed that he regretted his decision to open up to her. He'd always been volatile—not so openly hostile as Zach had been—but energized by a pent-up anger just under the surface, a blasting cap primed to explode. She wondered if he even had a clue about how he'd been conceived, but held her tongue.

Nelson was the child who should never have been born. She and Witt were estranged when she'd gotten pregnant. Witt had finally found out about her affair with Anthony Polidori and all hell had broken loose.

“You stupid, stupid bitch!” Witt had roared when he'd discovered the truth. He'd sensed that Anthony had been in his house, his room, his bed, though Anthony had slipped away minutes before.

Witt had slapped her so hard her head had snapped back on her neck and she'd stumbled to fall back on her bed. He was on her in an instant, pinning her to the mattress with his enormous bulk. “How could you?” he'd yelled, straddling her and crushing her face between his meaty hands. She was a big woman, a strong woman, but no match for him. “You lying, cheating bitch, how could you?”

She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and through his fingers, and she knew that he might kill her. His palms squashed her cheeks and she stared up at eyes bright with rage and hatred. Saliva collected in the corners of his mouth and his lips were pulled into a snarl of malice.

“I…It just happened,” she'd choked out.

“Like hell! You're my
wife
, Eunice, my
wife!
The wife of Witt Danvers. Do you know what that means?” He gave her head a little shake and she mewled a protest. She could barely breathe. “You may not like me—”

“I detest you!” she spat.

“So you go crawling to Polidori. Taking off your panties and spreading your legs and screwing his brains out. Why? To get back at me?”

“Yes!” she screamed, not daring to utter that she loved Anthony as she'd never loved Witt and the hands around her face pushed harder. Pain jolted through her brain.

“You're unbelievable.”

“At least he's a man, Witt! He knows how to satisfy a woman!”

He roared back and this time the hand that came down against her cheek landed so hard she heard bones crack. A moan escaped her throat.

“A man, eh?” Witt thundered. “I'll show you a man.”

She'd shivered as he'd held her down with one hand and undid his belt with the other. He'd never beaten her before, but now she was certain he was going to flay her until her skin was raw. Swallowing all of her pride, she whispered, “Don't, Witt…please…”

“You deserve it.”

“No.” She got one hand free and held it up to protect her face. “Don't—”

He hesitated, his shirt undone, his breathing hard and fast.

“You're a whore, Eunice.”

“No—”

“And you deserve to be treated like one.”

Still straddling her, he took her hand and guided it to his fly. “Undo it.”

“No, I—” She withdrew her hand and then held back a little scream as she saw his muscles flex beneath his shirt. He slid his leather belt out of the loops and for a second she saw the flash of a silver buckle—a running horse with sharp little hooves, made of metal that could cut and scar. Oh, God. Pain jolted through her body. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

“Take the zipper down.”

“Witt, no—”

“Just do it, Eunice. You're still my wife.”

“Please, Witt, don't make me do this,” she whispered and watched as his nostrils flared and his eyes bulged. How had they ever come to this? How had she ever thought she loved him.

“Now!”

Her hands were shaking and she felt revulsion when she noticed the bulge beneath his fly. He was enjoying torturing her and had become hard, after months of impotence, months of silent fury. He'd blame the business, then her, and now he was wreaking his vengeance.

The zipper slid down with a sickening hiss.

“You know what to do. Do for me what you do for Polidori. Show me what it takes to make that filthy bastard come.”

“Witt, no, I don't want—” He grabbed her by her hair and his eyes glowed with evil rancor. Thick fingers knotted in her French braid as it fell loose.

“We're going to do what I want, Eunice. You're going to make me feel good, Eunice, no matter what it takes, no matter how it hurts.” The fingers pulled hard on her hair. “And when I'm finished with you, you'll never run back to that bastard again!”

Sick to her stomach, she had closed her eyes and given herself up to her husband and all his perversity.

“Mom?” Nelson's voice broke into her painful reverie.

Startled, she cleared her throat and quickly reached for her napkin to dab at her eyes.

Nelson was staring at her. Her baby. The last of her children. The boy conceived during that night of hell. Never once had there been any question of Nelson's paternity. Even now, staring at her, his carved features set with worry, he was the spitting image of his father as a young man, a man Eunice had thought she'd loved, a man she could barely remember. Witt Danvers with all his energy, his ambitions, his vision for Portland had seemed the perfect match. Though she wasn't a dainty woman, he hadn't minded, probably because she was from the “right” family, had a small fortune of her own, and he felt that she would help and support him.

“It will be ours one day,” he'd said, smiling from a penthouse apartment and looking down at the city. “Every block will have a building with the Danvers name!” She'd believed in him then, trusted him. Until the other women. And the fact that after two children his sex drive at home had dwindled.

Anthony had been the balm for her ego and she'd stupidly fallen in love with him.

“Are you all right?” Nelson asked, snapping her back to the present. His handsome face was etched in concern, his blond brows beetling to form one line. So like Witt. Poor child. Despite the rough, humiliating way Nelson had been conceived, Eunice had loved him, as she'd loved all her children.