Free See How She Dies by Lisa Jackson Page B

like our boy here got himself into a fight. What happened to you? Haven’t seen a little girl, have you?”
    â€œWhat?” Zach figured they must be talking about Sophia, but he kept his mouth shut. Something wasn’t right and he didn’t trust the cops.
    The stocky officer—Bill—smiled without a trace of humor in his suspicious eyes. “Don’t you know who this is, Steve? It’s the Danvers kid. The one who’s supposed to be missing.”
    â€œZachary?”
    â€œYeah, so what?” Zach snarled.
    The policemen exchanged glances and Zach’s blood ran cold as ice. The tall one, Steve, said, “So where’s the girl?”

PART THREE
1993

5
    The memory of her fight with her mother was vivid. It had started as an argument about a boy Adria had been seeing on the sly and accelerated quickly to a full-blown battle.
    â€œThe Lord thy God is a vengeful God, Adria—”
    â€œHe’s not my God,” Adria, then eighteen, had said. “He’s your God, Mom. Yours. But he’s not mine!”
    The slap had been one of the few blows Sharon Nash had ever inflicted upon her adopted daughter and it had stung deeper than Adria’s skin; the pain had reached the thick hide that covered her soul.
    â€œDon’t you ever, ever talk like that again.” Sharon’s breath, bitter from the coffee and tinged with the underlying odor of gin, had drifted over Adria’s face. “Now, go wash up, and you forget about ever seein’ that boy again. He’s trash, y’hear. Trash. Just like his ma. Bad blood flows through his veins, girl.”
    â€œAnd what kind of blood flows through mine?” Adria had demanded.
    â€œWe don’t know—you don’t need to.”
    â€œOf course I do!”
    â€œThe Lord works in mysterious ways—he brought you to us for a reason. You’re not to question His wisdom, y’hear?”
    Adria had turned on her heel and fled to her little bedroom tucked under the eaves of the second story.
    Years ago. But it seemed like yesterday and the argument seemed to ring through the tiny motel room near the airport.
    She’d remembered the fight because of Zachary Danvers, another rogue, another man she should avoid. Though she’d only talked with him for a few minutes, she’d read all about him and his family, her family, and she hadn’t been disappointed.
    He was the black sheep of the family—kicked out of the house and cut out of his father’s will more often than not. He did things his own way, didn’t give a hang that he was born rich, and he was cursed with an irreverent spirit that just might want to help her find the truth.
    Or maybe not. In the year before his father’s death, Zach and Witt had seemed to bury the hatchet. Nonetheless, she knew instinctively that he would be her only ally in the family; the others appeared to be ready to pick at the old man’s bones and take his fortune.
    Maybe Zachary was like the rest.
    If so, her battle would be harder than she’d thought.
    She stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink in the bathroom and bit her lip. Was she on a fool’s mission? How could she ever hope to battle the powerful Danvers family? And why was Zachary Danvers—her half-brother, for crying out loud—so attractive?
    Adria had always been drawn to the kind of men her mother despised—the rebels and misfits and loners whom Sharon Nash found repulsive. The Zach Danvers of the world.
    Yet Zach was the one member of the Danvers family she instinctively turned to, the only one of her siblings she felt she could trust. Trust! She snorted a laugh at her own foolishness. Zachary Danvers was about as trustworthy as a hungry rattler with a trapped mouse. She walked into the bedroom and found a copy of the videotape that had led her to Portland and tucked it into her bag. As she snapped the purse closed, she wondered why she never