“Turn that thing off!” Trisha screamed.

Zach ignored her request. “They have any luck trying to track down Ginny Slade’s relatives?” he asked. Jason had told him how they’d torn the nanny’s room apart. She seemed to be the key in the kidnapping. Her references had proved false and her family had all but disappeared.

“Not that I know.” Trisha angled her head, wrinkling her nose as she eyed her work. “But no one thinks she was in on it, otherwise she would have demanded money. And her checking account hasn’t been touched. Still has a couple of hundred dollars in it. She’s got savings, too, over at First National, I think. Nearly a thousand dollars. Still there.”

“How do you know so much?”

Trisha glanced at him a second. “I listen. At keyholes and open doors and air shafts.”

For the first time, Zach was interested in what his sister had learned. For years he’d thought Trisha totally self-absorbed. He assumed that she didn’t care about anything other than herself, her manicure, and her latest boyfriend or a new mind-expanding high. Though lately, come to think of it, she hadn’t gone out much. After the fiasco with Mario Polidori…Zach squinted at his sister. She was pretty, he supposed, with her thick reddish-brown hair and blue eyes. She wore too much makeup and her clothes too tight, but there was something about her that was appealing. For the most part, though, she was a pain in the ass.

At twenty, she was still taking art classes, had moved out of the house three or four times and had always returned with a broken heart, busted for drugs, or flat broke. Sometimes all three. The drug busts-mainly marijuana and once in a while a little hash-were handled discreetly and without arrest by good ol’ Detective Jack of the Portland police, and Witt had always covered her bad checks and escalating credit card balances. The broken hearts weren’t so easily mended. Trisha had a long track record of picking losers. Including Mario Polidori.

No matter what the circumstances of her latest source of rebellion, Trisha always returned-tail between her legs, fingers stretched toward Daddy’s wallet. Zach figured it was because the world, with its demand of rent and electricity payments, was too difficult for his sister. She was better off having Daddy pay the bills.

He leaned back in the chaise and regarded her. Already, she had a pinched set to her mouth that reminded him of his mother. In the past few years, ever since the Polidori mess, Trisha had changed. Zach didn’t know exactly what had happened between Mario and her, but he’d heard arguments that had reverberated through the timbers of the old house and Zach had guessed that Mario Polidori had used his sister to get back at Witt. Trisha had been an innocent, but more than willing, accomplice in the war of hate that had existed between the families for nearly a century. The feud didn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Not that Zach cared.

“You know, Zach,” Trisha said, spinning her easel around so he could see her work, a caricature of him as a laid-up, unshaven, generally slovenly teenager lying on a chaise lounge and swilling Coke. A blaring radio and can of Colt 45 were propped on a nearby table. “You’d better be careful.”

“Very funny,” he remarked, pointing at her picture.

“I’m not the only one who can see through you, you know.” She stuffed her charcoal back in its box. “Kat and Dad, they’re on to you. There’s a lot of talk about boarding school or sending you off to the ranch to and I quote, ‘work his butt off and keep him out of trouble.’”

“No way,” he responded. He gazed up at the thin clouds moving in from the west.

“Any way you look at it, boarding school or shoveling shit at the Lazy M beats MacLaren,” she said, mentioning the Oregon school for underage male criminals.

“Is that where they think I’ll end up?”

“I don’t know what they think, but it’s my guess, Zach. You haven’t exactly been easy to live with since you got out of the hospital and that stunt with the reporters-”

He grinned, rubbing the swollen knuckles of his fist with his other hand.

“-you’re not winning friends.”

“The guy deserved it.” Zach could still hear questions, see the cameras pointed at him as he’d tried to get out of Witt’s Lincoln and away from the reporter who had appeared from behind the hedge.

“Can you explain why you were attacked on the night your half-sister-”

He’d reacted and his fist had slammed into the guy’s jaw with a bone-jarring crunch. Blood had spurted. Pain had ricocheted up Zach’s arm and the man had fallen, groaning to the ground. There was already talk of a lawsuit.

Now, as if reading her brother’s thoughts, Trisha sighed and gathered up her easel.

“You think I kidnapped London?” he asked, telling himself he didn’t care one way or the other.

Shaking hear head and staring pointedly at the scar that still edged his face, she said, “I don’t know what you did that night, but you’re not telling the truth…not all of it, and you’re going to end up taking the blame for this one unless you come clean.”

The muscles in the back of his neck tightened because he’d thought the same thing. “Since when are you the goddess of virtue?” He took another gulp of beer, drained the Coke can and crumpled it in his fist.

Trisha pinned him with eyes that had seen too much pain for so short a life. “You don’t know anything about me, Zach. You’ve never even tried to get to know me, have you? Look, I was just trying to do you a favor, but forget it.” She headed back to the house. “I made a mistake. It’s your funeral.”


Katherine’s eyelids stuck together. Her mouth tasted like she’d been licking an ashtray and her head pounded above her temples. She forced one eye open and sunlight streaming through a partially open window, nearly blinded her. Groaning, she rolled over and wondered about the sadness that was a horrible weight on her heart.

She was in her own bedroom and…Oh, God…the reality came crashing back to her fragile brain. London was gone, abducted nearly two-or was it three?-weeks before. Desperation, like the horrid beast it was, clawed at her from the inside. She needed a cigarette. With numb fingers she reached to the bed table and found an empty pack of Virginia Slims, which she flung onto the floor. Tears flooded her eyes. She couldn’t take this, day after day. The bumbling policemen, the useless FBI, and the media. Damn the media. The few reporters who had gotten past the guards had asked questions that made her heart bleed and the fire in their eyes, all looking for a story, and insensitive to her pain…No wonder Zach had punched out a reporter and broken a photographer’s camera as he’d returned to the house from the hospital.

She stood on unsteady legs, then drew the drapes open a little farther. Two squad cars and a plain, stripped-down Chevrolet were scattered on the circular drive. Farther away, past the sloping front lawns and tended rose gardens, she caught a glimpse of the front gates where the vultures gathered. Two or three cars were parked in the shade of an ancient oak that spread its branches over the brick wall which kept the scavengers at bay.

“I hope you all rot in hell,” she muttered, letting the drapes fall back into place.

What time was it? Bleary eyes focused on the clock. Two in the afternoon. She’d slept seventeen hours, drugged by Doc McHenry’s sleeping pills and God-only-knew what else. Somehow, some way, she’d have to pull herself together. With or without London.

That thought caused her knees to buckle and she grasped the edge of the bureau to steady herself. She’d find her baby. She had to. She couldn’t trust the federal government or the police, and Witt, well, he hadn’t been much help. The fact that he would no longer sleep with her, insisting that she needed her rest, bothered her. She knew the real reason. He was afraid that she would require more than a pat on the head, that she might need a kiss, a hug, even her husband to make love to her to comfort her.

God, she needed a cigarette.

Running her tongue over filmy teeth, she forced herself into the bathroom, where she stripped off the nightgown that she’d worn for days and turned on the shower. Before stepping under the hot spray, she got a glimpse of her reflection and cringed. No makeup, hair lank, her once-curvy body beginning to look gaunt from lack of food. Hazily she remembered Maria, the cook, coming into her room, trying to force soup of some kind down her throat.

In all her life, Katherine had never once let herself go; she believed that her greatest commodity was her body and she spent hours in the gym, with a masseuse, at the hairdresser, having her nails manicured. Her clothes were always flattering-a little sexy, but classy and pressed.

But now she looked like hell.

She stepped into the warm spray and let the hot water run over her hair and skin. Closing her eyes against the dark depression that settled over her whenever she thought of London, she leaned against the slick tiles. She couldn’t let this get her down because she was London’s only chance. If she gave up on her daughter, everyone else would as well.

Sobs burned deep in her throat and, telling herself that she could allow herself the freedom to cry, to grieve a little by herself, she let the tears drizzle down her cheeks, their salty tracks mingling with the rivulets from the shower as the steam billowed around her.

As long as she was alone, she could wail and scream and gnash her teeth in frustration, but when she was with the others, then she had to pretend to be strong.

An hour later she’d made it downstairs. Her hair was washed, blown dry and brushed until it shined, her teeth were polished, her makeup impeccable, her shorts and top a blue that matched her eyes. She grabbed some orange juice from the refrigerator, ignored Maria’s pleas that she eat breakfast, and found out that Witt and the police were holed up in the den with strict orders not to be disturbed. Fine. Turning her back to Maria, she splashed a couple of shots of vodka into her juice, swallowed two double-strength Excedrin, reached for a new pack of cigarettes, and tucked the Wall Street Journal under her arm.