See How She Dies

by Lisa Jackson

  “Sure you do. Every man here would like a little piece of the Kat.” He flung a brotherly arm over Zach’s shoulders. “But she doesn’t play her games with them. No way. For some reason she’s picked you to toy with. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she might have her sights set on you.”

  “Oh, Jesus! No way!” Zach said, though his heart skipped a beat.

  “I’m not so sure. She sure hasn’t come on to me like she just did with you and I’ve seen her, when she thinks no one’s watching. The way she looks at you. Christ, it’s hot.”

  “Stop it.”

  “But you can’t mess with her. If Dad ever found out—”

  “Cut it out, Jason,” Zach said, suddenly anxious. First Kat and now his brother. “I’m not going to mess with her.”

  Jason lifted a shoulder. “Everyone’s always said you were different—I guess Kat just wants to find out if it’s true.”

  “God, Jason, listen to what you’re saying! No, don’t! It’s sick.”

  “You know what you need to do?”

  Zach didn’t answer.

  “Go out and get laid.” Leaning closer to Zach, he pointed a finger at a swarm of teenaged girls, their makeup and hairstyles right out of Seventeen magazine. Compared to Katherine they seemed young and gawky and…desperate. “But not with Kat. Like I said, the old man would tan your hide if he found out. But Alicia Kramer is so hot for you she can barely stand it. I’ll bet she’s creaming all over herself just looking at you.”

  “Stop it!” Zach hissed, but Jason laughed, obviously pleased that he’d gotten such a violent reaction.

  “I’m telling you, sliding into her would be like sticking it into hot pudding.”

  “For Christ’s sake, cut it out!” Zach slid a glance in Alice’s direction and caught her hopeful gaze. She was a petite girl with big boobs and a bad complexion she disguised with thick makeup. Her teeth were straight, compliments of the braces she’d worn for two years. She wasn’t bad looking. She giggled and blushed when she caught Zach’s eye. But Zach wasn’t interested in the daughter of some big-shot banker. No way. Compared to Kat, Alicia seemed like a child.

  “She’s so horny she can barely keep her dress on. Look, I can tell you from my own experience that the Kramer girls are definitely hot-blooded. My guess is Alicia will give you a ride you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”

  “No thanks,” Zach replied.

  “I’m telling you, little brother, it’s time. I can hook you up with—”

  “Forget it, Jason.”

  Jason grabbed his arm. “Really, Zach. I know how you feel, like a powder keg ready to explode, and believe me, you can only take it so long.” His voice lowered a little. “There’s a girl I know…well, a woman, really. She…well, she knows just what to do to make a man feel good. She’s expecting me tonight.”

  “A hooker? Are you talking about a hooker?” Zach demanded, shocked, yet a little intrigued. Did Jason really know a prostitute? Holy shit!

  Jason took his arm and steered him to a quiet corner of the room, far away from the guests and the linen-clad tables of food and drink. “Now, just listen. This girl, Sophia, she’s…well, believe me, you’ll like her. She’s a good person.”

  Zach snorted. “Good people don’t sell their bodies.”

  “She’s not a streetwalker. In fact, she does this because she likes it. She’s always ready.”

  “Oh, God—”

  “She’s pretty and clean and will only do what you want to do. You can fuck her brains out if you want to, or, if you’d rather just talk…she’ll listen. Really. It’s up to you.” Jason’s voice was filled with brotherly concern.

  Zach knew he should walk away, but he couldn’t. An honest-to-goodness hooker. Waiting for Jason? A hooker who would just listen?

  “I know you and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, but this time, for the love of Christ, listen to me. You need a woman. Bad. And it can’t be Kat.” Frowning slightly, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a room key, and pressed the cool metal into Zachary’s sweating palm. “Three blocks down. The Orion Hotel. Sophia. Don’t worry about money. It’s all been arranged.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Do yourself a favor. Forget about Kat. Get laid.” With a friendly smile, Jason headed toward the bar, leaving Zach to clutch the damned hotel key in his clammy fingers. Swallowing hard, he opened his hand and stared down at the key to room 307, the key to his manhood, the key to his freedom from Kat.

  Suddenly aware that any number of his father’s guests could have overheard his conversation with Jason, Zach jammed his hands deep into his pockets and wondered how many of the other people at the party had witnessed his humiliation on the dance floor. How many eyes other than his brother’s and his father’s had seen Kat’s lips brush against his ear, or watched as his sweaty fingers had itched to delve beneath the zipper of her dress to grasp one of those firm buttocks? Jesus, he had to quit thinking about her like this! The key felt heavy in his pocket.

  The band broke into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Though his mind was still on the mysterious Sophia, the hooker with a heart, Zach watched as a huge cake in the shape of a fir tree was wheeled into the room on an elaborate cart. Sixty candles arranged in a string, like holiday lights decorating a Christmas tree, had been placed upon the needles of green frosting. Tiny flames flickered and danced as Witt, with Katherine and London’s help, blew out every last spark.

  Laughter and applause erupted and Witt, like a bridegroom, cut a fat piece of cake and fed the gooey concoction to his wife. Everyone cheered and Zach thought he might get sick as Katherine returned the favor, then smiling up at her husband, licked her fingers slowly.

  By the time London was hustled upstairs to one of the suites reserved for the Danvers family, the old man was starting to look a little tipsy. He hazarded a hard glance Zach’s way, and even in the crowded room, Zach read the warning in his father’s eyes. His heart sank. From years of experience Zach knew that Witt had not forgotten that his young wife had been flirting with his son. Nothing escaped the old man, and sooner or later, there would be hell to pay. Zach already bore several scars on his backside from the slap of his father’s belt. By this time tomorrow, he’d probably wear a few more—at least psychological scars. Witt Danvers was nothing if not brutal. He wouldn’t spare Zach’s feelings and would let his rebellious son know that he was no good, didn’t live up to his expectations, would never amount to anything in life.

  So who gave a shit what the old man thought?

  The key pressed hard against his thigh.

  Witt and Katherine began dancing again and his father’s attention was diverted from his second son to his wife. Zach seized the opportunity for escape. Without a glance over his shoulder, he wended his way past loud groups of guests, slipped through ballroom doors to the landing where he stopped to catch his breath and fight the dizziness in his brain from too much champagne.

  What was he doing? He couldn’t just leave the party. The old man would come unhinged.

  Good.

  Maybe Witt Danvers might even worry a little.

  Before he changed his mind, Zach steadied himself against the rail and hurried down the wide staircase.

  “Hey, Zach. Where’re ya goin’?” Nelson, his younger brother, demanded. At fourteen, Nelson, now hanging halfway over the rail, his shaggy blond hair flopping over his eyes, idolized his hellion of an older brother.

  “Not now,” Zach growled. He didn’t need the kid’s adoration any more than he needed Witt’s disapproval.

  “But—”

  “Just keep quiet, Nelson. Okay?” Refusing to acknowledge Nelson as the kid ran down the stairs, Zach strode through the front lobby where club chairs, brass lamps, and glossy dark tables were positioned around a massive fireplace. Past the main desk and a forest of potted palms, he walked quickly, trying not to think about the ramifications of his actions when Witt discovered him missing.

  Outside, the night
was humid. The smell of the river drifted on air so still it seemed to cling to Zach’s skin. He yanked off his jacket and began walking fast, heading north, trying to cool his blood and clear his head.

  What he was contemplating was crazy, and yet, he’d consumed enough alcohol to feel bolder than usual. So what if the old man found out? What could he do? Kick Zach out of the Danvers family mansion, force him to live with his mother? That thought was a bitter pill to swallow.

  Deep down, a part of him still cared for the woman who had borne him, but she didn’t deserve that love, not after she’d abandoned them all and left them in the lonely house on the hill with Witt. Zach didn’t know the full story, but the gist of it was that Witt had caught his wife in bed with his most hated rival, Anthony Polidori. She’d been carrying on with him for years and rather than expose herself, or her lover, to the media, she’d had no choice but to accept Witt’s terms for the divorce: he’d get the kids and most of the wealth, she’d receive a stipend and be spared the ugly scandal of testifying in divorce court that she was an adulteress. Her social position had been left unscathed; her children’s lives had not.

  As much as Zach professed to despise the old man, he did have a grudging respect for Witt Danvers and the power he seemed to possess over the people of this city. As for his mother, Zach felt little but loathing for Eunice. She had shamed his father with an affair that had ripped out the old man’s soul. It had been Eunice who had wounded Witt Danvers’s pride so badly that eventually, though it was years later, Witt had fallen into the open arms of Katherine LaRouche. He’d met Katherine at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. They had married within the week. Witt had explained to his children that Katherine was from a wealthy Ontario family. Though she was thirty years younger than he, she would become his children’s new mother.

  The family had been in shock, the Danverses’ lawyers nearly apoplectic, but the damage had already been done. Katherine LaRouche, whoever she was, had managed to become the bride of one of the wealthiest men in Portland. She’d seemed proper enough then, Zachary thought, remembering back, and the change in her attitude toward him had come subtly over the years. As he’d reached adolescence he’d felt her watching him more closely, caught her eyeing him whenever his shirt was off—either when he was swimming in the pool in his cutoff jeans or riding one of the horses bareback. As his muscles had developed, so had Katherine’s interest in her stepson.

  He’d told himself that he was imagining things, that it was only his newfound awareness of his own masculinity that had changed his perception, but now he wasn’t so sure. And Jason had voiced the same suspicions.

  Sighing through his nose, he shook his head to clear it. With one hand, he felt the key in his pocket and his stomach tightened into a hard ball of apprehension. What if he actually went into the Orion Hotel, took the elevator to the third floor, rapped hard on the door, and it was opened by a withered old woman without teeth? What if the damned door was opened by a man? A queer dressed up as a hooker? Oh, Jesus! What if this whole arrangement was a setup, the result of Jason’s twisted sense of humor?

  He gritted his teeth and glanced behind him as he reached the Orion. No one seemed to have followed him and no one other than Jason would guess that he was here. Somehow he found strength in his anonymity as he lingered on the steps of the high-rise that jutted upward, washed by floodlights, white concrete slicing into a sky as black as obsidian.

  Hesitating a fraction of a second, Zachary locked his jaw, squared his shoulders, threw open the hotel’s front door, and decided it was time he became a man.

  3

  The hotel corridor was empty, a long hallway of gold shag carpeting and metal doors painted to look like wood. The Orion had none of the charm of the Hotel Danvers, but Zach didn’t care. Swallowing back the urge to turn tail and run, Zachary let the stairwell door bang shut behind him and walked, heart knocking, toward room 307. To Sophia. His destiny.

  Before he lost his already-faltering courage, he rapped sharply on the door and waited.

  “It’s open,” a cool, feminine voice called through the metal.

  Oh, Christ! Zach’s heart nearly stopped. He reached for the knob with clammy fingers and threw open the door.

  The woman was lying with her back to him. Sprawled sensually across the bed, wearing only a black bra and a lacy black belt with long garters that dangled over a scanty pair of panties, she stretched. Zach could see the dimples above her smooth rump and long thighs and his mouth turned to sand. “You’re late,” she reprimanded gently.

  Zach’s diaphragm slammed up against his lungs and he could barely breathe. Heat radiated from his groin.

  Turning slowly, allowing him a glimpse of full breasts crushed into a bra several sizes too small, she smiled up at him with a come-hither look that evaporated when her gaze met his face.

  “Who’re you?” she demanded. Her dark eyes shadowed with fear. “Get out!” She cast an anxious look around, as if searching for a weapon, or clothes to cover her body. “Get the fuck out!” She reached for a pink silk wrapper and started ramming her hands frantically down its sleeves.

  “Jason sent me.”

  She froze. “Like hell,” she muttered, her black eyes disbelieving. The robe still gaped enough so he had a view of the hollow between her breasts.

  Zach’s throat closed in on itself and he prayed to God that his voice didn’t squeak. “He’s still at Dad’s party and—”

  “Dad’s?”

  “I’m his brother, Zachary.” He started to stick out his hand, knew it to be a mistake and wished he could just drop dead of a heart attack. She was a hooker, for God’s sake, a professional, and he was a bumbling, tongue-tied, green, virgin! She could probably smell it.

  Suspicion lingered on her features. “You don’t look like him.”

  The bane of Zach’s existence. “I know.” Still he didn’t move.

  “Close the door.”

  Zach kicked it closed but didn’t bother with the bolt.

  Scooting closer to the headboard, trying to hold the robe closed over her skin, looking as if she might bolt for the door at any minute, she asked, “Why’d he send you?” She tossed a thick rope of coal-black hair off her face. “Jesus, you scared the living shit out of me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well, come in,” she ordered, obviously agitated.

  Carefully, afraid she might jump up and run down the hall screaming rape, he walked across the orange carpet and eased himself onto the foot of the bed.

  “Jason sent you?” she asked, reaching onto the nightstand for a crumpled pack of cigarettes propped against a half-finished drink. She shook out an unfiltered Pall Mall and her hands only trembled a little as she struck a match and lit up. “Why?”

  “He, um, he had to stick around. Dad wanted him there.”

  She arched a fine black brow as she drew on her cigarette again and finally lifted it from her lips. “But he didn’t want you?” she asked skeptically.

  “Jason’s the oldest,” Zach said, as if it explained everything, which it did. Jason had been groomed from the day he was born to be heir to the Danvers fortune. Nothing had changed just because Witt had sired a second son.

  The hooker smiled. “So he’s the favorite.”

  “London’s the old man’s favorite.”

  “Ahh. Jason’s talked about her. The little kid. What is she, about three?’

  “Almost five.” Zach didn’t see that London’s age mattered at all, especially considering the situation. He was in a hotel room with a prostitute and they were discussing his baby sister! Well, hadn’t Jason said she liked to talk? Somehow he’d expected the conversation to be a little more sensual.

  Sophia set her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedstand, then picked up her drink. Swirling the melting ice cubes with one long finger, she stared at Zach, letting her eyes rove up his half-buttoned shirt to his windblown hair.

  “Jason wants you to take his place?”
r />   “That seemed to be the plan.”

  She took a swallow from her glass and the tip of her tongue rimmed her wet lips. “Are you a virgin, Zachary?”

  The question hit him like a slap in the face. “Of course not.”

  “Mmm. Then you’ve had…a lot of women?” She sipped her drink, trying to smother a smile.

  “My share,” he said, realizing that they both knew he was lying. Hell, what did you say to a prostitute when she asked you things like that?

  “You ever had a blow job?”

  His head snapped up. Was she for real, or was she teasing him? He stared straight into her dark eyes and wondered if she was laughing at him. His gut tightened as she set the glass on the night table, allowing the robe to gape open and reveal her breasts. He couldn’t help but stare.

  He was already beginning to get hard, but he didn’t try to hide his erection. The robe fell off one of her shoulders and her skin looked soft and smooth, moving easily beneath the silky ebony strap of her bra.

  “So what’re we going to do about this?” she asked, as she settled back on the bed, the pink wrapper no longer clutched in her fingers, her navel and the top of lacy black underpants visible. When he didn’t reply, she inched closer to him, first with her toe, then with the rest of her, sliding slowly down the bed, rumpling the coverlet with her rounded buttocks. Her eyes were hot, dark mirrors seeming to reflect the torment of his soul. She seemed to stare past all the lies he’d told her as she pulled herself up to her knees and moved her head close to his. She smelled of perfume and smoke and bourbon.

  “So you won’t tell me, eh? Well, just let me know when I do something you don’t like, okay?”

  She pressed her hot, wet tongue against the shell of his ear and he groaned. The swelling between his legs began to ache and as her tongue dipped into his ear, he wondered if he might embarrass them both by coming in his pants. “Come on, baby, what’re you waiting for?” she whispered in a whiskey-smooth voice.

  The invitation was impossible to resist.