“I said ‘get out’!”
“Not just yet. I’ve got a few more questions?” He tried looking over Zach’s shoulder to catch Adria’s eye, but a huge hand clamped over the lapels of his jacket and propelled him past the magazine stand toward the entrance. “Hey, you can’t do this! I’ve got rights!”
Zach shoved Havoline through the glass doors and he stumbled onto the street. “I’ll sue you, you bastard!” he yelled, brushing off his jacket as a news van for a local station pulled up to the front doors.
“Hell,” Zach muttered and clamped his fingers over Adria’s arm. As reporters climbed out of the cab, he spun her around and half ran back to the desk. “We need to leave,” he told the clerk who had witnessed the entire scene. “You must have a back way out so we don’t have a mob scene here in the lobby.”
“I don’t know—”
Another van from a rival station pulled up and reporters started through the doors.
“Now!” Zach ordered and the clerk called over a security guard.
“Give these people an escort out and have Bill come up to handle the rest.”
“This way!” The guard, a burly black man with a grim I’ve-seen-it-all expression, ushered them to the back of the lobby and through a set of double doors toward the kitchen. Excited voices drifted after them and Adria ducked gratefully into a stainless steel elevator. She wasn’t ready for the press. Not just yet. She needed time to prepare a statement, time to get herself ready for all the questions and accusations that were sure to be hurled her way.
Minutes later they were on the street and walking the short distance to the Hotel Danvers, where another crowd had gathered. Holding her arm fiercely, Zach guided her to a private entrance, through a tangle of hallways, down to the parking garage and into his Jeep.
“Where are we going?”
“Does it matter?” he asked, throwing the rig into gear and backing out of the narrow parking space.
“I think I have the right to know.”
“You got yourself into this mess. I could just leave you here to the piranhas.”
“I didn’t call the press.
“Like hell.” Zach aimed the nose of the Jeep toward the exit of the parking lot.
“You don’t believe me?” she said, disappointed as they sped out of the lot and joined the sludge of traffic clogging the city streets.
“No,” he admitted, glancing in her direction. “But if it’s any consolation, I haven’t believed a word you’ve said since you blew into town.”
18
Her face was a mask of calm resolution. Her chin was thrust forward with determination and her eyes, so blue, moved from one reporter’s face to the other. As the clouds overhead threatened rain and the cool wind caused the leafless tree branches to sway, Adria stood on a small rise in the park walkway blocks and addressed the throng of reporters. Her cheeks, stung by the wintry wind, were pink, her smile sincere, and Zach guessed that she’d had years of public speaking in college.
So far, her hastily convened press conference had gone well, and along with the reporters, a few passersby listened to her strong voice. “…that’s why I’m here. To uncover the truth. To find out for myself if I’m really Witt and Katherine Danvers’s daughter.” Six microphones were thrust in her face while photographers snapped still pictures and shoulder-held minicams rolled. The wind teased at her hair, whipping it across her face, and traffic continued to flow, the sounds of engines running, tires throwing up water, and hydraulic brakes squealing as a backdrop.
A pushy reporter with thin lips and a pointed nose asked, “Do you have any proof, aside from this tape of your adoptive father, that you’re London Danvers?”
“No, not really—”
“Isn’t that a little thin? Home video cameras are a dime a dozen now. Anyone could put together a stunt like this.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed on the man and he hooked his thumb into his belt loops just to make sure he didn’t start pushing the little bastard around.
“It’s not a stunt,” Adria replied firmly.
“You don’t think. But you don’t know. You have no idea what your adoptive father’s motives were.”
A red-haired woman with a deep voice asked, “What happened to Ginny Slade?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Why didn’t she demand ransom?”
“Again. I don’t know,” Adria said, as a truck roared past, sending pigeons scattering through the park and trailing a plume of blue exhaust.
“What about the million-dollar reward that Witt left for anyone who found his daughter? Wouldn’t Ginny have wanted a piece of that?”
“I can’t speak for her.”
Another woman asked, “At the time of the kidnapping, some people thought a local businessman, Anthony Polidori, was behind the plot. Witt Danvers always maintained that Polidori was involved.”
“I don’t know who was behind it.”
“Polidori was harassed by the police but he swore he was innocent.”
“I can’t comment on that.”
“Who was behind the kidnapping?”
“I don’t know—”
“What about you, Mr. Danvers? What do you and your family think?”
Zach responded by skewering the woman with a gaze meant to strike fear into her heart. “I have nothing to say.
“But you’re here, with a woman claiming to be your half-sister.”
He felt his blood beginning to boil. “This is her circus, not mine.”
“So that’s what you think about it?” the woman pushed, obviously pleased to get a rise from him. “What about the rest of the family?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
“They’re not here. You are. What do you think?”
“I have no comment.”
“Weren’t you one of the prime suspects at the time?”
Zach’s eyes flashed. “I was seventeen, for Christ’s sake,” he said, then forced a lid on his temper. “You’ll have to ask the police that one.” He grabbed the crook of Adria’s arm and if he could, he would have bodily carried her away from this ridiculous sideshow. Reporters were jackals. The whole lot of them. He’d learned that firsthand when London had been kidnapped.
“What do the police have to say?” the redhead asked.
Adria shot a glance in Zach’s direction. “Nothing yet.” She didn’t add that, at Zach’s insistence, she’d spent the last three hours at the station, explaining her story, giving the police a copy of the tape, showing them the threatening notes. “Thank you all for coming. If you need to get hold of me, please leave a message at the front desk of the Orion Hotel.”
“The Orion? Why not the Hotel Danvers?” a man yelled.
“Hold on a minute—”
“Just a few more questions—”
Zach’s fingers clamped firmly around her elbow and he propelled her to the Jeep. “Damned zoo,” he ground out as he helped her inside, then slid behind the wheel. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he spotted more than one of the hungry reporters dashing to their cars and vans, hoping, no doubt, to follow them. Good luck, Zach thought humorlessly. He knew the city like the back of his hand and had spent most of his teenage years trying to outrun the law. He slammed the rig into first, popped the clutch, and took off. A few cars gave chase and he had to suppress a grin of satisfaction.
“I think it went well, don’t you?” Adria asked.
“It was a fiasco.”
“Spoken like a true Danvers.”
He braked around a sharp corner and the tires skidded.
“We’re being followed?” she asked.
“Yep.” He glanced in the side-view mirror, frowned, and turned down an alley that opened onto Burnside. “Some of the vultures weren’t finished getting what they wanted.” He sped across the bridge over the dark Willamette, heading east toward the mountains, then doubled back on the freeway, crossing the river again and turning south, continuously checking his rearview mirror until he was satisfied that the cars shifting from lane to lane behind the Jeep weren’t giving chase. “You’ve really stirred up a hornet’s nest now.”
“It’s time.”
“You shouldn’t have called the press in the first place—”
“I told you I didn’t.”