See How She Dies Read Online Free Page B

grand and petulantly sipped from a fluted glass. She was allowed, having just turned twenty-one.
    Zachary lifted a shoulder. He was used to his old man’s theatrics and he really didn’t care what Witt did anymore. He and his father had never gotten along, and things had only become worse when Witt had divorced his first wife and eventually married a woman only seven years older than his oldest son, Jason, Zachary’s brother. Truth be known, Zach didn’t really want to be here, had only come because he was forced. He couldn’t wait to escape the smoky, loud ballroom filled with boring old people—suck-ups, every last one of them.
    â€œDad can’t keep his hands off Kat,” Trisha said, her voice slurring a little. “It’s obscene.” She took another swallow. “The lecherous old fart.”
    â€œCareful, Trisha,” Jason said as he joined his brother and sister. “Dad probably had this place bugged.”
    â€œVery funny,” Trisha said, tossing her long auburn hair over one shoulder. But she didn’t laugh. Her blue eyes were flat and bored and she continually scanned the crowd as if she were looking for something or someone.
    Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You know half the people here would like to see the old man fall.”
    â€œThey’re his friends,” Trisha argued.
    â€œAnd enemies.” Jason rested a hip against the piano as the band took a break. He watched his father, still holding London, playing the crowd, moving from one knot of bejeweled guests to the other, never once setting London on her feet.
    â€œWho gives a shit?” Zachary asked.
    â€œAlways the rebel.” Jason smiled beneath his mustache, that know-it-all smile that bugged the hell out of Zach. Jason acted as if he knew everything. At twenty-three, Jason was already in law school and six years older than Zach, a point he never let his rebellious younger brother forget.
    Zach tugged at the tight collar of his tuxedo shirt. He couldn’t stomach Jason any more than he could his sister, Trisha. They both cared too much about the old man and his bank accounts.
    Leaving Jason and Trisha to worry and fret over Witt’s affection for London, Zach walked to the edge of the crowd.
    He managed to grab a champagne glass from an unattended table, then sauntered over to the bank of tall, arched windows that overlooked the city and turned his back on the party. He felt a bit of satisfaction as he stared through the glass to the hot July night and swallowed champagne. Traffic flowed in a steady stream along the street. Taillights winked and blurred as cars and trucks labored through the city and over the yawning Willamette River, a sluggish black waterway that separated the west side of the city from the east. Steam rose from the city streets and the humidity level was high.
    In the distance, beyond the expanse of city lights, a ridge of mountains, the Cascades, guarded the horizon. Thunderheads that had been gathering all day blocked out any view of the stars, and the quick, sizzling forks of lightning added unwanted tension to the brackish night. Zach finished his champagne and, hoping no one would notice, half buried his empty glass in the soil surrounding a potted tree.
    He felt out of place, as he always had with his family. This black-tie affair thrown by Kat made him all the more aware that he was different from his brothers and sister. He didn’t even look like the rest of the Danvers clan, all of whom were fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and were favored with varying hues of blond to dark brown hair.
    He resembled his half-sister, London, more than anyone else in the family. Which didn’t win him any points with Jason, Trisha, and Nelson, his younger brother, all of whom on one occasion or another professed to hate their half-sister.
    With a snort, he considered London. He didn’t care much about the kid one way or the other. Sure, she bothered him. Any