You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,10

told her she’d had a fight with James Cahill and was driving through a near-blizzard to reach Rebecca’s condo in Seattle.

But she hadn’t arrived.

That had been two days ago, with Megan Travers already missing nearly twenty-four hours at that time.

Coincidentally, James Cahill had been discovered unconscious and wounded, a struggle evident in his home, a note from someone, presumably the missing Megan, declaring she was leaving him on the very night she had called her sister to say she was on her way.

“We’ve already got Knowlton’s statement,” Mendoza reminded him as she fiddled with a knob on the dash, adjusting the vehicle’s temperature.

Robert “Bobby” Knowlton was the person who had found Cahill and called 9-1-1.

“He might have forgotten something.”

“Okay.” She wasn’t buying it, but she quit messing with the controls for the heater.

“And I like to see the scene when it’s not crawling with techs and deputies and EMTs tromping all over the place.” He didn’t know why he was explaining it, as it was, as she’d said, his case. He slowed for a curve just as an oncoming pickup drifted across the middle of the road.

“Watch out!” she yelled.

Rivers jerked on the wheel, his SUV swerving, a tire skimming the edge of a snow-covered ditch.

The truck, fishtailing, missed them by inches.

The Jeep slid and caught as, beside Rivers, Mendoza braced herself. “Holy—”

“Idiot,” he muttered under his breath.

Mendoza was twisted in her seat, aiming her phone through the back window as she attempted to snap pictures through the glass. “You should go after that guy! He could’ve killed us!”

“I should.”

“I’m serious, Rivers! That prick is dangerous! I’m calling it in.”

Rivers checked his rearview, but the truck was already out of sight, having disappeared around the curve and into the curtain of snow.

Mendoza had her phone pressed to her ear and was already describing the pickup to a dispatcher. “I don’t know . . . Chevy, older model.”

“Ford,” he corrected. She shot him a look.

“Rivers says it was a Ford. White, I think.”

“Silver.”

Another dark glance was sent his way. “Silver. With . . . Washington plates, I think. I couldn’t really see. And no, I didn’t get the plate numbers.”

This time he didn’t interject as she told the dispatcher the location; but it was an effort in futility, just a chance for Mendoza to let off steam. She clicked off.

“He probably just hit ice and slid into our lane.”

She frowned. “Doesn’t matter. No excuses! Either you know how to drive in the damned snow, or you stay the hell home.” Craning her neck again, she peered through the back window as if she expected the pickup to reappear. It didn’t. “Anyway,” she said, letting out her breath as she settled into her seat again. “Road deputies will be on the lookout. I hope they nail that moron.”

“They could get lucky.”

She let out a huff of air. “You don’t even care.”

“Got my mind on other things.”

“Bigger problems than getting killed and meeting St. Peter today?” There was still an edge to her voice.

“Right.”

“We’re here anyway,” she said just as he spied the rustic inn set back from the county road. “And we’re not alone.” They’d caught up with a line of traffic, many cars peeling into the parking lot of the Cahill Inn. Like most of the commercial buildings in Riggs Crossing, the two-storied hotel was complete with a Western façade of weathered cedar siding, a covered porch running the length of the building, and, to add authenticity, hitching posts and watering troughs flanking the two wide steps leading to the front doors.

“Straight off a Hollywood set,” Mendoza observed, as Rivers spied the turnoff to the Cahill house. “Y’know, for an old Western show like Gunsmoke. Or The Rifleman.” Then, as if she anticipated a question, “My grandpa’s a big fan. There’s a Western channel on cable, and whenever he’s not watching sports, he’s tuned into reruns of old black-and-white shoot-’em-ups. Maverick. That’s his fave. It still holds up.”

He wasn’t paying too much attention to the conversation as he peeled off the main road, just before the hotel, leaving other vehicles to vie for limited parking space in the lot that separated the hotel from the lane to James Cahill’s home. A border of fir and pine divided the private lane from the commercial property. Through a line of trees, Rivers noted that the back side of the Cahill Inn was visible. There, additional parking separated the inn from a café near an arched entrance to Cahill Christmas Trees. The area was