You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,107
his bed in his room, had never taken his gun and . . .
The gun!
Why didn’t she feel its weight in her hoodie?
Oh, no, no, no . . . She reached into her pocket, found the key to James’s house and her phone, but the pistol . . . ?
Her anxiety cranked up three notches.
Forcing herself, she double-checked every pocket.
Nothing.
The Glock was definitely missing.
She went cold inside.
Hadn’t she picked it up? Or had she dropped it when she missed the last step on the stairs?
Let it go. Just get out of here. It’s his gun anyway.
Hurrying to her car, she told herself that James might just think he’d misplaced it and she and Sophia had found it and left it. She’d explain to Sophia that she’d run back in and put it . . .
Are you nuts? That nasty, nagging voice in her head cut into her thoughts. The police searched for the gun, too. And now it has your prints all over it. How’re you going to explain that one?
She couldn’t.
She slid behind the wheel and glanced in her rearview mirror.
Round haunted eyes stared back at her.
As she started the car, the voice in her head wouldn’t shut up.
“Face it, Willow,” it taunted. “You’re screwed.”
CHAPTER 33
Sophia snapped her hair into a quick bun and glowered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
James was slipping away.
She didn’t understand it.
But she sensed it. Like sand sifting beneath her feet in an outgoing tide, James Cahill was leaving her.
Angrily, she turned on the shower. She’d thought, stupidly, that his interest in her had begun to wane when Megan went missing, that some sense of guilt was drawing him away, but that wasn’t quite right. Nope. That wasn’t it. The real shift in his feelings had come when Rebecca had come sailing back into his life.
To find her sister.
Oh, right.
Like she even cared about Megan.
What a joke!
Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to deal with one sister turning James’s head, but a second? That just wasn’t fair!
The room had started to steam. She flipped the switch for the fan and heard nothing. Not the slightest whirr. No big surprise there. The place was falling apart, and that old bat Phoebe Matrix was too lazy and greedy to get anything fixed. You’d think since she owned the place, wasn’t just the manager, Phoebe would take better care of things. But she didn’t. Instead the old woman spent her hours and days peering out the window, spying on her tenants, when she wasn’t doting on that yappy little dog of hers or complaining about her ailments : a bad knee, arthritis in her back, diabetes, and her deathly aversion to peanuts. As if anyone cared.
Sophia pulled off her sweater and bra, then wiggled out of her skinny jeans and undies.
The shower pipes groaned as Sophia stepped into the phone-booth-sized shower with its stained panels. In the thin spray, she scrubbed off her makeup, careful to wash around her hairline, under her chin, and around her neck.
She thought of James again and was instantly pissed that she’d let him slip through her fingers. He was the one—the only one. It wasn’t that he was smart and sexy, it was that he was rich. Even though he hadn’t yet inherited the fortune he was due to receive, he still had money from all of his business ventures. Sophia knew. She had checked.
And once he inherited . . .
She lathered, then rinsed, turned off the shower, and stepped into the foggy bathroom to swipe at the mirror and crack the door. She let down her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders, covering the freckles on her neck, then found fresh clothes.
She set her jaw as the moisture in the room dissipated and goose bumps rose on her skin in the cold air. She’d made love to him, tried her best to be sexy and sweet, and . . . oh, it wasn’t working!
But she had a plan . . .
She snagged her bathrobe from the hook on the back of the old door and slipped it on, the thick white terry cloth drying the remaining droplets from her skin. Then she hurried downstairs and decided to call Julia.
Her sister would know what to do.
She always did.
But all Julia would do would be to caution Sophia not to lose her heart.
Well, too late for that!
Julia would remind Sophia how high the emotional stakes were and to play it cool.