You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,32
she couldn’t just wait around for James Cahill to “regain his memory” or the police to turn up anything on Megan. Time was ticking away, and her sister—make that her reckless sister—was in trouble. Rebecca was sure of it.
Did she really think James had harmed Megan?
As much as she distrusted him, she couldn’t quite believe that.
But what did she really know about him?
And then there was his involvement with Sophia Russo. Not a surprise, really, but Sophia worked for him. Rebecca had seen her through the windows of the hotel, serving at the bar, her blond hair shimmering in the dimmed lights as she mixed drinks. Megan had told her about Sophia, about the fact that every time she turned around, she saw the woman.
“I can’t seem to get away from her,” Megan had said in a phone conversation. “She works at the restaurant and the farms, and she’s everywhere in town. I know Riggs Crossing is a small town, but not that small.”
“Maybe she’s following you or checking you out.”
“It’s weird,” Megan had said.
And Rebecca hadn’t said what was uppermost in her mind:
Maybe she wants to be you.
At the very least, Sophia had wanted James Cahill.
Now Rebecca eased through James’s home. The house was a wreck, the police obviously having searched it thoroughly. Good. But she had to step carefully around debris left on the floor as she made her way from kitchen to dining area to the base of a staircase and the living room, where her phone’s light showed a raised hearth, the bricks stained a dark crimson in one corner.
James’s blood?
Or Megan’s?
Or even someone else’s?
Her stomach rolled at the thought as she imagined a body falling against the sharp bricks, head bouncing with a sickening crack. Then she thought of the bandage around James’s head, the sling supporting his arm, his supposed amnesia.
Stepping slowly into the room, she felt her skin crawl. She walked to the fireplace and touched the darkened brick with the fingertip of her glove. She tried to imagine the scene, the fight. Megan was mercurial, she knew that, and she was upset; that too was a fact. And she’d left this place on her own; Rebecca knew that as well. But something had happened.
It crossed her mind, not for the first time, that Megan could be hiding somewhere, that she was actually fine and just watching this play out, as a punishment to James. And to her.
But that seemed far-fetched.
Even for overly dramatic Megan.
“No,” she said aloud, her voice startling her as she swung the light over the room and then started for the stairs. Old as they were, they creaked as she climbed and reached the second floor. It felt empty, and two of the bedrooms appeared unused. One had only a twin bed, while the other was cluttered with leftover furniture and bags of clothes, books, and odds and ends. Both rooms, like the floor below, had been searched, as had the bathroom at the top of the stairs and the linen closet. She stepped over a pile of towels that had been left on the floor near the railing and moved into the final room on the floor, James Cahill’s bedroom.
As she pushed the door open, her stomach knotted. She felt more of a trespasser here than anywhere else in the house. Her muscles clenched as she stared at the huge bed, the mattress askew, the bedding on the floor. This was the room where James and Megan . . .
Stop it!
She forced her mind back to the task at hand. To find anything, any tiny bit of evidence that might tell her where Megan was.
Like you can do better than the police.
Maybe. She knew Megan; they didn’t. Tamping down her emotions, she kept her mind on track and searched with only the light from her phone. The battery was winding down, and she’d heard it was better to just turn on lights so neighbors wouldn’t be suspicious, but there were no neighbors out here, and if James returned suddenly, she didn’t want him to see her silhouette in a window, so she kept her flashlight trained on the room.
She checked the nightstands, but both drawers had been dumped, their contents not holding any clues. She pawed through some of the personal things and paused when she saw a package of condoms.
Unopened.
Reminding her.
Her lips twisted, and she pushed aside a forbidden memory.