You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,72
at six, that’s why I’m always rushing as most days I don’t get off work until five-thirty. Sometimes I’m late and miss the first stretches. I hate that.”
“And you didn’t see Megan on Wednesday or Thursday?”
“No.” Another quick sip from her drink, and it seemed as if her hands were shaking a little. What was it she was hiding?
“She wasn’t at the hotel?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Or with James?”
“I told you, I didn’t see her.” She folded her arms over her chest. Defiant. She then told them she’d never actually met Megan, not officially, and that she hadn’t been interested in doing so, all things considered. She looked away from the table, to the windows high overhead, and let out a sigh. “I knew of her, but that was about it. And before you ask, yeah, I knew she was seeing James and that they were ‘a couple.’ ” She made weak air quotes.
Rivers wasn’t buying it.
Sophia must’ve guessed as much. She licked her lips and fiddled with her hair, adjusting the band around the ponytail.
“Maybe I subconsciously avoided her, or she was avoiding me.”
Mendoza asked, “And the fact that they were a couple didn’t deter you from . . . getting closer to James?”
“They weren’t married or engaged or even living together!”
“So he was fair game?”
She squirmed in her chair a little. “I guess if I’d been hunting, then yeah, but it wasn’t like that. I told you. We were attracted to each other, and . . .”
It just happened. In his mind, Rivers finished her thought. Shades of Astrid’s weak explanation about her affair.
And so it went. For another fifteen minutes during which they didn’t learn anything significant. By the time Sophia slipped on her coat and hat and left the station, Rivers didn’t know much more than he had when she’d walked in.
“You believe her?” Mendoza asked, snapping her iPad closed.
“Jury’s out.”
“She’s a little too perfect,” Mendoza said. “Too put together. Too beautiful.”
Rivers pushed his chair back and stared at the door to the interview room as it hung open, the scent of Sophia’s perfume still lingering. “Not her fault.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t trust her.”
Rivers had experienced that same feeling. As they left the room, Mendoza asked, “Do you think she targeted James Cahill?”
“Targeted him before she came to Riggs Crossing?”
They walked toward their respective cubicles. “Think maybe she came to Riggs Crossing specifically because of Cahill? That she knew he was young and single and going to inherit a fortune?”
“There are lots of young, single rich men. You wouldn’t have to come all the way to Riggs Crossing to find one.” He thought it over. “Where’s she from?”
She propped her tablet onto his desk, opened it, and typed quickly. “California,” she said.
“Big state.”
“Hmm. Right. How about San Mateo?”
“How about it?” he replied, knowing its close proximity to San Francisco. Located about twenty miles south of the heart of the city, San Mateo was on the peninsula. He’d been there dozens of times when he’d lived in the Bay Area.
“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that she comes from close to the same place that the Cahill family called home?”
“I come from the area, too. Lots of people do. Including Megan and Rebecca Travers.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
“I do. But James Cahill is from Oregon. His parents moved there after he was born, I believe.”
“But the Cahill family is from San Francisco, originally, and it’s where the family fortune was amassed. Maybe we should follow the money.”
“Instead of the women?”
“One always leads to the other,” she said with an edge of sarcasm.
CHAPTER 24
The dream was so real.
He was with Rebecca. They were lying on the warm shores of a lake, the area deserted, no people, palm trees lining a beach of glittering sand. Far in the distance, on the horizon, was a boat of some kind, a small speck that grew larger as Rebecca started kissing him and nuzzling his ear.
His cock stirred, his erection coming to life as he responded. Her lips were warm and pliant, and he moaned, closing his eyes for a second before opening them and seeing that the boat was nearer, a ship by the size of it, steaming into the bay, moving quickly, black and massive.
Along with arousal, James felt a frisson of fear slide down his spine—there was something wrong here, and just as that thought occurred, the ship hit the shore and the beach started sloughing away to a ravine as dark and cold as a winter’s night, and