was crazy, wasn’t it? At the very least, paranoid.
Rebecca turned away from the window and focused on the open page on her computer, but couldn’t find the energy right now to care about weddings or brides or anything to do with romance and happiness and sunny futures. She snapped the laptop closed and returned to the window. Her stomach rumbled, and she eyed the restaurant situated catty-corner at the next block. She should just get going, leave this tiny town and head back to Seattle, but at the thought of her empty condo, she inwardly cringed. And she could work from anywhere as long as she had a decent Internet connection, anywhere in the world.
Maybe she should relocate entirely.
Get farther away from the mess that was her life and out of the drizzle and memories of Seattle.
Since the boutique shop was expanding into markets in California, she could possibly leave Seattle. Maybe a change of scenery was what she needed.
And what about Megan?
Her stomach twisted at the thought of her sister.
And then there’s James . . .
Forget him! He betrayed you. Remember?
Staring through the window, past her own pale reflection, she continued to watch pedestrians on the streets as they hurried along the sidewalk or between parked cars, some burdened with packages, all bundled against the cold as the snow fell. A boy on a skateboard slipped through the crowd, an elderly man helped his wife into a parked pickup, and . . . and a lone figure, standing apart from the rest—a woman, she thought, a scarf wound over her neck and lower face. She kept to one side, but her head tilted upward as if she were staring straight at Rebecca.
So what, was Rebecca’s first thought, but then, as if the woman realized she had been caught staring, she whirled away, ducking down an alley, the rope of her black braid snaking out behind her. Not blond Sophia, who’d ducked into the coffee shop. Who, then?
“What the devil?” Rebecca asked aloud as she told herself it was nothing and her cell phone jangled, causing her to jump. She nearly ignored it, as she’d already talked to her mother and most every other call had been from anonymous numbers, all of which had turned out to be reporters. They could leave a voice-mail message, she thought, but she plucked the cell from the mess of her bed again, and this time she recognized the number: James Cahill.
Her heart beat a little faster, and she told herself to let the call go to voice mail.
But what if he’d learned something about Megan?
Steeling herself, she picked up. “James,” she said without preamble, hoping there was no trace of emotion in her voice.
“Hey, Becca.” Her heart twisted as she remembered how he’d always shortened her name. Not Becky . . . Becca . . . and she’d loved it. “I’m downstairs.”
“Downstairs? Here?” she asked, then before he could answer: “Why?”
A beat, then, “I remember.”
“What?”
“That night. With Megan. I remember.”
She swallowed hard. “Oh.”
“I thought you should know.”
Her heart began to pound. “Tell me.”
“Face-to-face.”
“No, I don’t think—” she started to argue, then looked frantically around her small hotel room: the unmade bed, her computer on the covers, the clothes she’d worn earlier tossed over the back of a chair. The thought of him in her room—her space—was intimidating. She began cleaning up, straightening the covers. “Not here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but just not here.”
“We’ll figure it out.” He sounded so sure of himself.
Her heart was hammering. She needed to talk to him. She wanted to talk to him. Wasn’t that the reason she’d come all the way to Riggs Crossing to begin with? To find out what he knew, what he remembered?
Or was there another reason? Now that Megan was gone—
“I’ll come down,” she said quickly, breathlessly, cutting off that thought.
“I’ll meet you by the front door.”
She clicked off and wondered if she was about to make the worst mistake of her life.
CHAPTER 26
“Come on, lady, let’s go.”
The security guard, a big, burly man in a too-tight uniform, motioned Charity off the front porch as a fine mist, visible in the light from the streetlamps, fell around them. The Northern California night was close, the air as thick as it was cold.
“I wasn’t doing anything!” she declared when the guy tried to grab her arm. She yanked it away and glared at Lenora Travers, who was standing in the doorway of her town house. What an A-1 bitch! And she knew it!
Lenora was wearing a