Page 178 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

Julia probably should have rented a house, as there were too many prying eyes in this building. Though it didn’t have cameras, there was always the nosy landlady to deal with. Or there had been. Julia had managed to take care of Phoebe. Julia was a master at opening locks, and finding the EpiPens hadn’t been hard; the old lady was always talking about herself.

Too bad she hadn’t died.

Yet.

But Julia would take care of her. The switched-out candy had been brilliant, or so she’d thought. And come on, why was the old lady eating candy at all—what with her constant complaints about diabetes? Julia concentrated. Maybe she should put the peanut powder in the old woman’s Metamucil . . . or come up with some other kind of accident. Slipping on the ice would be good. Maybe if Julia let that stupid little Larry dog out, and he ran into the street, and Phoebe, running after him, slipped and fell on the ice and hit her head . . . at night. That would be best. She’d have to work on that, but Phoebe, the old snoop, had to go!

Julia cracked open the soda. “I bought groceries after the shift I worked.”

“I know what time you got off,” Sophia reminded her. “It was my shift.”

“So I got groceries and had a couple of drinks, down at the Brass Bullet.” She went back to the living room and carefully peered through the blinds to spy on Dabrowski shoveling snow, Larry—that stupid little yappy dog he’d inherited from Phoebe Matrix—sniffing the bushes lining the parking lot.

“Ask Bruce, if you don’t believe me,” she said, snapping the blinds shut, then returning to the kitchen. “He was there—at the Bullet.”

Sophia looked as if she were about to say something, but didn’t.

“So what? Now I can’t even have a drink?” Julia demanded and, to make a point, took a swallow from her can.

“You just need to be careful. And I think this is wrong. I mean, what we’re doing. The whole scam. It’s just not right.”

“When did you come up with a change of heart? Is this because you and James had a fight?” Sophia had confided that she was giving James a little space, that they’d had a disagreement, so Julia assumed all of her doubts arose from the fight—whatever it had been about. Sophia had been a little closemouthed about it. Now she touched her twin on the shoulder. “You knew this could get messy. So don’t think you can back out now. You’re in this, Sophia. It’s too late now to grow a conscience.”

Sophia appeared absolutely miserable, almost near tears, her throat catching. She shrugged off Julia’s hand. “Is it—is it really worth it?”

Hell, yeah, it is. What was wrong with her? They had a deal. A pact. Made between two women of the same blood! And stupid Sophia intended to blow it? After all the years of planning to get back at the Cahills for turning their backs on them, now . . . now Sophia was going to throw in the towel?

“We’re talking millions,” Julia reminded her, trying to remain calm. “Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions. Who knows? But more money than we would ever see in our lifetimes.” Julia softened her voice a little, tried to be placating. “Listen. We’re just getting back what’s rightfully ours. Remember? We were cut out when that whack job of a mother gave us up for adoption. Didn’t even let our father know we existed.”

“And now he’s dead,” Sophia supplied, as if she were sad at the thought.

Well, who knew if their old man had really kicked off, but Julia had spun that story well enough that Sophia had bought it. And really, as far as Julia was concerned, whoever had been the sperm donor who had impregnated Deidre, he didn’t exist, not to her. She never wanted to know who he was, so she planned to just keep him where he should be: dead in the ground.

Sophia set her near-empty glass in the sink, where a couple of other dirtied plastic dollar-store plates sat. What the fuck? Couldn’t she find the dishwasher? That was the difference between them. Sophia had grown up somewhat pampered, if ignored by her parents, and Julia had been forced to work hard, to take care of her younger siblings. It was like she’d been an unpaid maid—a slave! So still, after all these years, after finally finding her sister, she was the damned workhorse, had made the plans, secured this apartment, bought the car with money she’d saved working as a barista in a mom-and-pop coffee joint, scrabbling for every damned dime she’d saved.

“What about Megan Travers?” Sophia asked, finally getting to what, Julia suspected, was really bothering her. “Is she dead too?”

Julia let out a disgusted sigh. “Of course not.”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“You said you kidnapped her. The cops found her car at that cabin, but she wasn’t there. I read where they’re going to take cadaver dogs up there. Are they going to find her? Buried on the property? Stuffed in a basement?”

“This is crazy!” Julia snapped, her anger surfacing. What the hell was wrong with Sophia? “You’ve been watching too many made-for-TV ‘true crime’ shows.”

“Prove it,” her sister said again stubbornly.

“What? You want a picture of her?”

“Not unless it’s date-stamped.” Sophia was thinking now, and that was dangerous. “The plan was to kidnap her, right? Not harm her. So, what happens after we get James to marry me—us—huh? We can’t just let her free after keeping her prisoner. She’ll rat us out!”

“Not if we cut her in. And trust me, Megan Travers wants a share.”

“She’s in love with James!”

“She’s in love with his money. Like us.”

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