Page 205 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

“You heard me!” the woman barked again. “Three!” Her voice crackled with authority and concern. “I need EMTs. ASAP! . . . Yes, same address! Shit, just hurry!”

“Still unidentified?” Another voice. Male?

“Did you hear me? It’s bad here!” the woman said again. “I’m losing two, possibly all three.”

Sophia closed her eyes, felt a hand on her, heard the gentle commands from a distance. “Stay with me . . . can you hear me? Come on, now, lady, stay with me . . .”

But Sophia, fading, wasn’t paying attention.

Another voice was rising over the din.

Julia was speaking to her.

While the emergency worker tried vainly to capture her attention, Sophia heard her sister’s voice, as clear as the toll of a church bell. “We’re sisters, Sophia. You and I. Twins. It’s a miracle we found each other, and now we have a special, unbreakable bond. We’re together, you and I. Nothing can destroy that. Nothing!”

She didn’t have to say it. Sophia knew. But it was so hard to concentrate, to focus . . . she stopped trying.

“We’ll always have each other,” Julia whispered in a voice that broke with its sincerity, its truth. And as the blackness came for her, Sophia heard her sister’s vow. “Always. We’ll be together. I promise.”

I promise too.

And then Sophia let go.

CHAPTER 53

James opened an eye.

His head hurt.

His shoulder hurt.

His whole damned body hurt.

The room was in semi-darkness, and he saw that he was in the hospital.

“Déjà vu all over again,” he said through cracked lips. He barely recognized his own voice as he blinked and looked around the room to spy a man seated in a chair, wearing an overcoat, holding a hat between his knees. The detective. Of course.

“You got that right,” Rivers said.

“How . . . how long . . . ?” He was trying to piece together how he got here and remembered in bits and pieces his frantic drive following Julia to the cabin—a tiny house, on his own damned property. Then there was the panic, the gunshot that propelled him into the cabin. Sophia was on the floor, and there was so much blood, so damned much blood . . .

“You’ve been here a week.”

No!

“Surgery. And you hit your head, and it wasn’t completely healed from the last time . . . oh, hell, it’s not up to me to fill you in; the doctor will do that.”

“Rebecca?” he asked, his first thoughts of her. She’d been hurt.

“Back in Seattle.”

“But she was shot.”

“Bullet went through and through. Upper arm. Didn’t even nick a bone. Got some bruises and cuts, from the fight she had with Julia Harper, but, all in all, she’s lucky. She’ll be fine.”

He felt relief that she was okay, but a little jab of disappointment that she’d left. And he didn’t know how lucky she was—or he was, for that matter, all things considered. His mouth was dry, and he licked his parched lips. “Sophia?” he asked.

“She’s alive. Behind bars. Looks like she’ll make it. I can’t speak to anything else.”

---