Page 173 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

Rebecca had hated her sister then.

Had sworn she’d never help her again.

And now—Megan might be dead. Rebecca had to face that damning fact. Ever since learning about Megan’s car being found abandoned in a mountain cabin, the deep-seated fear that Megan was no longer alive had been gnawing at her, chasing away any chance of sleep.

“Enough!” Rebecca said aloud, sitting upright and flinging off the covers. She threw herself out of bed and felt a lump the size of Montana in her throat, her eyes stinging as tears threatened.

She hadn’t realized how much she’d believed that Megan would be found alive, possibly injured, but alive! Now, though, with the discovery of Megan’s abandoned car, it seemed as if Megan was truly gone, as if she were dead.

Don’t give up hope. You don’t know that!

Until they find her body.

Oh. God.

She had to do something.

She couldn’t just sit in this hotel room and wait for news, cling onto a little thread of hope and pray that the police would locate her sister.

What if Megan were still alive? There was still a chance, right? If so, Rebecca had to find her.

She stalked to the small bathroom, used the toilet, and twisted on the shower. She thought of the two women who lived here and had been found murdered. Had the same fate happened to Megan?

Don’t go there!

Angrily, she threw off her oversized T-shirt and kicked off her underpants. Then she stepped under the shower’s hot spray and closed her eyes, the water stinging against her skin before washing over her. The pressure from her mother was unrelenting. She’d have to do some detecting on her own because she was the one who understood her sister better than anyone else. She thought about the last time she’d tried to snoop and how James had caught her in his house. She’d have to be more careful, just find out something—anything—to point the police in the right direction.

As she lathered her body, she wondered, who had the most to gain with Megan out of the way?

The simple answer was: Sophia Russo.

Because she wanted James, who hadn’t been able to break up with Megan.

So maybe Sophia had taken matters into her own hands.

That seemed pretty rash, but Rebecca had seen enough true-crime mysteries on late-night TV to know that truth was stranger than fiction. She would just have to be careful.

* * *

Sweat pouring down his face, Rivers ran on the treadmill located in the second, or spare, bedroom of his condo. He never had overnight company, so he’d converted the room into an office/gym. He’d pushed a desk into one corner, while a set of weights, the treadmill, and a stationary bike were all aimed at a television mounted high on the wall opposite his filing cabinets, the equipment dominating the room. Currently it was 4:00 A.M., and the news of the day was breaking on the East Coast. Not that he was paying attention.

He hadn’t been able to sleep, his thoughts chasing one after the other about the ongoing investigations that had stalled over the last week. The loose ends kept running through his mind: Why had Charity Spritz been killed? What had she learned? Did it have anything to do with Megan Travers, who had grown up in San Francisco? Who was the mystery woman related to James? Why was Megan Travers’s car located at that out-of-the-way mountain cabin? Where was she? How was Jennifer Korpi involved? Did it have to do with her brother, Gus Jardine? And what about Sophia Russo, the woman who had caught James Cahill’s attention while he was still involved with Megan Travers?

He kept running and swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the towel that hung from his neck.

His calves started to ache, and he was breathing hard.

What about Rebecca Travers? Was she as innocent as she tried to be? And how was Willow Valente involved? Why was she murdered? And by whom? Why stage her death to appear a suicide, then take a picture of her dead body and send it to a newspaper, the same newspaper Charity Spritz worked for, the same newspaper that received pictures of Charity in death?

What the hell kind of nutcase were they dealing with?

Or was it more than one case? Were the murders and disappearance linked or separate crimes?

The latter seemed unlikely. On a side note, he’d learned that the owner/manager of the Cascadia Apartments, Phoebe Matrix, was in the hospital, in a coma, one of her tenants having called 9-1-1. The only reason he noted her condition was that Matrix was the landlady for the building where Sophia Russo, a suspect in the case, resided. It might just be coincidence, but James Cahill too, the man who had been dating Sophia for a while, had been in a coma recently.

And Rivers had never put any stock in coincidence.

He hit the INCLINE button, and the treadmill responded, its nose inching upward so that he was running uphill, the sweat rolling off his muscles and dripping off his nose, his calves and thighs protesting.

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