Rebecca had thought she was well over him, had told herself that James’s betrayal was water under the bridge, a good thing. She’d almost convinced herself that she’d been lucky not to get too involved with him before he’d shown his true colors and ended up with Megan.

But she’d been wrong.

So damned wrong.

As soon as she could, she would put Riggs Crossing behind her. Get on with her life.

Her cell phone chirped from the tangled mess of blankets on the bed. Retrieving it, she spied her mother’s number and inwardly cringed. She wasn’t in the mood for Lenora’s questions, which always made her feel as if she were being interrogated, but putting her off was no answer either. Sweeping up the cell, she crossed to the window and looked down on the street below. Streetlights glowed, reflecting on the ice and snow. Traffic moved slowly through the nearby intersection, and pedestrians, bundled in jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves, hurried across the sidewalk. Big, lacy flakes drifted from gray clouds overhead. The phone rang in her hand again.

No time like the present.

Still staring through the glass, she answered just before the call was routed to voice mail. “Hey, Mom.”

“For a second, I thought you were busy. Or ignoring me.”

And there she was. Lenora Travers. Never one to pass up an opportunity to get in a little dig.

“Just coming out of the bathroom,” Rebecca lied.

And there you are, bending the truth to avoid conflict with Mom.

“I won’t keep you. I just want to know if you’ve heard anything from Megan.”

Rebecca imagined her mother, tall and willowy, her skin tanned, her hair streaked blond from hours in the California sun, her pale eyes worried. “Don’t you think I would have let you know, if she’d called or texted or shown up?”

“Of course, of course, but . . . I’m just so far away.”

Your choice, Rebecca thought, which was wrong. She and Megan were the ones who had moved away. “I know.” On the street below, a pickup with a tarp over its bed rolled through the intersection, and three preteen girls in matching red caps, giggling, their arms linked, made their way under a wide awning and into the coffee shop sitting catty-corner from the hotel.

“And no ransom call?”

“You think she was kidnapped? Mom, Megan’s a grown woman.”

“Don’t you read the papers or see that information on Facebook? People, women, not just kids, are taken all the time. They—the kidnappers—they pretend to be stranded, and you stop, or they ram you from behind and you get out to do the insurance work and bam! They force you back into your car at gunpoint and drive you to some remote place. That’s why they haven’t found Megan’s car!”

“She wasn’t kidnapped.”

“You don’t know that!”