“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.”

“Julia?”

“Dead. Died that night. She was the connection to Gus Jardine, who’s still angling for a plea deal. Jennifer Korpi and Harold Sinclaire are innocent. Gus played them both.”

James felt nothing. Even as he listened to Rivers explain what he’d already figured out, that long-lost twins, daughters of his mother’s half-sister’s daughter and an unknown father, had finally found each other and cooked up a scheme to seduce James, marry him, probably kill him, and inherit a fortune. In the process, they’d hired Gus Jardine to kill Charity Spritz because she was close to unmasking them, and Willow Valente because she was getting suspicious that Sophia was really two people; and they’d nearly murdered Phoebe Matrix, the landlady who had been snooping around. Julia was the more deadly of the two, but Sophia was no angel. She would be prosecuted and sent to prison for a long time.

“Not long enough, though,” Rivers admitted. “She’s a piece of work.”

“So it was all about the money,” James said.

“Seems as if. And there’s something else you missed while you were out.”

“Yeah?”