“Stop!” Nurse Rictor swept into the room. “You need to leave,” she ordered in a take-no-prisoners voice. “Now.”

“You’ll do what?” James demanded of the visitor, his head finally level with hers.

“You can’t threaten a patient,” the nurse said, but the woman didn’t budge. Her dark hair was wound into a messy bun at the base of her neck, her face slightly flushed, skin taut over high cheekbones. In jeans and a coat cinched tightly around her waist, she was mad as hell. But there was something in her expression, an emotion that didn’t quite match her fury.

Fear?

Complicity?

Something wasn’t right here, he sensed. His memory might be elusive, but he’d always prided himself on his ability to read people, and with this woman, something was definitely off. “Who are you, and why the hell are you threatening me?”

“Ms. Travers.” Rictor interjected her voice a little more calmly as she attempted to take control. “If you’ll just wait until Mr. Cahill has seen the doctor—”

“I want to hear what she has to say,” James cut in. Ms. Travers? But not the woman he remembered attacking him.

“Where’s Megan?” she demanded.

“Who are you?”

Something dark crossed behind her eyes, an emotion beyond her anger. “You seriously don’t remember me.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Save it. And I don’t think you’ve been sorry in your life.”

The nurse let out a frustrated sigh. “Ms. Travers—”

“Rebecca,” he said. Her name came to him in an instant.

“Ah, you do remember.” Her eyes narrowed, silently daring him to confess. When he didn’t react, she said, “You know, I heard about your supposed amnesia, and let me tell you, I don’t believe it for a second. So you just tell me what happened to Megan.”

He shook his head, felt a jab of pain. He knew this woman, and it was more than just because she was Megan’s sister. He had a flash of her on a beach somewhere. The sun was shining, and she was running toward the water, the ocean stretching wide, the foamy tide lapping on pale sand. Laughing over the roar of the ocean, she turned her head, her wild hair catching in the wind, her arms and long legs slim and tanned . . . a red-and-white-striped bikini barely covering her butt . . .

Oh, yeah, he’d known Rebecca.

Intimately.

“Right,” she said. Gone was any sense of laughter or frivolity that he’d caught a glimpse of in his quicksilver memory. The woman who currently met his gaze was stern to the point of severity.

“Ms. Travers, it’s time for you to leave.” Rictor was firm.

“I will leave. Once I hear what happened to Megan.”

James said, “I already told you—”

“I know what you said,” she snapped. “But I don’t believe you.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what you think happened to her?”