As much as she distrusted him, she couldn’t quite believe that.

But what did she really know about him?

And then there was his involvement with Sophia Russo. Not a surprise, really, but Sophia worked for him. Rebecca had seen her through the windows of the hotel, serving at the bar, her blond hair shimmering in the dimmed lights as she mixed drinks. Megan had told her about Sophia, about the fact that every time she turned around, she saw the woman.

“I can’t seem to get away from her,” Megan had said in a phone conversation. “She works at the restaurant and the farms, and she’s everywhere in town. I know Riggs Crossing is a small town, but not that small.”

“Maybe she’s following you or checking you out.”

“It’s weird,” Megan had said.

And Rebecca hadn’t said what was uppermost in her mind:

Maybe she wants to be you.

At the very least, Sophia had wanted James Cahill.

Now Rebecca eased through James’s home. The house was a wreck, the police obviously having searched it thoroughly. Good. But she had to step carefully around debris left on the floor as she made her way from kitchen to dining area to the base of a staircase and the living room, where her phone’s light showed a raised hearth, the bricks stained a dark crimson in one corner.

James’s blood?

Or Megan’s?

Or even someone else’s?

Her stomach rolled at the thought as she imagined a body falling against the sharp bricks, head bouncing with a sickening crack. Then she thought of the bandage around James’s head, the sling supporting his arm, his supposed amnesia.

Stepping slowly into the room, she felt her skin crawl. She walked to the fireplace and touched the darkened brick with the fingertip of her glove. She tried to imagine the scene, the fight. Megan was mercurial, she knew that, and she was upset; that too was a fact. And she’d left this place on her own; Rebecca knew that as well. But something had happened.

It crossed her mind, not for the first time, that Megan could be hiding somewhere, that she was actually fine and just watching this play out, as a punishment to James. And to her.

But that seemed far-fetched.

Even for overly dramatic Megan.