What the hell was the detective doing lurking in the middle of the living room in the dark like some kind of burglar?

The whole thing was weird.

Rivers had been standing in the darkened room of Megan’s apartment when she’d opened the door. His eyes had been closed, his head tilted toward the ceiling, his hands in his pockets; the sight of his shadowed form had given her a shock.

What the hell had he been doing?

Having a religious experience? He’d scared her half to death. Worse yet, the apartment manager had showed up and had been armed and . . . well, maybe not all that dangerous. Still, Rebecca had nearly had a heart attack—make that two—in the span of five minutes.

Everything about this was nuts.

Her mind circled back to James again.

She scrounged a clean pair of jeans and a sweater out of her suitcase and thought that she was lucky James hadn’t accused her of breaking and entering.

Yet.

But then maybe squeezing through a dog door didn’t really count.

She hadn’t stolen anything, but hadn’t really learned anything either.

She pulled on fresh underwear and her jeans as she thought about the man she’d once thought she’d loved. James Effing Cahill. Did every damned thing have to circle back to him?

Unfortunately, in this case, the answer was yes.

She snapped on her bra before returning to the bathroom. She started to comb out her damp curls. Did she really believe that he was a kidnapper? A potential murderer? She caught sight of her reflection in the still-foggy mirror and saw that she was actually shaking her head.

“Denial,” she accused, pointing the tip of her comb at the image in the mirror. “It’s a killer.”

This whole situation was just so impossible to comprehend.

But she’d just have to go with it for now.

Detective Rivers was expecting her.

* * *

“Find anything?” Mendoza asked as she peered around the edge of Rivers’s cubicle. She was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand, and she waved it carefully toward his computer screen, which was open to Megan Travers’s Facebook page.

“Nope.”

He’d been checking Megan Travers’s social media pages and feeds, but her accounts had been stagnant for half a week, no activity. It was as if Megan Travers had fallen off the face of the earth.

Or been pushed by James Cahill.

“What about Cahill’s page? You check that?”

“Doesn’t have anything personal, just basic information about his businesses—the construction firm, the tree farm, the inn, even the café.” Rivers typed in Cahill Industries, and the website came onto the screen with a small picture of James Cahill in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up that was superimposed over the masthead, which featured pictures of tiny houses, fir trees, and the hotel.

“Busy guy.”