Riggs Crossing, Washington
James adjusted his tool belt over his hips and was about to climb up onto a trailer, where a tiny house was being built to look sleek and modern, with Scandinavian elements.
“Uh-oh.” Bobby Knowlton, picking a bit of cat hair from his sleeve, was approaching from the rear of the building and was peering through the open barn door. He glanced down the lane. “Incoming.”
Glancing over his shoulder, James spied a white Subaru fast approaching, splashing through puddles in the gravel.
Rebecca.
Despite the cop’s advice, James had called her and texted several times.
She’d never responded.
Not once.
But here she was, and his pulse jumped, his heart racing.
As her Subaru stopped and she cut the engine, he felt every muscle in his back tighten.
“I’ll be a minute,” he said to Bobby.
Bareheaded, in jeans, a sweater, and a long coat, she waited at the side of her car.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, forcing a smile as he approached. “You missed me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, I knew this was a mistake,” she said but cracked a bit of a smile, and he noticed that it was just starting to snow again, a few flakes drifting from gray skies and catching in her hair.
“What’s a mistake?”
“Coming back, but since I am here . . .” She squared her shoulders. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Always good.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve been thinking a lot. I decided I owe you an apology. I got your texts—”
“And didn’t respond.”
“Right. And I didn’t pick up your calls, because I just wasn’t ready. I had a lot of things to work out . . . because of Megan and . . . well, everything that happened, but when I finally got my head together, I thought I should say I’m sorry for leaving as I did. I only stuck around long enough to be stitched up and to hear that you were out of the woods—going to be okay. And I didn’t want to call or text. Not after everything that had happened. Even when you contacted me. Didn’t seem right somehow. Didn’t seem personal enough.”
He eyed her. “So you drove all the way from Seattle?”
“Yeah.” She was nodding.
“You don’t owe me an—”
“Just let me do this, okay?” she said and gathered herself. “I blamed you for everything, from messing up my life, to messing up Megan’s and somehow being involved in her disappearance. I just . . . I just wanted to make you out as the bad guy, and I did.”
He waited.
“Then, you know, I came here, and I found out differently, but I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe that you weren’t involved. I needed you to be the bad guy, and I thought you needed to know that I was . . . I was wrong about you.” She cleared her throat. “I was wrong.”
“I think that makes two of us.” His jaw slid to the side, and he glanced over at the dog for a second. “I wasn’t exactly a white knight, or even a knight at all.” He couldn’t begin to explain all the guilt he’d suffered. He rubbed the back of his neck and, for once in his life, was tongue-tied around a woman. This woman.
A breeze skittered through the yard, and a few brittle leaves, left over from last autumn’s shedding, danced and swirled.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted Ralph, who had been sleeping up in the office, hurrying down the stairs. The shepherd bounded out of the building to circle the tree and whine as if he could scare up a nonexistent squirrel in its bare branches.
Rebecca’s gaze followed the dog’s path, then returned to James. “Okay, well, I just thought you should know.” She jangled the keys in her pocket.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yeah. Job and life back in Seattle. A safer place, one where I’m less likely to get shot.” She was teasing, a light shining in her eyes.
“But . . .” He eyed her. “A long way to come for a ten-minute conversation.”
“Five,” she corrected.
He laughed. “Fine. But let me buy you dinner.”
“Not a good idea.”
“Then a drink?”
“An even worse idea,” she said, but at least she smiled.
“You know,” he said, gauging her reaction, “maybe you and I, we should try again. I messed up the first time.”
“Really messed up,” she reminded him.
“Yeah. So . . . maybe I should give it another go.”
She actually laughed. “Oh, James, no. I think that ship has sailed.” And before he could say another word, she got into her car and started the engine. She didn’t even wave as she drove off, but as he watched her leave, the little Subaru skimming down the rutted lane, he thought that sailing ships often come back to port. If he played his cards right, he could probably find a way to change her mind.
After all, James Cahill liked nothing better than a challenge.
And he was sure as hell that Rebecca Travers knew it.
Things might just be looking up. He walked back to the shop, where he found Bobby standing, arms over his chest, gaze moving from the now-empty lane to James.
“Don’t even think about it,” Bobby warned, adjusting his baseball cap on his head. “After what you’ve been through? No woman is worth it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” James told him as he walked inside and pulled his hammer from his tool belt, his thoughts on Rebecca’s smile. “Some women are worth just about every damned thing.”
The Otter Creek Women’s Correctional Facility
February
Sophia lay on the examination table in the prison, a skinny female doctor with a graying Afro administering an ultrasound. The gel was cold against her bare skin, the wand moving slowly, the whooshing sound of the baby’s heartbeat audible in this tiny, overheated room.
Sophia closed her eyes, thankful that the baby had survived, and trying to find something good to hang on to.
But how could she?
She thought of James, how she’d loved him, would have done anything for him, given her heart to him—and now? Now all
