“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?”
“God, I wish I knew. Would I be here if I did?” Rebecca glared at him. “I haven’t heard from her since she called me from the road, crying hysterically, saying she was coming back to my place. She hung up and never showed. No calls, no texts, no nothing!” Her color was high, her expression scathing. And yet there was something underneath, another emotion.
She hates me, he thought. And that hatred runs deep.
Rebecca wasn’t finished. “The news is reporting that you and she got into a fight the other night, and I can confirm that. She went on and on about it being over with you, that you’d had a horrible fight, and that she would tell me all about it when she got to Seattle.”
“And—?”
“And, obviously, she didn’t make it. I’ve tried and tried to reach her. As I said, phone calls and texts, but nothing . . . not since that night.” Beneath her hard veneer there was a hint of fear. For Megan? Or something else? “I’ve called the police and her friends and the hospitals and . . . and . . . oh, God.” She expelled a slow breath, and for a second, he thought she might break down. Instead, she set her jaw. “She’s just disappeared.”
“And you think I had something to do with it?”
“The whole world does, James.” Rebecca’s mouth tightened. “Me, personally?” she bit out. “I wouldn’t put anything past you. She said you were seeing some other woman, a blonde she said. Suzi. No—Sophie. That’s it. Dating her while you were still involved with Megan. She called you a man-whore. No surprise there, though, right?”
Before he could reply, she went on, “She said you two got into a huge fight, and that it was over. She didn’t tell me all the details, she couldn’t. She was too upset, so she was going to fill me in when she got to my place. But she never made it.” Rebecca’s loathing of him was barely concealed. “So, come on, James. Tell me. Where the hell is she?”
“All right, miss.” This time Nurse Rictor had had enough. She stepped closer to Rebecca, trying to separate the visitor from her patient. “If you won’t leave right now, I’m calling security.”
Her gaze never leaving James’s, Rebecca said, “Call them. But I want answers.” She jabbed a finger at James’s hospital bed.
James didn’t flinch, but his irritation was mounting. The lie slipped easily over his tongue. “I don’t remember what happened that night. Or much more before it. I’m having a helluva time piecing together what my life was right before all this came down, so maybe, if you were in contact with your sister, you could shed some light on it.”
Rictor had retrieved a cell phone from the pocket of her scrubs. “Mr. Cahill isn’t supposed to have visitors.”
“Too late,” James pointed out.
“You both can sort all this out once he’s released.”
“Fine,” James said, “I’m getting out of here.”
The nurse shook her head. “Not before you’re released; not without the doctor’s permission.”
“With or without. I don’t care.” He was sick of all the bull.
“That’s it.” The RN started punching buttons on her cell phone, but Rebecca was already heading for the door and sending James a final scathing glance over her shoulder.
“This isn’t over,” she said.
“You’re right about that.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sucked in his breath as
