Nodding, she tried to rein in her own spiraling temper and added softly, “Of course I do.”
“Good. Then tell me.”
Glancing around the disheveled room, she considered. She wanted answers, and here was James, ready to talk apparently. What did she have to lose?
“Megan called me on the way from here. After your fight.” Standing near an empty bookcase, she explained about Megan’s panicked, hysterical call and the next few hours and days of waiting when she didn’t arrive. “I didn’t worry at first. She has a history . . . well, you know, of . . . overreacting.”
He made a sound that could have meant anything. “What was she overreacting to?”
Rebecca leveled her gaze at him. “She thought you two were exclusive. Apparently you didn’t.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “I don’t know why it came as such a shock to her. She knew . . . she knew you.”
She hoped that remark might jog his memory.
If it did, he didn’t show it.
She went on, “I thought, at first, that she’d gotten over her anger and maybe she’d turned around, you two made up, and she just forgot to keep me in the loop.” She looked out the window to where snow was still falling. “I didn’t even worry all that much when she didn’t answer her phone or respond to my texts. I thought she probably felt foolish and didn’t want to explain anything, but when she hadn’t responded by . . . God, what was it? Friday night, I guess? I began to worry and started calling around to her friends and coworkers, who told me she hadn’t shown up for work. One of them . . . Ramon . . . tried to contact her too. Even went to her apartment and called me to report that she wasn’t there and her car was missing. So I started checking with everyone I could think of, anyone she mentioned that I could find and, of course, the hospitals.”
“And nothing.”
“So here we are.”
“Leaving you to think I had something to do with it.”
“Obviously, her story about the fight was right.”
“And it makes sense to you that I was injured badly enough to be taken by ambulance to a hospital where I was in a coma but still had a way of getting rid of your sister?”
“I’m thinking you could have . . . an accomplice,” she said. “Megan told me you were seeing someone else.”
“So instead of breaking it off with her, I staged an entire fight and hired someone to kidnap her? Seriously, Rebecca?” He walked into the dining room and, wincing a little, knelt near a cabinet with a door hanging open. “Shit,” he said upon looking inside, then retrieved a dusty bottle of some kind of liquor. He held it up. “Drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He scrounged in another cupboard and returned with a couple of glasses, along with the bottle. “Sure?”
“I don’t want a drink.” She’d had drinks with him before . . . and that hadn’t turned out the way it should’ve. “This is serious, James.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“And, coming out of the hospital, being on painkillers and all, I don’t think you’re supposed to drink either.”
He nodded curtly. “Agreed. But then . . . it’s been a helluva couple days, don’t you think?” He set the glasses on a small table that hadn’t been upended in the police search, poured them each a healthy shot, and left the open bottle between them.
“Maybe you should be more careful,” she suggested.
“No ‘maybe’ about it. But to hell with it.” He tossed back the first drink. “And you want to know why? Everyone in this damned town, including you, seems to think I’m, at the very least, a kidnapper and, at the worst . . . God, I don’t want to think.” He poured himself another shot.
“Wow. Slow down.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“I just want to find out the truth.”
“And nail me to the cross,” he said, eyeing her.
She wanted to lie but didn’t, and at that moment headlights washed over the windows as a battered old pickup pulled into the lot. More guests?
“Must be the calvary,” he said.
“You mean cavalry.”
“Either way.” He then knocked back the liquor that had been in the second glass just as footsteps sounded on the porch. Ralph shot to his feet and trotted to the front door.
“You’re going to kill yourself.”
“Hope never dies.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “But I don’t think so. Not today. Not from a couple of drinks.”
“It’s your funeral.” Footsteps on the porch. Who? she wondered. Not wanting to get caught in another awkward conversation and explanation about what she was doing here, she hovered to one side. She just needed to get out. “I’ve got to go.”
“We’ll take you to your car.”
“Who’s we? I don’t need a ride. It’s a short walk.”
“That’s Bobby. Coming to take me to the inn.”
The man who at that moment pushed in the front door was small and wiry, with a cap pulled low over his eyes, the scent of cigarette smoke clinging to him. He gazed hard at Rebecca. “Well, I’ll be. Ralph was on to something.”
“That he was. This is Rebecca. Megan’s sister. My foreman, Bobby.”
Bobby asked, “What’re you doin’ here?”
“She thought she might find something that would help her locate her sister.”
“So she broke in?” Bobby asked, scowling. “I locked the place myself.”
“Something like that. Long story. The upshot is that she’s parked her car at the hotel, so we’re giving her a ride back.”
He looked about to argue. Instead, he just squared his cap on his head. “All right,” he said shortly.
“Look. Really. I can walk,” Rebecca declined. “It’s not that far. You’re hurt, and I doubt there’s much room in the truck.”
James was heading for
