by Minka Kent
“Now’s not the place,” Wade says, nodding toward Andrew’s daughter. “Perhaps you two should finish this conversation in private?”
“There’s nothing more to be said.” Andrew slashes his hand through the air. “My wife is missing, Greer. I’m under an intense amount of pressure and scrutiny. Do you have any idea what that feels like? And for you to sit back and judge me and look at me like I could have possibly had anything to do with this? Why should I let you stay here?”
“Andrew . . .” My mother comes to my defense for the first time in decades. “Let’s not say anything we might regret.”
“I’m sorry, Brenda.” He turns to her. “I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. She needs to go. At least . . . for a little while.”
Fuck.
The hotels in this area are insanely expensive, the cheapest one being $500 a night during off-season last time I checked, and we’re in the thick of peak season.
I can’t afford to stay here.
I can barely afford the rent on my studio apartment.
But more than that, I can’t afford to skip a few days of searching for Meredith.
“Maybe I overstepped my boundaries,” I say. “Maybe I came on a little too intense. I’m sorry.” I try to look him in the eyes, but he won’t return it. “I’ll go home for a few days. I’ll get out of your hair. And when I come back, we can start fresh. I’ll try to be more cognizant of what you’re going through.”
The thought of leaving here with zero answers to all these questions and not a single step closer to finding my sister makes my stomach twist, but Andrew’s heavy breathing and cold stare tell me he needs space. And I need somewhere to crash until we find her.
His lips flatten, and he nods.
Returning to my room, I pack my bag and book my flight home.
My red-eye leaves tonight.
CHAPTER 27
MEREDITH
Eighteen Months Ago
He’s home.
Sitting at the kitchen table holding an opened envelope from McCray, Prendergast, and Van Clef PC, I drag my fingertips over the torn paper.
“Hey.” Andrew passes by, his briefcase in his left hand, and presses a kiss into the top of my head. “How was your day?”
I say nothing, my blood boiling from my discovery a mere hour ago.
Boredom put me into a cleaning frenzy earlier, and I spent most of the day organizing anything I could find: desks, drawers, closets. But when I headed into Andrew’s study and found an opened letter dated six months ago and addressed to me hiding beneath a mountain of paperwork in his bottom left drawer, that’s when my world tilted on its axis.
“Why was this in your office?” I ask. “And why the hell was it opened?”
I slide the torn envelope across the table, watching as his gaze narrows and his shoulders slump.
Andrew exhales, taking the seat next to me, sliding his hands down his cheeks as he gathers his thoughts.
“You better have a damn good explanation for this.” I see red. Nothing but red. I’ve never felt so betrayed by him. What else has he done that I don’t know about?
This envelope contained a letter from my biological father’s attorney regarding the trust I was to access on my twenty-sixth birthday.
I’d never told Andrew about the trust.
I’d never told anyone about it.
Greer and my mother were the only two who ever knew, and that’s how I intended to keep it.
A woman worth five million could be a dangerous commodity in the wrong hands. I may be young, but I’m not naive.
“I thought it was from a divorce attorney,” he said. “I didn’t want to be blindsided.”
Rolling my eyes, I offer an incredulous laugh. “Seriously, Andrew? That’s your excuse?”
“Yes.” He looks earnest. And he sounds earnest. But I’m not buying it.
“This is a huge invasion of privacy,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Meredith. I am.”
He could easily bring up the trust fund, blowing up at me for keeping that from him, but he doesn’t, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps five million is a drop in the bucket for him, not worth getting bent out of shape over?
I rise from the table, not in the mood to be within such close proximity to him anymore. But he follows, reaching for my arm. I jerk it away, heading toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to think.” I realize the hypocritical nature of my frustration. I’m angry at him for hiding something from me when that’s all I’ve been doing to him this entire time. Still, I feel betrayed. I need to be alone with my thoughts. I need to process this and what it means for the future of our marriage.
Maybe everyone was right. Maybe we have no business being together. A marriage built on a foundation of secrets can’t possibly survive.
“I’m sorry.” He apologizes again, which is a big deal because Andrew Price rarely mutters apologies. He’s following me so closely I feel the warmth of his body, the intensity of his energy along my backside.
Stopping halfway up the stairs, I turn to face him. “Please. I need to be alone.”
“No, we’re going to talk this out.” He reaches for my arm again, his hand gripping my wrist and pulling so tight it almost brings me to my knees.
Jerking my hand back, I rub the throbbing, red skin and hold it close to my chest. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
For the first time, I sense vulnerability in his gaze, and I wonder if he truly is afraid to lose me. He may be richer than sin, but knowing I’m coming into some money of my own means he can’t keep me on his leash forever, and that uncertainty rattles him.
Andrew likes taking care of me. He likes that I need him.
And now that he knows I won’t, he’s losing the upper hand, and that terrifies him.
A year and a half of marriage, and I’m just now beginning to see the extent of this successful, charming, powerful man’s insecurities. They run deeper than I ever imagined.
“You should sleep in the guesthouse tonight,” I tell him before turning my back. I climb the stairs, head to our suite, and lock the door behind me.
Holding my breath, I press my ear to the door, listening for footsteps, inhalations, anything that tells me he’s testing his limits with me.
But the other side is silent.
Peeling off my clothes, I draw the hottest bath I can stand, and when I emerge, I peer out the window facing the back of the house. The guesthouse is lit, his shadow moving behind curtains.
It feels weird to have the upper hand. The control.
Climbing into bed, I hold my phone against my chest, my body sinking into the mattress with the weight of the world.
I need to talk to someone and figure out what to do from here. Do I stay? Do I go? Am I overreacting? If I call my sister, she’ll lecture me, pressure me to leave him, and she’ll detest him even more than she already does. If I call Allison, she’ll think of this moment every time she sees us together, and with her being my only friend, that could get awkward. My mother gives the worst advice and can’t keep a secret to save her life.
I need an unbiased opinion, someone who will listen and not tell me what they think I want to hear and not judge me because they’re too invested in me to be objective.
I’m tossing and turning when Harris comes to mind.
He doesn’t particularly care for me, which means he’s not biased, and he’s never afraid to be blunt.
I need blunt right now.
I need brutal honesty.
Scrolling through my contacts, I find his name. The number of times I’ve called him in my life, I can probably count on two hands, but right now he’s my best option.
My only option.
It’s almost eight o’clock in New York. He may not even be home from work yet since New Yorkers tend to drink coffee all hours of the day, but I’ll leave him a message. If he doesn’t call me back, that means he doesn’t want to talk to me, and that’s fin
e, but I’m going to try.
My thumb presses his name. The phone rings twice. He answers.
“Harris,” I say, breath caught in my chest. “Wasn’t expecting you to answer.”
“What’s up?” He sounds casual for once. Not like he loathes me.
“Do you have a sec to talk?”
“If this is about Greer, no,” he says.
“It’s not about Greer.”
He’s quiet.
“I need some advice,” I say.
The clinking of pans in the background layered over jazz music tells me he’s at home, probably making himself dinner.
“Are you alone?” I ask, which is my way of asking, “Is she with you?”
“I’m alone.” The faucet runs in the background for a few seconds.
“I have all these things I need to get off my chest, and I don’t have anyone to talk to,” I say.
“Can I be blunt with you for a second?” he asks over the clicking of a gas burner in the background. “You’ve never been a good judge of character, Meredith. Your relationships have always been superficial at best. There’s no depth to them, and that’s why they’re so short-lived. How many friendships have you made in Glacier Park?”
“One.”
“My point exactly. And why aren’t you calling that friend right now instead of me?”
“I’m not comfortable talking to her about this.”
“Right, right.” His condescending tone is nearly impossible to ignore, but I try. “So anyway, what can I help you with? What harsh reality do I have the honor of bestowing upon you tonight?”
Sighing, I lay it on him, thickening my skin and bracing my ego. “I’m having issues in my marriage.”
He’s quiet. Then, “Continue.”
“He’s changed,” I say. “He’s not the same person I married.”
“No one ever is, Meredith. He probably feels the same way about you.”
“At first it was this hot and cold dynamic that I couldn’t wrap my head around,” I say. “But earlier today, I found a letter addressed to me, from an attorney, and he had opened it and hid it.”
“What did it say?”
I draw in a deep breath, harboring the air as I decide whether or not to share this information with him. As far as I know, Greer’s never mentioned a word to Harris about my trust fund. I swore her to secrecy years ago, and I trust her.
But this is relevant.
This is a game changer.
“He found out I’m coming into some money next year,” I say. “A decent amount. And I hadn’t told him that before we got married because I didn’t want him to look at me differently. Plus, he already has money. He doesn’t need mine. I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“Going into a marriage with secrets—especially ones that revolve around money—you’re just setting yourself up for failure,” he says. “Unless the both of you can be brutally honest and up-front about everything, you have no business being together. You may as well go your separate ways now. Once that trust is gone, you’ve got nothing.”
“I’m angry at him, Harris,” I say. “But I don’t know if I want to throw in the towel yet. It’s not fair for me to be angry at him.”
“Why not?” He scoffs. “Opening someone else’s mail is a federal offense. Hiding it from them takes it to a whole other level.”
“I haven’t exactly been the perfect wife myself.”
“Explain yourself.” The metallic swirl of a whisk against a stainless steel pan fills the background.
“A few months ago, I had a . . . fling.”
“Affair, Meredith. You had an affair. Let’s not sugarcoat. You won’t do yourself any favors if you can’t own up to your choices.”
“Fine. Affair. I had an affair.” I keep my voice down despite the fact that Andrew’s an entire house away. I’ve never said that word . . . “affair.” And I let it settle into my marrow for a second. “I regret it. I got caught up. I made a mistake. But I’ve never told him.”
“You should.”
“That would be the end, don’t you think? I don’t think we can come back from that,” I say. “He’d never look at me the same. He’d never trust me again.”
“Do you see yourself married to him the rest of your life?” he asks. “I mean, for the love of God, you’ve been with him, what, a year and a half? And you’ve already had all these issues? Wake up, Meredith. You married the wrong man. Probably for the wrong reasons. Also, you have some serious daddy issues, and now you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.”
Harris speaks to me the way I imagine my father would. Or the idea I have of my father. I’ve only seen him in pictures, but he seems like the kind of guy who didn’t make it to the top by sheer luck. He’s intelligent. People don’t mess with him. They respect him. They write about his success in articles. He mentors people. He’s accomplished so much, at least from what I can tell. People respect the hell out of him in Israel.
I’ve always wondered how he treats my half siblings. Whether he’s father of the year, there for them more than just financially.
He didn’t have to take care of me in the monetary sense, but he did.
He may not have wanted to meet me, to acknowledge my existence, but the fact that he set me up with a trust fund shows that on some level, he cares, and in a weird way, it sort of breaks my heart every time I think about it.
“And let’s face it, you’re young. Some might even call you a typical millennial. You refuse to accept that you don’t know anything about anything, and every decision you make revolves around your fragile little ego,” Harris continues, “so let’s start there. Accept that you made a mistake. Accept that there are going to be consequences.”
“Should I come clean about everything?” I ask.
“Yes. He’s your husband. He has the right to know if you’ve recently had the pleasure of another man’s cock inside you.”
“No need to be vulgar.”
“How do you think he’ll react? Is he going to make your life a living hell and go crazy on you?” he asks. “I’ve seen men do that before. They seem totally fine, and then they . . . snap. The ones with the biggest egos snap the hardest.”
I glance at my wrist. It’s red, and it’s going to bruise. The throbbing has mostly subsided.
“I have no idea,” I say. “I don’t know him as well as I thought. I’ve seen him get upset about things, but this . . . this is big.”
“Just be careful,” he says. “Anyway, I’m going to eat my dinner now. Is this all you needed?”
Pulling the covers up to my chin, I lie back. “Yeah.”
For now.
“Thanks for talking to me,” I add.
“Of course.”
“And Harris?” I ask before he hangs up. “Please don’t tell Greer we talked. She’s going to know something’s up.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
CHAPTER 28
GREER
Day Eight
I stop at the police department on my way out of town to meet Bixby, the detective who replaced Ronan as the lead investigator on the case, and I’m surprised to find him standing in the lobby, shooting the breeze with a female dispatcher who appears to be on a coffee break.
“Bixby,” I say, my attention trained on his name tag before rising to his smug, double-chinned smirk.
“Yeah? Why?” he asks.
“I’m Meredith Price’s sister,” I say, extending my hand in an effort to make a good first impression. I want him to trust me, to be able to confide in me the way Ronan did. “Greer Ambrose.”
His expression falls, and the dispatcher mutters a quick goodbye before disappearing down the hallway.
He shakes my hand. “Harold Bixby.”
His belly hangs over his belt slightly, and the fabric of his uniform top is pulled taut, held together by small, shiny buttons.
“Andrew said you’re bringing a cadaver dog out today?” I ask.
He studies me. �
��We’re exhausting all options. This is standard operation. Doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Okay.” I cut him off before he can finish. “I just didn’t know if maybe there was something you knew that you weren’t necessarily sharing just yet?”
“We’ve shared everything we can with Mr. Price,” he says.
“Is there anything you’re not sharing?” I offer a benign smile, like my question isn’t annoyingly persistent.
“If there is, ma’am, I couldn’t tell you. We share everything as it becomes available to be shared.”
“Yes or no, Detective?” I say, smiling so hard it makes my cheeks hurt. I probably look like a crazy person.
“Like I said, we share what we can,” he says. “Anything that could possibly jeopardize the investigation is unable to be shared with the public.”
“But Andrew’s not the public. He’s her husband.”
“Either way. We have a job to do, and we have to do it in such a way that it won’t jeopardize the case.” He drags his thumb and middle finger down the sides of his mouth, cocking his head. “That said, I’m not saying that we have any additional information.”
“It’s just that the last detective was willing to keep us in the loop about everything,” I say.
“And that detective is currently on leave for his unethical handling of a case that was entrusted to him.”
Fair enough. “We’re looking for her just as hard as you are. If there’s anything that can help us, we’d like to know.”
“I’m sure you would.”
Ignoring his sighs and folded arms, I add, “Anyway, I’m leaving for a few days, going back home to New York. If anything develops while I’m gone, I was wondering if you could call me? I’ll give you my number. My phone’s always on. I can be on the next flight back here.”
My mind plays a devastating scenario . . . the cadaver dog finding human remains . . . me hearing about it on some cable news show before I so much as get a phone call from anyone here.
He motions toward the reception desk, and the woman behind the counter hands him a pen and sticky note. I scribble my number, write my name in full, and thank him profusely for what an amazing job he’s doing on the case.