Page 82 of The Thinnest Air

“I’m under a tremendous amount of pressure and scrutiny,” he says. “I didn’t want to deal with it under my own roof, from my own family.”

He’s never referred to me as “family” either.

“Completely understand,” I say. “I was actually planning to come back tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure where I was going to stay ...”

“You’re welcome to the guest room again,” he says.

“Are you sure?” I can’t hide the breathy relief in my voice. Drawing my legs close to my chest, I tuck my body under the thin hotel sheets.

“You’re her sister,” he says, as if his reason for forgiveness boils down to that single, solitary reason.

Not wanting to dwell in sentimentalities, I change the subject. “Any developments since I’ve been gone?”

Andrew chuffs. “I wish. Sounds like they’re still focusing on Ronan.”

Rolling my eyes, I shake my head. “They’re wasting their time.”

“And how would you know?”

I wish I could tell him. I wish I could come clean and tell him about Harris being gone, about Ronan hopping on the next flight to help me rescue her from an empty cabin in the woods, but the truth is, I feel stupid, and without an ounce of real evidence to justify everything we did, he’s going to think I’m insane. He’ll never take me seriously again.

As of now, all I’m going off of are my instincts and the fact that Harris is MIA. I have to believe that if Ronan took my sister, he wouldn’t have flown to Vermont the way he did, a man with a gun on a mission to save the woman he still loves.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just a gut feeling. I think he really wants to find her.”

“So you’ve been keeping in contact with him?” Andrew asks. “Since he was removed from the case?”

Pausing, I finally answer. “Yes. Here and there. Someone needs to keep an eye on him.”

He’s not going to understand. I had to stay in contact with him. I had to keep him close on the off chance that he might slip up and I might find a hole in his story that could lead me to Meredith.

“Greer.” Andrew groans into the phone.

“What?” I sit up in bed, my back resting against a wooden headboard.

“You need to stay away from him.” Andrew’s direct tone and the clear, succinct delivery of his words send a chill down my spine. “The department did some checking into that stalker case he’d been handling for her a few years back. Turns out there was never a stalker. Never any paperwork filed. Nothing. He made it all up. Everything he ever told her.”

My blood turns to ice, and I can’t feel my lips.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

The only thing separating me from Ronan right now is a slim hotel wall and a door that adjoins our rooms.

“Positive,” Andrew says. “We think he’s been following her for years, obsessed with her.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” I say, my thoughts moving from a still very much MIA Harris to the bombshell Andrew just dropped.

“What doesn’t make sense?”

“I came back to New York,” I say. “Found out Harris has been gone for days. He never told me he left town. All those times I spoke with him, he made it sound like he was running the shops.”

Andrew’s silence concerns me, but I suspect he’s just as baffled as I am. Finally he says, “I’m not sure how Harris would figure into any of this.”

“Me neither.” I whisper more than I speak now, fearful Ronan’s got his ear pressed against the paper-thin walls.

“Just come back to Utah,” Andrew says. “And whatever you do, stay away from that detective, you understand?”

I swallow the hard ball lodged in the base of my throat. “Yes.”