The Last Thing He Told Me

nbsp; “Nicholas wasn’t always dirty, but at some point he started passing messages for leadership, from lieutenants in prison to leadership outside of prison. Messages that couldn’t be sent another way except through a lawyer. And these weren’t innocent messages. These were messages like who needs to be punished, like who needs to be killed. Can you imagine knowingly passing along a message that would result in a man and his wife being killed and their two kids being left without parents?”

“And where does Owen come in?”

“Owen helped Nicholas set up an encryption system that Nicholas ultimately used to send these messages, to record these messages when they needed to be recorded,” he says. “After Kate was killed, Owen hacked into the system and turned everything over to us. All the emails, all the correspondence… Nicholas served more than six years in prison for conspiracy to commit. Which we were able to prove directly from those files. You don’t betray Nicholas Bell like that and come back from it.”

This is when it hits me—the piece that has been gnawing at me, the piece that Grady hasn’t been addressing.

“So why didn’t he come to you then?” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“Why didn’t Owen come straight to you?” I say. “If the only way this ends well, if the only way to truly keep Bailey safe now is for her to be in witness protection, for Owen to be in witness protection, then when everything in The Shop blew up, why didn’t Owen reach out to you? Why didn’t he show up at your door and ask you to move us?”

“You’ll have to ask Owen that.”

“I’m asking you,” I say. “What happened with the leak last time, Grady? Did you guys nip it in the bud or was Bailey’s life compromised?”

“What does that have to do with what’s happening now?”

“Everything. If what happened made my husband think you can’t keep Bailey safe now, it has everything to do with what’s happening now,” I say.

“The bottom line is that WITSEC is the best option that Owen and Bailey have for staying safe,” he says. “Period.”

He says this without apology, but I can see that my question got to him. Because he can’t deny it. If Owen were really certain that Grady could keep Bailey safe, that he could keep all of us safe, he would be here with us now. As opposed to wherever he is.

“Look, let’s not get sidetracked here,” he says. “What you need to do now is help me figure out why Bailey left the hotel room.”

“I don’t know why,” I say.

“Wager a guess,” he says.

“I think she didn’t want to leave Austin,” I say.

I don’t add the details. She probably didn’t want to go yet, not when she was so close to finding answers of her own—answers to questions about her past, answers Owen left me ill-equipped to even begin to deal with. It calms me somewhat to believe this is the reason, to believe she is alone somewhere but safe, searching for answers she doesn’t trust anyone else to find for her. I should recognize that trait in someone. I have it myself.

“Why do you think she wants to stay in Austin?” he says.

At the moment I tell him the only piece of truth I know. “Sometimes you can sense it,” I say.

“Sense what?” he says.

“When it’s all up to you.”

* * *

Grady gets called into a meeting and a different U.S. marshal, Sylvia Hernandez, leads me down the hall and into a conference room, where she says I can make a phone call—as though the call isn’t being taped or traced or whatever else they do here to make sure they know everything you do. Before you even do it.

Sylvia sits outside the door and I pick up the phone. I call my best friend.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” Jules says when she picks up. “Are you guys okay?”

I sit down at the long conference room table, holding my head in my hand, trying not to fall apart. Even though it feels like the moment to fall apart, when I am safe to—Jules there to catch me.

“Where are you?” she says. “I just got a crazy call from Jake, screaming about how your husband is putting you in danger. Can’t say I miss that guy.”

“Yeah, well, Jake is Jake,” I say. “He’s just trying to help. In his incredibly unhelpful way.”

“What’s going on with Owen? He didn’t turn himself in, did he?” she says.