“Not any of the specifics, Owen never would have told him, but he knew he hired someone who came out of nowhere. No references to speak of, no ties to the tech world. Owen said at the time that Avett just wanted the best coder he could find, but I think Avett was looking for an angle. He wanted someone he could control, if it turned out he needed that control. And it turned out he did.”
“You think Owen knew what was happening at The Shop but he couldn’t stop it?” I say. “That he stayed there hoping he could fix it, get the software operational, before he got caught in the crosshairs.”
“I do,” he says.
“That’s a pretty specific guess,” I say.
“I know your husband pretty specifically,” he says. “And he’s been watching his back for such a long time that he knew if The Shop scandal touched him, he’d have to disappear all over again. Bailey would have to start over. And this time, of course, she’d have to be told the history. Not ideal to say the least…” He pauses. “Let alone what you would’ve had to give up, assuming you chose to go with them.”
“Assuming I chose to go?”
“Well, you couldn’t really hide out as a woodturner. Even a furniture designer. Whatever you call yourself. You would have to give up everything. Your job, your livelihood. I’m sure he didn’t want that for you.”
I flash to it—one of my early dates with Owen. He asked me what I would do if I hadn’t become a woodturner. And I told him that it was probably because of my grandfather—maybe it was because I associated woodturning with the only stability I’d ever had—but it was all I’d ever wanted to do. I had never really imagined doing anything else.
“He didn’t think I’d choose to go with them, did he?” I say, more to myself than to him.
“That doesn’t matter now. I’ve managed to tamp it down, to keep your friends at the FBI at bay…” he says. “But I won’t be able to pull rank much longer unless you guys are officially being protected.”
“Meaning WITSEC?”
“Yes, meaning WITSEC.”
I don’t say anything, trying to take in the weight of that. I can’t begin to fathom being a protected person. What will that look like? My only experience with anything close is what I’ve seen in the movies—Harrison Ford hanging out with the Amish in Witness, Steve Martin sneaking out of town to get the good spaghetti in My Blue Heaven. Both of them depressed and lost. Then I think of what Jake said. How in reality it’s nowhere near as good as that.
“So Bailey will have to start over?” I say. “New identity? New name? All over again?”
“Yes. And I’d take starting over for her,” he says. “I’ll take it for her father too as opposed to what’s happening now.”
I try to process that. Bailey no longer Bailey. Everything she has worked so hard for—her schooling, her grades, her theater, herself—it will be erased. Will she even be allowed to perform in musicals anymore, or will that be a tell? A way to lead people to Owen. The new student at a random school in Iowa starring in the school musical. Will Grady say that’s another way they can track them? That instead of pursuing her old interests, she has to take up fencing or hockey or just completely stay under the radar. Any way you shake it out, it certainly means Bailey will be asked to stop being Bailey—at the exact moment she is becoming singularly, inimitably herself. It feels like a staggering proposition—to give up your life when you’re a sixteen-year-old. It’s a different position than when you were just a toddler. It’s a different proposition when you’re forty.
But still. I know she would pay that price to be with her father. We would both gladly pay that price, again and again, if it meant we could all be together.
I try to find comfort in that. Except there is something else gnawing at me—something Grady is skirting around that isn’t sitting right—something that I can’t hold in my hands just yet.
“Here’s what you’ve got to understand,” he says. “Nicholas Bell is a bad man. Even Owen didn’t want to accept how bad of a man he was, not for a long time, probably because Kate was loyal to her father. And Owen was loyal to Kate, and to Charlie, who Owen was quite close to, as well. They believed their father was a good man with some questionable clients. And they convinced Owen of that. They convinced him that Nicholas was a defense attorney, doing his job. No illegal activity of his own. They convinced him because they loved their father. They thought he was a good father, a good husband. He was a good father, a good husband. They weren’t wrong. He is just other things too.”
“Like what?”
“Like complicit in murder. And extortion. And drug trafficking,” he says. “Like completely and totally unrepentant for how many lives he helped ruin. Like how many people whose entire fucking world he helped destroy.”
I try not to show it on my face, how that gets to me.
“These men that Nicholas worked for are ruthless,” he says. “And unforgiving. There’s no telling what kind of leverage they would use to get Owen to turn himself in.”
“They could go after Bailey?” I say. “That’s what you’re saying? That they’d go after Bailey to get to Owen?”
“I’m saying, unless we move her quickly, it’s a possibility.”
That stops me, even in the heat of this. What Grady’s insinuating. Bailey being in danger. Bailey, who is wandering the streets of Austin alone, potentially already in danger.
“The point is, Nicholas won’t stop them,” he says. “He couldn’t stop them even if he wanted to. That’s why Owen had to get Bailey out. He knew Nick’s hands weren’t clean in any of this. And he used that information to hurt the organization. Do you understand that?”
“Maybe
