Owen also knew there was no room for error. No room for the note to be intercepted or disregarded.
No. This needed to be a hand delivery. He flew to San Francisco and took a car service straight to the Hotel Drisco, where Nicholas was staying. It wasn’t a surprise that Nicholas was staying there. Bailey’s graduation was being held a few miles away at Kezar Stadium. And Hannah always liked to have her out-of-town guests stay at the Hotel Drisco, a beautiful boutique hotel in Pacific Heights that housed Hannah’s wood-turned bowls and furnishings in nearly every suite.
On the car ride into San Francisco proper, Owen hacked into the hotel’s system and figured out which room Nicholas was staying in. He took the elevator up to his floor and waited. He waited untilhousekeeping came to clean—theROOM BEING SERVICEDsign hanging from the doorknob—the door slightly ajar.
He walked in and said he forgot something and left the manila envelope faceup in Nicholas’s suitcase—where he could be sure that Nicholas would find it. He included a lot of things in that envelope—a lot of data points about the organization that Nicholas couldn’t ignore, about their leadership, about Frank himself.
Then Owen signed it with a simple invitation. As though anything between Nicholas and him got to be simple.
If you tell me where to meet you, I’ll be there.
After, Owen walked out of the airport and back into the waiting car. The car, which drove him a few minutes out of the way to Kezar Stadium. He couldn’t see anything from the road—certainly not his daughter. But the parking lot was full, and he knew she was inside, beginning the next step in her life.
On the plane he let himself imagine it. Nicholas coming back to the hotel that night—proud and happy and a little bit weary—to find the note there. Would he throw it out? Would the emotion of the day propel him, despite himself, to put it back in the suitcase to consider for later?
Because he knew that at this point, Nicholas would have to respond. For this to work he would have to respond.
Then, six months later, Nicholas did respond. Six months and two weeks later, to be exact. Owen didn’t know what changed in those six months, but he knew something must have changed for Nicholas to decide it was time to engage.
On his weekly visit to a local library (this week into Picton), Owen saw that he engaged. Nicholas was in Hawaii, staying at that hotel where he loved to take the family for the holidays. The hotel on the Big Island where Nicholas used to take Kate and Charlie growingup every Christmas, and where Charlie’s kids spent Christmas too, until Nicholas went to prison. Where, in the last few years, he had taken Hannah and Bailey too.
The hotel whose stationery Owen used to mail that first letter.
Bailey shared a photograph on her Instagram grid of the whole family celebrating Christmas Eve. Charlie and his ex-wife (who tried to spend holidays together for the kids) and the twins and Bailey (home for her first Christmas break from school) and Hannah. Of course, Hannah.
Caption reading:Another Day in Paradise
Here was the important part. In the photograph, the family was sitting around a beachside firepit. They were making s’mores and sharing frozen hot chocolate and laughing, all of them laughing together.
Charlie and Hannah and Bailey and the cousins. And flanked by the twins and by Bailey—flanked by all of his grandchildren, all in one place together, like a miracle—was Nicholas.
Owen knew that Nicholas didn’t let himself be photographed often, and never on social media. So Owen could imagine the rest of it: Nicholas telling Bailey that it was okay to post it. Bailey not knowing why of course.
That this was a message to Owen.
It was a message for him.
Owen walked out of the library and headed down to Queen Charlotte Sound and rented a room at a small bed-and-breakfast. He paid cash for a flowery corner room that cost him a week’s wages.
Then he got a fresh burner phone and scrambled the connection. He scrambled the connection and called that hotel in Kona.
It was after midnight in Kona when he called, but Owen had notime to waste. It was two days after Christmas—two days since Bailey posted the photograph.
He knew it was possible that Nicholas had already checked out and was on his way home to Austin. Calling Nicholas on a phone that the FBI and the organization would be tracing was a risk Owen couldn’t take.
When the receptionist answered, Owen thought his fear was confirmed—that Nicholas had already left. Because when he asked for Nicholas Bell’s room, the receptionist responded that there was no guest at the hotel with that name.
But then Owen remembered. Nicholas never checked into a hotel under his own name. Shortly after he started working with the organization, he changed Kate and Charlie’s surname from Bell to Smith. It was just a precaution then. But as Nicholas’s job got riskier, he took other measures to distance himself from his family—to separate out his work life from his home life. To separate out any of the dangers of his work life, touching anyone he loved. Owen knew this. He knew that Nicholas did what he could do to keep his family safe. It was, of course, not enough.
“Would you connect me with Meredith Smith’s room, please?” Owen said.
“I do see we have a Meredith Smith staying with us…” the receptionist said. “One moment, sir. I’ll transfer you.”
“Hello,” Nicholas said, picking up after the first ring.
He was awake and ready for the call. Because it had been a message for Owen. A message or a trap.
“Thank you,” Owen said. “For picking up.”
