Nicholas didn’t respond, not at first. He stayed quiet.
If this was a trap, Nicholas could be slow timing this call. Despitethe scrambler, despite any precautions, Nicholas could be tracing him to this small bed-and-breakfast on Queen Charlotte Sound—twenty-four miles from the vineyard where Owen slept every night, twenty-four miles down that stunning and too-short winding road.
If Nicholas was tracing him, he would be tracking Owen’s location to a manageable field. He could send men—the organization could send men—to every house and farm and vineyard in the area. There weren’t many. They would find Owen.
Owen held the line anyway. He held the line and he waited.
Finally, Nicholas cleared his throat. And he spoke.
“Turns out I love her more than I hate you,” he said. “Both of them. Bailey and Hannah…”
That didn’t sound like Nicholas, at least the Nicholas that Owen had once known. Except maybe it did now. Owen wouldn’t know, really, what Nicholas sounded like now. Who he even chose to be now. But he had to imagine that it had softened Nicholas: getting to spend these last several years with Bailey, his granddaughter, who was so much like her mother. Her face and her skin and her spirit. Nicholas getting to know Hannah too—Hannah who it was impossible (in Owen’s biased view) not to fall in love with.
The time Nicholas had been granted with both of them probably helped Nicholas make room for it—if not between Owen and Nicholas, certainly within Nicholas himself. A kind of thawing.
“I assume we need to do this in person?” Nicholas said.
“Yes,” Owen said. “And you’ll need to bring everything.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that.”
And then—like a promise, or a warning shot—Nicholas gave the instructions for what would happen next.
It would involve a trip back to the hotel in Hawaii in two months’ time. Nicholas provided a date in February for them tomeet there. An instruction for Owen to rent room 1807. And only room 1807.
“Anything else?” Nicholas asked.
But, before Owen even answered, Nicholas had already hung up.
The road into the Big Island hotel was lined with royal poinciana trees. Coconut palm trees. The front drive framed by monkeypods.
There was no denying it was beautiful: the rolling hills and the small bungalows blending into the landscape, ocean as bright and blue here as he’d ever seen. In all the years that he and Kate had been together, they’d never visited the island. She was too busy studying for the LSATs. Running the law review.
Then, Kate was out of law school and starting her law career: starting it off fiercely as a clerk for a Texas Supreme Court judge—Kate giving every ounce of energy to that incredible job, to being a young mother.
She used to talk about the Big Island with an intense love though. Kate loved reliving the memories of spending time on this island with her family growing up—the feel of that tropical air, days wading through that ocean together. The sense of calm she felt walking through the hotel lobby for the first time (every time) and taking a first sip of their welcome drink: a secret blend of local rum and fresh mangos and guava juice. (Minus the rum when she was a child.)Can’t wait for you to try it, she’d say.
It was one of many reasons why Owen turned down the drink now, his heart turning in on itself at the memory. Kate’s smile, Bailey’s smile.
He signed his paperwork and nodded politely when a staff member insisted on showing him the property (the koi pool and thefirepits and the hammocks dotting the great lawn) before taking him to his room—finally taking him to his room—on the second floor of one of those small oceanfront bungalows.
When Owen was alone, he locked the dead bolt and waited until he was certain the staff member wasn’t coming back. Then he closed the shades and put theDO NOT DISTURBlight on and walked over to the door that connected to Nicholas’s suite.
He unlocked his side of the door and he knocked. And he waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
He heard the click, the door unlocking from Nicholas’s side.
Nicholas, suddenly, standing before him, in khaki pants and a short-sleeve button-down linen shirt.
Nicholas, standing there holding a gun. He pointed it directly at Owen’s heart. The barrel touching his chest.
Fast and hard, that barrel digging into his chest.
For a second, Owen thought Nicholas was going to shoot him. For a second, Nicholas almost did shoot him. He cocked the trigger, his hand steady. Owen held his eyes. The gun against his heart, but he held Nicholas’s eyes. Because this would be okay too. Because if he were dead, Hannah and Bailey would be safe. At least, they would be safer than they were now. With Owen gone, they at least couldn’t one day be used as a bartering tool to get to him. But they could still be used for revenge.
Nicholas seemed to realize this at the same moment Owen did. Or, more accurately, he seemed to remember this at the same moment that Owen came to the same conclusion. That’s the thing about what we don’t want to know. It catches up to you whether you pretend you can avoid it or not.
Nicholas put the gun down, Owen’s heart beating loudly. Beating where that gun just was.
