Bailey moves closer to Nicholas. He wraps his arm around her, warming her. A small gesture—a gentle moment—that she thought she wouldn’t have again. Her grandfather next to her, comforting her.
This moment that I thought I’d never have either: Nicholas in front of me, caring for Bailey, the joy of his presence braiding itself through the shock of it.
We’ve been sitting here for a long time, working through everything Nicholas needs to fill us in on—every bit of information about Owen, about what he and Nicholas have been doing. Their joint orchestration to help get us here, to getBaileyhere, to keep her away from danger.
“The thing is,” Nicholas says, looking at Bailey, “your father wasconvinced, we were both convinced, that when I died, my former colleagues would renege on the deal that we made to keep you both safe. We became very concerned about that. That my former clients would utilize whatever means they could…”
“To get to Owen,” I say for him.
“Yes, exactly.” Nicholas nods. “To get to Owen.”
I can hear Nicholas click against it, the sound of the name Owen on his tongue. The strangeness of referring to his son-in-law as Owen Michaels and not Ethan Young—when Ethan was the name Nicholas had called him for so long. Nicholas did that with Bailey, at first, too—moving from thinking of her as Kristin (his little granddaughter, Kristin) to calling her Bailey. But he got there with Bailey. And, apparently, he spent the last several years trying to get there with Owen too.
“We needed to test his theory,” Nicholas said. “So, we created murmurs that I was sick. Let my heart condition leak to see if anything piped up through the system. Let the heart surgery leak to see what would happen…”
“And what did happen?” I ask.
“Nothing good…”
I have several follow-up questions about what that means exactly. But I stay quiet, waiting for Nicholas to get there. And circling back to the central thread. The most important thread. Owen and Nicholas have been in this together. The two of them on the same side of things—as impossible as that feels. Though, of course, it shouldn’t feel like such a leap. What other side would they be on? Except for Bailey’s.
Which is when I see it pop in Bailey’s eyes.
“Wait…” she says. “So does this mean that your heart condition, the surgery… was that all part of this too? Are you actually okay?”
“No, my love. Unfortunately that is all too real.”
I see Bailey deflate. I know her so well that I can feel it vibrating off her, her fear and her hope wrapping around each other. Her grandfather is sitting here with her, but he is also still on borrowed time. He will still be taken from her. He will be taken from both of us in the not-so-distant future. But not today.
“Your security started reporting that you were being followed,” Nicholas says. “Both of you, actually. And we were hearing murmurs that they were eager to deploy a more extreme intervention to locate Owen.”
“Extreme intervention?” I ask. “And who are they? Frank?”
He pauses and I can see that he is reluctant to give too much detail in a way that will scare Bailey.
“Frank and I have had a long, involved working relationship for several decades now,” Nicholas says. “But, over the last year, Frank began the process of handing over control to his two oldest children, Quinn and Teddy, and they have their own ideas about how our situation should be handled…”
“What does that mean, Grandpa?” Bailey asks. “For us?”
“Quinn and Teddy knew they couldn’t do anything to renege on our agreement while I was alive,” Nicholas says. “Frank wouldn’t stand for that. But it became clear to your father and me that Frank’s children had no intention of honoring Frank’s guarantee that you’d both be safe… at least when I was no longer here to ensure that they did.”
I unlock the rest as Nicholas starts to explain: Frank had always treated Nicholas like family—that’s a large part of the reason why Nicholas was able to secure our safety. But if suddenly Frank’s allegiance to Nicholas didn’t have to be honored (because Nicholas was no longer a factor), neither did Bailey’s and my safety.
This was why Nicholas faked his death. He knew what the organization planned to do in his absence. He and Owen both knew. So they needed that to play out now—while Nicholas was still here to control the aftermath. Which meant they had to create the illusion that Nicholas was in fact gone. It was a task that involved Nicholas being “found unresponsive” at his remote lake house as opposed to in downtown Austin, with all its bureaucracy and red tape. In that remote Texas Hill Country town, there was almost none. More importantly, Nicholas knew the local coroner well. Nicholas knew that the coroner would have no compunction (had historically had no compunction) about signing a death certificate—if it properly benefited him to do so.
“So that’s why you didn’t give us any warning?” I ask.
“We needed you to believe I was gone. We needed my passing to play across all fronts. That was vital to this all working.” Nicholas pauses. “I certainly didn’t expect that the organization would choose to act so quickly. That hours after my death was announced, they would start…”
“Coming for us?” I say.
Nicholas nods, and meets my gaze, his eyes giving away the betrayal he feels that this happened. And a sadness there. A sadness that I can’t disregard, even if I don’t yet understand what’s behind it.
“We did prepare for this, though,” he says. “Owen prepared for this level of response.”
It catches me, stopping my breath: the proximity to this danger—Bailey’s proximity to it. And everything Owen has been doing—the beating heart of everything Owen has been doing—to try and mitigate it.
I knew it in my gut. It’s why I felt safe enough to get on the plane—safe enough to be sitting here now. I knew that, to protecthis kid, Owen looked at this from every angle. And then every angle again. But I feel it gnawing at me all the same, something pushing its way to the forefront of my mind: The man in the army jacket on the street. He was familiar in a way I can’t ignore. Familiar and potentially still too close by.
