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“Why?”
He shrugs. “Because I asked him to,” he says.
“Why would you do that for us?” I ask.
“So you’d trust me when I tell you the best thing you can do for Owen is lie low and get a lawyer,” he says. “Do you know one?”
I think of the one lawyer I know in town. I think of how little I want to talk to him, especially now.
“Unfortunately,” I say.
“Call him. Or her.”
“Him,” I say.
“Fine, call him. And lie low.”
“Do you want to say it again?” I ask.
“Nah, I’ve said it enough.”
Then something in his face changes, a smile breaking through. Investigator mode apparently behind us.
“Owen hasn’t used a credit card, not a check, nothing for twenty-four hours. And he won’t. He’s too smart, so you can stop calling his phone because I’m sure he dumped it.”
“So why did you keep asking if he called?”
“There are other phones he could have used,” he says. “Burner phones. Phones that aren’t readily traceable.”
Burner phones, paper trails. Why is Grady trying to make Owen sound like a criminal mastermind?
I start to ask him, but he presses a button on his key chain, a car across the street shining its lights, coming to life.
“I won’t keep you longer, you have enough to deal with,” he says. “But when you do hear from Owen, tell him I can help him if he lets me.”
Then he hands me a napkin from Fred’s, his name written down, GRADY BRADFORD, with two phone numbers beneath it, his numbers I presume—one of them marked cell.
“I can help you too,” he says.
I pocket the napkin as he crosses the street and gets into his car. I start to walk away, but as he turns on the engine, something occurs to me and I walk toward him.
“Wait. With which part?” I say.
He lowers his window. “With which part, what?”
“Can you help?”
“The easy part,” he says. “Getting through this.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“Owen’s not who you think he is,” he says.
Then Grady Bradford is gone.
These Are Not Your Friends
I go back into the house just long enough to grab Owen’s laptop.
