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“So why hasn’t it occurred to you that if anyone expunged Owen’s record, it might have been the one man who has the capability to do so?”
Owen. He is saying Owen made the trail to his past run cold. “Why would he do that?” I say.
“Maybe he was testing out his software,” he says. “I don’t know. I’m just saying you’re making up quite an elaborate story when there are a variety of explanations as to what your friend did or didn’t find out about Owen’s past.”
He is trying to throw me off-balance. I won’t let him. I won’t let him try to control this narrative for his own agenda, which is feeling increasingly suspicious.
“What did he do, Grady? Before all of this? Before The Shop? Why did he change his identity? Why did he change his name?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” I say. “I think that explains why you came all the way to San Francisco for an investigation you have no jurisdiction over.”
He laughs. “My jurisdiction puts me firmly in charge of this investigation,” he says. “I think you should probably worry a little less about that and more about some other things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact your pal Special Agent Naomi Wu at the FBI is threatening to name Owen as an official person of interest.”
I pause. I haven’t said her name. He knew her name. He seems to know everything.
“We don’t have a whole lot of time before her team shows up at your house with search warrants. I’m fighting hard to hold her off for the moment, but I can’t guarantee you it will keep going this way.”
I think of Bailey having to come home to see her room turned apart—her world turned apart.
“Why, Grady?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you fighting so hard to stop that from happening?”
“That’s my job,” he says.
He says it assuredly, but I’m not convinced. Because something has clicked in for me. Grady doesn’t want any of this for Owen any more than I do. Grady wants to help keep Owen away from that fate. Why is that? If Grady were just investigating Owen, if he were just trying to bring him in, if he was just trying to end this, he wouldn’t care as much as he does. But something else is going on here—something far more nefarious than Owen being implicated in simple fraud. And suddenly I feel terrified that that something is worse than anything I have imagined yet.
Protect her.
“Owen left us a bag of money,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“Really, he left it for Bailey. It’s a lot of money, and if someone shows up with one of those search warrants you’re threatening me with, I don’t want them discovering it. I don’t want it used against me or as an excuse to take Bailey from me.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“I’m still new to how this works, so in the meantime, I’m telling you about the money,” I say. “It’s under my kitchen sink. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
He is quiet. “Well, I appreciate that, it’s better that I take it than that they find it,” he says. “I can have someone in our San Francisco office come out and get it.”
I look out past Lady Bird Lake, at Austin’s downtown, its gentle buildings, the trees letting through the morning light. Grady is probably in one of those buildings already, starting his day. Grady is closer than I suddenly want him to be.
“Now’s not a good time.”
“Why not?”
Everything in my body tells me to tell him the truth. We are in Austin. But I’m still not sure whether he is a friend or a foe. Or both. Maybe everyone is a little bit of both, Owen included.
“I need to get some work done before Bailey gets up,” I say. “And I’ve been thinking… maybe I should take Bailey somewhere else until this all calms down.”
