Not that The Good Lawyer had wanted his daughter to be hurt. He’d always been a great father and was devastated by her death, but his son-in-law was too angry to care. And his son-in-law knew things. He knew things The Good Lawyer had trusted him not to share with anyone else.

Which was why the son-in-law was able to turn state’s evidence against his father-in-law and become the lead witness in a case that put his father-in-law in jail while casting a blow to the organization itself—eighteen members of the organization implicated in the sweep. The Good Lawyer carted off behind them.

The son-in-law and his small daughter, who would have only a couple of memories of her mother—of her grandfather—disappeared after the trial, never to be heard from again.

The lawyer’s full name was Daniel Nicholas Bell, aka: D. Nicholas Bell.

His son-in-law went by the name of Ethan Young.

Ethan’s daughter’s name was Kristin.

I drop my phone to the ground and smash it. I smash it in one quick motion, kicking it hard with my foot, as hard as I’ve ever kicked anything.

And I open the bathroom door. I open the bathroom door to get Bailey and grab our things and get the hell out of Austin. Not in five minutes. Not in five seconds. Now.

“Bailey, we need to get out of here right now,” I say. “Just grab what you’ve already packed. We’re going.”

But the hotel room is empty. Bailey is no longer there.

She is gone.

“Bailey?”

My heart stars to race as I reach for my phone to call her, to text her. And I remember that I just smashed my phone. I have no phone.

So I run into the hallway, which is empty, save for a housekeeping cart. I run past it and toward the elevator bank, the staircase. She isn’t there. No one is there. I take the elevator down to the hotel lobby, hoping she went to the hotel bar to get a snack. I run into the hotel restaurants, each of them, into the Starbucks. Bailey is not there either. Bailey is not anywhere.

You make a hundred decisions. You make decisions all the time. And the one you don’t think of twice shouldn’t get to determine what happens to her: Go into your hotel room, double bolt the door. You think you’re safe. But then you head into the bathroom. You head into the bathroom and trust a sixteen-year-old to stay on the bed, stay in the room, because where is she going to go?

Except she is terrified. Except there is that. Except she told you she didn’t want to leave Austin.

So why did you believe she would go without a fight?

Why did you believe she would listen to you?