“Assuming I chose to go?”

“Well, you couldn’t really hide out as a woodturner. Even a furniture designer. Whatever you call yourself. You would have to give up everything. Your job, your livelihood. I’m sure he didn’t want that for you.”

I flash to it—one of my early dates with Owen. He asked me what I would do if I hadn’t become a woodturner. And I told him that it was probably because of my grandfather—maybe it was because I associated woodturning with the only stability I’d ever had—but it was all I’d ever wanted to do. I had never really imagined doing anything else.

“He didn’t think I’d choose to go with them, did he?” I say, more to myself than to him.

“That doesn’t matter now. I’ve managed to tamp it down, to keep your friends at the FBI at bay…” he says. “But I won’t be able to pull rank much longer unless you guys are officially being protected.”

“Meaning WITSEC?”

“Yes, meaning WITSEC.”

I don’t say anything, trying to take in the weight of that. I can’t begin to fathom being a protected person. What will that look like? My only experience with anything close is what I’ve seen in the movies—Harrison Ford hanging out with the Amish in Witness, Steve Martin sneaking out of town to get the good spaghetti in My Blue Heaven. Both of them depressed and lost. Then I think of what Jake said. How in reality it’s nowhere near as good as that.

“So Bailey will have to start over?” I say. “New identity? New name? All over again?”

“Yes. And I’d take starting over for her,” he says. “I’ll take it for her father too as opposed to what’s happening now.”

I try to process that. Bailey no longer Bailey. Everything she has worked so hard for—her schooling, her grades, her theater, herself—it will be erased. Will she even be allowed to perform in musicals anymore, or will that be a tell? A way to lead people to Owen. The new student at a random school in Iowa starring in the school musical. Will Grady say that’s another way they can track them? That instead of pursuing her old interests, she has to take up fencing or hockey or just completely stay under the radar. Any way you shake it out, it certainly means Bailey will be asked to stop being Bailey—at the exact moment she is becoming singularly, inimitably herself. It feels like a staggering proposition—to give up your life when you’re a sixteen-year-old. It’s a different position than when you were just a toddler. It’s a different proposition when you’re forty.