“I’m hoping it helps you understand that even in the face of what else I may lose here, my priority is your granddaughter. Doing what’s right for her, whatever the cost, is worth it,” I say. “You know that better than I do.”

“What makes you say that?” he says.

“You were there first.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Because he understands what I’m telling him. My mother never tried to fight for her family—she never tried to fight for me. That defines her. Apparently, I’m willing to give up everything to do the opposite for Bailey. One way or another, that will define me.

And if Nicholas agrees to what I’m asking him, it will define him too. We will have that in common. We’ll have Bailey in common. We’ll be the two people doing whatever is needed for her.

Nicholas crosses his arms over his chest, almost like in a hug, almost as if bracing himself against what he doesn’t know if he should do.

“If a part of you thinks that it will change one day,” he says. “That one day this will go away and Ethan can come back to you, slip back into your lives and they’ll let it slide… it won’t. That’s untenable. These men, they don’t forget. That can never happen.”

I summon up the strength to say what I honestly believe. “I don’t.”

Nicholas is watching me, taking me in. And I think I have him. Or, at least, we are moving closer toward each other. For better or worse.

But there is a knock on the door. And Charlie walks in. Charlie who apparently stayed, despite Nicholas’s instructions. Nicholas doesn’t look happy with him for that. But he’s about to get less happy.

“Grady Bradford is at the front gate,” he says. “And there are a dozen other U.S. marshals standing behind him.”

“It took him long enough,” Nicholas says.

“What do you want me to do?” Charlie says.

“Let him in,” he says.

Then Nicholas turns and meets my eyes, the moment between us apparently over. “If Ethan comes home, they’ll know,” he says. “They’ll always be watching for him.”

“I understand that.”

“They may find him even if he doesn’t come home,” he says.

“Well,” I say. “They haven’t found him yet.”

He tilts his head, takes me in. “I think you’re wrong,” he says. “I think it’s the last thing Ethan would want, to spend his life away from his daughter…”

“I don’t think it’s the last. No.”

“What is?” he says.

Something happening to Bailey, I want to say. Something happening because of Owen, because of his ties to all of this, that ends with Bailey getting hurt. That ends with her getting killed.

“Something else,” I say.

Protect her.