Chapter 10 The Middle of the Night Tells a Different Story
The Middle of the Night Tells a Different Story
After Bailey falls asleep, I crawl out of bed and walk out to the terrace off the bedroom. I close the glass door quietly, careful not to wake her.
Across the way, I see the main house. All the lights are now off. Everyone in there is asleep for the night. The landscape of this estate—this gorgeous, endless acreage—silent except for the trees and the soft nighttime breeze. The mountain air fresh and unburdened.
I lean against the railing, the chill rising on my arms. I push up against that air, let it steady me, trying to help it pull down the tired.
I’m so very tired at the same time that I know sleep isn’t in the cards for me, not tonight.
Not with everything moving through my mind about what is coming next.
I brace myself as I pull out my phone, click on CNN’s latest news.
I scan their home page for more updates about Nicholas Bell’s passing.
I’m waiting for a journalist to make the connection to Owen: for the doorman at Nicholas’s building to report that Owen was there last night, or for one of their crime experts to come forward and drudge up the history between Owen and Nicholas, the history that sent Nicholas to jail—when Owen turned state’s evidence.
But there’s nothing about Owen. I have to search to even find anything about Nicholas.
Other events are taking over the headlines and breaking news chyrons, taking over the social media gawking.
There’s a plane crash in Reno; a celebrity divorce; a beloved rock band announcing a new US tour schedule.
Nicholas, just like that, already (and quite literally) yesterday’s news. The twenty-four-hour news cycle seemingly done with him entirely. The incendiary headlines are done with him before they even pulled Owen into it.
I feel a moment of relief, but before I can even breathe into it, I feel something else. I feel it in the quiet.
I go over what Jules told me: cable news is prepping a longer story on the organization.
Owen will find his way there. Owen will find his way there, Nicholas, all of us.
Nicholas was an integral part of the organization for decades.
He was chief legal counsel, an unofficial consigliere to leadership—and, most critically, a trusted advisor to Frank himself.
There is no way that Nicholas escapes having his story told in a larger way in conjunction with theirs.
So I can’t deny that this is just a small respite from seeing Nicholas’s name in the news again, from seeing Owen’s name alongside it.
And that is the least of it. I know it in my gut.
Because the other thing Jules said keeps pushing its way to the forefront of my mind, more immediate and more terrifying: There’s been a changing of the guard.
Mirroring what Grady said: Everything has changed.
Which leads to a question about the past that I need to figure out the answer to—a question that will influence how I go about keeping us safe in the present: What, exactly, did it change from?
And why, exactly, did any mercy—for me, for Bailey—need to go with it?