“How do you think the girls are doing?”
“Really hard to say. There were definitely tears.”
I put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I heard my phone buzz on the dresser next to Taylor, where I’d set it down a moment ago. She picked it up to hand it to me. When she did, Taylor glanced at the message.
She looked up at me with a furrowed brow. “Who is Greta?”
I cocked my head, felt my heart jump. “What?”
Taylor handed me my phone, but she did not look happy. When I read the text message, I could see why.
Meet me in Room 314 at the Driskill Hotel at 8 p.m. —Greta It was a random local number. I wasn’t sure how to respond to Taylor. The fact that a woman she didn’t know was texting me to meet her in her hotel room tonight after I was shipping my family off to the lake obviously looked suspicious. I had to either tell my wife the whole truth right now, or I had to find a quick way to circumvent disaster. Considering that the truth would lead me down a path to telling her there was a million-to-one shot her dad could still be alive after she’d just found some closure, I decided on my answer.
“I don’t know who this is,” I said. “I don’t know anyone named Greta.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me, Alex.”
“I’m not. This clearly wasn’t meant for me. Why do you think there’s no contact info for the number? Or any other text messages between us?”
I handed her back my phone to take a look. She still seemed wary. I needed to take another bold but risky step to get out of this.
“Babe, just call the number,” I suggested. “Or text her back. Use my name. See what happens. Because I promise you whoever this is will tell you it was a mistake.”
It was a chance I had to take. But I figured there was no way that Greta would actually answer my call or even respond to a text from me. She had given me instructions. I figured there would likely be no other correspondence between us until I stepped into that hotel room in a couple of hours. But would Taylor call my bluff? My wife seemed to consider it for only a moment before her shoulders gradually relaxed.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . I’m an emotional mess right now.”
I tried to hide my relief. “I know. Me, too.”
Thirty minutes later, I had them all packed up in Taylor’s Lexus SUV. I hugged and kissed the girls and my mother-in-law. Then I leaned into the driver’s window to give Taylor one more kiss.
“I’ll try to wrap this up quickly,” I reassured her.
Then I watched them drive away. I had somehow managed to keep myself steady since receiving the text from Greta, but I could now feel a surge of adrenaline overtaking me. I checked my watch. In one hour, I would finally be face-to-face with a woman I was convinced held the answers to this entire thing.
THIRTY-FIVE
I parked in the nearest spot I could find a couple of blocks away from the Driskill Hotel, which sat on one end of Sixth Street, Austin’s famous downtown party strip. Because it was Saturday night, live music of all types blared from five blocks’ worth of bars, pubs, and hot spots. The closed-off street was packed with a mix of mostly college students and young professionals. I had to weave in and out of the crowd to make my way over to the hotel. Taylor and I had spent quite a few nights out here during our college days, but it had been a while.
Taylor had texted me a few minutes before, telling me they had arrived at the lake house. The girls were already in the hot tub on the back porch. Having them away made me breathe a little easier. If the text from Joe was real and they were truly in danger, I wanted to get them out of town until I could resolve all this.
I still could not wrap my head around the text from Mexico City. Let me go. If it was real, did my father-in-law really expect me to drop this whole thing and just let him disappear? And why just the one text? Why no other explanation? I felt really confused. He kept saying he was sorry—first while inside the minivan with his captors, then again in the text—which led me to believe he felt he’d brought this whole thing on himself and his family. Had Joe actually stolen $50 million thirty-five years ago? If so, why would he do that? Was that what led to his father and some mystery stranger being killed in the plane crash? I again hoped that Greta Malone could give me some legitimate answers in a few minutes. I wondered why she’d finally stopped running from me and wanted to meet. This was a conversation we could have had several days ago when I’d first called her on the damn phone.