Famous Last Words

The narrator reports to his brother that Cam met with Madison Smith. He couldn’t hear what was said. He followed her home, but nothing else of note happened.

Cam goes to meet the woman the next morning, but she never appears. Cam now feels as though she is fully into investigating, not willing to let all the recent clues go.

Cam then goes to the church where Alex Hale had his funeral. She finds his grave out back, but all that’s there is a couple of old photographs. She then finds the address of Hale’s parents online.

When Cam gets to the apartment complex of Alex’s parents, a man comes to the door, and Cam asks if he knows Luke. The man insists he doesn’t and closes the door. Cam considers knocking again but stops when she thinks of how the man must be feeling. She thinks of how upset she would be if a random person knocked on her door and asked about Luke, so she decides it’s best to leave.

Cam meets Libby for Libby’s fortieth birthday. They have drinks at a pub, which makes Cam realize that Libby isn’t pregnant. Libby admits that their most recent round of IVF had looked promising, but it hadn’t worked. She isn’t sure they’ll try again.

Cam shows Libby the text message with the coordinates. When Libby reacts with annoyance, insisting that Cam needs to move on, Cam regrets showing her. Libby tells her about a dream she had recently, where Cam and Charlie moved in together and were happy. Cam realizes that she has been too distant with Libby—and everyone in her life.

Late that night, Cam decides that she needs to begin to move on. She starts throwing out all of Luke’s things. When she gets to his bedside dresser, she finds a piece of paper behind it, stuck between it and the wall. On it is the name “H.Grace” and a phone number.

Cam calls the number. She asks the man if she knows her husband, but the man insists that he can’t tell her. She calls him “Mr. Grace,” and he corrects it to “Harry,” which sounds familiar but she can’t remember why. Harry tells her that he can’t reveal the nature of his business, then hangs up.

For the rest of the night, Cam lies in bed reading through all her old messages with Luke on her phone. When the phone stops loading messages in February 2017, she panics. She realizes that she will be devastated if she can’t see all their old messages.

Niall is at home cooking when he gets the notification that Cam has called a new phone number. He searches it online but can’t find anything; he decides not to call it, yet. He then sees that Cam has texted Luke’s old number, telling him that she misses him. Niall is overwhelmed with sympathy. He realizes that he has to figure out what Cam is doing—both to find Luke and to protect her, as he worries she’s walking into danger.

Niall briefly considers asking the police for more help. However, they have repeatedly told him that they won’t dedicate the manpower or the budget needed to track Cam full-time. Currently, they are investigating the murder of a woman in London.

A police officer then calls Niall. He tells him that they traced the phone number. It belongs to Harry Grace, who owns the home in Lewisham that Luke had saved in his phone.

Niall goes to Harry’s house. Harry meets him at the door, refusing to engage with him or let him in. However, when Niall mentions Luke, he can see “fear” in Harry’s eyes. He realizes that Harry isn’t afraid of the police but of someone else finding out that he is talking about Luke.

Harry tells Niall that he sells protection to people. However, he can’t tell Niall what the protection was for. He then excuses himself to go to the bathroom upstairs.

While Harry is gone, Niall searches his desk. He finds a note with a URL, a username, and a password. He takes a photo of it. He then realizes that he hears nothing upstairs. When he goes up, the bathroom door is open, as is the back gate.

Niall decides to go to an internet café nearby. However, on the way, he stops at Vivienne’s house. He watches it for a while, remembering Cam’s texts to Luke about missing him.

At the café, Niall finds that the URL has expired. He realizes that it was a link to the dark web, designed for a single use. He then spends over an hour going to different forums, trying the username and password. Finally, he manages to log in to one.

Niall looks through dozens of messages to different people negotiating different forms of protection. Among the messages from June 2017, he finds one to someone with a username that starts with “LD.”

Niall reads the message thread. Luke begged Harry for a gun, insisting that someone was trying to “murder” him, but Harry could not get him one soon enough. Harry tried to offer his services to show him how to protect himself, but Luke’s messages got more and more desperate. He told Harry that “they” had already been at his house—and Niall realizes that he was talking about the supposed burglary.

The next day, Luke messaged Harry from the warehouse. He told him that two men with black masks were armed inside. He said that he needed to go in to protect his family. Each time, Harry responded that Luke needed to “wait.” The messages then end.

Niall rewatches the video from the day of the siege. The movement at the start of the video is Luke grabbing the gun. He realizes that Luke must have watched from outside and come in when the men were unarmed. They weren’t hostages, but instead were men waiting to kill or kidnap Luke. Luke was holding his gun on them because he was afraid they would escape.

Niall returns to Harry’s house just after midnight. Harry is there, shocked to see Niall back so soon. Niall demands that he tell him everything he knows or he will arrest him. However, Harry insists that all he knows is that a “hit” had been ordered on Luke. Niall realizes that the men had no identities because they were hitmen.

Late at night, Cam tries to read Adam’s manuscript. However, her motion-sensing light comes on outside. She looks out the window but sees nothing. She then goes outside and waits, seeing and hearing nothing. After several minutes, she turns to go back inside when she hears the gravel “crunch.” She waits, contemplating whether to see who is there. However, she decides that she can’t risk something happening to her and goes back inside.

Cam looks out the window again and sees a dark figure standing there. She calls the police. They come over and search outside her home but find nothing. She admits to an officer that she has seen someone following her several times. He reassures her that it’s likely nothing to worry about but gives her his phone number just in case.

When Cam gets back into bed, she sees a recent news headline. Madison Smith was murdered outside her home—the same woman who contacted Cam at the school, then never showed up to meet her. The report says that she opened her back door and was shot on her doorstep. Cam finds no mention of her husband, then searches Madison’s name but finds nothing more about her.

The next day, Niall briefs most of the police force on the events with Harry. He is hoping that they will be excited and reinvigorated by the findings; instead, they are hesitant. Tim explains that there are several problems with what Niall discovered. They aren’t sure the person online is even Luke, they can’t change their perspective and assume that Luke isn’t dangerous, and Luke still killed two people. When Niall argues self-defense, Tim points out that Luke was in no immediate danger; instead, he was the one holding the gun. Tim decides to do nothing further on the case, not wanting to dedicate the resources to it anymore.

Niall is disappointed but not surprised. He thinks of how his entire career has been about public perception and “red tape.” He is reminded of Cam’s “I miss you I miss you I miss you” (221) message to Luke. He realizes that he has to continue to try to figure out the “truth,” even if only to give Cam a sense of closure.

Despite his initial hesitancy toward therapy, Niall is optimistic when he enters Jess’s office. He decides to talk about the siege, giving her the new information about Luke and the hitmen. To Niall’s surprise, Jess responds that the information is “good.” She points out that Niall’s instincts were correct: Luke never wanted to harm anyone. The revelation gives Niall a sense of “relief.”

Charlie comes over to Cam’s house. He had texted her asking to see her. Cam was relieved deep down that Charlie had not held it against her that she left him at the restaurant. She thinks of Libby’s dream and wonders if she really could move on. However, with Charlie in her house, standing where Luke used to, she is confused about how she feels. When her phone rings with no caller ID, she leaves Charlie in the kitchen to answer it.

Niall is on the phone. He tells her that he needs to speak with her. Cam panics, asking twice if they found Luke, but Niall tells her they haven’t. She then asks if the call is about Madison. Niall hesitates, then says yes. He asks Cam to meet her the next day, and she agrees.

Back in the kitchen, Cam decides that she needs to tell Charlie everything. They sit outside and drink tea, then wine, as she tells him the whole story. She does not mention Alexander, James, or Madison, but tells him about the coordinates and the call with Niall.

After, Cam is relieved at the way Charlie responds. He is empathetic, telling her that “most everyone feels utterly fucked up by life” (231)—so it is not just her that is struggling. The two then spend the rest of the night together, sitting outside, as Cam realizes how much better she feels to be able to talk to him about it all.

The narrator stands near Cam’s house. He thinks of how he has a lot of new information “straight from the horse’s mouth” (234) that he needs to tell his brother.

Niall meets Cam at the Inner Temple, a secure, gated village where lawyers and judges often stay during trials. He is sure that no one—not even the police—will be able to follow them in.

Niall starts the conversation by asking Cam what she knows about Madison. She admits that Madison came to her at the school and that she was the wife of one of the hostages. The revelation shocks Niall. However, he does not let Cam know he is surprised. He decides that he needs her to trust him, so he is not going to tell her about the coordinates or the possible sighting of Luke near her home a few months before.

Cam asks Niall if she is going to be prosecuted for withholding information. However, Niall tells her that he is not there in any “official” capacity—and that he could likely be prosecuted for the same thing.

Niall tells her about the hitmen. He explains what he thinks happened—that Luke took their gun to protect himself. When he finishes, he sees that Cam has tears in her eyes. She says twice, “he was good,” in response (239), clearly relieved by the information.