Owen walks past Bailey as he leaves the exhibition; it is his first time seeing her in over five years. He registers the differences between teen and adult Bailey, observing that her skin is tan, which suggests she overcame her previous dislike of the beach. This overwhelms Owen, whose only point of contact with Bailey has been her social media profiles.

Owen takes a taxi to the airport and waits for his flight in the first-class lounge. He switches disguises in the bathroom and then proceeds to the bar. When a woman chats him up, Owen tells the woman he is married but admits that he doesn’t know whether his wife would feel lucky to be married to him.

The novel flashes back to reveal Owen’s perspective on the previous novel’s events. After being informed by Hannah’s best friend, Jules, that the FBI would soon raid The Shop, the company he worked for, over investment fraud, Owen immediately went into hiding to avoid being identified. He withdrew his emergency funds from a safety deposit box, along with fake IDs, an encrypted phone, and a Vancouver storage unit key. Knowing that there’d be no time for him to explain everything to Hannah and Bailey, he wrote notes for each of them and left them with Bailey’s locker and a girl who knew Hannah. He spent the night driving north to cross the Canadian border. Owen originally planned to take Hannah and Bailey with him when he designed his escape route during Bailey’s childhood, but because she had grown up in the intervening years, he felt it would be unfair to force her to give up her life for his sake.

In the present, Owen lands in Austin, Texas. He drives a rental car and thinks back to the moment he called Bailey, who by then had learned the truth about her mother, Kate, and her grandfather, Nicholas Bell. This prompted him to make a new plan. He proceeds from the airport to a condominium and informs the doorman that he is visiting his father-in-law.

Hannah’s surprise encounter with Owen leaves her restless. Though she chose not to tell Bailey about it during their dinner, she is still thinking about it the next morning and considers when might be the best time to talk to her. She declines a phone call from a potential date, knowing she still feels committed to her marriage with Owen. She then gets a text from a phone number with an Australian area code that tells her to look in her pocket. Hannah finds a flash drive in the dress she wore at the exhibition and realizes that Owen gave it to her without her noticing.

A gas repairman rings Hannah’s doorbell and informs her that he needs to check a reported gas leak in her house. The repairman offers to give her identification to verify his claim. Before Hannah can do so, she gets a text from the Australia phone number telling her to leave the house at once.

Bailey opens a fortune cookie she got at her dinner with Hannah and Shep the night before. To her dismay, the cookie has no fortune, which reminds her of a previous experience in which she got a fortune she later interpreted as an ill omen. Bailey works as a part-time assistant to Alice Sleight, a successful casting agent, while trying to complete the musical she wrote for her senior thesis. As Bailey discovered, however, Alice has no sense of boundaries and calls her at all times of day and night to troubleshoot her emergencies. This has left Bailey exhausted.

As Bailey gets ready for work, she receives a panicked call from Charlie, her maternal uncle, who wants to know if she is with Hannah or the bodyguard Nicholas assigned to her, Justin. Bailey responds that she is with neither, as she cannot see Justin stationed outside her apartment. Instead, she sees two gas repairmen outside her building. Charlie tells Bailey to reach Hannah at once and call when they are safely together. Bailey asks if things are fine with Nicholas. Charlie tells her that nothing is okay, compelling Bailey to move.

Taking the flash drive with her, Hannah retrieves her emergency backpack and escapes through the attic window. Just as she exits the back gate, she hears a loud cracking noise. She passes through her neighbors’ backyard and runs as soon as she reaches the main road. Once she has cleared enough distance from her road, she takes a taxi to Appian Way and messages Bailey: “Late drink?” She removes her SIM card from her phone and throws it out the window.

Bailey remembers Hannah’s advice to breathe deeply three times before executing her escape plan. Over the last five years, Hannah has rigorously prepared Bailey for emergency situations, which makes her feel ready. She gets Hannah’s message, which she recognizes as their predetermined warning code. Bailey discards her phone in the sink and then proceeds to her superintendent’s door. Bailey has an agreement with her superintendent to let her use his private exit in case of emergency. This allows her to avoid passing through the main lobby, which is likely being monitored.

Bailey takes a backup car parked by Jules on level four to leave the building. The trunk is packed with emergency items, but Bailey has instructions not to open it until later. She only allows herself to cry once she gets to the highway.

Hannah’s taxi passes the exit leading to her workshop and proceeds to a house in Malibu belonging to her ex-fiancé, Jake, and his wife, an actress client of Hannah’s. Hannah was the person who introduced them to each other, so they offered to let her use the house as a favor. The house is listed under the wife’s name, which makes it an unlikely place for Hannah’s pursuers to search for her.

Jake’s house is at the end of the private-access Malibu Road. Once inside, Hannah uses her burner phone to call Grady Bradford, the US marshal who helped her learn the truth about Owen’s past. Right before she asks Bradford what is happening, she turns on the news and sees a report that Nicholas has died. Bradford confirms the report, indicating that Nicholas is believed to have experienced a heart attack at his lake house. Hannah struggles to absorb the news, acknowledging the ways that Nicholas stepped up to build a relationship with her and Bailey after they made their agreement. By proving his willingness to care for Bailey, Nicholas eventually earned Hannah’s trust.

Bradford tells Hannah that Nicholas’s employers, a crime syndicate known as the Organization, have chosen to renege on Hannah’s arrangement with Nicholas now that Nicholas is dead. They will likely use Hannah and Bailey to draw Owen out of hiding and take revenge against him for turning state witness against them. Hannah is confused that the Organization’s leader, Francis “Frank” Campano Pointe II, would turn so quickly on his promise to Nicholas when the two of them were close.

Bailey arrives at Jake’s house and learns the news herself. Before they hang up, Bradford tells Hannah that Owen was spotted at Nicholas’s apartment, which raises suspicions that he may have been involved in Nicholas’s death somehow. Hannah cannot help connecting the events of Owen’s sudden reappearance and Nicholas’s death together but resolves to find out why this is all happening.

Hannah catches Bailey up on Owen’s surprise visit and then retrieves a computer from Bailey’s car to examine the flash drive. The home page features the image of a marine compass, along with several folders of photo albums. One album is labeled “Sausalito” and contains pictures of Owen’s friend, Carl, Carl’s wife, Patty, and Carl’s brother, Daniel. Hannah decides to figure out why Owen included these pictures on the road.

On the road, Hannah uses her tablet to monitor the security cameras at her properties. She sees gas repairmen, including the one from her apartment, at her work studio and alerts her neighbor to call the police. Bailey expresses frustration over the coincidence of Owen’s reappearance and Nicholas’s death, which Hannah understands is her way of expressing fear. Hannah reassures her that Owen is not involved in Nicholas’s death.

Instead of following surface roads to Santa Cruz, where they can commandeer a yacht that Hannah has learned to operate, Hannah decides to call Patty, following the clue from her photos. Patty directs Hannah to Daniel, who lives up north. Stopping at a gas station, Hannah sees a news report featuring Charlie, whose family is being swarmed by news crews. She uses the station attendant’s phone to message Charlie and Jules. The message to Charlie is meant to mislead anyone monitoring his phone. The coded message to Jules informs her that they are going to Santa Cruz.

Bailey shares that she knew she was walking past Owen at the exhibition, as well as her upset feelings over the loss of Nicholas. At the same time, Bailey is relieved that Owen is okay. Hannah understands her sentiment and assures her that nothing lasts forever, including their retreat.

Patty directs Hannah to go to the Napa County Airport the following morning. She gives her strict instructions to behave as though she has business being there, indicating which plane to look for. She is to identify herself as a member of the Roberts party. When Bailey asks if Patty has seen Owen, Patty declines to answer but shares her condolences over Nicholas.

Hannah and Bailey arrive at the Santa Cruz house of Jules’s friend. They stay in the pool house, which is well-stocked, though Hannah stresses that they will leave in the morning. They settle down for the night.

Jules calls Hannah and confirms the initial reports that Nicholas died of a heart attack in his sleep. According to his will, there will be no autopsy, as evidence continues to discourage any suspicion of foul play. Major news outlets are planning to use Nicholas’s death to present investigative specials on the Organization, particularly the imminent shift of power from Frank to his eldest children, Quinn and Teddy. Hannah wonders why Nicholas never shared this impending development with her and connects it to both Owen’s visit and Bradford’s claim that the Organization will renege on its agreement with Hannah.

Bailey asks to share a room with Hannah and then asks how Hannah is doing. Hannah deflects, discouraging Bailey from worrying about her. Bailey expresses relief that Alice can’t reach her anymore but also regret that she let work get in the way of her relationship with Nicholas. She fondly remembers the last time they spoke, when Nicholas told her about a funny New Yorker cartoon. Bailey instinctively replied that Owen would’ve loved the cartoon as well and then assumed that she’d made Nicholas angry by invoking her father. Hannah reassures her that she did this out of love and that Nicholas loved her unconditionally, too. When Bailey asks Hannah if she is angry at Owen for putting them in this situation, Hannah realizes that his visit made her more hopeful than ever that they will soon be reunited.