Hannah Hall
Hannah Hall is the first-person narrator and protagonist of the novel. She is in the initial stages of middle age—around that period when the glass of wine starts to become the thing around which the entire day of a wife revolves—and is about to prematurely step into that phase of a marriage going sour: a knock on the door by an unexpected stranger bearing unthinkable news.
Owen
Owen is Hannah’s husband of just a little over a year. In coincidence with the knock on the door, the second shock of the day for Hannah is discovering via media reports that the company where Owen works as head of coding had just been raided by the feds hot on the trail of a massive investigation into fraud and embezzlement. The company’s CEO, Avett Thompson, is arrested and Owen is facing indictment. If, that is, he can ever be located.
The Messenger Girl
The knock at the door does turn out to be a girl, but not the kind of girl that usually brings bad news to a wife about the stage of the marriage. This one is really just a girl; a twelve-year-old soccer-playing student who has been paid twenty bucks to deliver a message to Hannah from her husband. It is written on yellow legal pad paper and would make even Ernest Hemingway question its frustrating lack of context, subtext, or useful information: “Protect her.”
Bailey
The only “her” that Hanna can figure out her husband would sent such a message in regard to is not the little soccer play who seems to need no protection at all, but rather her husband’s daughter from an prior marriage. Bailey is Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter with whom Hannah has a prickly relationship. Bailey turns out to have some more information that will only server to intensify the mysteries of Owen and, in the process, bring the two closer together as they are forced to team up to solve the lingering questions of who needs protecting, and why, and what’s the deal with the duffel bag stuffed with cash left safely hidden in Bailey’s school locker.
Grady Bradford
Soon enough, FBI agents are all over the case as well, but most interestingly is a lawman named Grady Bradford. While it is natural enough that the Hoover boys would be involved in a case of interstate fraud, Bradford turns out to be a member of the U.S. Marshals which covers a completely different jurisdiction within federal law enforcement. He also seems to have an interest in the case that does not exactly align that of the FBI. Grady also seems to be much more wired into the missing details that could help clarify the growing mysteries surrounding her husband’s disappearance. In fact, he warns her to prepare herself for learning that Owen isn’t exactly the man she thought she married.
