Page 13 of The Followers

Outside, blinking in the southwestern sunshine, Liv pulled out her phone and called her brother. “It’s him,” she said as soon as Oliver answered.

“Huh?” Her brother’s voice sounded muffled.

“I found Sam Howard. He changed his name, moved to Colorado, and started a river-rafting business, but I’m sure it’s him.”

Oliver didn’t respond, and the silence dragged on long enough that Liv started to get worried. Oliver had bad days sometimes, periods of time when he hardly got out of bed. “Ollie? You still there? What’s wrong?”

Oliver coughed. “I’m fine. Late night at work.” There was a rustling noise. When he spoke again, he sounded more alert. “Okay, back up. Is this the guy you think...” He trailed off, unable to say the words.

“I don’t think it’s him, I know it is.”

“Explain.”

Liv headed toward a nearby coffee shop, glancing around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. Tourists crowded Durango’s Main Ave, a street lined with old-fashioned buildings framed by a backdrop of red-green mountains and blue sky. It looked like something out of an old western movie, and Liv had to admit it was beautiful, cozied between mountains and desert, a river running through the middle of town. The cities she usually worked in had nothing special about them. They were stopping points, places she could live in another generic, beige apartment for a few months before moving on.

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?” she asked her brother.

“No, no, no.” She could practically hear Oliver backpedaling. “But anyone can be anyone in this day and age, especially online. People aren’t always what they seem. I just think you should be careful.”

“I am.”

“Says the woman actively stalking an internet celebrity.”

Liv rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “What if I said Scott Wander is from Ohio?”

Oliver went quiet. “That’s more promising. What’s your next move?”

“Not sure yet,” Liv said, knowing her brother wouldn’t approve of her real plan: trying to coordinate another run-in with Molly today.

She’d made it to the Steaming Bean, a café on the bottom floor of an aging red-brick building. A man wearing a baseball cap came up behind her and headed inside, holding the door open. He smiled, his eyes meeting hers in a friendly manner, but Liv shook her head. She wasn’t ready to go in just yet.

Once the man was gone, Liv returned to her conversation. “If you want to help, you could take a trip to the police station back in Clairton and talk to one of the detectives.”

Oliver barked a laugh. “Yeah, I’m going to drive across Pennsylvania, to the town where the worst experience of our lives occurred, and willingly talk to a cop. Right.”

Liv held in a smile at the image of her brother, with his gauged ears and tattoos, walking into a police station. She still thought of him as the gentle boy she’d shared a room with, but he wasn’t anymore. After Kristina’s death, all the softness had gone out of him. No more writing poetry or even doing his homework; he’d gotten in fights at school and punched holes in Gran’s walls, had barely graduated high school, and had run-ins with the law.

Recently, though, he’d been doing well. He was the evening shift manager at a Chipotle in Brooklyn, which, okay, wasn’t a glamorous job, but he had stuck at it for nearly a year. Liv was proud of him. Now if he could just find a nice guy instead of the shitheads he usually dated, she wouldn’t have to lay awake at night worrying.

“Don’t trash my methods if you’re not willing to put in any work to solve this,” she said.

“I don’t care to solve this,” Oliver said, serious. “It’s not something either of us needs to be involved in. If he is the guy who...” He cleared his throat. “It could be dangerous.”

“He has Gabriela,” Liv said. The trump card. Oliver couldn’t argue with that.

“You know this for sure?”

“Not yet. But I’m going to find out.”

“But—”

“But nothing. If I find evidence that proves he is Sam Howard, I will pass it on to the authorities. And if he is dangerous, think about what that means for Gabriela.”

Oliver sighed, the sigh that meant he didn’t agree but knew it was futile to try and talk her out of it. No one knew Liv like her brother. They’d grown up taking care of each other when their mom couldn’t. Their mom, a woman so dysfunctional she’d named her son Oliver, not realizing until several days after the birth certificate was signed that she already had a daughter named Olivia. No, Ollie and Liv had learned early in childhood to rely on each other. And after Kristina’s death, they’d strapped themselves to each other like two life rafts in a stormy ocean. Even now, even with the physical distance between them, they hadn’t fully untangled. Neither of them was good at letting anyone else get close.

“Be careful,” Oliver said, his voice gentler. “You’re all I’ve got.”

A lump rose in her throat. The last thing she wanted was for her brother to worry about her.

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