Page 90 of The Followers

The RV park was a ninety-minute drive from Durango. Which meant an hour and a half of tense, weighted silence in Jeremiah’s Jeep. The sky darkened with clouds, a few bolts of heat lightning crackling in the distance. Liv’s eyes felt scratchy and dry, her body tight with tension. She didn’t know what to say to Jeremiah or how to put her thoughts and feelings into words.

She wanted to be angry, to let the fury surge around him like lava. To make him suffer. But how would that help? Guilt buried him already, and piling more on would do nothing but suffocate him. It might suffocate her, too.

She wanted to question him, to force him to explain his motivation. It didn’t make sense that he’d spent so much time with her, when he could have just told Scott at the beginning that she was in town. But she couldn’t find the words, or maybe she was too emotionally spent to even try. She kept her eyes straight ahead, watching the highway stretch out like a fat black snake, the clouds a gray ceiling overhead. Jeremiah drove with his jaw tight and his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

Eventually she drifted off to sleep, the past few days catching up to her. When Jeremiah pulled off the highway she jolted upright, blinking.

They were on a dirt road marked with a wooden sign saying NANCY’S in faded, hand-painted letters. Drops of rain dotted the windshield. Jeremiah followed the road through a darkened tunnel of pine trees; in a hundred yards, it opened to a small clearing, where a turquoise vintage camper was tucked against the trees. CHECK IN HERE, another hand-painted sign instructed.

Jeremiah parked and got out without glancing at Liv. She watched from the front seat of the Jeep, her window rolled down so she could hear. The air smelled of damp earth and growing things. Jeremiah rapped on the door of the camper and waited, raindrops speckling his T-shirt.

A petite woman with gray hair down to her waist peered out. “We’re full,” she said. Her voice sounded like the effects of ten thousand cigarettes.

“I don’t need a spot,” Jeremiah said. “I’m looking for a friend. A man and his nine-year-old daughter. Have you seen them?”

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “Now, you know I’m not going to start giving away information on my paying customers.”

Jeremiah nodded. “I know, ma’am. Just needed to give a message to my friend, that’s all. He’s my brother, in fact. And that lady right there,” he turned and motioned to Liv without meeting her eyes, “is the little girl’s aunt.”

Liv leaned forward, watching as the woman’s eyes flickered. “If he was your brother,” the woman said, “you’d think he would’ve let you know where he was staying.”

Jeremiah stuck his hands in his pockets, and Liv could see the tension in his shoulders. “Fair enough. But how about this: if he’s not here, you tell me so I don’t have to waste time finding two people who mean a lot to me and preventing them from doing something that could end up being a disaster.”

Liv flinched, but Jeremiah was right: this could be a disaster. And although Liv hadn’t set it all in motion nine years ago, she was the one who had stirred it up again by coming here. By trying to find Scott, befriending Molly, and getting to know Ella. Jeremiah had brought her along for one purpose only: to convince Scott he could return safely to Durango. Once that happened, they would all be glad to see her go.

The woman—Nancy, Liv assumed—brushed long gray hair off her shoulder and put a hand on her hip. “All right. But only because I like your face. There’s no one here like that—no grown man with a young girl. Sorry, honey.”

Jeremiah’s shoulders slumped, and he fished in his back pocket for his wallet, then handed Nancy a bill. “Thanks for your help, ma’am. Appreciate it.”

He headed back, rain running down his face in little rivulets. Once in the Jeep, he reversed in a rush, reached the pull-out onto the empty two-lane highway, and paused, face impassive, eyes straight ahead. Rain beat against the windshield, drummed against the hard top, and he turned on his wipers. Watching him, Liv realized how badly they had both hoped for a quick resolution.

“Where do we go now?” she asked.

“No idea. He could be across the border to Mexico by now. There are a dozen directions he could’ve gone. I don’t know how we’ll find him.”

He slammed his hand into the steering wheel so hard the entire Jeep rocked. Liv flinched.

“I knew this would happen,” Jeremiah muttered. “As soon as he realized you were here, I knew it would end like this, with him taking off.”

“Is that why you didn’t—”

“Tell him about you? Yeah. I knew he would panic and run. I was trying to keep him from meeting you, but you . . .”—he exhaled and shook his head in frustration—“you kept getting more and more involved in their lives. I don’t understand why you couldn’t leave them alone.”

“You’re right,” Liv said. “You don’t understand.”

He turned to meet her eyes. The first time he had actually looked at her for hours. She saw a complex mixture of emotion in his expression: anger at her, anger at himself, bone-deep guilt.

“Then why?” he asked—not accusing, but curious.

Liv shrugged. A lump rose in her throat as she said, “Ella’s my family.”

Jeremiah held her gaze for a long moment, his lips parting and then closing again, like he was wrestling with something.

“Liv,” he said quietly, “I—”

From behind them came the humming sound of a vehicle moving their way, and Jeremiah glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows knitting together. Liv twisted, trying to see who it was, but the headlights blinded her. She couldn’t make out the face of the person walking toward them, but her heart surged with hope. Maybe it was Scott—maybe he had seen them.

Then the figure came around to Jeremiah’s window, and the light caught his ancient, sun-weathered face. Liv’s heart sank. It was a graying man in a flannel shirt, a cowboy hat, and wranglers.

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