“Okay, okay,” Austin says. “I was a busboy. Literally the worst job imaginable. One day I was cleaning glasses at the end of a shift and I got to talking to Jack Westman about cars. He was sitting at the bar. Closing time didn’t apply to him. He hired me on the spot to be his driver. I figured driving was a much better job than hauling dirty dishes. Soon enough, I was driving him to these warehouses, and these guys would come out and they’d all be talking in a circle. I’d be sitting there dead sure that the whole scene was going to turn into a Tarantino movie. I’d catch a stray bullet and my brain would end up all over the headrest. I got anxious. I wasn’t sleeping well. As luck would have it, my brother made his first ten million around the same time. And he’s generous. So I quit.”
“You were telling me your life story at the bar yesterday,” Clare says. “That’s a pretty key detail to leave out.”
“Have you ever left anything out of a story, Clare?” Austin laughs. “I think you have. I know you have, actually.”
Something in his tone tugs at Clare. Her stomach flips. Austin tries to nudge the wineglass her way again. Clare accepts it, then pushes it aside. She cannot drink it. She won’t cave tonight.
“I offered to take you home last night,” Austin says. “Share a cab. I like to think I’m a decent-looking guy. I thought we had something, you know? It might have been nice.”
“Jesus, Austin.”
“I’m just saying. It feels one-sided, this relationship. Unrequited.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ouch!” Austin sips his wine, the glass oversize for his grip. “You needn’t be so harsh, Clare.”
“You filmed what happened last night with Kavita and sent the video out.”
“Of course I did. This is the viral age, Clare. That shit was gold.”
“You screwed me,” Clare says.
“How? I made you famous.”
“You know my work relies on anonymity. You took that from me.”
“Oh, come on.”
When Austin reaches to pinch a strand of her hair, Clare recoils sharply.
“Here’s the thing,” Austin says. “I got home last night and turned off my phone. I never turn off my phone. But the notifications from the video post were insane. I was getting so many that my phone was literally too hot to touch. I jerked awake in the middle of the night, and I was all sweaty and thirsty. I hate that. I was in my bathroom chugging water, thinking about Kavita down the hall. I know she and Charlotte have this thing, this lesbian dabble or something, but she’s right down the hall and I know she’d be too hopped up to remember anything.”
How Clare wants to punch Austin now, to throttle him.
“You better not have touched her,” she hisses.
“Relax,” he says. “I wouldn’t do that. My mother raised me right. But what I did do was fire up my laptop and get to work.” Austin plucks his phone from the counter and swipes at its screen. “There’s this reverse search you can do. You know, where you take a photo of someone, or in your case a screenshot from a video, and you drop it into a search engine? And any other lookalike pictures out there on the internet will pop up.”
Clare feels the blood drain from her face. Austin angles his phone to allow Clare to see the screen.
“Clare O’Callaghan,” he says. “Look at this! Missing since December from some farm town way east of here. You went for a jog and just vanished into thin air? Crazy. There were search parties, a husband who seemed wracked by it all. Jason O’Callaghan. Look at this. You were in the news for a while there. The really local news, at least.” He swipes at more photographs. “Then there’s a blank spot over the winter and spring. I’m guessing you were lying low? That was smart. And then you show up a few months ago in some mountain town where another woman has gone missing. But wait! In that story, you’re Clare O’Dey? And now you’re Clare O’Kearney?” He turns the phone again to swipe through more photographs. “The O name thing is cute, I’ve got to say. Kind of like a calling card, right? But, Clare O… can I call you that? Clare O? You’ve definitely left a bit of a crumb trail in your travels.”
It takes everything in Clare not to lunge for his phone and smash it to the floor. As if detecting her instinct, Austin holds his phone high, a smirk across his face. Your gun, Clare thinks. You could pull your gun. Fire a bullet into his forehead. The rage she feels at his crooked smile is enough to compel her to do so, to end this. But she can’t. Instead she inhales deeply and holds her breath until her heartbeat steadies. Then she lays her hands flat on the cool stone of the kitchen island and looks Austin squarely in the eyes.
“What do you want?” she asks.
“Yours is a good story,” he says. “I could tell it for you.”
Clare must change her tack. She summons the tears that have been threatening to spill over. She allows her eyes to fill and her cheeks to streak. Austin looks stricken. He darts across the kitchen to collect a box of tissues for her. Clare smiles at him through the tears. She sees the look in his eyes. Though the tears are easy enough to come by, though Clare’s fear feels real, it still seems too easy.
“I really need you to back off on this,” she says, her voice cracked.
“Can I ask why?”
“Can I tell you another time?” Clare whispers. “How about I promise to tell you another time.”
“Okay,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.” Clare reaches out and allows her hand to linger on his arm. “I get it. You’re just doing your job. And I promise you I’ll give you the whole story, Austin. I just need a
