Lender said nothing.
“Two things went wrong,” Auggie said. “First, he sent you that text, bragging about blackmailing someone, but he was too stupid to realize you’d misunderstand it. Second, he got himself killed. If he’d been alive and you’d caught up with him, you would have figured it out pretty fast. Once he was dead, though, everybody was operating under the same mistaken assumption.”
“But you don’t have any proof he was talking about blackmailing you,” Lender said. “I have good reason to believe I understood him perfectly well when he sent me that message.”
“Actually,” Auggie said, “I do. He was putting together footage of me. Video clips that would humiliate me and ruin my social media platform. Chan was going to post them on her feed.”
“That’s silly,” Lender said.
“Chan is making five figures from an account that is mostly just stories about how awful I am. In a year, if she keeps adding content and followers, that’ll be six figures. And she’s got other accounts too. It’s a lot of money, and all she needed was for Robert to get her some fresh material.”
For a moment, Lender seemed to consider it. Then he shook his head.
“I have proof,” Auggie said. “I found the flash drive you wanted. It has one video on it. And it’s of me.” He drew from his pocket the flash drive that Orlando had given Theo and held it out.
Lender took it and said, “How did you find it?”
“We talked to his ex-girlfriend, Jessica Wallen. She’s in the county jail right now, so she had plenty of time to chat. He’d taped it to the back of the mirror in the Frozen King bathroom.”
“Really?” Lender said, turning the flash drive in his hand. “I have to point out, Auggie, you’ve been much too trusting, giving it to me.”
“I want you to leave me alone. And I want you to leave Theo alone. You’ve got what you wanted: Robert was planning on blackmailing me, and now you have the flash drive with the video.”
“I thought he was going to sell it to your friend Chan.”
“From what I hear, Robert had big plans. He obviously decided to score something on the side.”
“Very interesting,” Lender said. A tiny smile puffed into existence and then vanished. “Can you imagine? All this chaos over a misunderstanding. I don’t suppose you know who killed the little cunt.”
Auggie shook his head.
“Well,” Lender said, “I’m going to think about this, August. And if I’m not satisfied, I’m going to come back, and we’ll talk again. And, of course, I think we’ll need to discuss the value of this video you’ve given me. I understand your little internet star is rising; I’d like to be a part of that success.”
“No,” Auggie said.
“You should have thought about that before you handed this over.”
“That video isn’t worth anything,” Auggie said, clicking to his Instagram feed. “I’ve already posted it.”
And there it was, at the top of his feed: the clip of Theo leaning over and kissing him, their faces clear in the light spilling into the car. Thousands of comments were displayed under the video; Auggie couldn’t look at them. It was bad enough seeing that his followers had dropped to forty thousand—less than half of what he’d had a couple of hours before.
“Well,” Lender said with another of those momentary smiles. “Well, well, well.”
“We’re done, right? And you’ll make sure the Volunteers know, so they’ll leave me alone?”
“I suppose so.”
“And Theo? You’re done with Theo? And you won’t hurt him, you won’t hurt his daughter, you won’t go anywhere near them?”
Lender bared huge, yellow teeth, and it took Auggie a moment to realize it was a grin. “August, if I may, I’d like to offer you some fatherly advice. You’re a young lad, just a callow youth sailing into life’s storms of adversity, and so on and so forth. In the future, here’s something it might help you to remember: watch your own fucking ass. Nobody else will do it for you.”
“You won’t go anywhere near Theo or his daughter?” Auggie asked quietly.
“Of course not,” Lender said. “We’re finished here.”
16
Theo was halfway through the article on Lear and hadn’t understood a word of it. He flipped back to the beginning and tried again.
Two days had passed since that brutal fight with Auggie. Theo had regretted everything, every word of it, almost as soon as Auggie was out the door. But the combination of shock that Auggie knew about Lana, the humiliation of his situation, and the pain that never went away had made it impossible to think clearly in the moment.
He picked up his phone, flipped it open, scrolled to the messages, and stopped. He shut the phone and tossed it onto the cushion next to him. Then, grabbing a highlighter, he started the article once more from the beginning.
When a knock came at the door, he mumbled, “Thank God,” around the cap of the highlighter, and got to his feet. It was late afternoon on Sunday, the light coming through the windows in fat, golden beams, and the house still smelled like the pancakes Theo had made that morning—not as good as Auggie’s, instructions on the bag or not. Theo knew how it was going to go: Auggie would be out there, a knit cap pulled down, his big, dark eyes soft, and Theo would apologize, and Auggie would get that lightbulb glow in his face, and they’d have some excuse about studying on the couch and then they’d order Chinese and somehow things would be normal again.
Only, when he opened the door, it wasn’t Auggie. It was Cart, and his ears were red with the cold. He pushed into the house without saying anything, dropping the rigger bags on the floor, and stripped off his gloves and his coat.
“Hey,” Theo said. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Why?” Cart said, squatting to dig through
