“Moore?” Erica asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Theo glanced back at the patrons of the café once more to see if anyone noticed, but they didn’t. Finn said he told Erica to refer to the trio by their last names if they ever came in, just in case someone could recognize them.

  “Unfortunately,” Theo said, shrugging. He despised being called by his last name, but it had to be done. Erica scoffed, shaking her head as she smiled.

  She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly and hovered her hand over her tablet. “So what’ll it be?” she asked him, her eyebrows raised at him expectantly.

  “Uhh… an oat latte with cinnamon on top, please.”

  “For sure,” Erica said, tapping away at her tablet. The receipt printed, and she moved it over to the younger-looking barista, who was flinging drinks around with that focused, perturbed look in his eyes, like most baristas had.

  “Your order will be ready just over there,” Erica said, tilting her head to the edge of the bar.

  Theo squinted his eyes. “Don’t I have to pay?”

  “I owe you free coffee for life after you saved me last fall,” Erica said, her eyes gazing down at the counter, likely lost in the memory of being strangled by her own scarf by the killer last year.

  “Erica, you don’t have to⁠—”

  “No, I want to. Especially after the shit that everyone’s saying about you. And about Finn and Jada. You deserve someone in your corner. Sure, maybe a free coffee won’t solve that, but I hope it’s a start,” Erica said, finally meeting his gaze.

  Theo blinked rapidly, his mouth opening, but nothing came out. He didn’t know what to make of Erica’s comment, but he accepted whatever olive branch she was trying to offer him, even if it was only a paper cup filled with coffee.

  “Thank you, Erica. Truly,” Theo said, nodding his head.

  “Of course,” Erica said, her gaze looking back at her tablet, likely a nervous tic that Theo had mastered to detect in other people.

  Theo leaned closer to her. “Just in case something happens—” Erica’s eyes widened, looking startled at Theo’s comment.

  Theo put his hands out in front of him, trying to quell her budding distress. “No, don’t worry, it’s not bad.”

  Erica nodded, putting a hand on her chest.

  “I’m just meeting up with this guy who might have known my brother, Brandon. I think he’s a good guy, but I wanted to let you know what I’m doing here just in case something goes wrong. Not that I think it will,” Theo said, but he wasn’t sure if he was telling her the truth. He thought Don seemed genuine, but the secrets that Don held might make him appear worse than he liked to come off as.

  “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out,” Erica said, nodding.

  “Thanks again,” Theo said, nodding once and walked over to the other end of the counter to wait for his drink.

  He got his drink and sat down in front of Don, who was finishing up his espresso. Theo always wondered how people sipped on such a small drink. He could drink his latte in two minutes if he wanted, and he never understood how people could take such small sips of an already small drink.

  Theo rubbed the back of his neck. “So, Don. I know this probably feels really weird… I know I’m a spitting image of my brother. But… there’s a lot about him I didn’t know. Even when he lived with me my whole life… he always kept to himself, or at least he showed little of himself. Now that I know where he went, I need to get a better idea. Try to fill in the blanks, if you know what I mean.”

  “Of course, kid. But I want to know… what happened? You told me Brayden—Brandon was dead,” Don said, correcting himself by calling Brandon his alias.

  Theo puffed out a long breath, looking outside, now knowing how to fit the past five years together eloquently. His brother disappeared five years ago, but he remained like a ghost, his spirit whispering in the wind and bubbling in the sea foam. He was gone, but he was everywhere, and he still saw him everywhere he looked, even in death.

  “Well… he faked his death. He hated me and tried to ruin my life and tried to kill me and replace me so he could have a new chance at life, but… I stopped him. Now he’s dead,” Theo said, looking at Don. Don coughed as he sipped the last remnants of his espresso.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “He tried to kill me, so I had to protect myself,” Theo said, staring at the table.

  “No, I know, kid, but… how are you even standing? How are you… normal?” Don said, gesturing to Theo as a whole.

  Theo shook his head. He wasn’t close to being normal, but Don didn’t need to know that. “I’m not sure, honestly.”

  “Brandon was always like that. Nothing could ever get to him. He had skin made of titanium, that one,” Don said, nodding. Theo bit the inside of his cheek, his grip around his glass tightening.

  “Yeah, we both have that in common, I guess.”

  Don put his espresso glass down and pushed it off to the side of the table. “Anyway, so you wanted to know more about him, right? I’ll talk.”

  Theo took the first sip of his latte, letting the warmth and creaminess of the drink prepare him for whatever Don was going to say.

  “So, I work for a tech company, NexGen Innovations. I specialize in cybersecurity. I found Brandon one day when he was applying for some kind of internship, obviously under a different name, sometime in 2020. Told me he was an undergrad at Rutger’s and wanted some experience. I saw some potential in him and took him under my wing after everyone else was turning him away.”

  Don sighed. “I can’t tell you why… but there was something about him that made me want to take him on. Said he had a passion for cybersecurity and that he spent a lot of his time doing research.”

  Don laughed, shaking his head. “Man, that kid knew how to code. I was amazed by how much he knew, definitely more than an undergrad should know. I thought he was eighteen, but I guess he was probably sixteen or seventeen. In hindsight, I have no idea how he knew so much, but I didn’t question it. I taught him everything about cybersecurity, how to keep someone from getting hacked, how hackers get in… And I taught him how to use different software and make computer hardware. I’d like to think that he went the better route of keeping hackers out, but now I’m thinking that he became a hacker himself…”

  “I think he might have,” Theo said, nodding.

  “I remember he was super focused on this one person… he kept saying someone was trying to hack into his phone and that he wanted to keep them out and how to hack their phone if it should come to it.”

  Theo leaned forward in his chair. “Do you remember who?”

  “He didn’t say… but whenever I brought it up, he’d get… defensive. On edge. Kid was usually determined and happy-go-lucky, but when it came to whoever it was… he was like a whole different person.”

  “Do you think he was maybe trying to hack… me?” Theo asked, feeling small at the question he was asking like it was a stupid idea.

  Don quirked an eyebrow at Theo. “Why would he want to hack you?” Theo wondered why Brandon would have wanted to as well. Maybe he was tracking Theo’s phone.

  “Because he… tried to take my place at some point. He loved switching places with me growing up. He thought it was fun, pretending to be me. One time, he did it so I could get out of a test in elementary school, but… I think he got addicted to it. He tried to ruin my life by doing it… maybe he wanted to make sure I’d never be in the same place at the same time as him by hacking my phone,” Theo said, taken aback at his own idea.

  If it was true, Theo likely didn’t have it in him to fathom it, knowing how committed Brandon had been to wanting to replace Theo by knowing everything about him and where he was at all times. The private conversations he had with Jada and Finn, as well as many other things were likely all being monitored by Brandon at some point.

  All of Theo’s efforts to become unlike Brandon ended up wedging them closer together.

  “I don’t know, kid. He wouldn’t tell me anything other than that it was someone back from his hometown. But if you think it’s true… then I would believe you. If there was one thing about Brandon, it was that he was committed. When he set his sights on something… it never wavered.”

  “Yeah, I know. That was Brandon,” Theo said, nodding his head. He and Brandon were both committed. That was what their parents had taught them to be. That if they were going to be anything in the world, they would commit to what they put their sights on and never let it wither. Theo wondered how Brandon ended up so committed to pretending to be him.

  Why did he try so hard to ruin his life? Was it a game? Or was Brandon trying to escape from himself by pretending to be somebody else?

  “Was there anyone he was focused on? Maybe someone was in a relationship with?” Theo asked. His memory went through a Rolodex of his classmates, trying to think of someone Brandon was close with.

  “He did say there was someone he was always going back home to. He had a date here and there… I think he mentioned an anniversary once. But he said nothing specific.”

  “Was it a guy? Girl?”

  “Dunno. Always kept a lot to himself about whoever he was seeing.”

  Theo sighed, hoping that somehow the answer to whoever was stalking them would be served on a silver platter. It was never that easy. They hadn’t figured it out before. How would they be able to figure it out this time?

  “There was this girl he mentioned, though… said it was his close friend from back home. Said they were always texting. She was telling him about whatever was going on back at his home that he got kicked out of⁠—”

  Theo blinked, waving his hands. “Wait, he said he got kicked out?”

  “Yeah. Said his parents abused him his whole life. Said they starved him and yelled at him. Said once that his dad hit him. That he only got into Rutgers on scholarship for getting such good grades in school…”

  Don paused and sighed. He pursed his lips as he looked at Theo. “But I guess none of that was true, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Never,” Theo said, shaking his head. Don sighed and pursed his lips. As much as his parents could give him a hard time, Brandon was their golden child, and they would surely not hit or starve either of them.

  “Look, I’m sorry that all of this sounds shitty. But I’m just telling you everything he told me, okay? He fooled you, he fooled me,” Don said, looking at Theo. Theo nodded, sagging in his chair.

  The more he heard about Brandon, the less human he felt to Theo. They were always tied together by blood and looks, not by choice. Theo was glad that his suspicions of Brandon were always right. He could not be trusted.

  “Do you know who the girl was? The one he was talking to?” Theo asked, remembering the important piece of information Don shared.

  “Hmm, it was… Grace, I think. I forget her last name, but he said she told him everything that happened back home after he left. She and him were pretty close.”

  Grace. Theo thought it had to be Grace Rothman from Camila’s podcast. She’d been friends with Brandon back in high school. But Theo wondered if that meant that she’d known that Brandon was alive the whole time. Theo thought that it might have been unrealistic to think that Brandon would give that away about himself to someone who he hung out with every once in a while, but Brandon had a way of manipulating people. If he told her, he knew how to make sure she would tell no one.

  “I think I know her,” Theo said, pulling out his phone and getting a picture of her. He turned it over to Don, who squinted at his phone.

  “Yup, that’s her. I remember he said she looked like my daughter and showed me a picture once.”

  “Did your daughter know Brandon?”

  “She knew of him, never met him, though. Sometimes, I let him crash at my place, though. I felt bad for the kid, the amount of things that he said happened to him. All of it was bullshit, probably,” Don said, shaking his head.

  The two kept talking for some time, but Theo quickly realized that Don had little to offer Theo about Brandon other than what he had already mentioned.

  All of what Brandon told Don were intricate lies to create some kind of sympathy so that Don would feel bad if he ever let go of Brandon. That had been Brandon’s MO in high school, too. Trying to get everyone on his side. Even in his death, it worked by turning all of Cape May against Theo.

  The two of them finally got up and shook hands, and Theo thanked Don for the info.

  “No problem, kid. Let me know if you ever need anything. I might not have actually known Brandon, but I appreciate the friendship he gave me. Maybe I can’t get it with him, but you seem more of a stand-up guy. I’ll always be a call away,” Don said, smiling at him.

  “Thank you, Don,” Theo said earnestly. They gave each other one last nod, and Don exited the café, joining the mob walking the streets, becoming a head in the bobbing crowd like he never existed.

  Theo sat back down at the table, grazing his index finger over the top of his glass, mulling over Brandon and all he’d done.

  Even after spending almost sixteen years with him, Theo wondered if he ever knew him. They’d gone through the same upbringing, but turned out completely differently. But in reality, they were more alike than Theo wanted to think. They both operated on survival and doing whatever it took to get someone to do their bidding. Whether it be Imani helping him fake his death or Brandon manipulating the people around him to feel sorry for him, they knew what they had to do to survive.

  They were both lifeguards, and they worked by life or death. They cast their fishing rods out into the sea of life and reeled whatever they caught back, keeping what they caught or putting it back in the ocean. Catch and release.

  Theo bit his lip as he remembered flashing memories of his brother like a film supercut. He liked to think that the sob stories Brandon came up with and the killing he’d done just to make his own elaborate schemes work, but when it came down to it, Theo could make his own elaborate schemes work just the same, and he’d done it to save himself.

  As altruistic as he could be, he could be Machiavellian and cunning, willing to do whatever it takes to save himself.

  Theo focused on saving other people. He was a lifeguard. He wanted to be a firefighter. He saved himself in those treacherous waves. He tried to remind himself of that. All that he did was to save himself and others. Brandon only wanted to save himself. That’s what made them different.

  Theo wished he would come out the other side as someone who would do whatever it took to help someone else survive.

  20

  THEO

  Theo left Cool Beans in a hurry, haphazardly saying goodbye to Erica as he looked inside his bag, making sure that he had everything before he went to the gym.

  He was met with crisp, spring air and warm light. The kind of beauty spring brought where the city felt like it was waking up, and the streets were abuzz with anticipation for the summer. A reminder of his favorite season.

  He wished he could be back in Cape May and spending his entire day outside on the beach. Sun-kissed skin and sand between his toes.

  Maybe in those sun-drenched days, people didn’t like him and gave him scornful glares, but he reveled in those days sitting on the lifeguard chair, staring out into the ocean and saving people when he had to. As much as he wanted to be a firefighter, his days on the beach were what he dreamed about most, but he knew he couldn’t be a lifeguard forever. He needed a career, and being a firefighter felt like it was made for him.

  His phone buzzed right as he let the café door close.

  Unknown

  You might want to check your bag. Precious cargo that cops would love to get their hands on.

  I wonder if they’ll still allow you in the FDNY after a drug possession charge?

  Theo blinked at the text, his hands stiffening around his phone. He dove outside of the lines of people walking down the sidewalk. He skirted his eyes over the crowd. No one was watching him.

  He opened his bag and rummaged around frantically. What could they have put in there? His hand stopped as it touched something unfamiliar. It was a red bag. He picked it up and opened it.

  The overwhelming smell of weed filled his nostrils, and he froze, seeing the sheer amount of weed that was in the bag. He stuffed it back into his bag, panicking as he saw an NYPD car drive by. He still wasn’t twenty-one yet, and if he was caught with weed, he’d be charged with underage drug possession. Goodbye firefighting training.

  His focus shifted to multiple police officers walking down the street, some with a couple of dogs. Theo froze, his eyes widening in terror as he saw the dogs, knowing that they were likely going to smell something. Were they coming after him? Did their blackmailer set them on him? Theo’s pulse raced as he stood still, putting his bag back down, his heart jackhammering in his chest, hoping the dogs would pay him no mind.

  The police officers ran past him, dogs in tow, but none of them stopped. Theo sighed, rubbing his hand on his cheek. He darted into the nearby alley behind the café, set his bag down and walked over to one of the dumpsters lining the alley. He picked up the bag of weed and chucked it into one.

  How had this person put drugs into his bag? How did he not notice? And how did they know the police were going to be close to him when they texted him?

  His phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unknown number.

  “What?” Theo hissed through gritted teeth as he answered it.

  “Are you going to take me more seriously, now? Digging into my past will only make me more angry,” the caller responded in Brandon’s voice.

  “You have my attention, but I think you’re going to have to try harder to get me to listen.”

  Theo knew he was being impulsive by goading them, but he was so tried of having a target on his back. On Finn and Jada’s. It wasn’t worth it anymore.

  “You know, I’ve always admired your spark. That flame you have inside you that makes you fearless. I’ve always had a soft spot for you, you know, Theo. It’s too bad you might have killed me.”

 

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