“Hm-hmm,” he said, nodding.
“GREAT! THAT’S GREAT!”
“Hm-hmmm,” he repeated, his hands starting to tremble, then his chin. His head was now trembling, too.
“PLEASE, MR. SOULE . . . IF YOU KNOW WHAT NOLA SAID . . .”
He nodded, excited to help, though the trembling was getting worse. He stopped looking at Waggs—his gaze sliding diagonally down, unable to hold eye contact—but he was still fighting to get the words out.
“You sure he’s okay?” Waggs whispered, again eyeing his scar. “He doesn’t look so good.”
Nurse Sandie took Soule’s hand in her own. She’d been at this long enough to know what he needed.
“M-m-mmmm,” Soule stuttered, looking pained and frustrated, like the words were stapled inside his lips.
Sandie held his hand tighter, rubbing a small circle into his wrist. He reacted immediately, looking her way, blinking, pleading. Just as quickly, he was gone, staring into the distance, his eyes empty like no one was home.
“He needs a break,” Sandie said, still rubbing his wrist. “Maybe you can come back tomorrow or later in the week.”
For Waggs, it should’ve been a relief. She’d been traveling all day; time to get back to her life. She did have a life, she told herself. And a boyfriend. If she was smart, she’d call him right now and make peace for standing him up last night, but as she took out her phone . . . No. She’d texted him twice this morning, plus left a cute voice mail. Mikel still hadn’t bothered to reply. No way would she grovel.
Still, as she thanked Nurse Sandie and headed out into the fluorescent-lit hallway, Waggs wondered if she was doing that thing she was always scolding Zig for: spending time on someone else’s life rather than her own. How many times had they had that fight, Waggs yelling that Zig should stop surrounding himself with the dead, with ghosts from the past . . . and instead focus on the living? And yet here she was, picking at those same puzzle pieces Nola had left behind.
Was that the reason she and Zig had stayed so close all these years? It was a question worth asking. Maybe, after the ass-kicking that life had given them, they were both finding safety in the same place. You don’t have to think of your own problems when you’re trying to solve someone else’s.
Or maybe that was all just psychobabble manure, and it was time to face the harsher reality: that the real reason Waggs had spent the better part of the morning running hospital to hospital— or had the Bureau install a secure line in her house so at any hour she could help agents around the world find the one thing no one else could find—was simply because . . . she loved it. Was that her real truth? That she loved it and was good at it?
Shoving open the double doors at the front of the building and feeling a blast of summer heat toast her neck, Waggs again checked her phone. A few messages from Zig. Still nothing from Mikel.
Just call him, she told herself.
Instead, she swiped back to the Babel Street map with Nola’s first two stops. Two patients. Two paintings. Two victims of brain injuries. A simple pattern. But still a puzzle.
Luckily, Waggs knew how to find more pieces.
“We’re getting warmer now, aren’t we, Nola?” Waggs whispered, spreading her fingers onscreen and pulling in toward the next stop on the map.
Landenberg, Pennsylvania.
Private residence, not a hospital.
Why’d Nola go there?
It was a question worth asking.
63
It was dumb to be mad at Zig. A waste of energy, Nola decided.
Yet as she darted through the gravel pit along the back of the funeral home and finally reached the corner of the building, she was still mad, still annoyed, still kicking herself for letting Zig worm his way back into her— “Nola . . . ?” a familiar voice asked. Behind her, from the back door.