You know why I’m here. Those were his words. The words of someone who wants something. She replayed it again. Roddy said this was about her. There was only one her. A trick. Had to be a trick. No way did Roddy know what Mint did for her all those years ago, the real reason she was so attached to this case—and then, to her own surprise, her mental drawing quickly shifted to Zig.
Their little meeting in the funeral home bathroom—she didn’t want to say it was good. She’d never give him that. But she had to admit, his concern . . . the panic in his lonely eyes . . . his hands were shaking as he tried to open the window so she could sneak out.
She wanted to say there was something nice about not being in this alone, but she wasn’t convinced of that. Maybe it was just that she knew, she absolutely knew, that even here, in a case that was making her far too emotional, Zig wouldn’t screw her over—and she couldn’t say that about most people.
Turning off the main drag and down a narrow side street, Nola wove her way toward the back entrance of a long-dead strip mall that held the corpse of a hollowed-out Blockbuster Video, that became a twenty-four-hour gym, that became a Spirit Halloween store, that finally became a place where—to judge from the scattering of beer cans and Red Bulls—local high school kids came to drink at night.
Good sign. Kids know where there are no surveillance cameras.
Pulling out her iPad, Nola opened the app for Black House and entered Zion’s phone number. A digital hourglass appeared onscreen, along with a single word:
Locating . . .
That’s how she’d tracked the Reds in the first place—from when they grabbed Zion’s phone.
Back at Zion’s house, after watching footage on the nanny cam, Nola had combed through his emails, home computer, and anything else she could find. It was there she noticed the Black House icon on his desktop, confirming her theory that back when she’d first logged into Black House, Zion was one of the two digital avatars she saw there. The question remained: Who was the other? For a while, Nola thought it might be O.J. or another investigator. But the more she thought about it—the way the two avatars logged off together—the more it seemed like it was someone Zion knew, like a friend. Or employer.
Hoping to find the answer, she’d tried logging into Zion’s Black House account. But unlike with Mint, she had no chance of guessing Zion’s password. Still, the fact they each had their own login . . .
Opening Mint’s Black House account, Nola clicked the button labeled Contacts, and entered Zion’s name.
Contact not found.
She entered his email.
Contact not found.
She entered his phone number.
A pop-up box appeared:
（1） Known Associate.
Connect? Y/N
She hit Yes. Onscreen, a new pop-up appeared:
Locating . . .
Lazy, Nola had thought, rolling her eyes. Most Black House users were probably smart enough to disable their location services. But again, Zion was a runt, a moron. And completely trackable—assuming the Reds still had his phone.
Across the Blockbuster/gym/Halloween store parking lot, a gust of wind rolled a stray beer can into a shopping cart turned on its side. Onscreen, the digital hourglass blinked. The word Locating disappeared, replaced by . . .
Signal Unavailable
Nola reentered the phone number, double-checking each digit.
Signal Unavailable
They know. Of course they know. The Reds weren’t novices. Seabass got shot in the face. They either disabled tracking on the phone or tossed it.
Undeterred, Nola reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper that was covered with phone numbers. Like most people, Zion paid his bills online. A quick search of his browser history turned up a T-Mobile account, which revealed all of Zion’s incoming and outgoing calls over the past two weeks.