“I asked you a question, Ziggy,” Waggs said through the phone.
Hitting the gas and watching Luciana shrink in the rearview, Zig noticed that the flower lady was waving—not at him, but at the next car that had just come off the exit. Black Acura. Washington plates. Zig squinted, trying to get a better look at the driver. The sun visor was down, blocking the driver’s face.
Zig made a quick left. The Acura went right. Other side of town. Zig kicked himself for being so paranoid.
“Waggs, what number date are you on?”
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
“I’m making a point. You and the Deuce,” Zig said, referring to the guy Waggs had been dating for the past few months—the first real boyfriend she’d had in almost a decade.
“His name’s Mikel.”
“Don’t insult the Deuce like that,” Zig teased, using the name that Waggs instantly regretted telling him was on Mikel’s personalized license plate—TheDeuce—named after the ’32 Ford coupe that his grandfather used to drive. “So date number six with the Deuce? Number seven?”
“Date eleven,” Waggs said. “Today’s our two-month anniversary. He sent me a corsage.”
“Wait. An actual corsage? Like for prom?”
“Don’t make fun,” Waggs warned, Zig now hearing a soft pop through the phone.
“Waggs, I need to know right now—did you just open that little plastic corsage box? Because I’m currently picturing you sniffing it like you’re wearing a puffy dress in the back of a limo.”
There was a long pause. And a soft snap.
“You just put it back in the box, didn’t you?”
“Zig, you said you had a point.”
“My point is simply that even someone new in your life—like the Deuce—if he was in trouble, you’d want to—”
“Nonono. Don’t you dare try to use my good thing to make your bad thing look good. You don’t even know Mint.”
“My job is to take care of our fallen troops.”
“That was your job. Not anymore. You left it, remember? So please spare me the high-and-mighty speech.”
“It’s not a speech.”
“I know—it’s your mission. But you heard what his wife said. According to our records, Mint’s last assignment wasn’t at Dover. He was a reservist, doing security work at FIG,” she said, referring to the Pennsylvania military base known as Fort Indiantown Gap.
Zig didn’t say a word.
“Wait,” Waggs said. “You already looked him up, didn’t you?”
Of course he had.
“Who’d you sweet-talk? Esther in Veterans Affairs?” Waggs challenged.
“Connie in Personnel.”
“You called Connie before you called me?”
“I used to work there, Waggs. I can name Connie’s grandkids by heart, including the little one who they dressed like a Harley-Davidson biker for Halloween.”
“So she told you? Mint was assigned to Dover only since last night. They gave him pencil orders.”
Zig nodded. He’d seen it before. When a government spy was killed overseas on a secret mission, Dover sometimes used pencil orders to hide where they were really stationed. Giving them orders that were “penciled in” made it look like they worked at Dover.
“That doesn’t mean Mint was Spec Ops or some secret squirrel,” Zig said, remembering the medals on Mint’s chest. The average spy had far fewer. “Sometimes when a government big shot dies, like a senator,” Zig added, “they can also get pencil orders to bring them into Dover—so they get our good morticians, rather than some local funeral home.”