Walk away, Zig told himself. Leave it be. But as he played it through his head . . . Two people were already dead. Archie Mint and Rashida Robinson. He could see Mint’s son, Huck, the boy sobbing with his mom in the hallway; his daughter, Violet, with the scabs on her knees and the vacant look in her eyes that would take a lifetime to fade.
These people—all of them—had hopes and dreams and lives. If Zig walked away now . . . if Nola was next on that list and she was killed, too . . . No. Don’t even think it, he told himself. But that was all he could think. If he walked away and something happened to Nola, this would be on him. He already blamed himself for his daughter’s death. He couldn’t carry another.
“You’re going to help me, aren’t you, Mr. Zigarowski? You’ll come?”
“Wha? Come where?”
“She won’t listen to me—she runs every time I show up,” Roddy said.
“I don’t— Wait. You know where she is?”
“I got the call on the way here. We need to hurry. She has no idea what’s coming, Mr. Zigarowski. Now do you want to help Nola or not?”
14
Elmswood, Pennsylvania
Thirty minutes ago
“Y’can’t park there!” the valet called out.
Nola ignored him, shutting the car off and stuffing an iPhone into the glove compartment. The phone belonged to Buddy Adcock, the staff sergeant who’d pulled his gun and tried to handcuff her near the parking lot. While he was on the ground gripping his knee, she’d swiped it from his pocket.
“I’m looking for Richard Merante,” Nola barked at the valet, flashing the badge she’d found in Buddy’s wallet—from the same unit, Semper Vigiles—and using the name she’d found in one of his emails.
To protect against moments just like this, DISA—the Defense Information Systems Agency—was in charge of encrypting Army cell phones. But there was nothing DISA could do to stop Nola from pressing Buddy’s thumb into the phone’s fingerprint reader, adding her own thumbprint, and having access to everything Buddy and his unit had been looking at. Best of all, she’d pulled out the SIM card, so the government couldn’t track her, but by holding on to the card, she could slide it back in for easy updates.
“Ma’am, you hear what I—？”
Nola shot him a razor-sharp dagger of a stare.
The valet stopped midstep. He wore a bright yellow rubber bracelet with the name of the local high school imprinted on it. In his hand, his phone screen was open to an Instagram model who was shaking her fake boobs in a way that only a high schooler might think was normal. Just a kid, Nola realized.
“If this is about . . . about the murder,” the valet stuttered, “Mr. Merante is right in—”
She walked past him, toward the front door. Slam.
Inside, the restaurant looked like any other overpriced steak house—dark wood furniture, bright white tablecloths, bloodred walls, and the kind of low lighting that was supposed to be “sexy chic,” whatever that meant.
Searching for her pencil and notepad, Nola reached into her pocket. Empty. Left it in the car, she realized, cursing herself for yet another rookie mistake. What the hell is wrong with you? Pull it together.
Too late for that. Between Mint’s death . . . Roddy’s arrival . . . plus everything she was working on before this happened . . . Find your calm, she told herself—or as Mint himself used to say, “Get emotional, and you get dead.” It was good advice, given to her at Grandma’s Pantry. But what Nola appreciated far more was the genuine concern that came with it—the way he’d looked her in the eye and grabbed her shoulder as he said it. He was concerned about her. For Nola, that was a rare thing. A new thing. One that wouldn’t be forgotten.