Zig turned, no longer listening to Roddy.
“Why’d my husband have a second phone?” Tessa asked.
It was a good question, but not nearly as important as the one already twirling through Zig’s brain. Where was that phone right now?
44
Nola started at the town house’s back door. To her surprise, it was ajar.
She shook her head. Bad sign.
Sure enough, as she used her elbow to open the door, she found the kitchen floor caked in blood.
From her pocket, she pulled out two blue plastic foot covers, tugged them over her shoes, and stepped inside. The neighborhood was on the edge of the hood, but nice enough that cops would come running. Last thing she needed was her footprints being part of whatever had happened here.
On her left, toward the sink, was a young Dominican man, twenty-five years old: Zion Lopez.
Nola let out a sharp breath through her nose, more annoyed than anything else.
She squatted down for a better look. Zion’s throat was slit, a clean, deep slice. Single incision, no big swipes or slashes, which meant no struggle or fight. More important, no hesitation wounds. Whoever did it, they did it fast, precise. Definitely a pro. Someone who knew their way around a body. Like a soldier, or doctor. Even a cop.
Was this Roddy’s work? Too soon to tell.
Next to Zion’s body was a shattered vodka bottle, its stem still intact. Caught off guard. Or maybe using it as a weapon. At the foot of the body was a Walmart bag with a box for an Oscar the Grouch mask. A final message.
This was the guy who’d pulled the trigger on Colonel Mint. She could feel it, though it wasn’t bringing her the resolution she’d thought. Instead, it just added more questions, more anger, and another dead body.
It reminded her of one of her first missions as Artist-in-Residence, painting Navy SEALs who were tracking a Taliban leader to the small Afghan village of Sabray. To keep Nola safe, they put her in back, with the command and control element, so she’d be the farthest from the action. Yet as they approached the town, they were ambushed from behind—by thirty attackers from an entirely different village. The old back became the new front. Nola fought hard that day. They all did. But what stuck with her was something the SEAL commander said when the medics came: In every mission, the one thing to always worry about is what you don’t know. The unknown unknown. Especially when it’s coming for those you care about.
At that, her brain flipped to Mint’s wife, Tessa, and the kids, Huck and Violet, wondering what their night was like. And then she was thinking of Mint himself, and that very first evening in Grandma’s Pantry, when Mint came back from a short dinner break and surprised everyone by bringing chicken sandwiches for the whole team, including Nola. He must want something, she instinctively thought back then as she pulled the tomatoes and lettuce off the sandwich. She was wrong—though even then, she didn’t realize how much. Two days later, Mint again brought sandwiches, giving Nola one with no tomato or lettuce, handing it to her as if she’d been on the team for years.
Such a stupid story, Nola realized, though she’d now thought about it three times in the past twenty-four hours.
With her foot, Nola nudged Zion’s head to the side to get a better look at his wound. As she knew, slit throats usually started high on one side of the neck and finished lower. Higher on the left side meant the killer was right-handed, slicing left to right. Higher on the right side meant left-handed. Oddly, Zion was sliced dead center.
Nola made a mental note. Piano wire. Fishing string. Even a thin metal saw. Once, she’d heard of Iraqis who used glass-laced kite string to take off the head of a kidnapped journalist.
Leaning down, she went through Zion’s pockets—wallet, keys, but no phone. She made a note of that, too. But what was niggling at Nola more than anything else was the unknown unknown. Zion killed Mint. Tracking him here, finding Zion . . . that should’ve been the end. Instead, it led to another beginning, a new front. Someone else had gotten here first and murdered Zion. A new player. And by the looks of it, a far more dangerous one.