“Nola, huh?” Merante replied. “She told me her name was Kamille.”

  “I meant . . . She’s actually—”

  “I’m not offended, but do me a favor and spare me the bullshit, okay? I don’t care what her name is. I don’t care what she’s up to. In this job, the majority of my clients are polished people: businessmen, judges. I know what polished looks like. Your girl’s the opposite of that. She’s not even really a cop, is she?”

  “Mr. Merante . . .”

  “You don’t trust her, do you? I don’t blame you. From the moment she walked in, she asked a few questions, but kept her head down, drawing the entire time.”

  Roddy looked up from the business cards.

  “Did she draw anything in particular?” Zig asked.

  “She asked for my pen, but she’s not exactly a sharer. From what I could tell, it kinda looked like the restaurant. Like she was drawing the whole place. Otherwise, all she cared about was the Army guy, Mr. Mint.”

  “Colonel Mint,” Zig corrected, though again, he wasn’t surprised. Half a decade ago, Nola and Mint met each other on the same assignment, or at least in the same location, a place code-named Grandma’s Pantry. Now, someone seemed to be tracking, and killing, the few other people who served with them.

  “Oh, she also wanted our security footage,” Merante added.

  “I didn’t see any cameras out front,” Roddy said.

  “There aren’t any. The owners are cheap. Only places they record are the safe in back and our wine cellar. I gave both tapes to the Army investigators.”

  “You think she wanted to see Mint’s interaction with your valet?” Zig asked.

  “Actually, she was asking about interior cams—like she wanted to know who Mint was meeting.”

  Zig looked back at Roddy. It was a good question, one that Zig was already kicking himself for not asking. According to the police reports, once the valet took off, Colonel Mint jumped in a cab and followed him to Mint’s house. But in all the back-and-forth over the deaths, they’d forgotten a key detail: people don’t come to fancy steak houses to eat alone.

  “Mr. Merante, is it possible to take a look at your reservation book?” Zig asked.

  “Yeah, sure, of course,” Merante said, putting his coffee down with enough speed that it was clear none of the other investigators had asked about it. “I got it right . . .” He reached to his left, but nothing was there. Confused, he lifted a nearby stack of menus, then his laptop, then started rummaging through his briefcase.

  “It was just here. I had it when—” He cut himself off. “That bitch stole my iPad!”

  17

  The first thing Nola did was turn off the iPad’s tracking.

  Sure, she could’ve asked the steak house manager for a look at the reservation book, but if her hunch was right, the last thing she needed was for him to share it with others.

  For the rest of the forty-minute ride, Nola did what she always did during drives or long runs—composed layouts in her head, in this case, a mental drawing of Mint that she’d been working on since the funeral.

  Years ago, when she first drew him back at Grandma’s Pantry, she’d focused on the obvious: his stubborn lips, absurd jaw, and buzzed blond hair, so crisp it looked like it was cut every hour. Same with his military uniform. When you wash camouflage too much, the shades of green take on a faded, whitish tinge. Not Mint. The moment he stepped into a room, you knew he was the commander, though Nola quickly realized it had nothing to do with his clothing or jawline. It came from the hardest thing to render, the charisma and energy that radiated off him.

  That very first night at Grandma’s Pantry, things ran so late, Nola popped into a nearby supermarket to pick up a cheap dinner. At the checkout was one of the young privates—some junior-level kid assigned to do coffee runs—who was doing the same. As the kid went to pay, the prices were clearly more than he’d calculated, so he started putting things back to lower his bill. What the kid didn’t realize was that Archie Mint was in that same line.

  To put a finer point on it, Mint wasn’t one of those pushovers who took a recruiting command to avoid the field. He’d served in the Tenth Mountain Division up at Fort Drum—a hard outfit that always deployed. But on that night in the supermarket, Mint pulled out his wallet and paid the bill. The kid was embarrassed, saying thank you over and over. Mint wouldn’t have it. Told him it was just between them.

  More important, when they got back to the office, Mint never said a word to anyone, never took credit. Nola wouldn’t have even known about it if she hadn’t been lurking in one of the aisles. In the military, so many commanders divided the world into Os and Es—Officers and Enlisted. Mint inspired loyalty because he knew there were things more important than those distinctions.

  The mental picture disappeared as Nola’s car bucked to a stop at a black metal security gate. She entered a four-digit code into a keypad, and the gate unclenched with a loud ka-klunk. The road ahead was unpaved. She hit the gas, knowing where she was going.

  Finally. Home.

  For nearly a mile, the road twisted and turned, tornadoes of dust cartwheeling behind her. Then, at the very back of the park, Nola made a sharp right into an empty service lot. Straight ahead was a dirt footpath that wove into the woods. She checked it for footprints. Two sets, just as she knew there would be.

  “Psst, psst . . .” Nola called out, leaving the car behind. No answer, no surprise. As she started up the path, a mass of trees and brush swallowed her, hiding her from view.

  Back in the early 1900s, this park—over one thousand acres—had been a private estate that held multimillionaire Pierre du Pont’s summer home. Today, thirty-eight minutes from Mint’s house, with greenhouses a mile and a half long, it was known as Longwood Gardens, the largest private botanical garden in the world, attracting over a million tourists a year. Here, though, at the back of the park, on the outskirts of the eighty-six-acre meadow garden, it was abandoned.

  “Psst, psst . . . Sarah . . . food!” Nola called again. Still no response.

  Nola glanced around, noting the silence. She rechecked the path. Still two sets of footprints.

  Up ahead, the path ended at a dilapidated white milk barn that had been abandoned decades ago and was now used for holding the park’s discarded tractors, ladders, and other random equipment. On her left was her real destination: the rusted silver Airstream trailer—a 1993 twenty-five-foot Excella—with a bent awning arm that made the entire blue canopy sag like a winking eye. As always, a single Tupperware bin sat on the cinder block steps: Nola’s in-box.

  “Psst . . . psst . . . Sarah, you there?” Nola called again, eyeing the way the Tupperware sat askew on the top step, like someone had moved it. She rechecked the dirt. Two sets of footprints. Nothing out of place.

  Nola grabbed the Tupperware but didn’t open it. Inside were three Polaroids—each one of a different plant, its name handwritten across the bottom. Ficus benjamina, aka the Dutch Treat. Davallia tyermanii, the bear’s-foot fern. And Sansevieria, a rare snake plant with pristine white striping in the leaves. They were this week’s assignments from Darryl, the head of Longwood’s botanical library. For six months now, Nola had been painting their collection in return for room and board—though the best benefit was the solitude of living out here, in what had become her private art studio.

  “Sarah, if you’re hiding just to piss me off . . .” Nola warned, carefully pulling open the door to the trailer and—

  On the floor, a dead toad was lying stomach up, its belly torn open.

  Ssssssss! came a low hiss from below the kitchen table, where an angry Russian blue cat with bald patches and forehead scars sat.

  “Sarah Connor, did you mess up my floor?” Nola asked.

  Sssssssss! the cat hissed again.

  Nola rolled her eyes and picked up the toad, which was really all Sarah Connor wanted. Every few days, the cat would sneak out through the hole in the window screen and bring back a new gift: toads, mice, giant dragonflies . . . whatever she could find.

  “You’re a horrible cat,” Nola said, tossing the toad outside.

  Sssss, the cat hissed, satisfied, narrowing her white milky eye that had been scratched by a fox. Three months ago, Nola had found the cat bleeding, its paw broken and bent in a chain-link fence that it was trying to scale. No collar, no home, and clearly running from something. God, did Nola understand that.

  The local veterinarian said to give up on her, that the cat would be dead in a week anyway. Nola brought her back here, where Sarah Connor refused to eat for four days, until Nola found her weakness: buttered corn on the cob. The damn cat would do anything for that.

  Sss . . . the cat hissed again, scratching at the peeling linoleum floor for no reason.

  Nola barely noticed, pulling off her shirt to get a better look at her collarbone. Back at the funeral, when she took out the staff sergeant who tried to handcuff her, he’d stabbed one of the cuffs into her neck. Kid was quicker than he looked.

  Good for him. Right instinct. Trained well, Nola thought, pulling aside the strap of her black bra, trying to get a close-up look in the bathroom mirror. There was a little blood, but she’d be fine.

  Turning her attention to the iPad, she hit the power button.

  Onscreen, the logo for Barron’s Steakhouse bloomed into view, along with two buttons.

  SCHEDULES RESERVATIONS

  Nola didn’t hesitate. Reservations.

  A calendar appeared. Today’s date, then four columns.

  HOUR NAME PHONE NOTES

  Tonight was a weeknight. The earliest reservation was at 5:30 p.m., party of three under the name A. Epstein, with a note that read, Celebrating 75th B.

  Another half dozen reservations were listed below that.

  Nola swiped back to Saturday, the night of Mint’s death.

  “Whattya think, Sarah Connor? A middle-aged man going to a fancy steak house by himself?”

  The cat stayed silent.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Nola said, scrolling down and doing everything in her power to not reach into her pocket and pinch the skin on her thigh.

  Time to see who Colonel Mint was meeting the night he died.

  18

  Nola scrolled through the iPad, scanning the reservation list for parties of two.

  According to his death certificate, Lieutenant Colonel Archie Mint died at 7:46 p.m. That meant he probably pulled up to the steak house somewhere between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m.

  Parties of two, Nola thought as she continued to scroll. 7:00 p.m. 7:30. 8:00. 8:30. No one named Archie, no one named Mint.

  She started again, expanding the search to bigger parties. There were plenty of names, each in its own digital column. Bendis. Gaydos. Mack. Maleev. But no Mint or anything close to it.

  At the top of the screen, she noticed a Search box and quickly typed the name Archie.

  No records found.

  She typed the name Mint.

  1 record found. Two years ago. October 15. Mint’s birthday.

  That meant he liked this place. Or used to like it. Either way, he hadn’t been back—or at least made a reservation—until two nights ago, when he decided he needed some steak. Most likely, he didn’t plan to eat alone.

  Staring down at the iPad, Nola paced the length of the narrow trailer, whose walls were covered with hundreds of random pages, like a bulletin board in a student union—postcards, magazine photos, old album covers, and sketches from her notepad: of Nola’s cat, of the milk barn, of the trailer, of every animal she’d spotted on the property, and of course of Longwood’s open fields and native plants. There were no drawings of people, except for one sketch of DeShawn from the metal shop, and naturally, a postcard of Bob Ross painting happy little trees.

  Along the front wall were six finished canvases, leaning one against another, like dominos in midfall.

  Rrrrrr, Sarah Connor purred, sniffing the spot where she’d left the dead toad.

  It has to be in here. Check again, Nola told herself.

  She scrolled back to the top of the reservation list, rescanning them one by one. That’s when she saw it.

  Spear.

  That name—she knew it, from years ago. That was Mint’s old code name: Spearmint, that was it, based on his favorite military saying, that the best units and best leaders lived on the tip of the spear.

  Such macho awfulness.

  But if that’s you, sir . . . She scrolled to the right, checking the details.

  Spear. 7:30 p.m. Party of 2.

  Email contact was Ragdog1216@hotmail.com.

  Ragdog? Nola didn’t know what it meant. Maybe a nickname from his Tenth Mountain days? Mint’s official email followed the usual format, name.mil@mail.com. He had a personal one on Gmail. But if he was also using Hotmail?

  You cheating on your wife, sir? Nola asked, surprised by how much the thought riled her. Mint was a decorated soldier, a good father, a loyal investigator who once risked his life for— No. Don’t think it.

  But she had to. When it came to Archie Mint, it’s all she thought. For years now.

  “Hey, Sarah Connor, how’re your password-guessing abilities?”

  The cat turned away, sniffing the floor and licking it twice.

  Nola pulled out her phone and opened a browser. Hotmail.com.

  She had his username. Ragdog1216.

  Password?

  She tried a few. Each had the same result. Your password is incorrect. Eventually, a warning appeared: You have (1) try remaining before we lock your account.

  Something opened in Nola’s chest, a sharp, aching twist. She didn’t know if it was anger or pain, but right there, she wanted to put her fist into the phone’s screen. Turning back to the iPad, Nola reread the entry in the reservation book.

  Spear. 7:30 p.m. Party of 2.

  It was him. Had to be him. Replaying it again, she told herself it was probably just a work dinner. But who schedules work at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday? More important, whoever Mint was scheduled to eat with, why didn’t he or she step forward once Mint was found dead?

  She studied the name. Spear. 7:30 p.m. Party of—

  Huh.

  Nola pulled the iPad closer. She’d missed it at first. In the far-right column . . . under notes . . . Mint’s entry looked like it was blank, but it wasn’t. At the very bottom of the cell, there was tiny, light blue type, like fine print. A few other entries had it, too. She expanded the image to see it better.

  Most of the entries had the words OpenTable, the reservation app. Two others listed Resy, also a reservation app. But Mint’s entry had this:

  Black House

  Confused, Nola clicked on it. Had to be a referral. If you made your reservation through OpenTable, the steak house’s system listed OpenTable in your entry. Same with Resy. But as she clicked on the words Black House . . .

  A pop-up window appeared. Open in App Store?

  Yes, Nola clicked.

  Another window opened. The words Black House appeared in a stenciled military font.

  Nola’s eyes narrowed. Her stomach churned. Sir, what the hell were you doing here?

  19

  Zig was thinking about the pencils.

  “Can I see the photo again?” he asked, steering the car off the highway and blowing past the wooden sign for Wonderly Square. Where Nature Smiles for Five Miles.

  Roddy turned the tablet toward Zig, the glow lighting his face in the dark car.

  The photo was from outside the funeral this morning—of young, beefy Staff Sergeant Buddy Adcock, curled on the ground in agony, a pen protruding from his knee.

  During the entire ride home, Zig had been thinking about this photo. When he first saw it, he couldn’t help but stare at Buddy’s face contorted in pain . . . at his mouth wide open in midscream, a spiderweb of spit forming a tightrope between his top and bottom teeth. At Buddy’s knee, there was an unmistakable Rorschach blob of blood soaking through his slacks. But right now, Zig was focused on the bottom corner of the photo: the half dozen colored pencils littered across the asphalt.

  Naturally, they were Nola’s. She took her pencils everywhere. So for them to be scattered in such disarray . . . Buddy had hit her fast, caught her off guard, most likely as she was coming out of the building. It was a bad sign.

  As the Army’s Artist-in-Residence, Nola had spent years racing into war zones—Libya, Iraq, even that massacre when ISIS beheaded those three Marines outside of Raqqa in Syria. She stayed alive because she wasn’t easily surprised. She didn’t get caught off guard. And yet . . .

  In the photo, a stray chocolate-brown pencil had bounced off the concrete path, sitting askew in the grass. A yellow pencil was right beside it. To leave her tools behind . . . Nola must have raced out of there at full speed, like she was scared of what else was coming. Zig had never seen her scared before, never seen her panic or make mistakes before. To anyone else, those pencils were just pencils. For Nola, who processed everything through her art, they were a lifeline.

  “This isn’t just another case for her, is it?” Roddy asked. “There’s something personal she’s chasing.”

  Or something personal that’s chasing her, Zig thought, tugging the steering wheel and trying to think of the last time Nola ran from anything. And then this thought as he stared at Roddy: that nothing was more personal than family.

  “Today seems like a day that if you painted it, it’d be dark red,” Roddy said, taking a look out the window as they turned onto Zig’s block. “Y’ever have that, where a day seems like it’s red, or blue, or some other color?”

  Okay, Roddy was obviously weird. But it was more than just being weird. Even if you put aside his awkward stare, the way he overshared, and of course the way he said every damn thing that came into his brain, there was still something . . . Zig didn’t have a word for it yet, but he could feel it, lurking there, like Roddy had another layer that he kept hidden. Was Zig being paranoid? Of course he was. But right now, if he wanted to keep Nola safe, his best bet was to keep Roddy close and keep an eye on him.