In seconds, Mason is inside the house, I’m ducked down in the back, and Cassie is driving a little too fast for residential streets. Only when I peek out the window at the house as we’re speeding away do I realize what freaked Mason out in the first place.
The front door is wide open.
thirty-seven
“Are we moving here?”
“No, it’s just a safe house,” Mason says.
I’m standing in a dirty living room in Hayes, Texas, frowning at my surroundings in disbelief. I feel like I was teleported here when, really, it took thirteen hours by car. And still, I know nothing. Mason and Cassie were engrossed in their too-quiet conversation or calls from other Disciples the whole way. And with no one to talk to, the weight of too many nights with too little sleep got to me. The only scenery I saw was the backs of my closed eyelids.
>“That must have been so insanely terrifying,” I say honestly. “I mean, to be out there all by yourself, thinking you’re going to die.”
“Except that I wasn’t by myself,” Nora says. “I saw the truck driver before I passed out. He was the Good Samaritan. He walked in front of my headlights, and then crouched down next to my window. It was open because all the glass was broken.”
“And he pulled you out?”
“Yes,” Nora says. “But not right away. At first he checked on me. Then he called someone.”
“Nine-one-one?”
“I guess, but it sounded more like a normal conversation. Maybe he was asking a friend what to do. I’m sure he didn’t know whether he should move me or not.”
“I’m sure,” I echo, wanting to shake her for being so clueless. “What did he look like?” I ask, channeling Mason and Cassie.
“Uh…” Nora says, warily. “Just normal,” she says, and I don’t press it. In fact, I don’t say anything at all. “Anyway, then he came back over and said, ‘Help is coming,’ and I passed out a couple seconds after that.”
It hits me again that Nora doesn’t know she died.
“Wow,” I say, because it seems safe.
Nora’s quiet, except I can hear her inhale and exhale like she’s breathing through the trauma. Finally, she laughs a little.
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“It’s just weird what you remember.”
“Like what?”
“Like the guy,” Nora says. “It’s mean, because he saved me and all, but he reminded me a little of Daffy Duck.”
“Huh?” I ask. “He looked like a duck?”
“No,” Nora clarifies. “He reminded me of him. It was his voice. He had a lisp. It wasn’t as pronounced as Daffy’s, but…”
Nora keeps talking about cartoon characters, but I don’t hear her. I’m lost in thought, time-traveling back to when we first came to Omaha and I visited the aquarium. I remember the unsettling stranger who talked to me and then disappeared.
The otherwise nondescript stranger with a lisp.
Even though lisps are incredibly common, I feel it in my bones that this is more than a coincidence. But why would the same agent who was there to Revive Nora—who possibly caused her death—be at the aquarium? And why would an agent be so covert while speaking with me? We’re one big network, all working together. Everyone knows one another. Everyone except…
The hairs on my arms stand up; a shiver dances down my spine.
“Are you there, Daisy?” Nora asks.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve got to go.”
I end the call before she says goodbye, and then I sit in shock.