I try not to look at Nico even though my subconscious is focused on him. “I thought you never did field work.”
“I go where Donny needs me,” he says, focusing on zipping his jumpsuit.
I pull out my own jumpsuit and pause, holding it up against my body and finding it’s—the right size?
DJ—or whoever loaded our locker with the disguises for the day—must have found a smaller jumpsuit and put it in here for me. I’m not complaining. I change into it in the bathroom, and I don’t have to roll up my sleeves or pant legs.
When I get back, I notice something else in my locker: a pair of earplugs sits on the top shelf, but they’re not the foam kind. These look almost like earbuds, with soft silicone rims packed with a white, granular material.
Salt.
“What are these?” I ask Nico, even though I think I already know.
“I made them for you.”
I pick one up, turning it over in my fingers as I try to reconcile the guy who begged Donny to send him away from me with the guy who apparently spent hours making custom ghost-blocking earplugs.
“I don’t know if they’ll function the way you need them to,” he says. “I still don’t understand how your abilities work, but we can adjust over time. These should help keep out at least some of the sounds you pick up. If you decide you want to wear them.”
I slide one earplug into my ear. The world immediately dulls, the volume on everything turning down. The salt-packed rim sits snugly against my ear canal, but the silicone is soft and doesn’t scratch me.
“This won’t leak salt into my ear, will it?” I try to sound casual.
He shrugs, one shoulder lifting. “Guess we’ll find out.”
There it is again. That tiny glimpse of humor buried under all that seriousness. It makes me feel like I’m levitating a foot off the ground, which is frustrating because I’m supposed to be done caring about what he thinks about me.
But he made meearplugs.
“I know you said you didn’t want to dull anything.” His voice drops, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my pulse kick up. “But I wanted you to have the option. I won’t be there today if anything goes wrong.”
“Why are you doing this?” The question slips out. “I didn’t think you cared whether I lived or died.”
He goes still. “Obviously, I care whether you die.”
“It actually isn’t obvious, since you’ve been trying so hard to get rid of me,” I say.
He braces a hand on the door of his locker. I watch him struggle with something, his face scrunching before he drops his head. It feels like he’s considering telling me, even though he’s not saying anything else. So I keep pushing.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I thought we got along when we first met.”
“Was that before or after you punched me in the face?” he asks.
“During.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” he admits, turning away from me. “It’s a problem with me. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Before I can figure out what the hell he means, DJ bounces into the room.
Zoey adds everyone’s phone number to my phone: Daisy Jane Mayfield, Griffin Rourke, Benjamin Ashford, Donald Dellman, Zoey Mercado, and just Nico. Still no last name.
I read Donny’s number until I can recite it from memory. Knowing it by heart feels important in case we get separated from our phones.
Nico will take the van with Benji, Donny will go with DJ in her Jeep, and I’ll be riding with Griffin in his truck. As well as taking fewer suspects, Griffin and I are taking the ones Zoey deemed least likely to be Morrow.
Donny runs his eyes over all of us as we huddle in the driveway. “Questions?”
“If we find the man, what do we do?” I ask.
