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around your neck. For good luck.”
    “Not just good luck. Like a dog tag, it’s also a form of ID. Some even put their unit’s logo on the back,” Francy says, flipping to a new page and putting on her reading glasses.
    Unlike the other photos, this one’s a tight close-up of the back of the penny and the small hole at the top of it. It’s as weathered and rusty as the front, but instead of the Lord’s Prayer, this side’s imprinted with a diamond-shaped crest and a waving banner along the bottom.
    Usually, you see logos like this on a soldier’s shoulder patch. Some units have a lion as a mascot, a few use dragons, and of course, a ton use some version of an eagle. This one has a wide-winged owl clutching a branch. The banner below it reads HL-1024 .
    “Know anything about owls?” Francy asks.
    “They used to be symbols of imminent death. Julius Caesar’s murder was supposedly predicted by a shrieking owl. Though this one looks pretty content sitting on its branch.”
    “It’s not a branch.”
    I tighten my squint, pulling the photo closer. Sure enough, the owl’s claws aren’t holding a crooked branch. They’re clutching a flat piece of wood, more like a two-by-four.
    “It’s a plank ,” A.J. jumps in. “The owl’s holding a plank .”
    Plankholder.
    I look up from the photo. Francy and A.J. are staring back at me. “This penny’s from my father’s old unit,” I say.
    “Not just your father’s,” Francy says, lowering her glasses to the end of her round nose. I thought she was worried I was a threat. She’s worried about something far more dangerous.
    “There’s someone else who was in that same unit with your father,” A.J. adds, his face lit by the glow from the security screens.
    He doesn’t have to say it. We all know who it is. The man who took a shot at the previous President. And who put a bullet in the brain of the previous First Lady. And who recently escaped his padded cell at St. Elizabeths mental institution.
    A.J. refuses to say his name. But there’s no question who he’s talking about.
    Nico.

9
    Two weeks ago
Collierville, Tennessee
    N ico was down on both knees, mouthing a silent prayer. He had promised he’d say just one, which he did just before he tugged open the screen door, took a final breath of the night air, and picked the locks to sneak inside the small yellow house.
    He said another as the screen door snapped shut behind him and he knelt on the cheap linoleum floor. The house smelled of mothballs and old people. Holding his breath, he waited. No dogs. No alarm. No surprise. God was always on his side.
    “ Nico, you need to hurry! ” the dead First Lady warned.
    Back when he was a patient, Nico knew wha t the St. Elizabeths doctors would do if they caught him talking to the woman he’d killed a decade ago. These days, th e doctors were gone.
    “We’re fine,” he told his former victim. “I’ve broken eight different commandments. And still God provides.”
    The dead First Lady rolled her eyes, but how else could Nico explain these past few weeks? Or the return of his daughter Clementine? A decade ago, Nic o had tried to kill a President. Declared insane, he’d been in the country’s most famous mental hospital. He’d never thought he’d get another chance at his mission. There was only one person to thank for that.
    Closing his chocolate brown eyes, set so close together, Nico knelt down and said another prayer in the kitchen, then another in the living room, then yet another in the hallway lined with family photos and military medals.
    “ You’re getting worse, Nico ,” the dead First Lady warned as he finished his work in the bedroom. “ It’s because your medications ran out. ”
    Nico knew she was right, but he still did each prayer the exact same way: He mouthed the words. His head bobbed up and down sixteen times, always sixteen. Then he closed his left eye on the word Amen .
    “ It’s the same reason you’re seeing the crosses ,”