The Escape Artist

At Dover Air Force Base's Port Mortuary in Delaware, where fallen service members are prepared for burial, civilian mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski, 52, claims a personal case: the body of Sergeant First Class Nola Brown, killed when a military plane crashed near Copper Center, Alaska. Zig knew Nola as a child in Ekron, Pennsylvania, where she was a Girl Scout with his daughter Maggie. During a campfire outing, Nola knocked Maggie from the path of an exploding soda can, losing a chunk of her own ear. Zig has felt indebted ever since. Maggie died approximately fourteen years ago at age twelve, a loss that destroyed Zig's marriage and left him burying himself in work.

As Zig prepares the body, he notices both ears are intact. He scans the charred fingerprints using a device called the Fang and sends them to his FBI contact Amy Waggs. In the gut bucket, a container holding a corpse's organs, he finds a note preserved in the stomach: "Nola, you were right. Keep running" (17). Waggs confirms the prints do not match Nola Brown. The body belongs to someone else.

A hacker working for a man with a raspy, woodchipper-like voice monitors FBI activity and alerts his employer that someone at Dover is investigating the file. The employer recognizes Zig's name.

Zig consults Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Francis Steranko, known as "Master Guns," Dover's chief homicide investigator and Zig's closest work friend. Master Guns reveals that men in suits demanded Nola's body immediately after processing, and the crash was suppressed from the news for two days. One victim is Nelson Rookstool, the Librarian of Congress and close friend of President Orson Wallace, who arrives aboard Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to serve as pallbearer for Rookstool's casket. Zig obtains Nola's burial file and discovers someone redirected her body to Longwood Funeral Home in Ekron after her supposed death.

Flashbacks trace Nola's childhood. At seven, her adoptive family, the LaPointes, gives her away through "rehoming," an unregulated process with no social worker oversight. They keep her twin brother Roddy and hand Nola to Royall Barker, a violent man who acquired her through an online adoption site. Royall forces her to cook and clean, erupting into rage over minor mistakes. Young Nola begins recognizing that his fury masks weakness, an observational gift that defines her life. At fifteen, an art teacher named Ms. Sable discovers Nola's talent and becomes the first person to tell her she is good at something. In a classroom exercise, Nola writes six words about the most important thing in her life: "He watches me when I sleep" (186). At sixteen, she discovers hidden letters revealing the LaPointes demanded payment for giving her away; she was sold.

Waggs uncovers that three passengers on the plane used names borrowed from people who worked for Harry Houdini nearly a century ago, names appearing on government records across decades as rotating cover identities for an undercover unit.

At Longwood, Zig finds the real Nola alive, holding a gun. She is 26, with white hair and a scarred ear confirming her identity. She identifies the dead woman as Kamille Williams, a staff sergeant she painted in Alaska. With her official death rendering her IDs useless, Nola agrees to a reluctant partnership. She sends Zig to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to retrieve a tin from her office safe. At Fort Belvoir, Nola's supervisor describes her role as the Army's Artist-in-Residence: She travels to conflict zones to paint what cameras cannot capture, with observational skills that let her detect threats soldiers miss. The tin contains only crayons; Nola used Zig as bait to draw out anyone watching her office. A military operative named Markus, who had been surveilling Nola's office, attacks Zig outside, claiming Nola caused the crash. Nola captures him and interrogates him at the Pentagon marina, extracting the code name of the operation's mastermind: Horatio. Markus is later found murdered by an assassin called The Curtain, who works for the man with the woodchipper voice.

Zig follows leads to an antique magic shop in Washington, DC, that serves as a government "shop-and-drop" for classified shipments. Its operator, The Amazing Caesar, an elderly former Navy frogman, reveals that a man code-named Houdini has been collecting large suitcases of cash, with a major delivery from Alaska before the crash. Caesar helps set a trap, but Houdini murders him and takes the briefcase to Powell Rock Inc., a decrepit Prudential Insurance storefront. Finding decoy currency inside, Houdini realizes he is exposed. Nola, who traced Markus's phone to the location, storms in at gunpoint; The Curtain ambushes her from behind. Zig crashes through the door. In the ensuing fight, Nola kills Houdini, but The Curtain shoots her below the collarbone and escapes. Zig drives the wounded Nola to a motel and stabilizes her.

Nola reveals that Houdini was Rowan Johansson, a Special Forces "paying agent" who carried cash to compensate civilians harmed by military operations. Her Alaska trip was to paint Kamille, who had attempted to take her own life; portraying service members in such circumstances is Nola's artistic mission. The mastermind behind Operation Bluebook, a classified program using undercover soldiers with forged identities, is Horatio. GPS data from Houdini's watch proves an inside accomplice at Dover. Nola privately learns the truth about Maggie's death: During a fight between Zig and his wife, Maggie hid under the car, and Zig backed over her. Waggs traces the accomplice to Dino, Zig's lifelong best friend, who was recruited by the man with the woodchipper voice after accumulating massive debt.

Nola manipulates Zig into getting her onto Dover's base, then directs him to Building 1303, an abandoned warehouse called "The Graveyard." Inside, the conspiracy unravels. Royall Barker, the man who took Nola through rehoming, stands over Dino's body, having shot him in the temple. Royall is Horatio, the man with the woodchipper voice. After Nola's childhood, he reinvented himself and was recruited by the government for his talent at forging identities, becoming essential to Bluebook. He discovered that Johansson was skimming cash from the program and, rather than reporting it, partnered with him to steal a massive shipment during a Bluebook gathering in Alaska. Nola's accidental discovery of Royall at the Alaska base prompted him to sabotage the plane, believing she was aboard and could expose the scheme. Seven people died.

The Curtain ambushes Nola, slashing her hamstring. Zig arrives, shoots The Curtain dead, and wounds Royall. Royall beats Zig with a metal trocar, an embalming tool, breaking his arm and puncturing his lung. Nola crawls back and fires into a puddle of flammable embalming fluid at Royall's feet, engulfing him in flames. Despite Zig's pleas, she executes him, fulfilling a childhood promise, then loses consciousness.

The White House orders a cover-up; Bluebook will be renamed and continue. Nola receives a general discharge from the Army. When Zig drives her from the hospital, she shares a memory he has never heard: In seventh grade, Maggie rescued Nola from a cruel game of public humiliation, glancing back with genuine concern. The story gives Zig a new memory of his daughter and proof he raised her right. He cries for the first time in fourteen years. Nola says she will travel and paint, starting in New Orleans. Zig says he will stay at Dover.

Two weeks later, watching an elderly forager bee make its last flights, Zig reflects on Caesar's observation that there are four types of magic tricks; his favorite is changing one thing into something else. He opens a travel website and books a one-way flight to New Orleans, choosing to bury his old life and begin a new one.