Maybe if she ignored it for long enough,it would go away.
No, this was stupid. What was it thatDr. Monk had told her? To focus on her breathing. To try the meditation, even.
All right. She was going to feel like anidiot, but she had to at least try it.
Zoe shut her eyes again, starting tocount. One. A slow breath, rising in through her chest and evenly out. Two.Her chest inflated, her diaphragm pushed up and then down, deflating like abellows. Three. She felt the texture of the sheets under her hands, theweight of her body on the bed, pressing down into the mattress.
Four. A flash of Callie Everard’sburnt face.
No—that was wrong. Zoe fought backcontrol, trying to stop that hitch in her breathing, trying to flatten it outand keep thoughts of work down. Five. She imagined her breath coming outin a cloud of white, disappearing toward the ceiling. Six. The number ofstripes on the—no, forget the tiger. Forget about all of it. None of that wasfor right now.
Seven. The palm trees were calling toher. She wasn’t there, not yet, but Zoe was anticipating the moment. The wayshe would see them. The picture building up in her head, the feeling of theimagined breeze on her skin. Yes, she would be there soon, and she was somewhatsurprised to find that she was looking forward to it. Eight. Her breathcame evenly now, just perfect. In and out. And just like that, with theattention turned on it, it became awkward: how long to breathe in for? How longout? How quickly did she normally breathe? Was this it?
Nine. At least she was thinking aboutsomething other than the case. Dammit, and there was the case again. NaomiKarling in a pool of blood. No, push it away. Ten. Ten and done. Shecould go there now. The wait was over.
The island beckoned to her. Zoe stayedperfectly still, constructing the vision from her own body outward. She startedwith a bikini, the kind of thing she would never normally wear but—she wasintrigued to discover—her island alter ego felt very comfortable in. The suncame down to gently warm her skin. She had an even tan, the result of many daysof sunbathing.
The water lapped in next. She was lyingon a raft, she decided, or a floating platform, tethered to one of the trees sothat she could not float away. The soft bobbing of the waves rocked her gently,more like a lullaby than cause for alarm. Gentle, gentle, to and fro.
She opened her eyes, at least inside themeditation, and looked up. There was the island, just as she had seen it lasttime. She made out thirty-four individual trees, the rest faded into thebackground. Eight feet tall. No, stop counting—stop seeing the numbers—shutthem out.
Zoe looked elsewhere, to the sand. Whatwas that, lying there? … A knife. A knife in the sand, the right dimensions tobe the one that killed Naomi Karling and Callie Everard and John Dowling. Seveninches long. The blade was smooth and long and wickedly sharp.
Zoe wrenched her eyes away. That wasn’tsupposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to think about the case. The wholepoint of this was to give her enough time away from the case to get some rest.
She needed something, something to focuson. Something that would allow her to feel calm and relaxed. To put herthoughts of work away in a box that she could access again in the morning, whenshe’d had enough sleep to feel sane and make good decisions. Until then, sheneeded it all to stop.
She looked up at the hammock swingingfrom the tree. What she saw both surprised her and struck her as obvious; anintegral part of the vision that she should have realized from the start.
John.
Not John Dowling, the dead man burntinto a blackened mess. No, her John. He was lying there in the hammock, hiseyes closed, sleeping peacefully. His arms lying comfortably across his chest,the shade of the tree keeping the sun off him.
Zoe looked at him, and she felt twothings. The first was safe. Safe, because all that John had shown her so farwas that he was willing to look after her—to go above and beyond for her—totake her where she needed to go.
The second was calm.
Because, she realized as she looked athis sleeping form, she did feel calmer when he was around. Even when she wasbeing a terrible date and ignoring him in favor of counting the orders thewaiters carried by, she was at least able to go into a place like that andfunction. Hold some semblance of conversation without getting lost in her ownworld, however thin that conversation might have seemed.
Zoe wasn’t sure yet about herrelationship with John, and what it would become. She couldn’t say whether hiswas an avatar she could cling to, like an anchor, or whether it was a temporaryBand-Aid over a problem that would take longer to fix.
But if he could lie there and sleep sopeacefully in his hammock, then just for tonight, maybe Zoe could do the same.Her eyes closed slowly as she observed him, taking in the peace and calm thathe exuded from his very being, until she drifted off into very real sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Some part of Zoe had to know that shewas dreaming. None of what she was seeing made any sense, and therefore itcould not be real. That didn’t mean that it didn’t scare her, in the moment.
She was adult-sized, her own shape, theway she was at the present moment. But even so, she was there as she had beenwhen she was a young teen, cowering at a desk in the library. Glancingfurtively over her shoulder every few minutes, as if there was any risk thather mother might somehow be there behind her.
It would not have been the first timethat she thought she was safe, only to turn to see that disapproving frown, hermother’s face etched in sharp straight lines that were already beginning tosettle permanently on her forehead and around her mouth.
The face of a
