One of her cats, Euler judging bythe particular sound of his delicate claw-grips in the fabric, eased himselfcasually along the back of the sofa and spread out behind her, making almost nonoise as he settled his furry warmth against her short-cropped dark hair. Buthe did make noise. He had a heartbeat, a breathing rhythm. As quiet as theymight be, they were there, and with everything else shut out, Zoe knew shewould soon begin to count them.
She stirred slightly, reaching forher cell phone. It lay uselessly on the arm of the sofa, turned off. She hadn’tturned it on in days. At the beginning, when she first came home from the case thathad gotten her suspended, she had left it on. There had been messages,notifications, alerts, all ringing and buzzing and annoying the hell out of heruntil she switched it off. Then she would turn it on once a day, read themessages, turn it off. Now she didn’t even want to do that. It was too much.
Zoe wasn’t expecting anything newanyway. She had cut everyone off, shut them out, and over the weeks they hadstopped trying. There would be nothing from work—after she had badly beaten themurderer who took the life of her partner, Special Agent Shelley Rose, SAICMaitland had had no choice but to send her home. Not before she’d solved thecase, and she took grim satisfaction in that. Not that it was enough. She’dstill let it happen.
Let him kill Shelley right underher nose.
Zoe shifted her weight on thesofa, staring at the phone, calculating its dimensions, weight, the outline ofeach button on the side. Even the numbers were better than thinking about that.
And it wasn’t just the FBI whoweren’t contacting her anymore. Zoe had been dating John for long enough tostart trusting him, to think about telling him about the numbers; she’d evenplanned it, set a date. But after Shelley’s death, there didn’t seem to be anypoint in seeing him again.
He’d called daily at first. Thentexts, three a day, two a day, one a day. They had petered out rapidly, untilJohn stopped trying. He’d sent her a message that she had by now memorized: I’llbe here if/when you want to talk.
Nine words. Thirty-eightcharacters. And that was the last message he had sent, twenty-seven days ago.Zoe knew without looking, because her internal clock wouldn’t stop counting,that it was a few hours away from being twenty-eight. Each day slipped awaywith the same intolerable length, an equal measurement stretching out behindher and in front of her, the same thing over and over again for as far as shecould see.
Zoe was reaching for her secondbeer of the night when she flinched hard, almost dropping it on the floor. Theknock on the door was forceful, numbers instantly flashing through Zoe’s head:the weight of the fist doing the knocking, the velocity, the force. And sheknew, without a doubt, who was attached to that fist.
“Zoe?” The voice floated under thedoor and through the quiet apartment, too loud. Dr. Francesca Applewhite hadcome by almost every one of the twenty-seven days since John’s last text, andevery day before that, too. Thirty-six knocks on the door. Given that Dr.Applewhite almost always knocked in a pattern of four raps—one, one-two, one—thatwas one hundred forty-four individual knocks, impacts on the frame, on Dr.Applewhite’s knuckles.
And Zoe had never opened the dooronce.
“Zoe, I just want to hear yourvoice,” Dr. Applewhite said. “Just let me know that you’re okay.”
Zoe’s eyes slid closed. Dr.Applewhite’s voice came through the door at sixty-five decibels, only slightlyraised from normal speaking level. Just loud enough to be heard through thedoor. Through the apartment. There was nowhere Zoe could go where she couldn’thear the voice calling through the door. It was too small of a space. She hadtried.
“Zoe!”
Sixty-nine decibels. Zoe clampedher hands over her ears, trying not to hear the numbers anymore. “Go away!” sheshouted, unable to stop herself. “Just leave me alone!”
There was a soft noise in thecorridor outside. “All right, Zoe.” Sixty decibels. Low and calm. “I’m goingnow. Just call me if you need anything.”
There was a hesitant pause, a waitfor a response. Zoe said nothing. Finally Dr. Applewhite’s footsteps walkedaway, Zoe tracing their path to the stairs, knowing from the sound that Dr.Applewhite still weighed one hundred twenty-nine pounds.
Zoe rubbed a hand over her eyesand took the beer out of the refrigerator. She cracked it open and took a longswig, draining as much of it as she could manage in one go. Almost exactly one-half,she noted as she measured the volume with her eyes. She turned to look at thesofa but did not move, the apartment seeming stiflingly close now, too small, toocircular a space for her thoughts to rush around in.
She couldn’t stay here, not withthe numbers, not for the whole of the rest of the night. She couldn’t listen tothem echoing in her head with no response. They were everywhere, and eventhough she knew they were also out there, at least the numbers outside of theapartment would be new.
She waited seventeen minutes afterthe last of Dr. Applewhite’s audible footsteps to allow her time to be out ofthe neighborhood entirely, downed the rest of the second bottle of beer andthrew it in the trash, and went to put on her shoes.
***
Zoe stumbled, almost tripping overa loose stone on the edge of the sidewalk. On closer inspection, it transpiredthat the stone was actually part of the sidewalk itself, an edging slab put induring construction. Well. They shouldn’t have put it there. Zoe straightenedcarefully, making sure not to wobble over again.
She looked up at the street andrealized where she was with a sinking feeling: the same place she often endedup when she attempted to wander through the night after a few drinks. Or duringa few drinks, since she had carried the rest of the six-pack with her, and nowher hands were empty. It wasn’t exactly a short walk, which
