“I am sorry,” Zoe started again, alittle taken aback by his reaction. He hadn’t exactly been the mostprofessional agent himself, always undermining her and making her look bad infront of other people. Sure, she’d messed up—badly, actually, but… well, she’dwanted to tear a strip out of him herself, and she’d held back. It seemed hewouldn’t do her the same courtesy, even when she was clearly humiliated by whathad happened.
“It doesn’t matter,” Flynn said,shaking his head viciously. “You were drinking on the case. Tricked me intogoing into that frat house just so you could get yourself trashed. I had tohaul you out of there in front of all of the potential interviewees—kids wearen’t going to be able to get any respect out of now. When this thing issolved and we get back to base, I’m going to be reporting your conduct to SAICMaitland and putting in for a different partner.”
There was so much he didn’t know.Maybe it would be better that he did whatever he wanted, that Zoe never had towork with him again, but she didn’t want to let him have the wrong impressionof her. She was a good agent. She wasn’t like this. But Shelley, and then thepills, and then a simple mistake…
“I did not mean for that tohappen,” she said, wanting to explain herself. It was somehow important that heknew. That she could let him know he could still trust her, even as much as hehad trusted her judgment so far—which was not very much. “It was not a trick. Idid not know…”
Zoe cut herself off, hearing thefamiliar tone of her cell phone ringing out from the bedside table. She reachedfor it, feeling her head protest at the movement, and checked the number. Itwas local. She had to answer.
“Hello, Special Agent Zoe Primespeaking,” she said, closing her eyes momentarily against the throbbing in hertemples.
“Agent, this is Sheriff Petrovski.We’ve just been alerted to a new body.”
Zoe swore under her breath,pinching the bridge of her nose to try to hold back the headache some. “Where?”she asked, grabbing the motel notepad and pen off the side table, ready toscrawl down the address.
Making excuses, recovering fromlast night, even showering—it was all going to have to wait. Zoe took down whatthe sheriff told her and terminated the call, tossing the pad across the roomto Flynn.
“We better get moving,” she said. “Hehas struck again.”
***
Zoe got out of the car, gratefulbeyond words that the car journey was over. She bent over a little as shebreathed in fresh air deeply, trying not to throw up. Flynn’s driving wasgetting more and more erratic, and she could swear he was doing it on purposebecause he knew her head was killing her.
The movement of bending over senta fresh wave of pain through her skull, and Zoe cursed out loud, straighteningup and closing her eyes for a moment until the spinning stopped. When sheopened them again, Flynn was already striding away ahead of her toward SheriffPetrovski and her men, arrayed in a general cluster around what had to be theircrime scene just past the edge of the trees.
Zoe took advantage of that moment,with no attention on her, to reach into the pocket of her jacket. Maybe one ofDr. Monk’s pills would make her feel better. She went to insert her thumbnailinto the foil to pop out one of the pills, but to her dismay, it went rightthrough: the hollow behind it was already empty.
In a panic, Zoe turned the blisterpack over, looking at the side without the foil. She could see it clearly now:all of the little chambers were empty, every single one of them already openedand taken. She’d had the whole lot. How had she gone through them so quickly?They were supposed to last a lot longer, and now she had nothing.
Zoe swallowed down a lump ofdismay and anxiety in her throat and thrust the empty packet back into herpocket, striding forward and trying to pretend her brain wasn’t swinging aroundinside her skull and ricocheting off every surface as she followed Flynn. Shehad to at least act professional. She already had the aloof act going for her—itwasn’t hard to maintain stony silence. She could do this.
Except that she wasn’t sure thatshe could, because the trees all around her were catching her attention withtheir numbers, their heights and girths, their probable ages, the number ofbranches they had below a certain level, the dimensions, angles, and depth ofscratches left by angles. And then there was the sheriff and her men and all oftheir numbers and measurements and sizes and angles and all of the rest of it,and words floating up into the air like moths, syllable and rhythm and linelength, all their own kind of free verse poem that Zoe couldn’t stop herselftracking.
Flynn was saying something, thoughZoe could barely make out what, with the numbers and the pounding in her head.She gulped in cold morning air and headed directly for the body, needing to findsomething to focus on, something that would block out all the rest. At leastshe could be helpful there. Not only that, but it was what was expected of her.A good cover.
Zoe stood over her, looking down.The body was splayed out across a round tree stump; she would have liked to seeit without the body on top, to count the rings and know the precise age of thetree. But maybe it was irrelevant. Most likely. Most people didn’t read intoeverything the way that she did.
She focused her eyes on the bodyagain, trying to ignore the numbers that had no bearing. The woman was tall,five ten, and weighed a hundred eighty pounds. Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six;Zoe would have to check later. And her shirt, part of what looked to be an officialpark ranger uniform, was lifted up to display her stomach, three lines carvedinto it.
A straight line across the top,two coming down from it. The pi symbol, with exactly the same angles anddimensions as the last two. This third one
