make quick matches to any similar cases in other states. Serial killers didn’t often respect boundaries and state lines. In fact, most of them were smart enough to know that crossing those lines would delay the investigation.
“It’s nothing,” Flynn said, waving a dismissive hand in the air. When Zoe looked at him, he was shooting her an annoyed glance from the corner of his eye. “If you can think of anything that might be suspicious—anything in your mother’s behavior that changed recently, any bad blood, even from years ago—please do get in touch. Anything may help, no matter how small.”
He was holding out his card—shiny and new, his name and contact details next to the FBI logo, looking as if they had been printed just yesterday. Crisp and white, all of the corners still precise and sharp angles, not worn down and rounded out from weeks or even years of sitting inside a business card holder in pockets and suitcases. He was ending the conversation, cutting it off. Zoe would have pressed the issue and asked more, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she could see in their faces that they knew nothing. But he hadn’t asked her, had plowed right through her questions, and that was irksome.
At any rate, she wanted to be out of there as soon as possible—away from the distracting counting of tchotchkes on surfaces, measurements of picture frames, analyzation of the people in them. Zoe rose as he did, taking some balm to her wounded pride in the fact that, older than him as she was, she could straighten her spine faster and to a more perfect line than he could.
Flynn was shaking Carlo’s and Taylor’s hands, and Zoe did the same with mechanical instinct. Then she was analyzing grip strength, and by the time she was satisfied with her analysis, they were walking back out to the car, and the rookie’s phone was beeping out a consistent and rhythmic pattern from his pocket, and he was answering the call.
Zoe concentrated on bringing herself back to the present moment enough to get into the car, grabbing hold of the blister pack in her pocket and quickly shooting back one of Dr. Monk’s pills to quiet the numbers a bit. She sat silently in her seat, waiting for it to take hold, as Flynn stood leaning on his side of the car, still on the call.
Zoe could see exactly one-quarter of his body through the window of the driver’s side door. Below the shoulders, above the waist. She tore her eyes away, trying not to measure the different aspects of his body. It was much of a muchness to her what she saw—the numbers were everywhere, on everything, after all—but she understood from previous interactions that it could be considered rude.
Flynn yanked the car door open and threw himself into the seat, starting the ignition as he spoke. “I just got off the phone with administration at the planetarium,” he said. “They’ve emailed me a full list of the employees there. We can cross-reference them against the hiker’s known associates. Might throw up someone who knew them both.”
Zoe squinted at him, looking back in her memory. She didn’t recall that coming up in conversation before. “They just sent you that, off their own backs?”
“No,” Flynn said, indicating as he pulled out to resume driving along the road. “I asked for it last night.”
“You did not tell me,” Zoe snapped, her tone just as accusatory as she intended.
Flynn glanced in her direction for a brief moment, then focused back on the road. “I didn’t think I needed to. I’ve got the GPS set for the river site. Should take us twenty minutes to get there.”
Zoe, who had already seen that the display predicted twenty-seven minutes and was not heartened by his rounding down, was not about to let it go. “You need to tell me everything you do in pursuit of the case,” she told him flatly. He should have known as much already. He was fresh out of training. It was protocol. “You should have run it by me, as the senior agent.”
The bulge of Flynn’s lower jaw tensed, popping out as he gritted his teeth. “Well, I’ll do the work of running the checks myself. You don’t have to worry about doing it. Especially if you’re going to keep on chasing this weird delusion about pi.”
“We follow the leads,” Zoe fired back, her own teeth gritted now. “Whether you personally agree with them