his pent-up energy at once, barreling toward her. There was something in his hand. It happened so fast that she couldn’t make it out, only that it was dark and long and clasped in his hand tightly. And that thing, whatever it was, smashed against the side of her head, so heavy and sudden that she only had the time to draw in a single breath before she realized she was breathing in dry, dead leaves, and something wasn’t right, and there was a desperate cold spreading through her, and Shacora shivered just once before blinking out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zoe didn’t mind the silence so much. Silence was fine by her. Fewer words meant fewer distractions.
But it was the tension that was irritating. The way the rookie took corners and changed lanes with an aggressive anger, screaming to a stop at red lights and only just barely making it because he was driving far too fast. He was fuming, she could tell that much. This wasn’t his usual careless, fast driving. There was another layer to it: the sharp, choppy movements of his hands and feet, the way his head jerked around quicker and at more extreme angles. The numbers showed her what was wrong, even when she only saw them from her peripheral vision, refusing to turn to look at him.
She was regretting taking this case on at all. Flynn had been far from apologetic about his interrogation technique, and he didn’t look set to cool down any time soon. Zoe almost began to wish for some music or a radio station to dispel the hostility in the air. Almost. But not enough to want to risk inviting the numbers crowding into her head.
She reached into her pocket instead and took one of Dr. Monk’s pills. She swallowed it down, waiting for it to take hold. At least then she might be able to ignore Flynn more successfully. She closed her eyes and tried to count her in-breaths to ten, but before she even got to three, she found she was counting the revolutions of the tires against the asphalt (calculated by a particular noise that a slightly balder spot on the front left made every time it touched the road) instead and gave up.
No, she shouldn’t have taken this case. She shouldn’t have been tempted to read the file, and even after doing that, she shouldn’t have given in when SAIC Maitland insisted on her taking a partner. Partner. Zoe spat on the word. It meant nothing. Especially not with this excuse for an agent, who was so green he might as well have been grass. He wasn’t gifted like Shelley had been. He had nothing to offer Zoe. No skills that would solve the case quicker. She would have been better on her own.
Zoe opened her eyes again and looked out the window, staring dully out, letting the dimensions of structures flash in front of her eyes as she kept mental track of the street number. She counted mentally how far they were from the station, from the point where she could get out of the car and be away from him. The residential buildings fell away and opened up to the gaping mouth of a larger complex. Raising her eyes just in time to catch the sign outside, Zoe realized it was a university campus.
A university campus…
“Wait,” she said, the word firing out of her with the explosive suddenness of a bullet. “Stop!”
“What?” Flynn said, automatically putting his foot on the brake while glancing in the rearview mirror. They were in light traffic, but Zoe realized immediately he couldn’t stop immediately for fear of causing an accident. “Why?”
“Just go around the block,” Zoe said. “We have to go back. I just thought of something.”
Flynn breathed out through his nose, a frustrated sound, as he took the next turn and began heading back in a square pattern. “You could at least tell me what.”
“You could at least trust your senior agent,” Zoe shot back. She was still annoyed at him, and didn’t feel like explaining. Maybe it would have smoothed over their relationship a little if she’d given in and explained. On the other hand, maybe he would have refused to go investigate her “silly pi theory” any further. She couldn’t risk the second.
“Here,” Zoe said, sitting upright in her seat, pointing eagerly as they drove toward the campus again. “Turn here.”
“A campus?” Flynn frowned. “What are we doing here?”
Zoe shook her head, amazed that he hadn’t yet seen