after coming home without remembering it. At any rate, her head was pounding, and she wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.
The pain was probably about a six on her personal scale. Worse than that was the noise: Zoe hated the city during the day. Even with the windows closed, shut away inside her apartment, she could hear it. The steady stream of tires and engines on the asphalt below, telling her the average speed of the traffic on the nearest roads today. The woman in the apartment above walking across her floor with a heavy stomp that told Zoe she was walking to the fridge, because the layouts of their apartments were the same and she had made seven steps southward. And then back again, seven steps north.
There were birds, calling out to one another and somehow living whole lives in this city, even though there weren’t as many trees as they must have preferred. They called out in a rhythm that itched inside Zoe’s head: one call with three trills, one call with three trills, one call with three trills. Always the same. Then silence for a while before they started up again. The only variation was when one of the birds was a little hoarse on one of the trills, and then it was gone and the rhythm returned.
“Shut up, birds,” Zoe said out loud, covering her face with her hands. A soft mewl over by the door made her crack open her eyes to see Pythagoras, her Burmese, watching her with a reproving look.
Zoe groaned. At least her life hadn’t totally lost all meaning and routine. There was still the cats, and they still needed feeding, no matter what. She grabbed their food out of the cupboard and shook the packet until the rattling noise allowed her to estimate that she had shaken out a hundred twenty individual pieces of the dry cat food. Pythagoras and Euler came running immediately, and she watched them attack their bowls as she took a painkiller with a glass of water.
Zoe forced herself to drink the rest of the glass of water down, then refilled it immediately. Another three of these, and she estimated that the headache would be gone. She already felt better.
That didn’t help, however, when the loud knock battered at the door, making her start so much that a large drop from her glass splashed down to the floor.
Not now, Dr. Applewhite, Zoe thought, but something about the knock made her reconsider. Actually, it sounded as though there was more weight behind it. It was firmer than Dr. Applewhite’s knock, and the pattern was off. Rat-tat-tat, no fourth tap, and only once. Probably a man, Zoe guessed, which was odd.
Maybe the FBI had sent anything she’d left in the J. Edgar Hoover Building back to her in a parcel, and she needed to sign for it. That was a thought. Maybe not entirely likely, but it pushed her to go and take a look all the same.
Zoe opened the door, letting the chain extend fully before she saw that it was SAIC Leo Maitland—her boss. He was standing in front of her door with his arms held behind his back and a mild expression on his face, which was not necessarily a good sign. He was a busy man, and he didn’t take time out to do home visits. Something about that look, and natural trained obedience to her superior, made Zoe push the door back toward the frame, unhook the chain, and open it fully to meet him face-on.
She regretted not choosing a more cohesive outfit, or brushing her hair this morning, but it was what it was.
“Agent Prime.” Maitland’s voice was a deep rumble. At six foot three, he had five inches of height on her, and he used it now to look down on her like a teacher on an errant child.
“Sir,” Zoe said, trying to keep her voice steady. She hadn’t wanted to deal with anything from work. Not while the numbers were still everywhere she looked, now measuring the angles in Maitland’s straight military posture, noting that the man’s forty-five-inch chest and fifteen-inch biceps had not at all diminished since she was last in his office.
Since he had told her to go home on leave, because she had witnessed her partner’s dead body and then punched a guy like she was never intending to stop.
“I came over from HQ to see you personally,” he said. His tone was meaningful. “Do