Face of Fury (Zoe Prime #5) - Blake Pierce Page 0,51

with a cold stare. “For all I know, you’re still popping pills every time my back is turned and I’m going to have to abandon the search to take you to the hospital.”

Zoe bit her lip lightly. She deserved that. Her head was still pounding, but she hadn’t dared take anything for it. “I have not taken anything. You have my word that I will not. The case comes first.”

“Likely because you’ve run out,” Flynn scoffed.

Zoe couldn’t tell him he was right.

“At any rate, you need my help,” she pointed out. “This is a big task.”

“I’m aware of that,” Flynn said icily. “You help today. As soon as we’ve tracked down the killer, you’re on a flight, and I mean that. No worming your way back in. I’m still furious.”

Zoe nodded meekly, hoping it would be enough to stop him from pressing the matter further. So long as she was still here, she could still work on the case. That was as much as she needed.

Zoe refocused on the screen in front of her. As well as the computer that had been left set up for them in their assigned office at the sheriff’s station, someone had found a laptop somewhere in a storage cupboard so that Flynn and Zoe could research different areas at the same time. He was doing more of his beloved cross-checking: looking for the interests that their victims had in common, trying to ascertain if there was any kind of local association that might have their details.

Charitable causes, stores, bars and restaurants with loyalty schemes—there were so very many possibilities in the local area. Zoe’s head spun when she tried to count them all, and that was saying something, because counting things was like breathing to her. Worse than breathing. She could deliberately hold her breath, slow it down or speed it up. She couldn’t make the numbers stop.

Except, there was that thing Dr. Monk had taught her, wasn’t there? A way of tying the numbers to her own breathing. A meditative exercise that had worked before. When she was with Shelley. Zoe hadn’t wanted to try it since then. Hadn’t want to try to go back to that calm place, in case she saw Shelley there. In case it didn’t work anymore, because Zoe didn’t deserve that kind of calm.

But she was out of the pills, and those had barely worked as it was. There was no chance she was going to be able to get her hands on more alcohol, not with Flynn’s watchful gaze on her—and besides, Zoe was thinking about swearing off it altogether. She’d never liked the way it made her brain fuzzy. She needed her mental skills still sharp—but in control. That was the big problem.

She needed to think. And if she was going to be able to think properly, then maybe she needed to try an old favorite—even if it had to be painful to even try.

Zoe closed her eyes, grateful that Flynn was turned away. She placed her hands flat on either side of the laptop, feeling the smooth wood of the side desk that someone had carted into the small office. She felt the flat surface of the office chair against her spine, the solid floor underneath her feet. She breathed in deeply, counting one. And out.

A second breath, and out. Three, and out. Calmer, deeper every time.

Five, seven, nine, all the way to ten. Zoe could feel herself entering that restful state, something like dreaming but not at all like being asleep, a place where she could let her body relax entirely and try to let go. Let go of the stress, the numbers, all of it, even if only for a second. She wasn’t quite ready. It had been a long time, and she wasn’t in practice. She started again from one. Deep breath in, then steady out. Two. Three.

To ten again, and Zoe knew it was now or never. Everything else had faded away. She was no longer counting the audible ticks of the clock on the wall, no longer having to see dimensions and calculations everywhere she looked, the links between numerical yet inconsequential values in the lists that she was trying to see. The only numbers were those attached to her breaths, one to ten over and over in a repeating cycle that was never faster, never slower.

Zoe opened the eyes inside her head and she was there. Floating peacefully on the gently rocking current of the sea, her spine supported