if they didn’t get there, he would kill again.
“Hey, cool down,” Flynn said, sounding alarmed. “I’ll just—I’ll get started now, all right? I’ll go ask the sheriff if she knows a good judge to go for right now. We’re coming up on lunchtime, maybe there’s someone who’s known for getting things rushed through so he can go back to eating.”
Zoe nodded, maybe a few too many times—she’d lost count. “I have to make a phone call,” she said, grabbing her cell phone out of her pocket and clutching it hard until Flynn was gone, one backward glance behind him as he went, as if he was worried she wasn’t going to hold it together.
Maybe she wasn’t.
Zoe hadn’t exactly had a good mother figure growing up—with her own mother determined to punish her for the “devil sickness” of the numbers, and no one else to turn to because of her reputation as a weird child. But she knew one thing, from TV and books and the conversations other people had.
She knew that when you were in trouble, real trouble, you called your mother.
Not her real mother, of course. Zoe had had herself emancipated years ago and never looked back, and besides, the woman was dead now. No, the only real mother figure she’d ever had: the one who had found her at college, told her what the numbers really were, helped her develop and grow, supported her every step of the way.
Dr. Applewhite.
She had little choice right now. Zoe had followed the case as far as she could, and now with the numbers buzzing around her like flies everywhere, there was no way she could see to the end. But she needed to—people’s lives depended on it. And in the past, whenever she’d been stuck in this kind of situation, she had turned to her mentor. And Dr. Applewhite had always, always come through—even if just by lending an ear while Zoe talked her way to her own solution.
The line only rang twice before it connected.
“Zoe?” Dr. Applewhite asked. “Are you all right?”
Zoe bit her lip, hating the way Dr. Applewhite sounded. Her words tight and breathless. Worried. She must have been worrying about Zoe ever since their last conversation ended so badly. “It is me,” Zoe confirmed, trying to keep her voice steady. “I… I need your help.”
“Of course,” Dr. Applewhite said immediately. Her support had always been like that. Unconditional. No matter what Zoe did or said, she was always still there at the other end of the phone. “What is it? Do you need me to come and get you? Where are you?”
“Not like that.” Zoe closed her eyes. “I am sorry. I made you worry. I should not have pushed you away.”
“That’s all right,” Dr. Applewhite said. “I know what you’ve been going through. I’m not about to be angry with you for processing your grief.”
Grief. Yes, that was probably what it was. Zoe hadn’t even thought about giving it a name. It was strange to hear it like that. Part of her wondered if she had any right to the word. She was only Shelley’s partner, not her family member or even her real friend, not outside of the Bureau. They were colleagues. And Zoe was the one who had let her get murdered, right there on her watch. Did she even have the gall to call it grief?
“I hit a brick wall with the case,” Zoe said. It was better to push on. Dr. Applewhite always seemed to know what she meant without her having to say it, anyway. “I do not know where to go, what to do next. And the killer could strike again at any time. His timeline is escalating.”
“All right,” Dr. Applewhite said soothingly. There was a rustling sound, and Zoe had a vision of her mentor setting out a fresh sheet of paper, grabbing a pencil, tucking her gray-streaked dark bob behind one ear. “Tell me all about it.”
“In brief,” Zoe said, because she couldn’t go through the whole case in detail; not only because of the time limitations, but also because she wasn’t allowed, and making this call at all was a huge risk to her career. “The killer carves the symbol for pi onto his victims. In chronological order, the ages of the victims also spell out pi—thirty-one, forty-one, fifty-nine, and so on.”
“I see,” Dr. Applewhite said. “And have you figured out how he knows their ages?”
“They all enrolled or worked at a local college,” Zoe explained. “But