door and tried to calm his beating heart. If control was a disguise, Daniel was the only one who could see past it.
He suddenly felt exhausted. Forgoing sleep altogether wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he should get a good night’s sleep. Just once. Once he slept, he’d have more control. Then he wouldn’t give Daniel such a scare like he did the day before.
He went to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. The pills all waited for him there, in little containers, with the days’ labels on them. He’d skipped almost a week. Maybe he should take only today’s pills and quit the pills after that. He opened the container marked Sunday and pried out one of the pills from the container.
“What are you doing?” The voice startled him, and he nearly dropped it.
He turned around. Daniel stood behind him in the bathroom’s entrance.
“I thought I’d take today’s pills, get a good night’s sleep,” he said. “I think yesterday I was just tired, you know?”
“Sure, sure.” Daniel nodded. “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”
“You think so?”
“Could be. Sleep’s important. You sure, though? Because you told me you hated how those pills made you feel.”
“But just one day couldn’t hurt.”
“And you don’t like the feeling in your throat, right? It feels like the pill is scraping the insides of your throat.”
That was true. He’d forgotten, but now that Daniel said it, he recalled the ghastly sensation. And he had six pills to take. Six.
“I thought you looked better. Like you’re in control now,” Daniel said. “But maybe it’s a good idea to take the pills today. Just to maintain control.”
“I am in control.” He saw the skeptical look on Daniel’s face. Acting on a sudden urge, he emptied the entire container into the toilet and flushed it.
Daniel let out a short laugh, and the man in control smiled. It was nice to see his friend laugh.
“You’re something else, you know that?” Daniel slapped him on the shoulder and turned away.
He watched Daniel return to his room and nodded to himself. He really didn’t need the pills. He was in control.
CHAPTER 8
Zoe stared through the window at the far end of the large room. It was a rainy day, giving the street view a somewhat depressing ambience. Then again, the window faced the Cook County Juvenile Center, and that place wasn’t cheerful even when the sun shone and birds twittered in the trees.
She and Tatum had been allocated two desks on the fourth floor of the FBI’s Chicago field office as soon as they’d landed in the city. When they’d first arrived, they’d been two outsiders, treated with courtesy and suspicion. There were private jokes she and Tatum weren’t privy to. Some of the agents had cryptic nicknames whose origins she didn’t care about. On their second day in Chicago, one of the agents had a birthday. She was about to ignore the whole thing when Tatum dragged her along to join the tedious cake-and-greeting-card formality. She found herself standing there, listening to the agent, whose name she had already forgotten, thanking everyone for a gift she hadn’t participated in paying for. Twenty precious minutes gone. The cake had been mediocre.
Now, a week later, she was still an outsider. But Tatum wasn’t. He knew all the nicknames. Agents joked with him. He seemed to understand a lot of their discussions. One of the analysts was definitely flirting with him.
Obviously none of it mattered. They were going to leave in a few days. And she didn’t want to waste her time small-talking about politics, or the weather, or the Chicago Cubs.
But somehow it was a relief that the room was mostly empty on weekends. That for a couple of days, it was just Tatum and her.
She turned back to her work, already annoyed that she’d let her mind wander. Finally, they had a lead. A scent they could chase. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
First things first, she could use some music. She hesitated, looking at her music library. Taylor, Katy, and Beyoncé all waited for her choice. In a sudden moment of carpe diem, she selected albums from all three. A moment later she added Lizzo’s Big GRRRL Small World and Adele’s 25 to the mix, feeling almost giddy. She set it to shuffle. The first song began playing through her earphones, Katy Perry’s “Peacock.” She let her head bob with the beat, forcing herself not to sing with the chorus. Tatum was within earshot.