He kicked out desperately in a last attempt to hold himself up somehow, to grasp hold of the pole, to stop the blackness he saw at the edges of his vision from swallowing him whole. Frank had a flash in front of his eyes of his wife’s face, of her back to the door as she turned on the oven to prepare for him coming home, a last desperate clutch at the rope to pull it back that produced no result.
The blackness overcame him as his body succumbed to its need for oxygen, though Frank’s body kicked a few more times, an involuntary and unconscious reaction. Consciousness gone, he had no hope of fighting free of the rope. He swung back and forth for some long minutes, with the motion of his final struggles, before finally coming to a stop, hanging straight and lifeless in the dark.
CHAPTER TWO
Zoe checked her reflection in the car’s rearview mirror one last time, even though there wasn’t much worth looking at. Her brown hair, which she always kept boyishly short, didn’t leave a lot of room for styling. What she knew about makeup could be written on the back of a paper napkin, with a lot of space to spare, and despite having some help from her mentor in recent months she could only apply the basics. As for her dress, it was one that John had seen before.
Zoe hadn’t exactly felt like going shopping in the months since her partner, Agent Shelley Rose, had been murdered while in pursuit of a serial killer. Then again, she also hadn’t felt like dating, but she guessed it was time to deal with that. She was on her way out of her Bethesda, Maryland, apartment to meet John for the first time since she’d unceremoniously broken up with him, too broken from Shelley’s death to want to engage with anyone at all. Not even the man who she had once thought might be part of her sanctuary.
But after a case with her new partner, the inimitable and infuriating Agent Aiden Flynn, Zoe had sent John a simple text: just the word “hi.” Just enough to break the ice. And John, who apparently hadn’t forgotten about her despite the weeks of radio silence, had been only too quick to jump on her invitation for conversation.
He hadn’t let up since, and so Zoe found herself getting out of the car and into the February chill to meet him at a bar downtown. It hadn’t been her choice, of course. John still didn’t know about her ability to see numbers—or, rather, disability, as it seemed at times. The chaotic environment of a bar was not Zoe’s idea of a place to relax. But she had to meet him halfway.
At least, she did if she wanted the relationship to continue. Which, Zoe thought as she pushed open the door to the bar and stepped inside, she wasn’t entirely sure about.
She liked John—really liked him. That wasn’t the issue. This was the issue: the music filtering through the background of the bar that distracted her into counting beats and rhythmic arrangements; the constant rumble of conversation that dragged her into analysis of syllable, syntax, and word count; the sea of people crowding the popular spot, prompting her to perform impromptu head counts and age, height, and weight calculations; the trays laden with drinks, which she could tell at a glance were either under- or overfilled even if by a fraction of a milliliter’s divergence from regulation servings.
But Zoe took a deep breath and counted to ten in her head, stepping just aside from the door so she wasn’t blocking the entrance. She tried to find her inner calm, something she’d been working on extensively with her therapist. There wasn’t enough of an opportunity to do a full meditation here—not in the middle of a bar. But she could at least try to quiet the numbers down.
When Zoe opened her eyes again, the numbers weren’t totally gone. But they had minimized enough that she could see through them, across the crowded space—to the seats at the far end, where John had already sat down at a table. Zoe fought her way across the bar to him, wincing at each contact and trying not to pay attention to the calculations of force they triggered, attempting not to read the total value of the drinks sitting on each table that she passed. Nausea rose up in her stomach, almost making her want to turn and run away; every hair on the back of her neck stood up. This was more than just overloaded senses. She was made of nerves, all of them strumming on high alert at the sight of him. She realized with an overwhelming panic that she desperately did not want him to be angry with her, or to send her away again. She wanted to be near him again, to have the comfort of his conversation, his gentle understanding (even when he didn’t understand a thing). It had been long enough that she had told herself she didn’t miss him. But now, seeing him again, she knew that she had, and it had been terrible, and she didn’t want to feel it again.
“Hi,” she said, as soon as she reached the table, prompting John to look at her with a startled expression. He was handsome as ever in a blue-striped shirt under a dark blue jacket, bringing out the hazel in his eyes. He had that clean-cut neatness that Zoe had always admired, his chin smooth, always dressed smartly even in a more casual setting like this.
“Zoe,” he said, rising to greet her, leaning forward to awkwardly kiss her on the cheek.
“You sound surprised to see me,” Zoe said, wondering with a heart-stopping flutter whether she had, in the chaos of all of the other numbers, managed to get something as simple as the date wrong. Maybe John was expecting someone else.
John flashed her a weak smile before sitting down. “I wasn’t sure you would actually turn up.”
Zoe took a seat, turning that guilt over in her mind. John seemed little changed from when she had last seen him. Though, looking closer, she could see that the diameter of his biceps under his pin-striped shirt had reduced fractionally, that his light brown hair had grown by half an inch longer, and that he had lost perhaps three pounds to his overall body weight.
“So, how have you been?” John asked, sipping at the drink that he must have already ordered at the bar. “Sorry, I should have gotten you something. Did you want me to order for you?”
Zoe unclenched her fists in her lap with some effort and shook her head. “I am not thirsty for the moment,” she said, which was more or less a lie. She just didn’t want to drink alcohol right now. Although it would help to deaden the numbers somewhat, it did it in a horribly uncomfortable way, leaving her off-kilter and confused. She belatedly realized that maybe she should have apologized to John for dropping him without a word before, for cancelling their last date and never explaining why, but the moment was gone.
“Right.” John nodded slowly, looking at the table. His fingers tapped a one-two-three beat on the surface momentarily, out of rhythm with the music. The silence counted on for three, four, five, six, seven seconds. “So. Yeah. I’ve been good. Had some successful cases.”
Zoe nodded. Right: John was a property lawyer. “That is good,” she said, nodding again in what she hoped was an encouraging way.
“It was.” John paused, cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. “I had a friend who got married. I think I told you about that.”
Zoe bit her lip and looked down at her hands. He had. It had been one of the texts she had ignored. Him inviting her to be his date. “I remember.”
“Yeah, well, it was a nice reception,” John said hastily, his words speeding up. Zoe wondered if he felt as awkward as she did. He must. The atmosphere was horrible. If Zoe had been able to focus more on him and less on all the numbers competing for her attention around their table, it would probably have been even worse. “Um. Anyway. How’s work been for you?”