Elara tried with one last effort to simply fall backward, to tip the bucket and the water away, but her throat was convulsing and her vision failing, and she knew she had nothing left. A painful contraction in her chest forced her to try to suck in one last breath, but she found none, and then there was a blackness so absolute that there was nothing—not even the glimmers of stars millions of light years away, dying in another galaxy, perhaps already dead.
CHAPTER THREE
Zoe had to pause twice as she crossed the kitchen to hold her head in her hands and groan. Rehydration was what was required. But turning toward the front of the room, and the windows, she immediately regretted it. She had never closed any of her curtains last night, and now the late morning sun was streaming in through the glass, dousing her room with a bright glare that sent pain ricocheting through her skull.
The hangover was just insult to injury. She had consumed around fifty-six grams of alcohol last night, which meant that her body should have been able to break down the alcohol within seven hours. The only thing was that she had gone to bed late last night, still wearing her shoes, and there was a definite possibility that she had drunk more units 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 you mind if I come in?”
Zoe looked at him, uncomprehending for a moment. What was that tone? Was he mad at her? Amused? Disappointed? What? All she could hear was the sixty-one decibels, the sixteen words, the cadence and rhythm, the flow of syllables. But she stepped aside and gestured toward the sofa, and Maitland stepped past her with the air of a man taking care where he put his feet.
Not because he didn’t want to step on something important, mind. Because he didn’t want to dirty his shoes.
Maitland took a careful seat on the sofa as Zoe closed the door and followed him. She hesitated; since there was no one else who came to visit her here, she’d never seen the need to invest in an alternate form of seating. There was just the sofa, which meant she had to sit beside him—awkwardly inappropriate, and confusing, too, because which angle should she position her body at? She sat after a moment of hesitation and finally settled on a forty-five-degree angle: halfway between facing him and straight ahead.
“Agent Prime,” Maitland said again, as if he was speaking very carefully. “What happened yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” Zoe repeated dully. Her mind began to race back. Yesterday? What had she even done? Sat listlessly in front of the window, turned Dr. Applewhite away again, gone for a walk. Ah. The walk. Had Harry Rose made a complaint?
Maitland shifted his position, changing his angle more toward her. Zoe noted that his dark buzzcut was the same length as it always was, though there was more gray in it than she had noted last time she saw him. “Your suspension was over yesterday. I expected you to report for duty.”
“It was yesterday?” Zoe asked, turning over her mental calendar. Yes, she thought, it had been the right number of days. And that was a Wednesday, too, so she guessed it was the right date. She had missed it entirely.
“I sent you several emails to that effect,” Maitland said. His head moved, glancing around the apartment. Zoe noted the angle of his chin and knew what he was looking at: computer, turned off; cell phone, dead; landline, unplugged. “I also called you a number of times, and when I couldn’t get through, left you numerous voicemails.”