Face of Death

“You and I had the same data,” Shelley said. “You knew as much as I did. But you managed to track him down to the casino, even though there was no way you could have known he would definitely be there. Then, when he tried to run—you knew where he would go. You directed me to the exact position where I could stop him.”

Zoe said nothing. Technically, there had been no question. She could continue looking at the files in front of her in silence, her eyes roaming over words and pictures without seeing a thing.

“How did you know?” Shelley repeated.

Zoe felt something in her throat, a lump that threatened to swallow the easy, rehearsed words. Maybe she could admit it. Maybe Shelley would understand. She had been fairly understanding so far, and kind, and nice. Maybe this was the person that Zoe could confide in.

But the number of people in the world who knew about her synesthesia, the numbers and patterns that flew in front of her eyes wherever she looked, could be counted without needing all the fingers of one hand. And a secret that had been so closely guarded—the ability since childhood, and the diagnosis since she received it as a young adult—could not be so easily given away.

“It’s just a combination of luck and experience,” Zoe said, turning the page, still without reading a word. “Once you’ve been going for as long as I have, you’ll be able to spot things a bit easier. Then you make your best guess, and hope you get it right.”

There was something in the air now, something that hung so heavily over Zoe’s neck that she was sure it must have gained visible physical manifestation. That Shelley was looking at her and seeing it, and knowing that she was not telling the whole truth.

“Just luck? That’s how you knew he would dodge to the side, instead of staying on course to where the others were waiting?”

There was hard disbelief in Shelley’s voice, a sternness and inflexibility that Zoe had heard many a time before. It was her mother’s voice, her teacher’s voice, the voices of the few friends she had had before they inevitably got weirded out and stopped calling her. It was the voice of everyone, eventually, when they stopped believing that she wasn’t a freak.

You’ve got the devil in you, child.

The moments ticked away, Zoe’s skin crawling beneath her shirt, sweat prickling from her pores. Shelley didn’t believe her. Was this the moment where she had to confess? If she continued to pretend, would it be worse? Shelley could move on, find a new partner, and that would be bad enough. Zoe was getting used to her. Or she could bring it to their superiors.

Was now the time to tell her?

The landline phone rang, startling both of them with the abrupt way it cut into the stillness, slicing through their tension like a cheese wire. Shelley scrambled to answer it, dropping her papers on the desk and rolling her chair back toward the phone.

“Hello?… Yes?”

Zoe knew from Shelley’s expression alone that it wasn’t good news.

She hung up, her face blanching pale. “There’s another body,” she said. “Sheriff will take us there. It’s not far. He’s sending a team in with us.”

Zoe felt her stomach sinking. They hadn’t gotten away with missing him last night, after all. Even though she had expected it, it hit her like a ton of bricks. Another person had lost their life, because Zoe wasn’t quick enough to save them.

“We wasted that time on Sikes,” Shelley said, her tone hollow. She looked shell-shocked, like she was going to stand there for a long time without moving.

They couldn’t afford that right now. They needed action. They needed to find the clues, stop it from happening yet again. Zoe grabbed her notepad, Styrofoam coffee cup, and bag and headed for the door. “Any details?”

“Just the location right now,” Shelley said, shaking her head, seeming to pull herself out of her daze. Then she tossed her head to the side sharply, her tone changing. “Wait a second.”

Shelley moved over to the map on the wall, grabbing a red pin and hunting the place names for a moment before pushing the pin into place.

“There?” Zoe asked, feeling confusion wash over her. “Are you sure?”

“That’s what the sheriff said,” Shelley confirmed.

Zoe took another look at the map, then turned to go, rushing out to the parking lot. This was wrong, all wrong. It was not far from their location, but still off from where she had predicted. How had she managed to mess it up?

The straight line was no longer intact—this pin swooping to the left and below the last pin, where the previous one had been to the right and below the original murder.

It wasn’t a straight line.

Was it possible that it was a curve?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Zoe let Shelley take the driver’s seat, as she sat by her side, thinking. Numbers and figures and curves. Could it really be true? Could she have been reading the signs wrong all this time?