“I’m feeling better.”
“The treatment did the trick, huh?”
That was what Daniel always called it. The treatment. He was the one person who understood.
He licked his lips. “Yeah, it definitely did the trick. Are you sure you don’t want—”
“Thanks, there’s no need,” Daniel said. “You know I can’t.”
“You’ll feel so much better if you try.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.”
“Okay,” the man in control said after a short silence. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
“How are you feeling about what we did?” Daniel asked. “Better?”
He swallowed. “We did what we had to, right?”
“It’s not our fault,” Daniel said. “It’s those damn insurance companies, right? If they’d just fund proper health care for people like us.”
“Right, right.”
“You sure you’re all right? Because yesterday you were crying, and you said we should turn ourselves in. You freaked me out, man.”
“It was just a momentary loss of control. I’m fine now.”
“Uh-huh.” Daniel met his eyes.
“I’ll, uh, talk to you later.” He shut the 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.
Photos were taped to the low wall of her small cubicle, and she removed them one by one. They were all crime scene photos from Glover’s previous murders, and Zoe wanted her improvised office to be free from Glover’s influence. O’Donnell had been right when she’d said they had to avoid any preconceived notions about the case. The evidence suggested that two men were involved in Catherine Lamb’s murder. Nothing conclusive had been found about their identities yet.
After taking down all the photos, she collected the papers that were strewn on the desk. Most were transcripts—they’d spent a lot of time interviewing people who’d known Glover, most of them coworkers. There were also various documents that pinpointed his whereabouts—three apartment rental contracts, a speeding ticket for Daniel Moore, bank account records under Daniel Moore’s name. Zoe kept wondering how Glover had managed to stitch up such a solid fake identity. Someone must have helped him.
But now was not the time to think about it. Fresh case, no assumptions.
Her phone blipped, a notification from her Instagram app. Aside from a brief two-week foray into Facebook and a barely maintained LinkedIn profile, Zoe never bothered with social media before. She did now. Andrea had an Instagram account, and since she’d moved away, Zoe had created her own account just to follow her sister. She never posted anything, had no profile picture, and her profile name was _____ZBentley. And she followed only Andrea.
Her sister told her it was creepy, though Zoe didn’t really understand why.
She tapped the notification, and the app opened, showing Andrea’s new post. She’d taken a selfie and captioned it remembering the old days of sleeping in big-sis room. Zoe blinked, recognizing the poster in the background, a close-up of Winona Ryder’s face from one of her favorite movies, Girl, Interrupted. She’d bought the poster a day after watching the movie, hanging it above her bed. Now the rest of the furniture in the room fell into focus—the familiar desk, the old bed light, the small night table. Andrea smiled in the picture, but her eyes were sad, and she seemed younger, almost a child again. Zoe felt a sudden tug of homesickness.