Zero Days

Jack wakes from nightmares to the reality of Gabe’s murder. In the kitchen, she makes coffee and interacts with Hel’s husband and daughters. Hel loans her an old phone since the police have hers. Jack wants to start telling people about Gabe’s death and letting clients know that they won’t be able to complete jobs. Malik calls and asks Jack to come to the station again, though she doesn’t say why. Jack feels too sick to eat.

Hel offers to make calls for her, but Jack feels she must call Gabe’s parents and best friend, Cole Garrick, herself. When she calls Gabe’s parents, she gets their voicemail. Next, she considers how Cole and Gabe were opposites in many ways, but they met as boys and became fast friends. Both went into information technology, but Gabe ended up on the wrong side of the law, while Cole was recruited by a top firm. They shared, she says, “a genuine, bone-deep love for each other that you had to be blind to miss” (67). Cole is devastated by the news, but he offers to help Jack, and she asks him to tell their mutual friends about Gabe’s death. She tells Cole that Hel thinks it was a professional hit because of the murderer’s method, and when Cole speaks again, it “sound[s] like [she’d] punched him in the stomach” (70).