Takes place shortly after Trapdoor...
Zazen
The moon sits at full mast when the front door is thrown wide, inviting the cool air and the furious woman to sweep inside. Shoes click on the hard surface, sending echoes to the far reaches of an empty home. There are few possessions to absorb the noise of her haste and in the seconds between angry breaths, Dani Reese notes that the environment speaks to an owner preparing at any moment to flee.
Fleeing from her would be wise.
Eventually she finds him on the back deck, seated beside a reflecting pool in jeans and a dark t-shirt. Comfortable with long legs crossed before him, not quite lotus but with no less concentration. His right hand lay upon his left, both with palms up in what she vaguely recalls him once describing as the Burmese position or some such. It's difficult to concentrate when he uses the word position in any context. The orb above casts a favorable glow on his meditation, a spotlight on unnatural stillness. Barely breathing, as though the effort would disturb the grab at peace.
That's her job.
"Zen will get you killed," she tells him.
He is silent for a self-indulgent moment, gathering himself from whatever place he'd scattered his pieces. A deep exhalation to expel the demons and Crews turns his head toward the volcano in heels. The pond's calm water reflects in his eyes and she suspects what's coming, knows she cannot stop it.
"Zen is not an instrument of death but an implement of life."
Which is exactly the sort of nonsense she hates. Stepping closer, her weary bones contemplate the benefits of collapsing on stone tiles but the height advantage is too rare to dismiss. Staring down on the crown of his head, Reese constructs her lecture.
"You weren't answering your phone and we know what kind of mood that puts me in, don't we?" A collective of Mother Superiors couldn't produce so menacing a tone. "You leave your doors and windows unlocked at all hours which, as we tell our victims, is the policy of stupidity. And you'll be sitting here in New Age oblivion while they're slitting your throat."
His immunity to her tone should be bottled and sold by prescription only.
"If I'm in tune to the vastness of the universe, I'm all the more aware of the inches around me."
He speaks it so reassuringly that she knows winning the point will only be possible if she spills his blood in demonstration. Blowing out a huff, Reese tries to fathom how the man survived in prison after his enlightenment. And then recalls the quick-trigger violence he's displayed and realizes Zen is not the path. It's the façade.
"So you knew I was in your house robbing you blind of the three things you actually own, right?"
As expressions go, his has sunk into amusement and she'd like to stick a sharp implement of life through his mystical third eye. But he will answer, because he always has to answer.
"You parked your car at the far end of the drive and walked the rest of the way, tripping once because you self-medicated tonight. You looked through two windows before heading to the pool, which was odd. And then you looked under the chairs, which was stranger still."
The smile, deepening the lines neighboring his lips, adds to her discomfort. The heels-on-tile incompatibility doesn't help.
"Is that all?" She asks, then curses herself for giving him an opening.
"When you heard the coyote calling its mate, you nearly pulled your gun." His grin softens to that gentle, patient formation that coaxes victims to pour out their hearts.
"I did not," she protests, feeling the lie of it stick in a parched throat.
"You went to the front door and reached out twice to knock, but decided to just let yourself in. And yes, there was cherimoya fruit in that bowl."
In the dawn of a colossal headache, Reese wants to ask how a man facing the desert can accurately recount every move she's made. The answer will be vague, invoking the frustrating qualities of Zen and contrary to her weaving, she hasn't consumed enough alcohol tonight to make that palatable.
"That's considered trespassing, by the way." He's teasing now and the constraints of their partnership fractures when he does that.
And damn her mouth for reacting to it. "You know all this by practicing meditation?"
"The path of Zen is completion, not oblivion."
"Are you capable of speaking without relying on bullshit?"
He chuckles, rising from his place at the pond and eclipsing her unsteady frame with his shadow. There's moonlight in his hair and she thinks her own tresses can never be granted such a halo. The coyote howls, a mournful sound and the gun stays at her side this time in sympathy.
"You don't have to worry about me," he says.
"I don't waste brain cells worrying about you." Reese backpedals sharply. "I'm trying to avoid breaking in a new partner when your Zen security system fails."
"And you think you have me broken in?"
There's no suitable answer to the loaded challenge, arriving on the fuel of a tone so low it scrapes the ground. That's new. And better to be ignored than indulged.
"I think your extracir- extr… your other activities warrant a little caution." Steps back to regain whatever she's lost in this exchange, aside from multi-syllable words. "I think being locked inside isn't so bad if the lock is on your side."
Crews' expression is borrowed from the ink-stained sky and it's in these moments when he's caught between the past and vengeance that she doesn't know him at all.
"They know where I am. And locks won't keep them out."
Because Reese can't fight the logic, she browbeats the principle.
"Especially when you open the door for them and then protect their identities," she spits out, smelling blood on hardwood and shaking hands. "Does meditation help you lie so effortlessly?"
That she's wounded him pleases the part of her that is equally injured by his lack of trust. That he did, in fact, previously offer to tell Dani about her father soothes nothing. She shouldn't have to be told what Jack Reese has done. It's her responsibility to know these things but refusing knowledge is abstinence from guilt.
Crews moves away from the pond, taking the weight of his shadow with him.
"Meditation helps me remember why I sometimes have to. They're not the only ones I'm protecting."
A quickly sobering woman is left standing by the silent water, which reflects her rippled frown at his departure. But Reese doesn't hurry to follow, feels no compulsion to confront what they haven't said.
She hasn't broken him in but at least he won't lock her out.
Zazen = Seated meditation, the aim of which is to 'open the hand of thought.'