RUTH WARE

Zero Days
Part 1: “Saturday, February 4: Minus Eight Days”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of
abuse and stalking and mentions a possible suicide.

Dressed in black and carrying a backpack full of lock picks and fake IDs,
Jack Cross breaks into an office. Though her clothing is professional, she is
wearing sneakers and sporting “fluorescent scarlet” hair. Jack, who
narrates the novel, asserts that Arya Stark is the best character in Game
of Thrones. She wears an earpiece through which her husband, Gabe
Medway, gives her instructions. After she plugs in one of his devices, he
can hack into the company’s security cameras to monitor Jack as well as
the security guards. Jack and Gabe work together to get her to the server
room. She must crawl above the ceiling to get in and knocks down a tile,
which sounds like a gun firing. Jack plugs in several devices that allow
Gabe to infiltrate the company’s systems. He alerts her to two guards
approaching.

Gabe and Jack have a comfortable, familiar rapport; they joke and flirt, but
they also know when to be serious. Hiding under a couch, Jack twists her
wedding ring, her “usual tic” when she feels stressed. Following Gabe’s
instructions, Jack escapes the guards and exits the building. Gabe
promises to order food so she can eat when she gets home. After they
hang up, however, Jack runs into the head of security.

Part 2: “Sunday, February 5: Minus Seven Days”

Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary
At the police station, Jack informs the officer who questions her that she
and Gabe are penetration testers, or “pen testers,” hired by companies to
break in and report vulnerabilities they find. Gabe handles the technical
side while she does the physical. A letter from Arden Alliance, the
company Jack and Gabe were testing when she got caught, reveals Jack’s
full name, Jacintha Cross, and the name of their company, Crossways
Security. Arden officials are unreachable to confirm her identity, and Gabe
is not picking up his phone, which is odd. Though it is 2:00 am, Gabe
should be awake, looking at Arden’s files.

Jack resigns herself to getting booked, but the officer goes to speak with a
colleague. Suddenly, she hears the voice of another officer, her ex-
boyfriend Jeff Leadbetter, and she is immediately nervous. Jeff chastises
Jack for not calling him, and she feels a strong urge to yell at him. He
comments on her body and fitness, looking her up and down like a
predator eyeing its prey. Jack alludes to the “stories” she could tell about
Jeff, but she had evidently told those stories before, and “it hadn’t ended
well” (31). He remarks about her being engaged when he sees her ring,
and Jack tells him she is married but kept her last name. Jeff declares that
he “wouldn’t have stood for that” (31), apparently meaning that he would
have forced Jack to change her name had they married. She believes Jeff
wants to see her “beg” for his help, and, after telling her that she “owes”
him one and physically blocking her passage through the door, Jeff lets
Jack leave. She realizes her underarms are wet from the “sweat of pure
panic” (32), and she knows that she still fears Jeff.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
By the time Jack gets to her home in South London, it’s almost 4:00 am.
She is so tired that she took a wrong turn on the way home, finding
herself on unrecognizable streets for a “surprisingly long time” (33). As
soon as she opens the front door, she knows something is wrong. The
“fetid, iron-rich” odor that greets her reminds her of a butcher shop. She
finds Gabe slumped over his desk, his throat slashed from behind,
producing a horrible, jagged hole in the front of his neck.

Feeling faint, Jack drags herself to the couch and sits in shock. She knows
she must find her phone to call the police, something she “should have
done the moment [she] walked in the door” (36). Jack locates her phone
and charger so she can call emergency services.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
For the next several hours, officers interrogate Jack. She tells them that
Gabe had no enemies because everyone loved him. As forensics officers
study the scene, a female officer helps Jack change clothes and escorts
her to a patrol car. The police want her to come to the station while her
memory is fresh. Although she would rather not, she knows she’s “already
wasted precious minutes, maybe even hours, by going into shock in the
living room” (39). Detective Constable Miles introduces himself to Jack and
thanks her for agreeing to come to the station.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
In the interview room, Miles and Detective Sergeant Habiba
Malik question Jack. Malik asks her to run through the last several hours
one more time. Jack feels too exhausted and grief-stricken to continue,
and she cannot remember what she said before; she cannot seem to
remember anything clearly. Jack explains that her phone battery died and
her car is too old to have satellite navigation or GPS. She cannot provide
evidence of her whereabouts at the time of the murder. Miles and Malik
take Jack to the home of her sister, Helena Wick.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Helena, or “Hel” as Jack calls her, ushers Jack to the guest room, where
she sleeps the entire day. When she awakens at dusk, she knows where
she is but not why until she remembers Gabe’s murder. She wonders if
she will become like her grandfather, who lived with Alzheimer’s and felt
grief for Jack’s mother every time he was told of her death.
Jack takes a shower before going to the kitchen. Hel’s husband, Roland,
hugs her, but the kindness is more than she can bear. As Jack tells Roland
and Hel what happened, the couple become alarmed by the police
officers’ questions and the amount of time Jack’s phone was off. Because
of the murderer’s method—cutting Gabe’s throat from behind—Hel thinks
it was a professional hit; as a journalist, she has written about contract
killings, and she says the method is “pretty distinctive.” Moreover, the
killer didn’t leave footprints or anything else to implicate themselves,
which suggests that they are a pro.

Jack reveals that Gabe was convicted of computer hacking when he was a
teenager. Hel and Roland agree that this likely has nothing to do with the
murder. Hel says that the only people who hire contract killers are those
involved in organized crime and spouses. Since Gabe had no obvious
connection with criminal organizations, suspicion will likely fall on Jack.
There was no sign of a break-in, Jack has no alibi, and she waited a long
time before calling the police. Jack is angry that the police might suspect
her, and she promises her sister she’ll call a lawyer if the police ask to
question her again.

Part 3: “Monday, February 6: Minus Six Days”

Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary
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). Cole tells Jack that Gabe was like a
brother to him, making her like a sister, and he encourages her to call
him, day or night.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary
Despite telling Hel that she would call a lawyer before talking to the police
again, Jack doesn’t. As Jack enters the station, she cannot help but check
for cameras and exits, like she’s on a job. Malik takes Jack to a room
where Miles is waiting. This time, Malik informs Jack of her rights,
something she did not do before. Malik points out that Jack’s timeline of
the night of Gabe’s murder includes a large block for which she has no
alibi. Given the distances from station to car and car to home, Jack should
have arrived home around 3:15 am, but she didn’t call the police until
nearly 5:00 am. Jack explains, again, that she’d taken a wrong turn on the
way home and then gone into shock when she saw Gabe’s body. Miles and
Malik begin asking questions about Gabe’s computer: if Jack noticed
anything missing or if she removed the hard drive, which was missing.
They ask if she recognizes a particular kitchen knife from a photograph,
and she does. Now, it is covered in blood. Jack asks for her lawyer.

Malik and Miles leave the room. Jack’s borrowed phone pings, and she
sees an email from Sunsmile Insurance Ltd. stating that the life insurance
policy she took out for Gabe has been confirmed. But Jack never took out
an insurance policy, and she wonders if Gabe did. When Jack clicks on the
attachment, she sees that she and Gabe took out £1 million policies on
each other. Jack realizes that someone is framing her for Gabe’s murder.
She wonders if she should tell Malik or if Malik would only see it as a
motive. She recalls, sarcastically, that “trusting the police went so well
last time” (83), referring to her reports about Jeff. Not only had the police
failed to take her seriously, but they also retaliated against her by issuing
parking tickets for places she’d never been, flagging her car as stolen,
causing her to struggle to get insurance, and more.

Jack overhears Malik and Miles, and Malik wants to arrest Jack. The fact
that there was no sign of a break-in supports Malik’s opinion. Jack uses
breathing exercises Gabe taught her to calm down. Miles returns to tell
Jack that her lawyer will be there soon and offers her something to drink.
She requests tea, hoping it will buy her time, and, when he leaves, she
runs.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary
Jack has only her wits to help her escape. She encounters a door with a
card reader and inserts a Sharpie into the frame when the door next
opens, preventing it from closing securely. Once through, she passes the
front desk, slipping into the security camera’s blind spot she noted earlier.
Jack realizes she needs clothes and tools and decides to return home.

A taxi drops Jack near her house, and she goes around the back to avoid
the police in front, jumping a fence and scaling a stone wall to get into her
backyard. She knows that someone broke into their home without leaving
clues, and that’s what she plans to do. Jack climbs to the roof and sees
that the bathroom fan is cracked and loose, and she pulls it out easily. She
reaches through and unlatches the window, letting herself in the way
Gabe’s killer must have. The smell of Gabe’s blood brings Jack to her
knees. She finds her “go bag,” adds some clothes, and goes in search of
Gabe’s key code so she can access his Bitcoin wallet, which has about
£20,000 in it. Finding the book where Gabe wrote the code, she adds it to
her bag.
Jack hears the officer outside, preparing to enter the house. She hides in a
wardrobe while the officer searches the bedroom, but as he turns to leave,
she sneezes. With only the element of surprise in her favor, she bursts out
of the wardrobe and runs down the hall, going out the same window.
Surmounting a stone wall, she feels a terrible pain in her side. She picks
the lock to access a neighbor’s garden and knocks on the door. She claims
she locked herself out of her house, asking about the security code for the
fence so she can get back in. The woman doesn’t know it but offers to let
Jack pass through her home. They chat for a moment, and Jack exits onto
the empty street.
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary
Aware that she won’t be able to use Hel’s old phone any longer because it
will be traced, Jack uses it one last time before tossing it. Calling Hel, she
explains that she ran from the police and she needs money, a sleeping
bag, warm clothes, and bleach for her hair. Hel proposes that they meet in
the bathroom at a shopping center after she picks up the girls from
school.
Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary
Jack arrives at the shopping center on foot, having purchased a baseball
cap to cover her very recognizable hair. She wonders if she’s made a
mistake in running from the police, but, without Gabe, she doesn’t really
care what happens to her. She only wants the police to find who killed
him, and they are wasting time pursuing her. She feels responsible for
finding the killer. She thinks of how the police failed her once, and now
they seem to be failing her again.

Jack wonders if Gabe did, in fact, buy the insurance policy. Maybe he
sensed something and did it to protect her. He had been acting strangely
lately: zoning out, being deliberately vague, and claiming he was stressed
from work when work never made him feel this way. Now, Jack worries
that something Gabe might have done to protect her will trap her.

Realizing that she is bleeding from the wound she sustained climbing the
wall, she goes to get first aid supplies. She considers how good at
shoplifting she used to be and how the guard who finally caught her told
her about security jobs that would make use of her talents. Jack promised
him that she’d never shoplift again, but now she must break that promise.
She steals a box of dressings and finds the bathroom to assess her injury.
She realizes she was caught on a metal spike in the wall outside her
neighbor’s garden and wishes she’d stolen antiseptic too.

Hel and the girls arrive, and Hel hands over everything Jack requested
along with a burner phone. Donning a different shirt and hat, Jack leaves
by the bathroom’s other exit, hopeful that she’ll look like another person
to anyone monitoring the cameras.
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary
Jack realizes that she is a fugitive and needs to get out of London. First,
though, she needs to change her hair so that she isn’t instantly
recognizable. She finds a hostel, but the girl at the front desk says they
don’t take cash. Jack is shocked when a stranger pays for her room. He is
Lucius Doyle, an American, and he simply asks her to help the next person
she can. Jack uses a fake name and address to sign in, and when she
looks up, Lucius is gone.
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary
Jack bleaches her hair in the hostel’s bathroom. Her wound is really
hurting. In the lobby, she opens her laptop to email Hel—using a secure
personal network Gabe set up—and she sees a new message from Jeff. He
taunts her, calling her a “naughty girl” and telling her that she’s in big
trouble. He advises her to turn herself in and suggests that she killed
Gabe because he was hitting her or cheating on her. Furious, Jack sends a
scathing reply, addressing half to Jeff and half to his colleagues who might
have put him up to writing. She says that he treated her “like shit” for
80% of time they dated and then abused and stalked her for six months
after she ended it. Then, when she reported this to the police, they
ignored it. Further, she explains how she got into her house—via the
broken bathroom fan—and argues that the police could have figured that
out if they were not so busy trying to pin the murder on her.

As Jack is writing an email to Hel, she thinks about Cole. He knows even
more than Gabe did about mobile phone security and might be able to
figure out how to keep in touch with Hel. She is startled when Lucius
speaks to her again, and she explains that she is trying to figure out how
to word a difficult email. He suggests that, for big things, speaking to
someone in person is best. Jack mulls this over and decides to find Cole
the next day.

Part 4: “Tuesday, February 7: Minus Five Days”

Part 4, Chapter 1 Summary
When Jack awakens, she isn’t sure where she is. Her abdominal injury
throbs, her head aches, and she recalls terrible nightmares. She tries to
wait out the “sickish” feeling in bed but soon realizes that it isn’t going
away. She must take her backpack because she’s not sure she’ll be
returning to the hostel after going to see Cole. Jack deposits her room
keys on the hostel’s counter and leaves.

Jack is alert to security cameras everywhere she walks, hoping the police
don’t have facial recognition technology. She arrives at Cole’s workplace,
Cerberus Security. He suggests they walk to a nearby church to talk. Once
inside, Jack realizes Cole is crying and wonders why she can’t and hasn’t
since she found Gabe’s body. Cole is concerned by Jack’s appearance, and
she understands because she was “shocked” by her reflection in the
hostel’s bathroom mirror that morning. It is only three days since Gabe’s
death, but she looks gaunt and tired.
Jack tells Cole that she’s on the run from the police and they think she
killed Gabe. Cole is shocked. She explains about the insurance policy and
expresses her uncertainty, wondering if Gabe bought it because he felt he
might be in danger or if she’s being framed. She tells Cole the police have
her cell phone and most of Gabe’s devices and that a hard drive is missing
from their house. Cole helps her to set up her burner phone to be
untraceable by the police.

Cole offers Jack the use of his girlfriend’s cabin outside the city. He is
worried, though, that she wants to pursue Gabe’s killer. She explains that
it is the only reason she has to live now that Gabe and their future
together are gone. She hugs Cole, wishing the tears would come. Jack
won’t let herself think too far ahead because it is overwhelming, so she
focuses on trying to take one step at a time.
Part 4, Chapter 2 Summary
Now at the train station, Jack feels vulnerable even though Cole helped
her cut her hair and gave her his sunglasses and a coat his girlfriend left
in his office. She fixes her fleece around her middle to look like she is
pregnant and pretends to be checking her phone as she passes security
cameras. When she boards the train, a young man gives his seat to her,
an apparently pregnant woman, and Jack feels a pang of guilt.

Jack takes a cab to Cole’s cabin. She can only provide a small tip and feels
guilty about this too. When the driver wishes her good luck with her baby,
she feels even more contrite. Walking along the beach, Jack is surprised
by her lack of stamina; she is exhausted, and her wound is throbbing
painfully. She begins to doubt her ability go on, and she considers
allowing the waves to carry her out to sea. However, “something steely”
inside her urges her to continue. As fog rolls in, Jack finds the cabin and is
grateful to be safe for now.
Part 4, Chapter 3 Summary
The electricity is out, so Jack lights oil lamps and candles. There’s no heat,
but the stove runs on gas, so she makes pasta with sauce that she finds in
the kitchen. She gets a message from Hel, who says she is also using a
burner phone now, on Cole’s advice. Jack tells Hel that she’s safe, and Hel
asks her what she’s going to do next. In one message, Hel uses an
“uncharacteristic smiley” emoji, but Jack rationalizes it by considering the
abnormal situation.

Hel asks if Jack has heard from Jeff, and when Jack asks why Hel would
bring him up, Hel explains that maybe someone killed Gabe to hurt Jack.
Hel can think of only one person who would be “sick enough” to do that.
Jack cannot imagine that Jeff would go to such lengths to punish her for a
relationship that ended years ago. Further, he was at the police station at
the time Gabe was murdered, giving him an alibi.

Realizing her phone’s battery has only 15% remaining, Jack ends the
conversation. She doesn’t think Jeff is a murderer, but she remembers his
threats when she broke it off. He’d said, “I’ll make you regret this, you
stupid cunt. If I can’t have you, no one can” (169). Jack realizes that she’s
not sure of much these days.

Part 5: “Wednesday, February 8: Minus Four Days”

Part 5, Chapter 1 Summary
Jack wakes in the cold cabin, and every part of her hurts. She gets up to
use the bathroom, an outhouse that is even colder than the cabin, and
considers calling Sunsmile Insurance to get information about Gabe’s
policy. Her phone’s battery, though, is down to 8%. She tries to get the
electricity to work but cannot. Jack messages Cole to ask for advice on the
electricity, but she has to switch off her phone soon because of her limited
battery.

Jack checks the phone every half hour to see if Cole has responded, but—
a few hours later—there is still nothing, and her battery is dead. Sitting on
the front porch, reading a book she found, Jack hears a car approaching.
She ducks inside, grabs her bag, and runs behind the cabin into the sand
dunes. She hides for some time, grateful for the coat that blends in with
the sand, until she hears someone whistling a familiar tune. Jack
recognizes the opening notes of the song she and Gabe first danced to at
their wedding, and she knows it must be Cole. He had messaged her, but
when she didn’t respond, he panicked and jumped in the car. He can’t get
the electricity to work, but he brought a battery pack so Jack can charge
her phone.

Jack expresses her concern that Cole should not have come as he could
have been followed. He worries about her tired appearance and asks if
she’s been eating. She had the pasta last night and a cereal bar for
breakfast, but the pasta she tried to eat for lunch made her sick.

Cole cooks a dinner with food he brought while Jack sips wine. After
dinner, Cole says he probably shouldn’t drive, and Jack tells him to stay
there for the night. Jack tells Cole about Hel’s theory that Jeff killed Gabe,
and Cole thinks Hel could be right. Jack says this isn’t something Jeff
would do, despite being a horrible person, because it’s too complex: hiring
a killer, setting up the insurance policy to frame Jack, and now the
pretense of innocence. She looks at the insurance paperwork and sees
that Gabe’s personal information is correct. Jeff couldn’t have known
Gabe’s exact height and weight or his middle name. Cole embraces Jack
and tells her it will all be okay, but she knows this isn’t a promise he can
keep.

Cole suddenly kisses Jack, and she thinks at first that it is a show of
compassion, accidentally landing on her mouth rather than her forehead.
It becomes clear that this kiss is neither brotherly nor accidental. For a
moment, she kisses him back before something within her revolts. She
wants to be held and comforted, yes, but by Gabe and not Cole. She
pushes Cole away and tries to brush the kiss off as a result of their
drunkenness and grief. He unrolls her sleeping bag to go to sleep on the
floor, and Jack tries to open the sleeper sofa, but the metal frame bumps
her wound. The pain is so bad, she cannot speak. Blood starts to trickle
down her torso, and she lets Cole remove the dressing and clean the
wound. She needs stitches and antibiotics, but she cannot get those
without going to a hospital and revealing her identity.

Jack reiterates to Cole that she cannot do anything until she finds out who
killed Gabe, and she makes a silent plan to break into Sunsmile’s offices.
She doesn’t have Gabe’s hacking skills, but she is good at getting into
places she isn’t supposed to be. She almost tells Cole her plan but holds
back; she isn’t sure why. He redresses the wound, and she feels a little
better. Finally, they go to sleep, he on the floor and she on the sofa.

Part 6: “Thursday, February 9: Minus Three Days”

Part 6, Chapter 1 Summary
Jack is woken by something, and she listens carefully to figure out what.
Gabe always told her that the reason she is so good at her job is that she
“notice[s] stuff” other people don’t. She hears it again, a police radio, and
she looks outside to see Malik, waiting for reinforcements. Jack wrenches
her sleeping bag out from under Cole, packing her belongings as fast as
she can. She goes out a back window just as reinforcements arrive.
Running through the darkness, she hears Malik on a loudspeaker, telling
her that they know she’s innocent and that she should help them catch
the real killer. Half a dozen officers pursue Jack across the dunes. She
finds a boarded-up concession stand and figures out the key code based
on which buttons feel smoothest. Hearing Malik and Jeff just outside, Jack
hopes they won’t figure out how to get in. They don’t, and after they
leave, she quietly exits the building and walks into the darkness.
Part 6, Chapter 2 Summary
Jack finds a diner. She researches Sunsmile on her laptop using the diner’s
Wi-Fi. She finds a photo of someone’s security badge as well as
information about a woman who works at Sunsmile but is home with a
sick child. She makes herself a relatively convincing badge using this
woman, Keeley Winston’s, identity. Using a fake social media account, she
gets Keeley’s phone number from a friend.

Jack changes clothes and heads toward Sunsmile’s offices. She gets a
message from Hel, who is elated to hear that Jack is following a lead and
asks if she is at the insurance company now. Jack confirms her location,
despite Hel’s use of “an uncharacteristic number of exclamation marks”
(206). She bluffs her way through security and heads to the elevators,
which are key card protected. Jack gets a sling out of her bag and puts it
on her right arm, carrying the bag in her left. She tries the elevators
again, and a man offers to use his card for her, just as she hoped.
Jack makes her way to Keeley’s desk and dials Keeley’s home number.
She pretends to be “Kate” from IT, needing access to Keeley’s computer.
When Jack suggests Keeley might have to come to the office to log in,
Keeley jumps at the chance to give her login credentials and avoid the
trip. Jack logs in and finds Gabe’s policy, although the phone number
attached to the record isn’t his. Then, she spots a voice file of a phone call
from three days before Gabe was killed, and she plays it. The more she
listens, the surer she is that it is neither Gabe nor Jeff. Replaying the call,
Jack realizes who the voice is. It is Cole.
Part 6, Chapter 3 Summary
In the lobby, Jack sees a group of security guards huddled around a
screen, and someone is questioning the guard who buzzed her through.
Just then, a patrol car pulls up. Jack turns back into the building and ducks
into an office. Hearing guards outside, she pretends to be angry on the
phone. When a guard sticks his head in, she is purposely rude and then
turns in her chair and yells at the receiver. She hopes this treatment will
convince him that she’s supposed to be there, and when she turns back,
he’s gone. Back in the hallway, Jack runs until she reaches an emergency
door attached to the fire alarm. She breaks the glass and pushes the
emergency button. The alarm sounds. People begin rushing outside from
every door and Jack walks out, blending in with the crowd.
Part 6, Chapter 4 Summary
Jack runs to the local train station, in terrible pain now, and tries to figure
out how the police found her. Suddenly, she sees officers at the station
entrance and makes her way down the platform, trying to figure out what
to do. She puts on her hoodie in hopes it will disguise her, but an officer
calls after her when she begins to jog to a waiting train. She hops on at
the last moment and sees the officer looking around and talking on his
radio just outside.
Part 6, Chapter 5 Summary
As the train pulls away, Jack is relieved, but then she feels blood trickling
from her wound. Finding the bathroom, she peels away the dressing and
sees that the gash looks much worse than it did yesterday. She cleans
and redresses it, feeling the heat through layers of gauze. Jack has a new
message from Hel, but something feels off: Jack considers the emojis Hel
used yesterday even though she never uses emojis and how Cole had
been the one to supposedly tell Hel about how to contact Jack safely. She
realizes she was probably messaging Cole all along. She texts back,
asking for the name of the big blue teddy bear Hel loved as a child,
something Hel would never forget. This person claims not to remember,
confirming it isn’t Hel. Jack texts back that she knows it’s Cole and that he
took out the insurance policy.

She calls the number she got from the Sunsmile database, and Cole
answers. Cole says he doesn’t know who killed Gabe, but he knows why
they did it. He asks if she knows what a “zero-day exploit” is, and she
describes it as “a way to hack into a device […] that the software
developer doesn’t know about—hence the zero days. That’s how long the
developer has had to fix it” (234). These exploits can be worth a fortune if
they provide access to users’ personal information, and Cole says that
Gabe found a big one. He went to Cole for advice, and Cole says he told
Gabe to report it to the software developer. But Gabe sold it on the dark
web instead. Evidently, the buyer didn’t feel like paying, so they murdered
Gabe and stole his hard drive.
Part 6, Chapter 6 Summary
When she hangs up with Cole, Jack turns to see a woman who has come
out of the bathroom. There’s no telling how much she overheard, but it
was enough to make someone curious. Jack tries to Google Gabe’s murder
and finds a BBC article from just hours earlier with her picture and
description. Seeing everything in print sends Jack into a tailspin, and she
wonders if the woman is already calling the police to report her.

Jack considers her options: Get off at the next stop, which is a big one and
likely to have police; wait for the stop after that, a much smaller stop that
would be safer; or turn herself in. Suddenly, the train stops at a red signal.
Jack almost jumps to the ground, but the train begins to move again. She
jumps anyway.
Part 6, Chapter 7 Summary
When she lands, the pain in Jack’s side is “screaming.” She calls Hel, who
calls her back on a new burner phone. Hel hasn’t heard from Cole, and
Jack says not to trust him if he gets in touch. Jack tells Hel about the
insurance policy and her conversation with Cole. Feverish and exhausted,
Jack isn’t thinking clearly.

Hel accepts that Gabe found a security flaw and went to Cole for advice.
However, Hel cannot believe that Gabe tried to sell his findings. Jack
agrees. Hel also wonders why Cole took out an insurance policy on Gabe
unless he was sure Gabe was in danger. Jack and Hel surmise that Cole
perhaps created the security flaw in the first place. The criminals who paid
him to do it then killed Gabe when he found it and refused to keep quiet.
Feeling sick, Jack hangs up because her phone battery is down to 15% and
she has no way to charge it.

Part 7: “Friday, February 10: Minus Two Days”

Part 7, Chapter 1 Summary
Jack awakens in the cold, the ground frosted around her, and she
immediately vomits. Cold, nauseated, and weak, she feels the crusty,
sodden dressing on her gash. Feverish from the infection, she
understands she has another day or two before she is too sick to run,
perhaps too sick to live, and she does not want to die before finding
Gabe’s killer. Thinking over Cole’s story, she decides that there must be a
reason he wanted to frame her. Perhaps he worried she would eventually
find a backup of Gabe’s discovery. Jail would prevent her from finding it,
plus her conviction would deflect police attention away from him. The only
way she can find Gabe’s backup is to use one of his devices—which are all
in police custody.
Part 7, Chapter 2 Summary
Jack turns on her nearly dead phone, swallows her pride, and dials Jeff
Leadbetter, the only person who can help her. She will log in to Gabe’s
cloud account and ask Jeff to give her the authentication code that will
appear on Gabe’s phone. Jeff toys with her. She knows he wants her to
beg, so she does, for Gabe. Jeff agrees to give her the code, but only in
person. Jack doesn’t trust him, so she chooses a meeting place with
witnesses and many routes of escape. Jeff agrees and tells Jack that she
didn’t always used to be so suspicious. Jack agrees to a meeting time that
night, hangs up, and vomits again.
Part 7, Chapter 3 Summary
Jack thinks over Jeff’s words, and she knows he’s right. She was not
always like this. This truth takes her back to when she met Jeff. She was
only 20, and he arrested her while she was pen testing a government
building in North London. Once he verified her identity, he was fascinated
by her work. He asked her out to discuss the security of the police station.
They ended up kissing. His “protectiveness” appeared soon after. Jeff
became more and more controlling—monitoring what Jack wore and who
she spent time with, even intercepting her paychecks—and by the time
she realized who he really was, she felt trapped. When Jeff suggested she
quit her job and do something safer, Jack chose her work over him. She
was 22, nearly six years ago.

Jack walks to the train station to get back to London. She stops to buy a
hot sandwich from a food truck, but the woman refuses her money and
says something about helping the homeless. Again, Jack feels guilty about
accepting this kindness. Her train ticket uses up the last of her money.
When Jack gets on the train, a kindly older woman expresses concern over
her pallor and shivering. Jack tries to get up, but slinging her pack on
nearly causes her to pass out. The woman offers help, but Jack snaps at
her. Ashamed for yelling at this well-meaning stranger, Jack wonders who
she is becoming.
Part 7, Chapter 4 Summary
Waiting in a store overlooking Piccadilly Circus, Jack reflects that the
statue is where she met Gabe for one of their first dates. She thought it
was the Greek god of love, Eros, but Gabe explained that it was Eros’s
brother, Anteros, the god of requited love. Jack remembers this his
correction didn’t strike her as arrogant mansplaining but rather as the
enthusiasm of someone who enjoys sharing interesting information. After
Jeff, Jack was too wounded to consider love again; after just a few weeks
with Gabe, though, Jack began to feel it was possible. She saw the statue
as a good sign for their relationship.

Earlier, Jack called Hel to explain her plan. Hel said Jeff will probably just
arrest her when they meet. They decided Hel would dress like Jack and go
to the meeting wearing a wire. If Jeff gave her the code, Jack would hear
it. In either case, Jack would be safe from arrest. Now, she hears
Jeff’s voice and sees his handcuffs. He arrests Hel for aiding and abetting
a fugitive. Jack has one option left to access Gabe’s files: Pay someone in
Bitcoin to switch Gabe’s number with that of another phone.

Part 8: “Saturday, February 11: Minus One Day”

Part 8, Chapter 1 Summary
Jack hitchhikes to the highway service station where she is supposed to
meet Madrox, the hacker with whom she made a deal: £20,000 of Bitcoin
for a burner phone with Gabe’s number. As they pull into the parking lot,
the driver who picked her up, Bill Watts, says that he knows who she is.
Jack feels deathly ill. Her entire torso hurts, and now she feels as though
she might pass out. Bill assures her that he won’t turn her in for two
reasons: He can tell she isn’t a murderer, and he doesn’t trust the police
because he served time in his youth for something he didn’t do. Bill asks
how she will get home. He tells her to tell other drivers at the station that
she’s his niece, and one of them will help her. Jack is overwhelmed by his
kindness.

She steps out of the truck and crosses the lot. The hooded man waiting for
her is young, and he looks as nervous as Jack feels. Jack makes him laugh,
trying to create rapport. She doesn’t want to pay him until she is sure that
the phone works. Madrox calls his partner and tells him to route Gabe’s
number to the burner phone in his hand. Jack dials Gabe’s number, and
the burner rings. In return, she transfers the Bitcoin to Madrox’s account,
aware that this is her last hope, as the phone will now lead the police to
her.

Madrox tells Jack that she transferred less than they agreed upon. She
checked the exchange rate the day before, when they made the deal, but
the value of Bitcoin fluctuates, and it isn’t worth as much today. Madrox
demands the rest of the money or else the deal is off. Jack explains that
she has nothing else. He sees her diamond engagement ring. She doesn’t
want to give it to him, but she hands it over. Madrox gives her the phone,
and she sinks to her knees in the rain.
Part 8, Chapter 2 Summary
Jack goes to the station bathroom and looks at her wound. Angry red
streaks lead away from it in all directions. All she can do is redress it. She
barely recognizes herself in the mirror and laments the loss of her ring,
“the last tangible piece of [Gabe] [she] had” (292). She buys food with her
last few pounds and opens her laptop. She triggers the two-factor
authentication and awaits the code. The code arrives, Jack punches it in,
and Gabe’s backup files appear.
Part 8, Chapter 3 Summary
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of files, and Jack scrolls until she
finds a folder labeled “Unsubmitted.” In it, she sees a document that
references a problem with the code in Cerberus’s newest app, a note to
speak with Cole about it, and a reminder to report it to Cerberus the
following week. This app gives parents access to their children’s contacts,
browsing history, and location, and a backdoor in this code would grant
someone access to this information. Suddenly, the swapped phone rings.
Knowing it has already transmitted her location, Jack answers. It takes her
a moment, but she recognizes the voice on the other end as Malik’s.
Part 8, Chapter 4 Summary
Jack identifies herself and reflects on everything Malik got right, despite
the one big thing she got wrong: Jack’s guilt. Malik speaks
sympathetically, but Jack knows it’s a strategy. Jack tells Malik about
Cole’s part in Gabe’s murder and insists he be arrested immediately. She
knows she cannot give herself up and risk Malik misunderstanding the
significance of what she found. Jack must make it public to guarantee the
public knows and she is exonerated.

Quickly, Jack crosses the overpass to the service station on the other side
of the highway as a half dozen police cars arrive at the station she just
left. Jack finds a driver, Mike Rake, who knows Bill. When she claims to be
Bill’s niece as instructed, he offers her a ride. She explains that her
partner recently died, and Mike says he was afraid that she was being
abused. She is shocked to think she looks like a battered woman. Jack falls
asleep. Mike wakes her when they are near her stop. She struggles to
express her gratitude, and he watches with obvious concern as she gets
down and walks away. Jack heads toward Cole’s flat. It is midnight, and
she is beyond exhausted, but this is the last hurdle.

Part 9: “Sunday, February 12: Zero Days”

Part 9, Chapter 1 Summary
Jack approaches Cole’s flat, weak and shaking. She marvels that she and
Gabe never considered how different Cole’s luxury accommodations are
from their “modest” home. Before entering Cole’s building, Jack pulls out
her laptop, sets up a hotspot with her old phone, and logs into Gabe’s
social media accounts. She then posts that an “unpatched vulnerability”
exists in Cerberus’s app and that she believes Gabe was murdered to
keep it quiet. She begs users to demand a fix immediately.
Part 9, Chapter 2 Summary
Jack buzzes someone else’s apartment, claiming to have a pizza for Cole
Garrick, and the woman angrily lets her in. Pushing into the building, Jack
is energized, feeling once again like “predator, not prey” (318). She takes
the fire escape and, on the roof, sees Cole’s balcony below, a 10- or 12-
foot drop. She creates a makeshift rope with her sleeping bag and extra
clothing. It’s too difficult for her to grip the sleeping bag, though, and she
falls hard onto the balcony. The pain from her wound is so excruciating
that she cannot even cry out. She puts the burner phone in her pocket,
camera facing out. Jack forces open the balcony door, and she’s in.
Part 9, Chapter 3 Summary
Jack goes to Cole’s bedroom. It takes a moment for him to realize who she
is. He pulls a gun. She urges him to check his phone, and he sees the
screen full of notifications. Cole tells her that they are both going to be
killed because of what she did, but Jack does not care. She wants Cole to
admit what he did to Gabe and to be sorry for it. He spits out an apology,
but it isn’t sincere. He blames Gabe for nosing around where he shouldn’t
have and for being a “fucking puritanical shit” who would have refused a
payoff to keep quiet (326). Cole is packing a bag, but Jack tells him to just
turn himself in.

He leaves, running down the stairs, and Jack tries to keep up. As Cole gets
to the ground floor, Jack hears sirens. When she exits the building, she
asks if they arrested him, but she is ordered to the ground. As Jack
reaches for the phone in her pocket, an officer hits her with the baton. She
passes out from the pain.

Part 10: “Monday, February 13: Day One”

Part 10, Chapter 1 Summary
Jake wakes, and the pain in her side is less than it was. She’s in a hospital
bed with Hel in a chair next to her. There are no police, and Jack does not
seem to be under arrest. Hel doesn’t know what happened to Cole. Jack
slept for more than a day and had surgery to remove a ruptured spleen.
Hel says that Jack is all she has, but Jack knows it isn’t true for Hel, though
it is for her.

Malik enters and tells them Cole has been arrested thanks to Jack’s
livestream of his confession. Jack is no longer a suspect in Gabe’s murder.
Cole is likely to go to prison. Jack’s tears finally come.

A nurse enters offering food, but Jack still feels nauseated. He implores
her, asking if she could handle a little, “for the sake of the baby” (340).
When she tells him she’s not pregnant, he checks her chart and confirms
that she is. The hospital workers learned of her pregnancy during an
examination prior to surgery and assumed she knew. Jack realizes she
must be six or seven weeks along. She recalls the nausea and exhaustion
that she attributed to her wound, realizing it was morning sickness.
Thrilled by the news, she is ready to eat.

Epilogue Summary: “Monday, February 12: Day Three Hundred

and Sixty-Five”
Inside the police station, Jack needs a disguise. She finds a uniform and
puts it on. When she runs into an officer, she introduces herself with a
fake name. She says she is from a different precinct and is lost, so he
walks her to the suite she requests, buzzing her through a security door.
Just then, Gabe’s mother, Verity, calls to report that Jack’s daughter,
Gabby, is sick. Jack says she’s on her way and informs the officer in the
suite that she’s doing a pen test set up by Malik. Just then, Malik walks in,
shocked to see Jack wearing a police uniform, and she is disappointed by
the security vulnerabilities Jack uncovered.

Walking Jack outside, Malik tells her that Cole died while awaiting trial. He
appears to have hanged himself, but she is not certain because he was in
protective custody. She says, “He was found hanging. How you interpret
that…” (350). Malik says he gave testimony before he died, and every
lead is being pursued. Jack recalls that two bodies were fished out of the
Thames River the summer before, and their DNA matched traces found at
her flat. Jack wanted Cole to stand trial, as she thinks of him as the person
responsible for Gabe’s death. Malik tells Jack that Jeff was found guilty of
gross misconduct. He was fired, and two of his coworkers were
reprimanded for their behavior toward Jack when she reported his abuse.

On the car ride home, Jack hears the song she and Gabe first danced to at
their wedding. She thinks of the wedding but also of Cole, who whistled
that song as she hid in the dunes. Jack cries, returning her thoughts to
Gabe. She pulls up to her house and hears their daughter wailing. She is
home and feels that this is where she wants to be.