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  She cocked her head quizzically. “Yes, I’ve already scheduled a visit. Why?”

  “How was he the last time you saw him?”

  “He seemed fine,” she said. “He’s been a little subdued ever since he was attacked, but that’s not a surprise, is it? He’s been through a lot.”

  “He has indeed,” Nate agreed. “He had quite a shock, and the warden is worried about him.”

  She leaned forward, tense and apprehensive. “Worried? Why?”

  “He has been . . . acting somewhat unusual in his cell. He exercises continually, violently.”

  She crossed her arms. “He works out a lot and stays very fit. You know that. And it saved his life in there.”

  He nodded. “I know. I talked to the jail staff yesterday and explained that to them. They sent me this video clip.”

  He took out his phone, pulled up the clip, and handed it to her. It had been taken through the cell door. It showed an exhausted Brandon with bloody hands and feet, hurling punches and kicks into a bunched-up and bloodstained foam mattress.

  Jessica watched the video twice, then handed the phone back to him. Her face was pale and drawn.

  “They say he does that twelve hours a day, sometimes more,” Nate said. “He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He’s refused meetings with social workers and chaplains. The jail is going to order a psychological evaluation. They may medicate him if the situation doesn’t improve.”

  “I had no idea,” she said softly, not looking at him.

  “Do you want me to come with you when you meet with him tomorrow?”

  “No. I should . . . I should talk to him alone.” She was silent for a moment, looking at the table. “I had no idea,” she said again.

  CHAPTER 44

  Jessica walked into the visiting room at Tassajara and sat in her usual spot. Her heart thumped as she watched the door, waiting for Brandon to come in.

  There he was. He grinned and strolled over toward her. She looked at his hands and saw that his knuckles were crusted with scabs.

  He sat down and picked up the phone. “Hi, Mom. How’s it going?”

  “Everything is fine,” she replied. “How about you? What happened to your hands?”

  He looked at them as if noticing his injuries for the first time. “I must have scraped them while I was working out in my cell. The floor and the walls are cement, so if I do anything where I touch them at all, this can happen. I’ll try to be more careful.”

  “They say you’re working out twelve hours a day or more,” she said. She was trying to stay calm, but she could hear the tightness in her voice. “They say that you’re punching and kicking things over and over until your hands and feet bleed.”

  He rolled his eyes. “They’re exaggerating. Yes, I work out a lot. There’s not much else to do. Life in jail is very boring, especially when you’re in ad-seg.”

  “I’ve seen video of it, Brandon.”

  That seemed to startle him. He stared for a second, then gave a fake smile. “Well, if it bothers you, I’ll stop. I’ll take up yoga or something. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

  She realized that last sentence was true—he didn’t want her to worry. He was protecting her.

  “If you don’t want me to worry, then talk to me,” she pleaded. “Please.”

  “We are talking, Mom.”

  “No, we’re not, Brandon. Not really. I need you to tell me what’s actually going on, what you’re really feeling and thinking. Don’t hold back because you’re afraid the truth might hurt me.”

  He looked at her in silence for a moment, indecision in his face. Then he took a deep breath. “All right, the truth is this place does make me a little stir crazy, especially now that I’m on my own. I mean, it’s great to not have to worry about getting attacked again, and it’s nice to have a cell all to myself, but it really does get dull. There’s only so much time that I can spend sleeping or reading, so I work out a lot.” He held up his damaged knuckles. “Okay, maybe I do a little too much boxing—but that’s not really something you need to worry about.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said, sounding a little exasperated. “I’ll change my workout starting today. My hands will be all better by the next time you see me.”

  She decided to try a different tack. “I’ve also heard that you’re not willing to talk to social workers or chaplains. Why is that?”

  He scoffed. “All they want to do is have me ‘get in touch with my feelings’ about being in here and killing that guy and stuff like that. News flash: those aren’t fun topics, so I’d rather not talk about them. And my feelings are that I’d like to get out of here. But that’s never good enough for them.”

  She didn’t doubt that was true—as far as it went. But it certainly wasn’t the whole truth. “Those things would be very upsetting to most people. They’d be upsetting to me.”

  He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Yeah, but does that mean I have to talk about them all the time? Seriously, I’m fine.”

  “The warden doesn’t think so,” she said. “Did you know that they’re going to give you a psychological evaluation?”

  He nodded. “They mentioned that. I think it’s tomorrow.”

  “They’re thinking about putting you on some sort of medication too.”

  A sardonic half smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “I hope they at least give me something good.” Before Jessica could react, he added, “Just kidding. I’ll talk to the psychologist and that will hopefully be the end of this. Then I can go back to twiddling my thumbs and take up yoga while I wait for my mom and my lawyers to get me out of here.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Would it help if I sent you something to read? Maybe some of the books from your classes?”

  For the first time, she thought she got a completely genuine reaction from him. “That would be great. Send whatever they’ll let you. Oh, and it would be awesome if you could talk to my professors and see if there’s anything else I should be doing to stay caught up.”

  “For once your phone won’t distract you,” she said with a smile.

  He laughed. “That’s for sure.”

  “And if you do feel . . . any negative feelings, please tell me. Or at least tell someone.”

  “I will,” he said with what was doubtless supposed to be a sincere smile. But every fiber in her body told her he was lying.

  CHAPTER 45

  April

  Kevin sat in his chair, playing with his Fidget Cube. He was excited and wanted to immediately tell everyone what he had found, but he knew that he needed to wait until the end of the meaningless talk that always clogged the start of meetings. Nate introduced him to two women and a man with a ponytail. In his eagerness to get to the substance of the meeting, Kevin forgot to write down their names—which he therefore immediately forgot as well.

  At last, Nate turned to Kevin and said, “Kevin, please tell us what you’ve found out about Brandon Ames’s DNA profile in the Cal-DNA database.”

  Kevin nodded. “It was altered.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the younger of the two women. Kevin thought her name might be Sonia.

  “Someone accessed the database and changed the file containing Brandon’s DNA profile,” Kevin explained.

  The older woman leaned forward. “They changed it so it would match the DNA from the crime scene, right?”

  “So it would seem,” Nate said.

  “Doesn’t that mean he’s innocent?” the older woman asked.

  “It may,” Nate said. “It’s certainly a positive development, but we really can’t say more at this point.”

  “Who did it?” Sonia asked. “Do you know?”

  Kevin shook his head. “The person who made the changes logged in using an admin account, but hackers typically use stolen accounts—and if they can steal admin accounts, they’d use those, of course.”

  “Why would they want to alter Brandon’s profile?” asked the young
er woman.

  Kevin frowned. “I don’t know yet.” He didn’t like it when he wasn’t able to tie off all the loose ends in a problem and see the whole pattern. “I’m going to keep looking.”

  “Hold on a sec,” said the woman who might be Sonia. “Let’s take a step back: How do you know this?”

  “Because I accessed the Cal-DNA database and looked at the metadata for the file holding Brandon Ames’s profile,” Kevin said.

  Sonia opened her mouth, but the older woman asked, “What’s metadata?”

  “It’s the data about the data,” Kevin said. “Metadata can tell you when a file was created, when it was altered, the account used to edit it, and so on.”

  “Thank you,” the older woman said. She glanced at Sonia. “I’m sorry, Sofia. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Ah, Sonia is actually Sofia. Kevin wrote Sofia on his notepad with an arrow pointing toward her.

  “No problem, Jessica,” Sofia said. “How did you access the metadata?” she asked Kevin.

  Kevin finished writing Jessica with another arrow. “I, uh, I’d rather not say.”

  Sofia groaned and looked at Nate. “Tell me he didn’t just hack into a government database.”

  Kevin’s face grew hot. He looked down and picked up his Fidget Cube, focusing intently on it. He hated it when people judged him for breaking rules. When the rules made sense or at least didn’t get in the way of what needed to be done, he always followed them. But people kept trying to put all sorts of rules in cyberspace that made no sense at all and got in the way when he was trying to do something important—like catch criminals. At least he had Nate to help him take care of the problems that sometimes came up when he had been exploring online. Nate had handled this sort of thing several times in the past, and Kevin was sure he could handle it again if need be.

  Nate cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how he got the information, but if there are any problems, I’ll deal with them. And I’ll make clear that he was acting solely at my request, not yours. But let’s not get distracted from what’s really important here: we now have evidence—however obtained—that someone set up Brandon.”

  “Well, we may,” Sofia said. She turned to Kevin. “Could you tell when Brandon’s profile was altered?”

  Kevin looked up, relieved that the conversation had turned back to the database. “Yes. June twenty-fourth of last year.”

  “So four months before Linc Thomas was killed,” Sofia said. “Hmm. And could you tell what the profile looked like before it was altered?”

  He shook his head. “I would need to find a backup of the database from before June twenty-fourth and look at that.”

  The man with the ponytail had been staring at his phone since shortly after Kevin started talking. He now looked up. “Okay, I’ve been trying to confirm whether it’s possible to access the FBI’s CODIS database from the Cal-DNA database. In other words, if someone hacked into one, could they hack into the other?”

  “Yes,” Kevin answered.

  “And could they access any profile located in those databases?” Ponytail Man asked.

  “If they were using admin accounts in each database, then yes.”

  Ponytail Man’s eyes widened. “Wow. This has major ramifications.”

  Sofia nodded. “It does indeed, though I don’t know yet how much it affects this particular case. We’ll need to think about that.” She paused and looked at Kevin. “I’m not sure I want to know the answer to this question, but how did you find out all of that?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that either,” Kevin said to his lap.

  “If anyone needs to talk about it, I will,” Nate said. “Kevin, if you get a call about this from anyone in law enforcement, please don’t talk to them. Send them directly to me.”

  Kevin nodded, though he doubted this was a serious issue. After all, the government must have better things to do than go after someone like him.

  CHAPTER 46

  “You’ve got a guest, Ames,” the guard announced through the doorway of the cell, interrupting Brandon’s workout.

  “Social worker again? Or is it Father Vicente this time?”

  “No, a guy named Craig Connors.”

  Pastor Craig was the youth pastor at Berean Christian Fellowship, the church Brandon had attended growing up. His mom was still active there, and Brandon used to go to services with her when he was home from school.

  Brandon always associated Pastor Craig with sunlight. He was an outdoorsy man with a deep tan, and he took the high-school youth group outside whenever he could. They went on scavenger hunts, played Frisbee, barbecued, had pool parties, hiked, and did basically anything else outdoors that Pastor Craig could think of. He said it was easier to appreciate God’s creation if you were in it.

  Pastor Craig was also sunny on the inside. Even when tragedy struck, he stayed basically happy. When a girl in their group died in a car crash, Pastor Craig gave an uplifting talk about how God’s love conquers death and surrounds us even in our deepest grief. Even the girl’s sister, who had been sobbing nonstop, seemed almost happy while Pastor Craig was talking, and she gave him a big hug and thanked him when he finished.

  Brandon had liked Pastor Craig and enjoyed his positive outlook and cheery homilies. He attended the youth group regularly throughout middle and high school, and he kept in touch with Pastor Craig after he went off to college.

  Their relationship started to fade after Brandon’s father died. Pastor Craig sought Brandon out at the memorial service, hugged him, and did his best to console him. But he said the same things he had told the youth group a couple of years earlier when the girl died. It was as if he had memorized a little speech that he recited every time he had to comfort someone. The speech wasn’t insincere—Brandon got the sense that Pastor Craig really believed everything he said—but it also didn’t do much to comfort him. It was on that day that Brandon first realized that Pastor Craig was so full of sunshine that he didn’t understand what darkness felt like. And darkness was all Brandon felt right now.

  What did Pastor Craig know about being arrested and charged with a murder you didn’t commit? About having someone attack you with a shiv? About being so covered in blood that you still smelled like it after soaping and shampooing three times?

  Nothing. Less than nothing, actually. Pastor Craig wouldn’t admit that he couldn’t possibly comprehend what Brandon was going through. No, he’d put a concerned, empathetic look on and trot out some vacuous platitudes about forgiveness and how God works in all things. Pastor Craig had nothing to say to Brandon, but that wouldn’t stop him from talking. It would be painful and pointless.

  Pastor Craig was a good youth pastor who genuinely cared about kids—but Brandon wasn’t a kid anymore, and he wasn’t dealing with a kid’s problems. Talking to Pastor Craig would only make Brandon think less of the man, and he didn’t want to do that. Better to remember the old, bright days of playing air hockey and belting out catchy, simple praise songs around a campfire.

  “I don’t want to see him,” Brandon said and turned back to doing push-ups with his feet on his bed.

  “Suit yourself,” the guard said.

  The cell door clanged shut.

  CHAPTER 47

  “We found the restaurant Linc Thomas took his ‘date’ to—the one with the red plates, white tablecloths, and number eights,” Sofia’s voice announced from Nate’s phone. “The place is called Good Luck Kitchen.”

  “Excellent news,” Nate said. “Any idea whether they’re likely to be cooperative?”

  “They aren’t. My investigator stopped by there this morning and talked to the owner. He denied having ever seen Linc Thomas, but my investigator thought he was lying. And when he asked for credit-card receipts from the nights Thomas might have taken the girl there, the owner refused and ended the interview.”

  “Interesting,” Nate replied. “How did he know which nights to ask for? I didn’t think the girl gave you a date for when she went out with T
homas.”

  “She didn’t,” Sofia replied. “But we have the dates from the surveillance pictures from the Captain’s Lounge. He took her there after dinner.”

  “Got it,” Nate replied. “He seems to have taken all of them to the same bar, so maybe he took them to the same restaurant too.”

  “Exactly,” Sofia said. “If we find the same credit card used at both places on those nights, it’s a good bet that’s the one Linc’s dates were using. If we can figure out who it belongs to, we may have a good lead on who killed him. Even if we don’t, we’ll probably find some human traffickers we can offer to hand over to the DA during plea-bargain negotiations.”

  “Excellent thinking,” Nate said, impressed anew by Sofia’s legal savvy. “But we’ve got to get those receipts first.”

  “Yep. Since the restaurant isn’t playing ball, we’ll hit them with a subpoena tomorrow.”

  “Good. Did he have any better luck at the Captain’s Lounge?” Nate asked.

  “Nope. They’re getting a subpoena too.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Is there any other news?”

  “My investigator thinks he found the place where Linc’s date works. There aren’t that many strip clubs in Chinatown, and he only found one that offers massages. He’s been there a couple of times to check it out. He says there’s a girl there who looks like one of the women in the surveillance shots from the Captain’s Lounge. He’s going back tonight to make sure.”

  “I suppose you can never be too sure about these things,” Nate commented drily.

  Sofia chuckled. “By a strange coincidence, he said exactly the same thing.”

  “I hope he manages to tear his eyes away from the dancers occasionally,” Nate said. “He could be in danger. If we’re right that Brandon didn’t kill Linc Thomas, then whoever did is still out there. And we’re getting closer to them.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Jessica worked out on the elliptical machine, her arms and legs rhythmically moving on autopilot. A TV screen in front of her showed cable news, which she barely noticed. Her focus was elsewhere.