The real question became: what did Knox do now? He had to keep looking for the man. But maybe what he did when he got there might change. And that meant he was now basically a traitor to his own agency. Helping the enemy. It could tank his career, ruin his retirement, perhaps cost him his freedom or maybe even his life.

For a man he’d never even met, but one whom he felt he probably knew better than many he’d called a friend.

Was John Carr worth it?

He didn’t have the answer to that. At least not yet.

Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

ABBY AND STONE had just finished breakfast. Stone had been famished while Abby barely touched her food.

He looked at her nearly full plate and said, “Remember that Danny is going to be okay.”

“For now, yeah. He never should have come back here.”

“And you’re saying you only wanted him to go because there were no decent jobs here? You’ve got plenty of money.”

“It’s not the money! He hated how I got it anyway.”

“They killed your husband, Abby. What other way was there for you to get justice? You can’t exactly imprison a company.”

“For what they did to my husband somebody should’ve gone to jail.”

She rose, poured another cup of coffee and sat down next to him.

“You know much about digging coal out of the mountains?”

“Only that I probably wouldn’t want to do it for a living.”

“My husband worked at a dog hole mine. I guess you don’t know what that is?”

“No.”

“Small-scale shops, usually only a single shift crew and a foreman. Doesn’t pay as well as the big shops and you get no health insurance. But if you’ve failed enough drug tests the dog holes tend to be more forgiving than the big outfits. Nice fallback.”

“So your husband had a drug problem too?”

“The men are beat to hell from digging in the earth on their hands and knees. Sam had three back surgeries before he was forty. Got a hand caught in a grinder machine that they use to chew up coal seams. Even after a bunch of surgeries his hand was still a mess. Out of his mind with pain and the meds the clinic gave him didn’t do anything after a while. He was snorting six hundred dollars’ worth of crushed-up oxycodone up his nose every day.”

“Can’t they get help for their addiction? Other than the methadone juice?”

“I kept begging until Sam tried. Tore my heart to see him all wormed over after a few days in withdrawal. But he could never hold it.”

“I’m sorry, Abby.”

“The mining companies don’t care so long as you pass your pee test and show up for work. They make their money and America stays warm.”

“Abby, how did your husband die?”