“You okay, Captain?” Jessie asked. “You look like you ran here.”

“When you hear that your forensic profiler, who is supposed to be hidden away in witness protection, is down the hall, you get a little giddy-up in your step. Care to tell me what’s so important that I had to come to this godforsaken corner of the station, where there’s more asbestos than oxygen in the air?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jessie saw Murph shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other and smiled to herself. He didn’t yet know of Decker’s gift for overstatement.

“Absolutely sir. But before I do, can I ask how things are going with the hunt for…everyone?”

Decker sighed heavily. For a second it looked like he might not respond. But finally he settled into the chair across from her and spoke.

“Not great, actually,” he admitted. “You know we caught one NRD escapee, Jackson, the first day. We caught another one, Gimbel, a couple of days after that. But since then, despite dozens of credible leads, we’ve had no luck finding the other two guys, nor Crutchfield and Cortez.”

“Do you think they’re all together?” Jessie asked, already aware that the Marshals Service didn’t.

“No. We’ve seen surveillance footage of Stokes and De La Rosa near the hospital when they first broke out and they were each on their own. We haven’t found any footage of Crutchfield and Cortez but the working theory is that they’re still together.”

“Hmm,” Jessie said. “If only you had some kind of human resource who was familiar with both men and could offer insight into their likely behavioral patterns.”

The sarcasm, fully intended, dripped from her lips. Decker barely blinked.

“And if only that resource wasn’t the target of the very men she was familiar with, we might take advantage of that knowledge,” he replied.

They stared at each other silently for a moment, neither inclined to concede their point. Jessie finally relented, deciding that alienating the man whose authorization she needed wasn’t advisable.

“What about Xander Thurman? Any more luck with him?”

“None. He’s kept off the radar completely.”

“Even with all his injuries?”

“We’ve been monitoring every hospital, urgent care center, and free clinic. We even sent alerts to veterinarians. There’s been nothing.”

“Then that means one of two things,” Jessie concluded. “Either he has access to someone else with medical training, or someone at one of these places is lying, maybe under threat. There is no way he could have recovered from those injuries without help. It’s not possible.”

“I’m aware of that, Ms. Hunt. But this is the information we have right now.”

“What if you had more?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Decker asked.

“I know how he operates, just like I know how Crutchfield does. Crimes that might look unremarkable to most detectives could have markers I could identify with one of them. If I could check out recent case files and investigate the more promising leads, maybe we could catch a break.”