Agent Kravitz sighed. “What if I told you, hypothetically, that the men who ran that prison were released by us. All except the man who shot the old couple. The others were held, temporarily, by another agency. And now…” She glanced around the sandwich shop to make sure no one was listening. “Now they might hypothetically work for a private contractor who deals with the US government.”

“Is that something I could track down? If I swore out a warrant, would someone look for Jackson?”

Now Agent Kravitz leaned in close. “They work for a company called Deep River. The company does everything from patrol to detention work in Afghanistan. Jackson is possibly on Bagram Air Base.”

“But if there’s a warrant for Jackson, you could do something, right?”

“No one’s going to care about a warrant from some little town in upstate New York. And no one will look for this guy. But I’ll make you this deal: if you find him, I mean exactly where he is, I’ll do my best to get a warrant. A federal warrant. Especially if we can get him back to the US.”

She talked with me a little longer. I was so interested that I lost track of time. When I glanced at my phone, I couldn’t believe it was after noon. I wouldn’t make it home in time to see Alicia.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I tried to explain the situation to Alicia, but she wasn’t interested. When I told her I could be home in an hour and a half, she said, “Don’t bother. I told my dad I’d take him to physical therapy. You should visit your brother.”

I’d made a mess of it with Alicia. It was a familiar story with me. I took her advice and stopped in Newburgh. I made it to my brother’s room at the hospital just after sundown. The first thing I heard as I walked in the room was, “How could you disappear for a full day?” Of course, it was my mom.

I started to offer explanations, but she wouldn’t understand. And I didn’t have the energy left to fight her. I just shrugged and mumbled, “Sorry.”

My mom said, “And you managed to piss off Alicia, too. Poor girl thought you guys were going on a date or something.”

That hurt worse than my mom’s guilt trip.

At least my brother looked much better. The news was pretty good as well. He’d be coming home in a couple of days. Looking around the private room with all sorts of medical devices beeping and blinking, I knew this was another expensive visit to the hospital.

A couple of hours later, using my laptop to research Deep River, I looked up DP Lampkin’s company, Non-Metric Solutions. Unlike Deep River, about which there was very little information on the internet, Non-Metric Solutions didn’t seem shy about posting anything.