“Because I couldn’t. When you called me, it was transferred to the off-site location where I work. There’s no caller ID on those transfers. I didn’t have your number and I knew you were probably on a throw-away line.”

“So what’s the bureau brass going to say when they find out you dropped everything and hopped on a plane to save me? Didn’t you learn anything in South Dakota?”

She waved the concern away. Something about the gesture reminded me of our first meeting. It happened to have also been in a hotel room. She had driven my face down hard into the bed and then handcuffed and arrested me. It wasn’t love at first sight.

“There’s an inmate in Ely that has been on my interview list for four months,” she said. “Officially, I came to interview him.”

“You mean like he’s a terrorist? Is that what your unit does?”

“Jack, I can’t talk to you about that side of my work. But I can tell you how easy it was to find you and why I know I wasn’t the only one tracking you.”

She froze me with that word. Tracking. It conjured bad things in my imagination.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”

“When you called me today you told me you were going to Ely and I knew that had to be to interview a prisoner. So when I got concerned and decided to do something about it, I called Ely and asked if you were there and I was told you just left. I spoke to a Captain Henry there and he said your interview was put off until tomorrow morning. He said he recommended you go into town and stay at the Nevada.”

“Yeah, Captain Henry. I was dealing with him.”

“Yeah, well, I asked him why your interview was postponed and he told me that your guy, Brian Oglevy, was in lockdown because there was a threat against him.”

“What threat?”

“Hold on, I’m getting to it. The warden got an e-mail today with a message that said the AB was planning to hit Oglevy today. So as a precaution they put him in lockdown.”

“Oh, come on, they took that seriously? The Aryan Brotherhood? Don’t they threaten everybody who isn’t a member? Isn’t Oglevy a Jewish name, too?”

“They took it seriously because the e-mail came from the warden’s own secretary. Only she didn’t write it. It was written anonymously by someone who had gained access to her state prison systems account. A hacker. It could have been someone inside or someone from the outside. It didn’t matter. They took it as a legitimate warning because of the way it was delivered. They put Oglevy in lockdown, you didn’t get to see him and you were sent to spend the night here. Alone, in unfamiliar surroundings.”

“Okay, what else? This is still a stretch.”

She was beginning to convince me but I was acting skeptical to get her to tell me more.