Denny Macklin didn't seem as cocky as he had the day Scott had sentenced him. Prison will do that to a man. It's hard to be cocky when another man tells you when you can shower.

"Denny, I need your help."

Denny lay on his bed. It was a metal bed with a shallow mattress; it did not have a pillow top and a soft down comforter. The ten-foot-by-ten-foot cell offered a metal toilet and sink. The walls were bare; the floor was concrete. Scott sat in a chair on the free side of the bars. The warden had given them privacy.

"Why would I help you? You put me in here."

"No, Denny, you put yourself in here. When you understand that fact, you'll be ready to live outside again."

Denny sighed, almost a cry. He spoke in a soft voice.

"You get carried away, with your own genius. How smart you are. How clever. Untouchable. Smarter than the Feds. Smarter than anyone. Once you know that, your next step is over a cliff."

"You're on the right track, Denny."

"Thanks, Judge."

"For what?"

"Putting me in here."

"I helped you?"

"You did."

"Will you help me?"

"How?"

"My two daughters were abducted by terrorists."

Denny snapped up. "What?"

"The people who plotted to blow up Cowboys Stadium-"

" 'ISIS in Dallas'-I saw that on CNN in the lounge."

"-they abducted me and demanded I release Mustafa."

"He's the most dangerous man in Dallas."

"So I've learned. I refused to release him, so they took my daughters."

"That wasn't on CNN."

"No one knows. They left a note, said they'd behead my girls if I went to the FBI."

"So you came to me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're smarter than the FBI."

"True."

"I need your help to save my daughters ... and a hundred thousand people in that stadium."

"I thought the plot was thwarted?"

"Two bad guys are still out there."

Denny stood and came to the bars. "They're going to blow up the stadium? Can they do it without Mustafa?"

"Apparently they're going to try."

"What about the FBI?"

"They can't find them."

"No surprise there."

"That's where you come in."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Find them. In something called the dark Net."

"That's the part of the Net where bad people play."

"You know it?"

"Very well. That's where I played bringing down the company."

"The FBI says that's how they communicate with ISIS in Syria. Cat ... I mean, the FBI figures ISIS is directly running this plot, talking to these two guys. But they use software to route their messages though a dozen different countries to evade tracking. If you can find their location in Dallas, we can stop them from killing all those people-and my daughters."

Denny paced the cell.

"This kind of operation would require lots of man-hours."

"It's just you, Denny."

"I'm not going anywhere, not for two years. You got a pen?"

Scott pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to Denny through the bars. He pulled off the top.

"Felt tip. Perfect."

He stepped to the white wall and drew an outline of the North American continent and a dark spot at the Dallas location; then he drew an outline of the African continent and a dark spot in Syria. He added Europe and the UK. The Atlantic Ocean lay between the continents.

"So we got bad guys in Dallas and bad guys in Syria talking to each other but running their messages all over the world before hitting the final destinations. No doubt they use end-to-end encryption. Hacking the encryption would be easy enough, but finding the message in the first place, that's the tricky part. Only way would be to trace a live feed ... be in the dark Net same time as the bad guys ... find the message ... then jump aboard and hitch a ride. And to find the bad guys in Dallas, we have to ride a message from Syria."

He drew a line from Syria to Europe to the UK to Canada and down to Dallas.

"We figure the bad guys in Dallas are taking orders from the bad guys in Syria," he said, "so they're working on Syrian time, not Dallas time."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Syria is eight hours ahead of us. It's five P.M. here but one in Syria. So one of the parties must work in the middle of the night. I don't figure the ISIS boss is missing any sleep. So that puts the Dallas party in play from say, midnight to noon our time. That's our window of opportunity."

"Smart thinking, Denny."

"Those ISIS, they're smart people, too."

"And bad people."

Denny stopped and faced Scott. "Taking kids, that's bad. I read that they use young girls for ..."

"Can you do it, Denny?"

He stared at his work on the wall a moment then nodded.

"I did it myself. Routed messages all over the world to evade the authorities. I know the software inside and out. I can do it, Judge. I can find them. But that's not the question."

"What's the question?"

"Question is, can I find them in time?"

"You can save a lot of innocent people, Denny. You can save the world. Like you did in those video games."

"Except this is real."

"This is real, Denny. Will you try?"

"I will. How will we communicate?"

Scott pulled out the girls' cell phone and handed it to Denny.

"It's their phone. My girls."

"Oh, nice-a Hannah Montana screensaver."

"They're thirteen. When can you start?"

"Let me check my daily planner." He gave Scott a look. "Right now."

"What do you need?"

"Laptop, twenty-four/seven high-speed Internet connection, and a subscription to Starbucks. I won't be sleeping for a while."

Abdul jabbar sent the message then glanced around the law library. The computer cubicles were mostly empty in the evening. He always took the computer cubicle in the corner, not to catch a bit of porn in private but to communicate with Zaheed. A message came back.

Has he gone to the FBI?

Abdul typed: Not yet. But no doubt he has told his FBI girlfriend.

A return message came quickly: He must.

Abdul typed: He will.

A return message: Proceed with the plan. Talk again tomorrow.

Abdul logged off. In five days, a hundred thousand Americans would die.

Cat walked in the back door. Her parents sat at the kitchen table. She hung her FBI jacket on the rack, unbuckled her waist pack and dropped it on the table, and then reached under her shirt, unsnapped her bra, and pulled it through the armhole of her shirt. Her father shook his head.

"I am still amazed at how women can do that."

He held out an Oreo to her. She shook him off. He frowned.

"What's wrong, my dear?" her mother said.

Cat sat down hard. Her mother patted her hand. She took an Oreo.

"The judge ... Scott ... he was short with me this morning."

"What about?"

She recounted their morning together.

"Perhaps he had a bad day."

"His day hadn't started yet."

"Perhaps he was worried about his daughters."

"It's the flu. I texted him six times today, he never responded." She stuffed a whole Oreo in her mouth and said, "It's me. It's always me. I scare men off."

Her father gestured at the waist pack. "Perhaps it's the gun."

"Perhaps it's my personality."

"Why don't you sext him?" her mother said.