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said, without asking me what I wanted.

    “Decaf, please,” I added.
    My caffeine habit had been a help during those midnight hacking runs that lasted until dawn. But in jail, I had been weaned off it, and there wasn’t any point in re-engaging it. I had gotten used to sleeping at night, instead of in history class.
    Curiously, my body and brain now woke up several minutes before the jail lights came on, at 6:00 a.m.—something that never ceased to amaze me.

    I noticed a newspaper on the counter, and walked over to get it. There were no headlines in it about any Pentagon hacker getting released from prison, either on the front page, the back page, or anywhere in between. Philips had been right: nobody was interested in my existence at all—not the press, not any of my old teachers and counselors, and not even my family. Only the police were interested in me now.
    The glum waitress brought three cups, and still no one said anything. Some time ago, I had begun to think the main asset in the FBI agent’s fight against crime is his unwavering persistence in the face of grinding boredom. More than anything else, they simply quietly outwait criminals. I was going to ask what we were hanging around for, when Garman spoke.
    “Aster is injured again,” he said, dismayed. I wondered what he was talking about, and then noticed a picture in the newspaper of an oversized football player being carried off the field in obvious agony.
    “Yeah, he’s making a career of it,” replied Philips, mildly. I got the idea that he was more interested in keeping the conversation going than in discussing sports heroes.
    I had no real interest in organized sports, either. I had always preferred single sports, like cycling, or running, where you compete against yourself. But I knew something about football. At one point, when I was about thirteen—in my pre-hacking days—I became interested in gambling, and had spent some time puzzling over the game schedules, wondering how to predict the winners and make some money. During every boring bus ride, or every time I was waiting in line in the school cafeteria, or every time my mother started complaining, I’d just tune out, and start thinking about my gambling system.
    Though I had never made a single bet (being underage), the system had given me something to do. In jail, keeping up with sports was one way of having something to talk to the guards about. I remembered talking about Aster and his knees.
    “Isn’t that his third injury this season?” I asked Garman. For a second, both men looked a bit surprised. Garman didn’t say anything, but Philips said, “I think so.
    He’s got a weak Achilles.”
    “It’s his knee,” corrected Garman. “The same thing happened to me. I had surgery, but it never goes back to normal.”
    I hadn’t seen Garman limping, but I could believe that he had played football.
    He looked like he had spent his formative years tackling beer trucks or something.
    The two men continued talking about football, and I half listened. A few minutes later, the waitress came back, and smiling weakly now that table number six was so chatty, she asked if we had enjoyed our coffee.

    “Yes, thank you,” replied the polite undercover agents. Would we like to order any food? No, thanks. Did we want our coffee topped up? Yes, please.
    11

    I saw the waitress give a quick sideways glance at me, curious perhaps as to why the quiet young man was currently sitting with the two well-dressed adults. Then she went back to the counter.
    “Either way,” concluded Garman, still talking about Aster, “he’s not worth the money they paid—”
    He fell silent suddenly, and stared out of the window, his easy expression gone, replaced by his usual tense grimness.
    “They’re here,” he said.
    12

Chapter 4
    A man and a woman in their late thirties got out of a black Mercedes SUV, and walked into the diner. These were my new parents, but I hadn’t expected them to look so much like