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even when he wasn’t hungry. Now his mouth watered and his stomach grumbled, as he inhaled the aromas of baked goods and fresh coffee. He bit into the apple-peanut-butter muffin, tasting sweet bits of apple, salty nuttiness, and brown-sugar crumble. As he wondered how apples and peanuts could blend to taste so damn good, Ragno’s voice grounded him. “Have you selected a favorite?”
    He chuckled as he watched the sisters descend the stairs. Spring now wore a pair of blue jeans, but otherwise, her outfit remained the same.
    Skye went behind the counter, while Spring went into the room with the cake. Good , he thought. With the sisters separated, he could talk to Skye without interruption. Before he could stand, three customers walked into the coffee shop and headed to the counter, where Skye had joined Sarah. Dammit. His opportunity to talk to her alone had, for the moment, disappeared.
    “Ragno,” he said, keeping his voice low as he watched Skye talk to the customers and waited for the customers to leave the counter. “Has there been any contact between the daughters and Barrows’ lawyer?”
    “None,” Ragno said, “but she called Black Raven yesterday evening to see if we had managed to locate Skye and Spring.”
    Sebastian had been present at the interview of Jennifer Root, the lawyer for Barrows. They had interviewed her within the first twenty-four hours of her client’s jailbreak, at her office. She had a reputation as a hard-ass lawyer, who’d made a name by pursuing, and winning, high-stakes copyright infringement actions on behalf of BY Technologies, Barrows’ company. Root also had been Barrows’ defense attorney, when he had pleaded guilty. She had called in criminal defense experts, but she’d taken the lead with the government in negotiations for the plea deal.
    In the interview, Root had claimed to be unaware of Barrows’ escape. News of the escape hadn’t hit the airwaves, and the only way she would have figured it out was from someone with the government, Black Raven, or Barrows himself. She had seemed believable.
    Root had assured the marshals and Sebastian she hadn’t heard from her client since the conviction, but she did say she was worried about Barrows’ daughters. Root couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell them where the two women were. She professed to have no idea, shrugging off the secrecy as due to Barrows’ paranoia. The interview had left Sebastian unsettled, for reasons he couldn’t explain. He’d requested Ragno start a Black Raven-style profile on her, and Ragno’s team of analysts was now on the task.
    “Minero is holding for you,” Ragno said, interrupting his thoughts just as Skye handed a cup of coffee to the last person in the line. He had to take the call. Anthony Minero was the lead U.S. Marshal in charge of the manhunt. So far, the marshals thought Sebastian’s trip to Covington was a waste of time. That’s why Sebastian didn’t have a marshal with him. From Sebastian’s perspective, the biggest mistake the marshals had made so far was not immediately grasping how difficult it was going to be to find Barrows. It was also why the marshals had dragged their heels on putting together a cyber-felon-manhunt team of FBI agents and marshals.
    Despite what Minero thought, Sebastian’s gut told him Barrows’ daughters were worth pursuing, and that’s why he was sitting in their coffee house eating muffins. There was one giant, nagging problem with trusting his gut, and Sebastian knew it. In the past year, his gut instincts hadn’t always been accurate, and right now, even though he was following his instinctive hunch, he certainly wasn’t on the fast train to an answer for the question of the day.
    “Put him through.”
    “Holt’s at the jail, not giving us a damn thing on Biondo or Barrows,” Minero said. “We’re getting more leads from other sources on Biondo. We have nothing on Barrows. Have you made contact with his daughters?”
    “I just