If she pretended to know Simeon and asked for him by name, maybe she could figure out if he at least worked where he said he did….

A man answered on the second ring. “Department 6.”

Peyton curled the nails of her free hand into her palm. She was using her cell phone so her name would’ve appeared on caller ID, but that beat letting him know she was calling from a prison. “Is Simeon Bennett there?”

“Who?”

“Simeon Bennett. B-E-N-N-E-T-T. I met him at a club last weekend. I have an ex-boyfriend who…who’s scaring me.” She drew a deep breath in an effort to make the lie more convincing. “Simeon said he worked for a private security company that could protect me. He said I should call him at this number if my ex kept harassing me.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of a Simeon Bennett,” the man responded.

And yet he was supposed to have worked there for most of the past ten years?

“Would you like to speak to someone else? Protection is definitely a service we offer.”

“No. Thanks, anyway,” she said, and hung up.

Just as she’d thought. Bennett didn’t work for Department 6. So what had he been doing? And what about the rest of his résumé? Was any of it true? Had she even been given his real name?

She got up and crossed to the credenza, where she picked up the last photograph ever taken of her and her father. At four years old, she stood hugging his leg outside their middle-class home in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. Shortly after a neighbor snapped that picture, he’d gone to prison for embezzling the money to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments. Because of him, Grace had survived an additional quarter of a century, but after serving five years, with only three weeks left on his sentence, he was stabbed—and died in minutes.

Her father was the reason she’d gone into corrections. Knowing him and the reality of his story convinced Peyton to look at convicts as individuals with unique backgrounds, situations and desires, just like other human beings. Sometimes mitigating circumstances led a man to do the unthinkable. It wasn’t fair to make snap judgments or lump them all together. Now that she was reaching positions with enough authority to make significant changes, she wouldn’t allow Fischer, or the department, to set her up for failure by sending her into some dangerous investigation without all the facts. She’d worked too hard to get where she was.

So how would she learn exactly what they had planned? Although she’d seen the prisoner number on Bennett’s arm, she’d been so shocked by what it signified that she hadn’t thought to memorize it. She could recall only the first four digits. Otherwise, she might’ve been able to use that to obtain further information.

Maybe she wouldn’t need it. Wallace hadn’t done much to cover his tracks. He was so used to being in charge, so arrogant and sure no one at the prison would bother to check on anything he said, he hadn’t even invented a fictional company for Bennett’s previous employer. Or chosen an organization that wasn’t as easy to locate.

Setting her father’s picture back in its place, she grabbed her purse and flung her jacket over her shoulder. She’d figure out who Bennett really was, or she wouldn’t let him into the prison on Tuesday. Maybe her determination would end her career, but she’d go down swinging.

In the notes Wallace had given him on Operation Black Widow, Crescent City had been called “California’s Siberia” by one defense attorney. Now that he’d seen it for himself, Virgil had to agree. Nearly four hundred miles from both San Francisco and Sacramento, and eight hundred miles from Los Angeles, it was only accessible via narrow, winding roads clogged with RVs, or a small airstrip with very few flights. Dense forests of giant, old-growth redwoods hemmed it in on one side—silent, massive and pungent. An angry, churning Pacific Ocean stretched to eternity on the other.

But it wasn’t just the physical isolation that made this part of the California coast different from the hot sun and toes-in-the-sand party beaches down south. It was the climate. Foggy and chilly, with trees shaped by the wind, this tiny dot on the map seemed every bit as lonely as a barren field of ice. The only major difference was the lush beauty.

There shouldn’t be a prison here, he decided. Especially a supermax as notorious for harsh discipline, even abuse, as Pelican Bay. It was too much of a contradiction.

Chief Deputy Warden Peyton Adams was also too much of a contradiction. He pictured her blond hair pulled into a knot at her nape, the wide brown eyes that’d stared out at him with such quick perception, the satiny skin that made her look too young to hold the authority she did, the lines of her suit, which was practical yet stylish. Had he met her anywhere else, he would’ve guessed she worked behind the makeup counter at Neiman Marcus or sold upscale women’s clothing.

Hiding ruthless power behind such a pretty face seemed the ultimate lie.

But he’d been told that lie before, hadn’t he? By his own mother….

“So what do you think?” Wallace piped up as he drove them from Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, a sight Simeon had wanted to see, to a restaurant for dinner.

Virgil didn’t care for Wallace. Smug, cocky and shallow, he wasn’t particularly likable. There were moments when, without provocation, Simeon had to fight the impulse to break his jaw, and that upset him as much as everything else going on in his life. He hadn’t always struggled with authority. The resentment that simmered just below his skin was a product of the years he’d spent in prison dealing with corrections officers who’d been created from the same mold, and was no doubt influenced by The Crew, the gang he’d had to clique up with to survive. “About what?”

“The meeting.”

He adjusted the hat and glasses Wallace had provided for their trip to the state park, in case they were spotted by an off-duty corrections officer who might later recognize him. “It went more or less as I expected.” Except for the beautiful chief deputy warden who’d been so unfriendly to their plan. Like the stunning vistas that appeared without warning, she’d come as a complete surprise. He couldn’t imagine someone like her working at a prison.

“So you can handle it?”

“Do I have any choice?”

Wallace shifted beneath his stare. “No, I guess you don’t.”

The old-fashioned business signs they passed, like the one in front of the local gift shop, made Virgil feel as if they’d detoured onto the set of Happy Days. But that sign and others similar to it were merely one facet of this place, holdouts from an earlier era. Overall, Crescent City had become a mixed bag. Heads bent against the constant drizzle, rednecks mingled with artisans. Old, weather-beaten buildings soldiered on amid the typical fast-food joints seen everywhere else in the country. And, at the harbor in the small bay—the only calm in a restless sea—fishing boats bobbed next to shiny new recreational craft.

He took in every detail as if he hadn’t seen anything like it in years. Because, other than on the long drive from Sacramento this morning, he hadn’t. He’d read all the books, leaflets, newsletters and pamphlets he could lay his hands on when he was inside, but experiencing a place like this made a real and very different impact. He especially enjoyed the salt-laden air and the smell of the loamy earth and towering trees.

While Wallace parked at Raliberto’s Tacos on M Street, Virgil wished he could’ve visited Crescent City back when it was teeming with lumberjacks and salmon fishermen. It would have felt innocent then. But, according to Wallace, who’d picked him up at the airport in Sacramento, it was only because of Pelican Bay that Crescent City had survived. In the early ’80s, the salmon fishing had died and thirteen of the seventeen sawmills went out of operation. The prison, which opened in ’89, supplied much-needed jobs. Now nearly half the town’s population resided behind bars and most of the other half worked in a capacity related to that.