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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, shegrabbed 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 practicalyet 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