Liquid Smoke Read Online Free PDF

she’d be on the plane. I told her I wasn’t sure what I was doing.”
    Miranda nodded. “Yeah. I talked to her right after that. She said you were kind of a dick.”
    “I’ll be sure to ask her about that. So she didn’t come back last night?”
    “If she did, I haven’t talked to her,” she said. “But she had reservations on the morning flight. I left a couple of messages on her cell, but she never called back.”
    It didn’t feel right. Darcy had come down to San Diego for one reason—getting me to San Francisco. It made no sense that she would miss the flight. If anything, I had half expected her to show up at my house and escort me to the airport.
    “Do you know where she was staying?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” Miranda said. “I need to make a couple of calls. She may have just got caught up with something else.” She pointed a finger at me. Her nails were black. Shocker. “And you need to get over to Quentin to see your dad.”
    I bristled. “His name is Russell Simington, and I don’t know that he’s related to me.”
    She held up her hands in mock apology. “Right, dude. Sorry. Not like you don’t look just like him or anything.”
    Darcy had said the same thing, and I didn’t feel any better hearing it a second time. “You’ve seen him?”
    “Of course. It’s the only thing we’re doing now.”
    “You and Darcy are the whole office?”
    Miranda started looking through the papers on her desk. “The whole office.”
    “And you’re a paralegal?”
    She snorted. “That’s my title. I’m third year at Hastings. Secretary, paralegal, investigator, office manager. I do it all.” She pulled a piece of paper from a stack. “Here we go. Eleven thirty is check-in.”
    “For what?”
    “Visiting hours start at noon,” she said. “You need to be there at eleven thirty so they can check your ID, do the cavity search, all that stuff.”
    Miranda thought she was funny. I thought different. She shoved the paper in my direction. “Fill this out before you get there. They’ll want it from you at the gate.” I took the paper. “What about Darcy?”
    The corners of her mouth flashed into a little smile. “You need someone to hold your hand?”
    “No. I meant what are you going to do to find her?”
    “It’s a scary place over there,” she said, still smiling. “All those mean, nasty men. I could get my sister to go with you. She’s thirteen, but she’s tough.”
    “You treat all your clients like this?”
    “Other than Russell, we don’t have any clients right now,” she said, the smile fading.
    “Imagine.”
    She waved a hand in the air. “Go. They won’t let you in if you’re late. I’ll work on tracking down Darcy.”
    “Maybe your sister can help you out,” I said, turning to leave.
    “Hey,” Miranda called out. “Noah?”
    I opened the door. “What?”
    “Say hi to your daddy.”
    I slammed the door behind me.

NINE
     
    Two blocks away from Miranda, I waved down a taxi. I didn’t know where Darcy was, but I had other things to worry about.
    The cab went north out of the city. The irony was that California’s most violent prison sat on a beautiful plateau next to San Francisco Bay in one of the wealthiest counties in the state. For years there had been rumors that the state would sell the land to developers for billions and ship the prisoners to other prisons. But, so far, they remained incarcerated with an ocean view.
    I looked at the paperwork Miranda had given me. Basic stuff about who I was and why I was visiting. Probably just to have a record of me in case I tried to break someone out.
    Not likely.
    The cab pulled to a halt outside the entrance. The driver turned around. “This is as far as I go. Bad luck to drive in there.”
    I handed him the fare and tip. “Probably bad luck to walk in, too.”
    “No doubt, man.”
    The front of the prison looked like a city park. Big grassy lawns with palm trees. The parking lot was full, and there was a line at the