“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 main gate. A knot like a rock formed in my stomach as I got in line.

The guard greeted me with a big smile. She looked at my paperwork, nodded, asked me a few routine questions. She handed back my license, but kept the paperwork. “You’ll have exactly fifty minutes, sir. We’ll notify you when there are ten minutes left.” She upped the wattage in the smile. “Welcome to San Quentin.”

I walked through a metal detector and into an expansive courtyard. People talked casually, the prisoners identified by their bright yellow coveralls. Babies cried, toddlers ran in circles, and men and women held hands, trying to act like normal families. But the forced smiles and reserved actions told the real story.

I felt like I was entering some sort of deranged amusement park.

A guard explained to me that death row inmates were not allowed into the public areas, and I was directed through another gate and to a bank of windows down a narrow hall.

I didn’t argue.

I slid into a seat in front of the last window and my assisting guard told me that Mr. Simington would be along shortly. In the center of the window was a small circle with slats running through it, like in the box office of a movie theater.

Only this movie was real.

Sitting there by myself, the urge to run was greater than anything I’d ever felt. I had no place being there. I could live without meeting this man. My life would be no different. I owed nothing to him or to Darcy Gill. Nothing. Going through with this suddenly seemed like a ridiculous exercise in masochism, and I stood to get the hell out of there.

There was movement behind the window and a guard pulled back the chair on the other side of the clear panel.

I froze.

Run or sit?

I sat.

The guard moved away, and Russell Simington moved into view.

He was a little over six feet tall and well built, the yellow coveralls fitting him like a tailored business suit. I put him somewhere in his late fifties. Thick brown hair streaked with gray. The reading glasses he wore over his dark green eyes gave him an educated look. A nondescript nose. His skin was darker than I expected for someone in his position, a golden brown that only the sun can give. A tiny white scar stood out next to his right eye. A well-manicured beard, brown with gray like his hair, covered a distinguished jaw line. I saw a small tattoo near his right wrist, but I couldn’t make it out.

I felt my breath getting away from me.

If Russell Simington wasn’t my father, someone had done a damn good job of drawing us with the same pencil.

He slid into the chair and gave a slight nod in my direction. “Hello,” he said. His voice was deep but smooth. “Hi,” I managed.

He leaned forward, his face closer to the panel, and adjusted his glasses. “I’m Russell.” I said nothing.

“And unless I’m looking in some sort of trick mirror that takes me back a ways, you must be Noah.” A small, tired smile emerged on his mouth.

I shifted in the chair. “Yeah. I’m Noah.”

He folded his hands on the small ledge below the panel. “It’s nice for me to meet you, but I expect it’s not the same for you.” “Not exactly.”

He nodded as if that was the response he expected. “I assume you’re here because that Darcy woman found you.”

My heart was thumping, almost as if it was beating against my ribcage. “Yeah.”

He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “She is a pistol, that one. Surprised she’s not here with you, actually.”

Even if I could have, I didn’t feel the need to explain her absence to him. So I said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what else we’re supposed to do.”

“Me either.”

“She told you about me?” “I got all the highlights.”

He studied me for a moment, then laughed. “Highlights.” We sat there in silence. It felt like everything I’d expected and nothing I’d expected, all at the same time. “How is Carolina?” he asked. “Fine.”

“You and she close?”

“None of your fucking business.”

He pursed his lips. “I suppose.”

Everything seemed to be closing in around me, and I needed to escape.

“Look,” I said. “Darcy thinks you’ll talk to me and it’ll help her win your appeal. Are you going to do that?”

He leaned back in the chair and readjusted the glasses again. “No appeal is going to change my situation. I’ve done what I’ve done, and there’s no going back.” He stared at me with my own eyes. “I’m going to die here, and I’m alright with that.”

“Then I am, too,” I said quickly.

“As you should be,” he said. “But seeing you here, in front of me, has given me some things to think about.” “Good for fucking you.”

He came forward again, his hands folded together neatly on the ledge. “I’m not going to fight with you, Noah. All the reasons you hate me are the right ones. I’m not going to try to change that.”

He was defusing the anger inside of me, and that made me hate him even more. I wasn’t ready to drop thirty years of anger like it was a used napkin. But I was sitting there for a reason, even if I hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“Darcy thinks that you were under orders from someone else to kill,” I said, deflecting the conversation away from me. “Were you?”

Russell stared at me, almost through me, his mind elsewhere. Then he snapped back to the present.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“It might. To her and to your case.”

“How about to you?”

I stood. “I’m not here about me and you. I could give a shit about me and you. Darcy is trying to help you. She convinced me to have a conversation with you, so here I am. But I’m not gonna sit here and let you get to know me. I may look like you, but that doesn’t mean I am like you.”

He sat back in the chair, studying me. It was unnerving.

“You wanna die without fighting, it’s fine by me,” I said. “You don’t wanna give me anything to pass along to Darcy, then I’m outta here.”

I felt my chest heaving, and I was furious with myself for getting so worked up. I needed to get it together.

Russell Simington stood up slowly. I saw the tattoo on his wrist clearly now. Small green letters. All capitals. Spelling out my name.

If I could have changed my name on the spot, I would have done it. George, Tom, Mario, whatever. Anything other than what was on his wrist.