Inside Read Online Free Page B

know, physical injury wasn’t part of his sentence. And we don’t have the right to embellish it.”
    “I’m just saying…. You can’t see into the future. What he did landed him in prison. Now that he’s here, all you can do is make the call and hope for the best.”
    Shelley was right on that count. Peyton had made many such “calls.” Some turned out as she’d hoped. Others didn’t. Which was why the responsibility weighed so heavily.
    “I should get going,” her assistant said. “Good luck with it.”
    “Thanks.” Peyton waved. Then the door closed, leaving her alone with Victor’s file, a stack of others on which she had to make some decision or other and the manila envelope on Simeon Bennett.
    Removing Simeon’s bio, she read it again. Then she got on her computer and searched the internet for “Department 6, Los Angeles.”
    A webpage came up. It provided only general information, as she’d expected, but there was a contact number.
    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 legoutside 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