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smirk.
    “Yo, Holt. Nice suit.” The C.O., an African American, had large brown eyes and looked fit and trim in her navy blue uniform. A strand of dark hair curled like a shiny fishhook in front of her ears. “News flash. Jerry Garcia’s dead.”
    “That never gets old.” Angus grinned. “Tanisa Shields, meet my colleague, Natalie Greco.”
    “Hiya.” Tanisa shook Nat’s hand, but her gaze didn’t leave Angus. “Take a lesson, Holt. This girl knows how to dress.”
    “But I’m wearing my lucky sweater,” Angus said, and Tanisa snorted.
    “Yeah. Lucky I don’t set it on fire. ”
    Nat stayed happily out of the fray. She’d changed her clothes five times this morning, mentally going from nun’s habit to pup tent to down comforter. She’d finally settled on a brown tweed pantsuit, white tailored shirt, and a Hermès scarf in granny pastels. Hank would have approved of the outfit, but he’d left for work early and never got to see it, or to hear that she’d be at a prison today. That, he might not have approved.
    “You gotta lose that beard, too.” Tanisa clucked. “Looks like you got a damn dog stuck to your chin.” She slammed the bars shut behind the three of them with a ringing clang , then locked the door with a large, crude key.
    “I love a woman in uniform,” Angus said, but Nat wasn’t laughing.
    I’m locked inside.
    Tanisa turned on the rubber heel of her patent work shoe and led them into a wide hallway that appeared to run the length of the building, presumably the body of the T. A black male C.O. stood against the wall and he acknowledged Angus with a nod. The lower half of the wall was mint-green cinderblock, and the top half bulletproof glass, which exposed the inside of the rooms that lined the hallway. A floor of polished concrete shone dully, and the air felt hot and dry, overheated.
    “Stop right there.” Tanisa stiffened her arm, holding them back, and Nat felt herself tense. A line of red lightbulbs protruding from the ceiling flashed on suddenly.
    “What’s going on?” Nat asked, and Angus turned.
    “At the end of the hall are the residential pods, and whenever the C.O.s move the inmates across the hallway, the red lights go on. Wait a sec.”
    “Okay.” Nat exchanged looks with the male C.O., who gave her a reassuring wink. In the next minute, inmates in white T-shirts and loose blue pants shuffled as a group from one side of the hall to the other, talking and laughing. Even though they were far away, a few spotted Angus and waved to him, and he waved back.
    “My kids,” he said softly.
    Tanisa chuckled. “Then you need a new family.”
    Angus said to Nat, “It’s only in the movies that a prison eats and exercises together. Inmates live, eat, and exercise in the same pod, which is corrections-speak for cellblock. That’s why they’re remodeling this facility, to build new pods.”
    Nat nodded. The inmates kept crossing the hall, the red warning lights flashing.
    Angus continued, “They keep movement between pods to an absolute minimum and break up gang members among the pods. Here it’s mostly Hispanic gangs, then Aryans and African Americans.”
    “I didn’t know there were that many Hispanics in Chester County.” Nat had always thought it was whiter than white out here, but she could see from the moving stream of inmates that her demographics had been wrong.
    “They come up from Mexico to work on the mushroom farms and fancy horse farms. Some are gangbangers. It’s East L.A. come to Chester County.” Angus patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. The gangbangers live in RHU, the rehabilitation unit farther down the hall, far from our classroom.”
    Good .
    “That’s the processing room, where they handle intake and paperwork for the inmates.” Angus pointed to the left, near them. “Here’s our classroom, next to it is the infirmary, and behind that extra pods, temporarily converted to infirmary space. They’re short some beds.”
    “This gonna be