Читать книгу Falling For The Enemy - Dawn Stewardson - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

MR. WILLIAM FITZGERALD, “Billy Fitz” to his friends, rated one of the “executive suites” at the Poquette Correctional Center in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. That meant he didn’t have to share. He was the sole occupant of a six-by-eight-foot windowless cell.

Despite his privileged status, every morning when Billy woke up he wished he were anywhere else on earth.

The cell walls were cinder-block gray. The sink and seatless toilet, which occupied one open corner, white. At least, he assumed it was the color they’d been before becoming permanently stained putrid yellowish brown.

The bed was concrete, the mattress a slab of foam. The cell door had a slot where a battered food tray was pushed through at mealtimes.

Inmates from the executive suites didn’t eat in the communal dining room. Prisons like Poquette were filled with meltdowns who figured they could make their reputation by killing someone with a big name. That meant living like a hermit was conducive to Billy’s continued good health.

Five days a week, he was allowed to take a shower while a guard stood outside the shower room. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he had an hour in a fenced-off section of the exercise yard. Weather permitting.

He’d been in Poquette for three weeks that seemed like three years. The place was intolerable. Worse for him than for most because of what he was accustomed to—an old mansion in the elegant Garden District of New Orleans, where dinner was served on bone china in his enormous dining room.

In his cell at Poquette, he ate off a dented tin plate with a plastic spoon. No forks allowed.

Billy was fifty-eight years old, and came from long-lived Irish stock. With any luck, he’d see the far side of ninety. He had no intention, though, of seeing it from a prison cell. In fact, he had no intention of seeing fifty-nine from behind bars.

After being convicted on three separate counts of manslaughter, he didn’t have a hope in hell of his appeal going anywhere. But there were other ways for him to regain his freedom, and as head of New Orleans’ “Irish Mafia,” he had both the money and connections to get what he wanted.

All he needed was a little help from his friends. And from Dr. Hayley Morgan.

Until now, he’d never had much use for psychologists. But he certainly had use for her. She was the key. The weak link. A woman with something valuable to lose.

One way or another, she was going to get him out of here. “We’re better off to take things slowly and try the most obvious route first,” his lawyer had advised. “With any luck, she’ll cooperate. Then there’ll be one less problem to worry about.”

Billy didn’t like the prospect of taking things slowly. It meant spending longer in this rat hole. But although he’d never admit it to a living soul, if he’d listened to Sloan Reeves more often he might not have ended up in prison. So he’d listen now and see where it got him.

If Dr. Morgan didn’t cooperate, then they’d use their ace in the hole. Her son.