The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape Read Online Free PDF

inside the prison walls.
    She felt uncertain about taking Sammie to the jail in the morning to say good-bye. Sammie having to part with him there behind bars, part with him maybe forever. But how could she not take her? The child had a right to be there no matter how painful the parting. To be excluded would be far more heartbreaking.
    She didn’t remember coming home after the sentencing. She remembered coming in the house, sitting down inthe chair. She didn’t know how long she had sat there, but evening was falling, the sun slanting low. She had not gone to her mother’s, where she and Sammie were staying. She’d needed to pull herself together before she faced Sammie, before she went to tell Sammie.
    Tell her they must begin now to live the rest of their lives without him.
    Unless they could get an appeal, could win an appeal. That was the only chance they had. The only chance for Morgan to come home, to ever set foot inside his own house again, for him to live his life in freedom, the only chance for them to hold each other close, to be a family again.
    Was he never again to play ball with Sammie, take her to the automotive shop to hand him his tools, as she so loved to do? Tomorrow he would leave Rome for the last time, to be locked in that vast concrete prison that rose on the south side of Atlanta, its high gray walls austere and forbidding, its guard towers catching light where loaded rifles shone in the hands of grim-faced guards. The world they had built together had ended. Their family’s carefully nurtured life, their gentle protection of one another against whatever chaos existed in the world, had all been for nothing. Morgan’s war years fighting against the tyranny of Japan and Germany, his safe return, had been for nothing.
    But, she thought, Morgan’s contribution to his country, to America’s successful campaigns, had not been for nothing. And yet now, after all he had given, Morgan himself had been betrayed.
    The jury of their own neighbors had believed—all of them believed—that Morgan had murdered the bank guard, had beaten those women and taken the bank money. The jury’s unanimous vote was beyond her comprehension. Such unfairness didn’t happen, not under the free government which, in the war, Morgan and so many men had fought to preserve. Morgan faced the rest of his life behind prisonwalls for crimes he’d had nothing to do with, to be harried by armed guards, harassed and maybe beaten by other prisoners, at the mercy of men as vicious as caged beasts. He didn’t belong in there, she didn’t want him in there; she wanted to scream and never stop screaming, wanted to put her fist through the window and smash it, hurt and bloody herself. She wanted to arm herself and find Brad Falon and kill him, wanted to destroy Falon just as he had destroyed Morgan and shattered the life of their little girl. She would kill him, except for Sammie, for what that would do to Sammie.
    Falon had always been hateful. When they were kids in high school Morgan hadn’t seen how twisted Falon was, he’d seen Falon’s adventurous side, his boldness, had admired Brad Falon for the brash things he did that Morgan was reluctant to do. Though Morgan hadn’t wanted Falon hanging around her . She’d never told Morgan the extent of Falon’s unwanted attention when he found her alone; she’d tried never to be alone with him. Falon was possessed of a cruelty that she guessed some young men, with all that animal energy, found exciting. They were halfway through high school before Morgan realized how twisted Falon was and backed off, leaving Falon to pull his petty thefts alone. But after Morgan left for the navy, Falon started coming around, increasingly pushy, refusing to leave her alone. He had frightened her then. Now he terrified her.
    There was no doubt Falon had set Morgan up, had drugged him, left him unconscious in Morgan’s own car