Falling For The Enemy

She couldn’t help smiling. He thought his “goin’ to jail” line was hilarious and used it regularly—which was all right as long as he said it to people who knew what her job was. Last fall, though, he’d told his first-grade teacher that his mom was goin’ to jail and for weeks the woman had believed Hayley was incarcerated.

“It’s Saturday,” she reminded him, turning to get the orange juice from the fridge. With school over for the summer, he was finding that the days blended into one another.

As she poured the juice, he sat contemplating the three different cereal boxes she’d put on the table. “Jimmy’s mom got him some real good cereal,” he informed her at last. “It tastes like candy.”

She set the glass of juice in front of him. “Well, call me old-fashioned, but—”

“You’re old-fashioned,” he interrupted, bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Which is why,” she said, ruffling his hair, “I think cereal should taste like cereal.”

Once he’d decided on corn flakes and began shaking some into his bowl, she wandered over to the window.

This early in the morning a cool mist still hung in the air, but by noon the city would be ninety degrees and steamy, reminding residents and tourists alike that much of it was built on reclaimed swampland and lay below sea level.

Yet even in the scorching heat of the summer New Orleans had an appeal she’d never felt anywhere else.

Three years ago, when she and Max had moved here from Pennsylvania, the Crescent City had quickly lulled them with a gentle sense of belonging. And even though New Orleans was far from the safest city for raising a child, this section of the Bayou St. John District had a secure, friendly atmosphere. Children played outside without their parents feeling they had to be watching every minute. And there were enough stay-at-home moms right on their own street that Hayley never had a problem finding someone to look after Max.

She glanced at him, making sure he wasn’t mushing his cereal instead of eating it, then looked out again, this time focusing on the way the sunshine filtered through the branches of the ancient oak in their side yard, backlighting the gray beards of Spanish moss that hung from its branches and dappling the street below in light and shadow.

That century-old tree, perfect for a boy to climb, was part of the reason she’d bought this place. That and the house itself, of course. A scaled-down version of a French-Colonial plantation house, with cypress woodwork and beautiful columned room dividers, it had murmured it was the one for her the first time she’d walked into it.

She turned from the window and, for a few moments, stood watching Max eat his corn flakes. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, he looked like his father. Personality-wise, though, he was completely different—as happy and easygoing a child as any parent could hope for.

He was the single good thing that had come from her failed marriage. She loved him more than she sometimes believed possible.

MONDAY MORNING, SLOAN REEVES was a man on a mission. He had to convince Dr. Hayley Morgan not to make the wrong decision. And he had to do it without telling her even one of the reasons why.

After striding across the lobby of the Orleans Parish state government building, he walked into a waiting elevator and pushed the button for the sixth floor. That was where the regional office of the State Department of Corrections was located, and where he’d find Dr. Morgan, regional director of Mental Health Services for the three state prisons closest to New Orleans—among them, the Poquette Correctional Center.

As the elevator carried him upward, he reviewed what he’d learned about the woman. Her job was partly administrative, partly clinical. She normally spent two days a week in her office and three in the field, giving the prisons’ staff psychologists whatever support or direction they needed. And she’d been known to personally evaluate prisoners who, for one reason or another, warranted special attention.

She was thirty-four, which struck him as young for someone in her position of authority. But having worked closely with the previous regional director, she’d been the logical choice to replace him when he’d retired five months ago.

The elevator reached six; the doors opened. Sloan stepped off, straightened his tie and started down the hallway to his right, not even glancing in the receptionist’s direction.

He knew exactly where Hayley Morgan’s office was located and that, as of late Friday afternoon, she’d had no appointments until ten-thirty this morning. In his line of work, it was wise to check those sorts of things out beforehand and leave as little as possible to chance.

When he stopped outside her doorway, she didn’t immediately realize he was there. She was engrossed in an open file on her desk, so he took the opportunity to appraise her, surprised his source hadn’t mentioned how good-looking she was.

Her plainly styled blue suit was the only plain thing about her. She had smooth, lightly tanned skin, full sensuous lips and hair the color of rich cognac. It was long enough that she was wearing it pulled back into some sort of knot—an attempt, he suspected, to make herself appear both older and less attractive. Being young and good-looking would not be an advantage to a woman working with incarcerated men.

But if she didn’t want them to notice her, she needed to do a whole lot more than just pull back her hair. And even the effectiveness of that was spoiled by the tendrils escaping the knot. If they could speak, he knew that right this minute they’d be whispering “Sexy” to him.

His visual inspection completed, he said, “Excuse me? Dr. Morgan?”

She glanced up then, her large brown eyes meeting his gaze. They were decidedly sexy, as well.

“Yes?” Hayley said, doing a three-second once-over of the man with the lazy Louisiana drawl.

In his mid-to-late thirties, he was well dressed, tall and attractive, with dark hair, an easy smile and eyes a deeper blue than Gulf waters on a sunny day. As he stepped into her office, she couldn’t help thinking they were the kind of eyes women found themselves drowning in if they weren’t careful. And sometimes, she suspected, even if they were.

“I’m Sloan Reeves,” he said, extending his hand across the desk. “May I have a few minutes of your time?”

His hand was warm, his handshake firm but not crushing, and she was absurdly aware of his touch.

When that realization skittered through her mind, she told herself it meant nothing. Her hormones were simply reminding her she was a woman.

That wasn’t something she exactly forgot, but between her job and Max, she seldom had time to notice men.

Checking her desk clock, she said, “I have a meeting in twenty minutes, but if you don’t need any longer than that...”

“I doubt I’ll need even that.” He took a business card from his wallet and handed it to her as he sat down.

Sloan Reeves, Attorney at Law, it informed her.

“I’ll come straight to the point,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of William Fitzgerald.”

“Oh?” And what, she wondered, did the newest executive-suite prisoner at Poquette want from her?

When she asked, Reeves flashed her another easy smile, then said, “Well, first off, I hope you won’t take any personal offense, but he isn’t happy he was sent to Poquette.”

“Really.”

She did her best to conceal her amusement. Fitzgerald should be grateful one of the smaller prisons had had space available for an inmate requiring protective custody. Otherwise he’d have ended up in Angola.

“What, specifically, does he find wrong with Poquette?”

Sloan Reeves leaned forward in his chair. “He’s being kept in virtual isolation.”

Reeves had to be aware of the reason for that, but since he was apparently waiting for an explanation, she said, “Surely he realizes it’s for his own safety. The prison staff can’t assign... celebrity prisoners, for lack of a better term, to the general population cell blocks.”

“No, of course not. But we both know isolation is brutal. That it almost always leads to deterioration—mental or physical or both.”

“You’re right, it’s far from ideal. I’m afraid there’s no magic solution, though. Even if Mr. Fitzgerald qualified for a minimum-security facility, we don’t have country-club prisons in Louisiana. He’d be segregated no matter where he was.”

Reeves nodded slowly. “I guess the basic problem is that he’s a very sociable man. He finds the lack of human interaction difficult to cope with.”

Rather than respond to that, Hayley merely gazed across her desk at Reeves. He was falling short on his promise to come straight to the point, because he couldn’t possibly be suggesting that Fitzgerald wanted to be moved into general pop. Not unless he’d like to end up graveyard dead, courtesy of some inmate with a shiv.

After a few seconds, she checked her clock again, assuming Reeves would get the message. He did.

“Here’s the bottom line. Mr. Fitzgerald wants to be transferred to a prison with a rehabilitation program. Being in one of them would give him both human contact and something to occupy his mind. And inmates in a rehab program shouldn’t be a threat to his safety.”

“I see,” she said again, still trying to figure out the game. Reeves wasn’t being straight with her, she knew that much.

The prison psychologists did a psych assessment on each new prisoner, and she’d read her copy of the one on Fitzgerald. He didn’t believe he belonged locked up with a bunch of low-lifes. So even if he did want more human contact, she wasn’t buying that he’d want it with his fellow prisoners.