Juliet Rosetti - The Escape Diaries: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

The Escape Diaries

Love and Life on the Lam

Juliet Rosetti

Loveswept,New York

Advance Reader's Copy Not for Sale

The Escape Diaries

Life and Love on the Lam

A Loveswept Contemporary Romance

Elise Sax

Ballantine Books

This is an uncorrected eBook file.

Please do not quote for publication

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Tentative On-Sale Date: December 10, 2012

Tentative Publication Month: December 2012

Tentative eBook Price: $5.99

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Loveswept

An imprint of the Random House Publishing Group

1745 Broadway New York, NY 10019

The Escape Diaries is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are usedfictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, orlocales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by PatriciaKilday

Excerpt from The Devils Thief copyright 2012 by Nancy Kattenfeld

Excerpt from Paradise Caf copyright 1988 by Adrienne Staff

Excerpt from The Perfect Catch copyright 1995 by Linda Cajio

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Loveswept,an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House,Inc., New York.

Loveswept and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Cover illustration: Anne KeenanHiggins

Cover design: Derek Walls

eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53431-6

www.ReadLoveSwept.com

To Ethel and Allen

My mother-in-law sends me poisonedcookies. Occasionally she sends rat pellet pie or drain cleaner doughnuts, butmostly she sticks with the cookies. I can picture her in her big, cheerykitchen, wearing a frilly apron and humming as she mixes the ingredients:flour, sugar, eggs, butter, cyanide...

Inmateshavent been allowed food packages since crystal meth disguised as rock candysneaked into the system and everyones teeth started falling out. But thatdoesnt discourage my mother-in-law. She keeps cranking out the toxic treats,convinced that one day the strychnine snickerdoodles or the carbolic caramelbars will make their way to my digestive tract.

AlthoughI dont get the goodies, the mailroom staff passes the packing cartons along tome. This is how theyre addressed:

MazieMaguire

Murdering Scum

Inmate#3490082

WisconsinCorrectional Institute

750County Road K

Taycheedah,Wisconsin 54935

Sometimes theyreaddressed to Murdering Bitch, but Vanessa Vonnerjohn has standards forladylike speech and usually restricts herself to Trash, Trollop, Jezebel,and the like. The lah-di-dah standards stretch only so far, however. Given theopportunity, my mother-in-law would claw my beating heart out of my chest andfeed it to her dogs. Vanessa believes in Family, Church, and Vengeance, notnecessarily in that order.

Im always Mazie Maguire onthe care packages, never Mazie Vonnerjohn. Apparently Id trashed mygood standing in the family when I put a bullet through Kip Vonnerjohn Juniorshandsome head.

Myhusbands murder was captured on nanny cam. The police found the murder weapon,my blood-spattered nightgown, and a video of me committing the crime. All thephysical evidence rolled up in a tidy package and tied up with a ribbon ofmotive: Id killed my husband because he was going to leave me for hissquash-playing, matched-set-of-pearlswearing, lockjawed, flat-assed,Junior League girlfriend.

Arrested, tried,found guilty, sentenced to life in Taycheedah.

Idbeen terrified the day I arrived. I was small, scrawny, and street-dumb. I knewhow to unjam a copier, tune a piano, and duct tape a sagging skirt hem, but Ihad no clue how to survive in a prison full of hard-as-nails women. Id seen Chicksin Chains; I imagined tough girls in denims and barbed wire tattoos pinningme up against the bars and setting to work with a plunger handle.

Asit turned out, nobody pinned or plunger-handled me. In fact, I was treated likea celebrity. Taycheedahs inmates had watched my trial the way people had oncefollowed the OJ Simpson proceedings. To the crack dealers, meth chefs, paper hangers,and stickup artists on my cellblock, I was a star. I was right up there withHilda Hoffacker, whod sliced off her philandering boyfriends head with achain saw. I got more fan mail than Annie May OReilly, whod brained herbattering spouse with a grain shovel and buried him in a pigpen.

Two-thirdsof the women in Taycheedah had been beaten or abused by males, so if a womangot a little of her own backwell, you go, girl. Forget the SlammerBabe movies. No frenzied rattling of cage barsfor one thing, therearent any bars, just bulletproof glass. Nobody looks like the hot babes in thereform school movies either, since inmates arent allowed to wear makeup andeveryone resembles the before pictures in the magazine makeovers.

Prison isnt fun. No pizza, popcorn, ornail polish, and the toilet is right in the room with you. Whatever secrets youconfide in a girlish giggle fest may end up being whispered in the wardens earin exchange for a dime off someones time.

Ivegotten the hang of prison life. Ive learned how to use margarine formoisturizer. How to mend ripped denims with Elmers glue and pocket lint. Howto survive Christmas by sleeping through it. Ive become a model prisoner.

Ive turnedtwenty-seven, twenty-eight, and twenty-nine in the can. Thirty is staring me inthe face. Ill go through menopause and Metamucil behind bars. I tell mycounselor Im resigned to spending my life in prison.

But heres thetruth: I spend a lot of time pondering ways to break out of this place. Andwondering what Id do if I succeeded.

The Escape Diaries :

A Guide to Breaking Out of Prison

Escape tip #1:

Be prepared.

Actually I wasntprepared at all. I just wanted to go to bed. I was tired and cranky, sweat waspuddling between my boobs, and my armpits smelled like sprouting onions.Deodorant cost one ninety-five at the prison canteen, well beyond the means ofsomeone who earned ten cents an hour. Given a choice between M&Ms orMennen, Id pick the sweet and live with the stink. Repulsive, yesbutchocolate is what gets you through the day, and no one else smells any better.

If Id stuck tochocolate, things might have turned out differently. But I had a leftover coughdrop from a bout with bronchitis, and when my cellmate, Tina Sanchez, developeda tickly throat, I gave her the cough drop. Just being a pal, right?

Wrong. Youresupposed to return unused medications to the medical director. The staff trackspharmaceuticals the way the CIA tracks yellow cake in the Middle East. Acellblock officer caught the menthol scent on Tinas breath and wrote her upfor taking a nonprescription drug. Since I was the one whod dished out theillicit substance, I was written up, too. Along with a bunch of other drugoffendersaspirin pushers, Alka-Seltzer peddlers, and MidoldealersTina and I were sentenced to garden detail.

Not exactly theBataan death march in a suburban peas and petunias plot, but Taycheedahsgardens are a whole different chunk of real estate. Looking out over them islike gazing at the Great Plains; you wouldnt be surprised to see buffalo andbuzzards roaming around out there.

The first days ofSeptember had been sunny and hot, and in the perverse way of growing things,every tomato on six acres had ripened on the same day. Ten thousand of thesquishy red things, demanding to be handpicked before thunderstorms sweptthrough and turned them into salsa. We picked. And picked. And picked somemore. All morning, all afternoon, and into early evening. When it got to befive oclock I thought wed be dismissed for dinner. But no-o.