Elizabeth ate lunch in peace for the very first time since she had arrived upon Alcatraz Island, knowing that McNeill's eyes weren't running over her body and waiting for her to do something that he could punish.

"Do you know where he's gone?"

"Who cares?" the gray haired man next to her said as he chewed on a sandwich. "If he's somewhere else, then he's not here, right?"

"Sounds like a good theory to me," Sutton agreed nodding his head and chewing down his own sandwich.

Elizabeth tapped the tip of her fork on her tray as she lightly chewed on her bottom lip, wondering where the Warden cold have gotten to as she looked at the place where he usually stood.

"What are you doing after lunch Oldin?"

Elizabeth snapped back to reality and looked at Sutton who had just asked her the question. "I think I'll just stay in my cell and read this new book I found in the library last week. At least I know I will be safe in there while he's not around, I need to get some rest anyway, maybe I can catch up on some sleep seeing as he's not here."

"So I take it that that's a no for a game of cards then?" Sutton asked looking rather intently at Elizabeth's most recent bruises and lesions. They were still fairly black but now fading to purple and covering most of her face and neck and the exposed parts of her arms.

Elizabeth smiled with a laugh. "I'll let you keep this week's pack of cigarettes, I've got enough to last me for another week at least."

"Well thank you," Sutton replied with a nod of his head and biting into his sandwich once again, almost savoring the stale bread and poor excuse for jam.

Elizabeth finished her lunch and left the mess hall with Sutton beside her. He walked the dark angel to her cell then continued on to his own cell to quickly clean up and await the correct count bell that would signal recreation time for the inmates.

After the count bell sounded that the count was indeed correct Elizabeth changed into the prison issue shorts and tee shirt that exposed far too much of her bruises for her liking. Looking down at the book she had hired out from the library she thought better of reading it now and instead slumped onto the small and uncomfortable bed in exhaustion, closing her painful and blackened eyes.

Six months, she thought to herself as she laid there on the cot. Six months I've been enduring the onslaught of the Warden. Finally a few hours without him.

The dark angel quickly fell asleep on her bed and dreamt about a person bathed in white light that was gently holding her. She couldn't see who the person was but she felt so very safe in those arms, she felt at home.

Elizabeth awoke to strange footsteps she had never heard before coming down her hallway. She rolled over in the small bed and saw a beautiful woman in a long black dress walk past, her high heels making the unmistakable sound on the hard floors.

"Hey," Elizabeth called out to the pretty woman as she lifted herself onto her elbows and looked out her open cell door.

The woman's footsteps stopped in the hallway and walked back towards the cell from where she was called.

"You. You're the Wardens wife, aren't you?" Elizabeth asked looking up at the stunning woman who was now standing in front of her cell.

With a furrowed brow Dawn walked towards the open door and looked in at the inmate lying on the bed. "How did you know that?"

"Your shoes, no one wears high heels around here, not even the food or clothing ladies are allowed to wear high heels. Besides that everyone knows it was your weekend to come and visit." Elizabeth looked at the classic shiny black high heeled shoes on the woman's feet. She missed wearing high heeled shoes.

Dawn looked at Elizabeth lying in her bed with a strange fascination irking up in her ticking brain and then something suddenly clicked. "You're Elizabeth Oldin aren't you?" she asked, curiosity peaking in her voice. "The only female inmate ever to be incarcerated on Alcatraz Island. They call you 'the dark angel of Alcatraz'. All the newspapers used to talk about you almost daily, but not so much anymore."

Elizabeth nodded her head as the pretty blonde woman looked down on her with intrigue. "Yeah that's me, most of the guards and some of the inmates around here call me the dark angel still too."

"I don't think you will ever meet a person that doesn't know who you are now, and you have so many people that believe your story. You didn't really kill your husband and child did you?"

"No, I didn't," Elizabeth replied coldly with a small shake of her head before changing the subject to something almost entirely different. "Can you answer me one question?"

"Sure." Dawn looked down on the now famous woman wondering what on Earth she could possibly want to ask her.

Elizabeth shakily got out of the bed, pulling her shorts and tee shirt back down to where they should be sitting she walked over to Dawn and stood close to the thick metal bars. "Where's the warden this afternoon? I haven't seen him around."

Dawn froze for a minute in shock as Elizabeth climbed out of her bed. She looked at the woman's severe injuries and wondered how it could have possibly happened to her, the black bruises covering most of her skin, the white strips of tape that held together the cuts and lesions over her face and arms. "What happened to you?" the words came out in nothing more than a whisper of shock as she stared at Elizabeth's wounds.

Elizabeth hesitated for a moment as she looked at the startled woman staring at her, wondering whether she should tell this pretty woman the truth or not, spare her the reality of what her husband truly was or to throw it on her like a ton of bricks. Deciding on the latter Elizabeth quietly said, "your husband did this to me."

"He did this to you?" she whispered, tears of disbelief filling her eyes and shock taking over her body. Dawn stepped forward and held one of her elegant hands covered in gold jewelry onto the bars of the cell to steady herself, her eyes unmoving from Elizabeth's beaten body.

"I hate to say it Miss, but you honestly don't know the half of it. Where is he today?" Elizabeth asked, not wanting anything but an answer about where the Warden was and how many hours of peace she had left.

"He had to go to the mainland, how did this happen to you?" Dawn's soft voice was still coming through as nothing more than a terrified whisper.

"I ah, I got him a bit angry, and I got punished." Elizabeth stepped back and dropped her eyes down to her severely bruised legs, the wounds weren't nearly as bad as they looked, but they always shocked everyone.

"Surely you didn't deserve this."

"Well apparently I did but you will have to ask Warden McNeill exactly what it was that I did because I honestly can't tell you." Elizabeth sat on her bed with one leg tucked underneath her body and the other pulled up close to her chest.

Dawn walked into the cell and sat on the bed beside Elizabeth. "How could he do this to you? Oh my goodness I'm so very sorry my husband did this to you Elizabeth." Dawn felt something deep down inside that she had been hiding and forgotten for a long time, and all of a sudden from knowing this horribly damning information, everything had changed.

They sat on Elizabeth's small and uncomfortable bed and talked non-stop for the next hour, and then Dawn finally asked the one question Elizabeth had been anticipating.

"Did he force himself onto you?"

"Uh, well no, not really," Elizabeth lied and avoided the gaze of Dawn's bright blue eyes, directing them instead towards her elegant hands covered in gold jewelry that were placed gracefully in her lap. "He hasn't well-" the words that she wanted to say didn't want to escape her lips and Elizabeth stuttered slightly as she tried to assure the woman that her husband was not a complete monster. "He, he ah, he hasn't raped me or anything like that, if, if that's what you're asking."

Elizabeth had not completely remembered the night in the dungeon during her first week on the rock. Occasionally snippets of the event came and went from her mind, but she had never been able to solidly grasp the memory to know what had happened to her that night.

Dawn hesitated as she saw Elizabeth look away from her eyes and then stutter the slightly mumbled sentence. She didn't want to ask the next question but deep down inside she needed to know the answer all the same. "What does he do to you?"

Again Elizabeth paused and her green eyes found Dawn's blue ones, they pleaded so deeply for the truth about her husband, her voice was nothing but the quietest of whispers as the words slipped through her lips and into the ears of the Warden's wife. "He touches me, and every time he has tried to do something more either something has happened that required his immediate attention or I pushed him off of me and spat out a few nasty words and copped another beating." Elizabeth didn't want Dawn to know that only a few nights before she had sex with the woman's husband and it was so much deeper than just sex.

Dawn felt tears' swelling in her bright blue eyes as she found out her husband is a woman beater as well as a cheat. "This...I... I just can't believe all this. I need to get something off my chest Elizabeth, do you mind if I talk to you? I haven't had another woman I could talk to in so long."

"Not if you keep everything I just told you secret. I'm positive that if the Warden found out I just told you all that I would be a dead woman."

"When I'm back on the mainland, I'm not the same person I am when I'm here on the Island with my husband. When I'm here I'm the good little Wardens' wife that I'm expected to be, and when I'm on the mainland, well I have another man back home and I'm someone completely different with him. The problem is, I don't know if I can keep being the good little Wardens' wife. I need a man that I know is going to be there for my children, and I know my husband needs to have a woman when I'm not around. I understand that and I choose to let it happen by not being here throughout the week, but I just, I don't feel as attracted to him as I did when we were first married."

Elizabeth tried to understand what Dawn was going through and quietly comforted her, running her hand up and down Dawn's back as she quietly sobbed into her hands about what she was doing to McNeill. "Who is it, the man you have on the mainland I mean."

"His name is Peter, he was my husband's best friend back home for years, they were in the army together for a long time. Comrades in arms. They don't talk as much now because he is always here. I feel like I've stabbed him in the back so badly." Dawn broke down crying.

Elizabeth moved closer to the weeping woman on her bed and put her arm around Dawns' shoulder as the confused woman poured her heart out, the comfort of strangers never goes astray.

"Have you ever thought of leaving your husband? You say that you truly love Peter and you need a man that's going to be there for your children," Elizabeth whispered as Dawn sobbed into her elegant hands.

"I've thought about it, once or twice and always thought better of it. But I thought my husband was someone much different, I thought we were through this. And now I feel like I've been completely betrayed by him by seeing what he's done to you."

Elizabeth hoped that Dawn wouldn't choose Warden McNeill over this other man of hers back on the mainland now that she had seen what he has done to another woman and what he could potentially do to any woman. "There's nothing I can say to help you make this decision, but you will have to spend some time thinking about what you truly want."

Dawn nodded her head in approval of the idea, wiping the tears from her bright blue eyes and sniffling a little. "I don't believe you ever killed anyone Elizabeth, I never have for a moment. That picture of you when you were being escorted to your court case and the fear and innocence that's shining through in your beautiful eyes. You never could have done those horrible things you got locked up in here for. If you ever get an appeal, I would be willing to testify as a character witness for you."

With a smile and a slight tingle of warmth Elizabeth shied away slightly at the compliment. "Thank you Dawn. What time is your husband meant to be coming in?"

"He will probably be back with the next ferry I would guess, oh no." Dawn glanced down at her gold watch and her eyes grew wide with shock. "The next ferry will be back in about five minutes, I have to go, thank you so much, you've been so much help Elizabeth."

"Any time Dawn."

Dawn left with her quick high-heeled footsteps unmistakably echoing through the hallway. Elizabeth decided that it was definitely time that she went outside to join the rest of the boys and see if she couldn't win herself another packet of cigarettes to see her through the week.