Page 120 of Darkwater Lane

I flinch. I’m not getting married as a defense strategy. “Not an option,” I tell her succinctly. She studies me for a moment and then nods, accepting that she’s unlikely to change my mind.

“Second, you could try to cut a deal, but?—”

I cut her off. “No. No deals. I’m not admitting to something I didn’t do. Neither will Sam.”

“Technically, we could seek an Alford plea, where you don’t take responsibility but?—”

“No,” I tell her again. “You’re talking like we’re guilty. We’re not.”

She shifts in her seat, her fingers smoothing down her long, dark ponytail. “I haven’t had a chance to give you my whole defense-attorney spiel, so let me do so now: I don’t care if you’re innocent, guilty, or all or none of the above. My job is to hold the prosecution accountable. If they have the evidence, and theycrossed all their Ts and dotted their Is so that evidence is legit and admissible, there’s not much I’m going to be able to do for you. At least not until the sentencing phase.”

“But we’re both innocent,” I protest.

She looks at me a little sadly. “I really do wish that mattered. The problem is that innocent people go to jail all the time. Oftentimes, it’s due to ineffective assistance of counsel, so at least that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.”

I consider her words. I appreciate what she’s saying, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. “I’m not sure I can work with someone who’s still questioning my guilt.”

She looks me square in the eyes. “Then find me evidence to prove your case, and we shouldn’t have a problem.”

When I get back to Sam’s hospital room, it’s the very early hours of the morning, and the hallways are quiet. Sam is still asleep, his room dark but for the monitors surrounding his bed. The doctor told me rest is the best thing for him right now—the brain has a chance to heal during sleep. So, I take care not to wake him. Instead, I sink into the chair by his bed and watch him in the scant light, wondering how the hell I’m going to keep us both from going to prison.

This can’t be how it all ends. Madison can’t win. I can’t lose Sam, after everything we’ve been through. I can’t lose my kids. Being separated from them for the rest of my life would kill me.

I think through everything I know about Madison, reconsidering every conversation and interaction with the new understanding of who she really was and what she wanted. There’s so much I still don’t understand. How did she know so much? How was she able to break into our house? How did she find Leo and have the time to murder him?

If there’s one maxim to murder, it’s that the more complicated it is, the more chances there are for failure.

Madison must have fucked up at some point. No one is that perfect of a serial killer. Everyone makes mistakes, especially killers like Madison, who think they’re too smart and clever to ever be captured.

Melvin was the same way. The arrogance of that man! I shake my head, still marveling at how close he came to getting away with the bulk of his murders. Initially, he was only charged with killing Callie—that was the one victim they had.

Then, I’d stumbled across evidence of a storage unit he’d been keeping outside of town. Turned out, that’s where Melvin had been burying his secrets. That’s where he kept the trophies from his kills. He even had journals detailing each and every gruesome, torturous death.

He’d left us a roadmap to his depravity, and it’s what ultimately sent him to death row.

If only Madison had done the same. But I’m not holding my breath. There’s no way she was stupid enough to keep incriminating evidence lying around. It would have been too much of a risk. What if I’d gotten suspicious of her and decided to go digging? What if I broke into her house while she was out, or got ahold of her computer during one of our recording sessions?

At the same time, a plan as involved and complicated as hers would require planning. It would necessitate documentation. So, where is all that paperwork?

A storage unit like Melvin’s, probably. But there must be a million of those in the country. How in the world am I supposed to narrow it down? I only found Melvin’s because he was stupid enough to list our home phone number on the rental application, and the company called when Melvin stopped paying the bills.

If I were Madison and wanted to stash things away where no one could find them, where would I go?

When it hits, the answer is so blindingly obvious that I’m sure it can’t possibly be right. Except that I can’t get the idea out of my head. And I know the only way I’ll be able to move past this is to check it out for myself.

I grasp Sam’s hand and press it to my cheek, trying not to wonder how many times we’ll be able to touch each other so freely if either of us ends up in jail. I won’t let that happen. “I’m going to fix this,” I whisper, not wanting to wake him. It’s a promise I intend to keep.

It takes three flights with ridiculously tight connections, but I land in Wichita late that morning. Within an hour, I’m standing in front of the storage locker I visited only once before, but whose location is seared in my memory.

It’s the exact same one Melvin used: the same company, the same location, the same unit. I admit I was surprised to find it still in use. I guess part of me assumed that maybe the storage company would want to retire the locker used by one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Though, more than likely, I’m one of the few people in the world who knows this unit’s past history.

You’d have to dig pretty deep into the evidence presented at Melvin’s trial to find out about the provenance of this locker. It doesn’t surprise me that Madison did just that.

I study the unit, noting the combination padlock on the door. It’s the kind that requires a six-digit code, and I try some of the basics: 123456, 111111, 654321, but none of those work. With a huff of frustration, I crouch and stare at it for a moment longer before it comes to me.

I swivel the dials until they read 820724. The lock clicks open. I let out a laugh. Of course. The same number as Melvin’s gravestone.

My heart hammers with anticipation, causing my hands to tremble slightly as I tug the lock out of the D ring and pull open the storage locker door. My mind slips back to a similar moment all those years ago when I first learned about this place and came to investigate. It had been the middle of the night. I’d had no idea what to expect and was in no way prepared for what I found.