Born, Darkly (Darkly, Madly 1)

“She will,” I assure him. He’s just as committed to this case for his own sake as mine. A case like this can make his career. And I’ve invested my time wisely in London. She’ll be here. I’ve made sure of that.

“Court is adjourned,” the judge announces. “We’ll resume at nine tomorrow morning.”

“You better make sure. Do whatever it takes to get her on that stand.” Young assembles his folders into his briefcase and departs, leaving the officers to shackle and escort me to the courthouse jail.

I glance around the room once more, noting London’s absence with a set jaw. She’ll be here. It’s not just my fate riding on her testimony.

Her life depends on it.

15

Prison

London

The first prison I ever saw was in the basement of my family home.

My father had turned the belly of our house into a hell. A cell where he kept the girls he’d stolen—where he torture

d them. Until they were of no more use, then they’d stay down in that dungeon, starving in the pitch-black, until he ended their life.

He buried them under my mother’s garden.

She was dead, he said to me when I asked him why…how he could do it. A dead woman doesn’t care and neither should we, was his simple reply.

The first girl I found by accident. The anniversary of my mother’s death meant sadness. I wanted to cheer up her neglected flowers. My father was outraged when I showed him the decayed body…that’s how I knew. It wasn’t the rational response a person—a cop—should have when one discovers a corpse in their backyard.

And then I remember the shiny glint of the key. That damn key that always hung around his neck. It all rushed together, a crash of elements around my life that I never looked at too closely, but that suddenly unmasked a very ugly, malevolent picture.

The basement.

My mind leapt from detail to detail, stringing together connections, and I understood why I was banned from his private sanctuary. I suddenly knew what was down there.

For three months, I listened. In the still of the night I crept through the house, planted my ear to the floorboards, afraid to hear what my mind wouldn’t allow me to believe.

The faintest cry tore up through the ground and gripped my soul.

There was another girl down there.

I close my eyes now, just for a moment to center myself. The air is stuffy and humid in this part of the courthouse as the officer leads me to the cells, to where Grayson is being kept under heavy guard and surveillance.

“Please check your purse and any personal belongings,” the officer instructs, setting a plastic container near. “Then walk through.”

I unload my items and then step through the metal detector. I’m cleared and instructed to follow a short hallway to the last cell on the right.

I walk the length of the hall toward Grayson the same way I walked down those steps all those years ago. My heart constricted. My pulse firing shots through my blood.

I’m not allowed access to him; can only talk to him through the bars. That same cold iron that filled my father’s basement.

“You weren’t there today.”

I stuff my hands into my jacket pockets. “No.” That’s a lie. I stood outside the courtroom doors, my back pressed to the brick as I listened to the trial unfold. But Grayson already knows I’m a liar.

He stares at me from the other side of the cell, those watchful eyes sussing out the truth. “My lawyer thinks I can beat the capital punishment wrap.”

I suck in a breath. “Are you truly afraid to die?”

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Doesn’t everybody fear death?”