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pocket would be so effective?
    Fucking brilliant .
    “There’s more,” Borden said. “Beneath your name was anothermessage.” He paused again. He knew damn well he had her full attention and he was determined to soak up every second. Jesus, how did his wife stand him? “Two numbers. A two, a slash, and then a ten.”
    He let go of her hands and Abby resisted the urge to wipe her palms on her prison-issue slacks. She watched as he removed his pen from his breast pocket to scribble something on the yellow legal pad in front of him. He turned it around so she could read it.
    2/10.
    “Two-ten?” Abby frowned at his handwriting, her finger brushing over the page where he’d scrawled. “Is that a date? February tenth? What happened on February tenth?”
    “Nothing, which is why they don’t think it is a date.” Borden tapped the notepad with his pen. “February ten doesn’t correspond to anything. It’s not your birthday, it’s not your incarceration date, it’s not linked to anything relevant they can find. Not even anything to do with Ethan, as far as they can determine.”
    “So then what does it mean?”
    “The police think it’s the kind of number you would see at the bottom of a limited-edition print.”
    Abby waited. Her attorney interpreted her silence as confusion.
    “You know when artists make prints of their work?” Borden said. “And at the bottom, they sign it, beside the number of prints that will be in circulation? The dead woman who was found a week ago—who’s probably linked to this murder—was also strangled with a zip tie. Your name wasn’t on that one, or we’d have obviously heard about it then, but there was a number carved on that body as well. One-ten.” He scrawled it again for clarity.
    1/10.
    “I see.” Abby picked up the piece of paper and stared at it, tilting her head. “So it’s a counter . As in, one out of ten. Two out of ten.”
    “Yes. They think so.”
    She spoke softly, almost a whisper. “So there’ll be eight more victims? Victims who look like me, with my name carved into them?”
    “Possibly.”
    Abby leaned forward and took both his hands in both of hers, enjoying the flush that spread across his cheeks once again. “So you’re thinking I might have some leverage here. The police are going to assume I know something.”
    “Do you know something?”
    She shrugged and said nothing. A moment passed. Borden didn’t push. She knew he didn’t care whether she was innocent or guilty—he was her lawyer, for fuck’s sake. All he cared about was winning.
    Borden smiled at her, the rush from their skin-to-skin contact going straight to his head. “It’s okay. Even if you don’t know anything, there’s no reason to let them think otherwise. For now, anyway. This could definitely be to our advantage, if we play it right.”
    “So tell me how to play it.”
    He squeezed her hands tighter. “Just keep doing everything we talked about. I’ve been getting some calls from television shows wanting to interview you, and we can work with that, too. You might be in prison, but you are in control here, Abby. Don’t you ever forget that.”
    Abby laughed. God, men could be so stupid. “Come on, Bob. As if I ever could.”

chapter 5
    THE LOVEBIRDS WERE still inside the restaurant. How long did it take to eat lamb souvlaki, anyway?
    Jerry didn’t have the time to be sitting outside a Greek tavern. He was scheduled to meet Maddox in an hour, and the drive to Rosedale Penitentiary was a little over that, maybe fifty minutes if he really stepped on it. But none of that seemed to matter at this moment. Abby Maddox could wait. He’d been on an overnight stakeout when Torrance had called that morning, and he wanted—no, needed—to see how it all played out.
    He sat cocooned inside the tinted windows of his brand-new navy blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, bought last month after his old Honda Accord finally died. The afternoon was dark and wet, typical for a Seattle