A Marriage That Isn’t So Perfect

From the outside, Sarah Morgan and Adam Morgan look like a successful Washington, D.C. power couple. Sarah is a highly accomplished criminal defense attorney, while Adam is a novelist still struggling to achieve the kind of success his wife enjoys. After ten years of marriage, the imbalance between them has become impossible to ignore. Sarah spends most of her time working, and Adam increasingly feels like an afterthought in her life.

Rather than confronting the problems in his marriage, Adam finds fulfillment elsewhere. For sixteen months, he has been having an affair with Kelly Summers, a waitress he met at a café near the Morgans’ secluded lake house in Brentsville, Virginia. The lake house becomes their regular meeting place, allowing Adam to maintain a secret relationship while Sarah remains consumed by her career.

That arrangement ends violently when Kelly is found murdered in the lake house—in Adam and Sarah’s bed. She has been stabbed thirty-seven times.

Adam immediately has a serious problem. He was at the house, his DNA is on Kelly, and there is no question that the two were having sex. Sheriff Ryan Stevens and Deputy Marcus Hudson quickly make him their primary suspect and place him under arrest.

Sarah learns two devastating things almost simultaneously: her husband has been cheating on her for more than a year, and he is now accused of brutally murdering his mistress.

Instead of walking away from him, she decides to defend him.

Sarah Takes Her Husband’s Case

Sarah’s decision shocks nearly everyone around her. She insists that whatever Adam has done to their marriage, that does not mean he murdered Kelly. As an experienced defense attorney, she knows how easily circumstantial evidence can make someone appear guilty, and she begins preparing to save her husband’s life.

Adam’s situation becomes even more dangerous because Kelly was married. Her husband, Scott Summers, is a police officer, and he is furious about the affair. While Adam is in custody, Scott viciously attacks him, leaving him hospitalized with a broken cheekbone.

As Sarah investigates Kelly’s background, she discovers that the murdered woman was hiding much more than an affair. Kelly Summers isn’t even her real name.

She was born Jenna Way, and years earlier, she had been accused of murdering her first husband, Greg. The case took place in Wisconsin, but the charges against Jenna were eventually dismissed after crucial evidence mysteriously disappeared. Even more suspiciously, Scott had been one of the officers involved in that investigation.

Sarah now has another possible version of Kelly’s story: perhaps Scott wasn’t simply the betrayed husband everyone thinks he is. He had helped Jenna escape a murder charge years earlier and then married her.

Adam Starts Investigating for Himself

Adam becomes increasingly desperate to prove that someone else had a reason to kill Kelly. While his case is moving toward trial, he is contacted by Rebecca Sanford, who presents herself as a reporter interested in hearing his side of the story. Adam eventually hires Rebecca to investigate Greg’s family, particularly Greg’s brother, Nicholas Miller.

If Nicholas believes Jenna murdered Greg and escaped justice, Adam reasons, he has an obvious motive for revenge.

At the same time, Sarah’s decision to represent Adam creates problems at her law firm, Williamson & Morgan. Her colleague Bob Miller and senior partner Kent Williamson worry about the attention the case is bringing to the firm. Sarah is also dealing with Eleanor Morgan, Adam’s mother, who makes it clear that she believes Sarah’s obsession with work helped drive her son into another woman’s arms.

Adam, however, becomes suspicious of Sarah herself after examining a threatening note he previously received that read, “End it or else I will.” He realizes the handwriting looks remarkably similar to Sarah’s handwriting on Post-it notes she has left around the house.

The discovery terrifies him, but instead of immediately concluding that Sarah killed Kelly, Adam becomes convinced that Sarah’s assistant, Anne, may somehow be involved. He violates the conditions of his house arrest and heads to Sarah’s office to confront her.

What he finds there only makes the case stranger.

Bob Miller’s Real Identity

At Sarah’s office, another major secret comes out: Bob Miller is actually Nicholas Miller, Greg’s brother.

The man Adam has been trying to track down has been working beside Sarah all along.

Bob has every reason to hate Kelly. He believes she murdered his brother and escaped punishment, giving him a strong motive for wanting her dead. Between Bob’s connection to Kelly’s past, Scott’s suspicious involvement in her old murder case, and the unanswered questions surrounding the threatening note, Sarah has several possible ways to create reasonable doubt.

Her defense focuses heavily on Kelly’s hidden history and the possibility of corruption within law enforcement. If the investigation was compromised by officers with personal connections to Kelly, then the evidence against Adam cannot necessarily be trusted.

But none of it is enough.

Despite Sarah’s efforts, the prosecution convinces the jury that Adam murdered his mistress. He is found guilty and sentenced to death.

Sarah loses the case, and Adam spends the following years waiting to be executed for a murder he insists he did not commit.

Adam’s Execution

Eleven years pass.

On the day Adam is finally scheduled to die, Sarah comes to see him. By now, there is nothing left she can do for him. His appeals have failed, his sentence stands, and he is strapped down to receive a lethal injection.

Sarah approaches him during his final moments and whispers something that completely changes Adam’s understanding of everything that has happened.

“I know for a fact it wasn’t you.”

Only then does Adam realize the truth.

Sarah didn’t fail to save an innocent man.

She deliberately made sure a guilty verdict would stick.

Sarah Was the Killer

Long before Adam’s arrest, Sarah had discovered his affair. Bob Miller, who knew Kelly as Jenna Way and wanted revenge for his brother Greg’s death, told Sarah what Adam was doing.

But Bob and Sarah weren’t merely colleagues exchanging information. They had become lovers, and together they devised a plan that would solve both of their problems. Bob wanted revenge against Kelly, while Sarah wanted to punish Adam for betraying her without allowing a divorce to threaten everything she had worked for.

On the night Kelly died, Sarah drugged Adam with Rohypnol, leaving him conscious enough to witness what was happening but unable to stop it or properly remember it afterward. She placed a plastic tarp over him and murdered Kelly in front of him, stabbing her repeatedly.

Adam had been at the murder scene because Sarah needed him there.

His affair ensured that his DNA would be found on Kelly. His presence at the lake house made him the obvious suspect. Their secret relationship gave prosecutors a believable motive and explanation for why Kelly was in the Morgans’ bed.

Sarah then took control of Adam’s defense herself.

For years, Adam believed his wife had stood beside him despite his betrayal. In reality, the person responsible for proving his innocence was the same person who had framed him.

Sarah had orchestrated the entire situation so carefully that Adam would never understand what happened until it was too late to do anything about it.

Sarah Gets Her Perfect Ending

Adam dies knowing the truth but unable to expose Sarah.

By the end of the novel, Sarah has built an entirely new life with Bob Miller, the man who helped set everything in motion. The two are now married and have an eight-year-old daughter named Summer.

Sarah has also protected the career, money, and future she feared losing if she simply divorced Adam. Instead of allowing his affair to dismantle the life she had built, she arranged for Adam to take the blame for Kelly’s murder and spent years maintaining the appearance of the devoted wife who had fought desperately to save him.

Only at his execution does she finally allow him to understand what she did.

Adam’s affair with Kelly ultimately costs both of them their lives: Kelly is murdered by Sarah, while Adam is executed for the crime. Sarah walks away untouched, free to enjoy the life she planned with Bob and their daughter.