Three years ago, she had been Eleanor Vance, the trembling new bride of Dr. Julian Vance, a celebrated neurosurgeon with a smile that could disarm a jury. Their wedding had been featured in Portland Bride magazine. Their home, a glass-and-stone mansion on the Columbia River Gorge, was flawless.

The Protocol was a thing she had built for her mother, who had been a domestic abuse survivor. A go-bag. A burner phone. A pre-paid bus ticket to nowhere. She had never thought she'd use it for herself.

On their six-month anniversary, Julian had gone to a conference in Seattle. Eleanor, bored and restless, decided to finally organize the locked storage room off the garage. Julian had said it was full of "old medical records." The key, however, was exactly where he’d hidden it—under a loose tile in the greenhouse.

The news reported her death as a presumed suicide. The falls had swept her away, they said. Julian held a tearful press conference. He was so brave. So broken. The public sent flowers.

The rain stopped. The silence was absolute.

Or so she thought.

On the walls, framed like diplomas, were driver’s licenses. Samantha Hart, 34. Lisa Ng, 29. Margaret "Maggie" O'Dell, 31. Each woman had Julian’s last name stamped next to theirs— Vance. Each had a date of marriage and a date of death, neatly typed beneath.

It was not a storage room. It was a museum.