Chapter 1 - THE RIVER WASN’T AN ACCIDENT
“Don’t try to open the door, Rosalind. It’s already too late.”
Garrett said it calmly.
That was what frightened me most.
There was no panic in his voice. No fear. No instinctive scream for help.
Only certainty.
The SUV tilted violently as it broke through the old guardrail and plunged into Savannah Creek.
For one impossible second, everything became silent.
Then the river swallowed us.
Cold water slammed against the windows.
I screamed Garrett’s name.
“Tobias!”
My brother was in the back seat, still strapped into the wheelchair he had supposedly used for fifteen years.
I twisted around.
“Tobias! Are you okay?”
His face was pale beneath the emergency lights.
“Rosalind!”
The water was already rushing across the floor.
I reached for my seat belt.
It wouldn't release.
I pulled again.
Nothing.
“Garrett!”
The driver's seat was empty.
I looked toward the front.
The driver's window was open.
Garrett was gone.
He had escaped.
My heart stopped.
He had left us.
The water climbed higher.
I pulled the belt again until the buckle cut into my fingers.
Nothing.
Then my hand touched something beneath the seat.
A thin metal wire.
I froze.
The wire had been looped through the seat-belt mechanism.
Someone had deliberately jammed it.
This wasn't an accident.
I looked through the windshield.
Far above us, beyond the dark water, I could see headlights.
A figure stood near the riverbank.
Garrett.
And beside him stood a woman beneath a black umbrella.
Penelope.
My half sister.
She placed one hand over her pregnant stomach.
Garrett put his arm around her.
They were watching the SUV sink.
Watching me die.
I felt something inside me break.
Three years.
Three years of marriage.
Three years of believing Garrett loved me.
Three years of waking beside him, building a life with him, trusting him with every secret my family possessed.
And now he was standing on the shore with the woman who had spent her entire life competing with me.
The water reached my waist.
“Tobias!”
My brother didn't answer.
I turned.
He was staring at me.
Not frightened.
Focused.
Too focused.
“Tobias?”
He whispered, “Don't fight the belt.”
“What?”
“Stop pulling it.”
The water reached my chest.
“You're going to drown!”
He looked at me strangely.
Then he reached beneath his jacket.
And pulled out a small cutting tool.
My breath stopped.
“Tobias…”
He slipped it around the wire.
One cut.
The wire snapped.
My seat belt released.
I stared at him.
Then Tobias placed both feet against the floor.
And stood.
I forgot how to breathe.
My brother stood upright inside the sinking SUV.
The man who had supposedly been unable to walk for fifteen years.
The man who needed assistance getting out of bed.
The man who couldn't climb stairs.
The man who had spent half his life in a wheelchair.
He was standing.
“Tobias…”
“Later.”
He cut his own restraint.
Then he kicked the rear door.
It didn't move.
Again.
Nothing.
“The pressure,” he said. “Wait.”
The water reached our shoulders.
My lungs burned.
Tobias looked at me.
“When I open it, don't swim toward the surface immediately.”
“Why?”
“Because Garrett is watching.”
Another kick.
The door shifted.
Tobias kicked again.
The door burst open.
Water exploded through the opening.
He grabbed my wrist.
We pushed into the darkness.
For several seconds, I had no idea which direction was up.
Tobias pulled me sideways.
We surfaced beneath an abandoned wooden pier nearly fifty yards downstream.
I gasped.
My lungs felt torn apart.
Tobias dragged himself onto a concrete maintenance platform.
Then he turned toward me.
I slapped him.
Hard.
“You've been walking?”
He didn't react.
“You've been walking for fifteen years?”
“Yes.”
I hit him again.
“Why?”
His eyes filled with something I had never seen in them before.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of what he was about to tell me.
“Because Mom and Dad didn't die in an accident.”
The river continued rushing beneath us.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“They were murdered.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Twelve days before they died, Dad discovered someone was falsifying ownership records at the shipyard.”
My father's shipyard.
The company our family had built in Baltimore.
The company Garrett had become increasingly interested in after our marriage.
Tobias continued.
“He was going to expose them.”
“Who?”
Tobias looked toward the distant riverbank.
“Garrett's father.”
My stomach twisted.
“That's impossible.”
“It isn't.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because the people responsible were watching us.”
He reached into his jacket and removed a waterproof envelope.
Inside were photographs.
Our parents.
The wrecked car.
A man standing beside the wreckage.
Garrett's father.
I stared at the photograph.
My hands began to shake.
“You knew?”
“I knew enough.”
“Then why pretend to be paralyzed?”
“Because after the accident, they expected me to be helpless.”
He looked at me.
“So I let them believe it.”
A siren sounded in the distance.
I looked toward the road.
Garrett's SUV was gone.
The river had swallowed ours.
Tobias closed the envelope.
“We have maybe two hours before they realize we survived.”
I stared at him.
“What happens then?”
He answered quietly.
“They come back to finish it.”
May you like
And somewhere beyond the trees, a phone began ringing.
Someone had found us.
