Chapter 1 - The Wire in the Buckle
When my husband climbed out of our SUV and left me trapped inside, I didn't understand that I was watching the final act of a plan set in motion long before I ever met him.
I only knew three things. The car was sliding toward the Thornwood River. My seat belt would not release. And Marcus Vane was walking away from me.
Rain hammered the roof hard enough to swallow every other sound. We'd left a Calloway Holdings charity reception in Ashford Bend less than forty minutes earlier. Marcus had insisted on driving. He'd also insisted on the river service road, because an accident had backed up the highway.
I should have questioned that. I didn't.
My older brother, Caleb, sat behind me in his wheelchair, secured by the straps we'd used every single day for fifteen years. He hadn't been able to walk since the crash that took our parents. At least, that's what everyone believed.
At least, that's what I believed.
The SUV clipped the guardrail once, spun, and slammed sideways into a concrete barrier. My shoulder cracked against the door. Caleb shouted my name. Marcus didn't make a sound.
The front tires slipped over the muddy shoulder, and the car didn't fall so much as tilt — slow, sickening, the mud giving way beneath us in stages. Then we slid nose-first down the bank and hit the river. Cold water exploded across the hood.
"Marcus!"
He'd already unbuckled. That was the first thing that frightened me. The second was his window — already down, rain pouring straight through it. He was climbing out before I'd even processed the first thing.
"What are you doing?"
He looked at me. Three years of marriage, and I knew every face he owned — the sleepy one, the angry one, the one before a hard meeting, the twitch at the corner of his mouth when he was trying not to laugh.
I had never seen this one. No panic. No confusion.
Just acceptance.
"Renee," he said quietly.
"My belt is stuck."
He glanced down at it. "I know."
Water had already reached my ankles. For a second I thought I'd misheard him. "What?"
He pulled himself further through the window while I grabbed at the buckle and pressed the release. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
"Marcus!"
Behind me, Caleb fought his own restraints as the car shifted and more water rushed in. I screamed. "Help me!"
Marcus paused halfway out the window. Then he said the last words I ever heard him say to me as my husband.
"I'm sorry it had to happen like this."
And he was gone.
I went completely still. For one second. Then survival took over. I yanked the belt, twisted it, pulled until my fingers found something rough near the latch.
Wire. Someone had threaded wire around the buckle assembly. Not damaged in the crash. Installed. Prepared.
"Caleb." My voice barely came out. "He did this."
Behind me, my brother said, "I know."
I turned. "What?"
He wasn't looking at me. He was staring through the rear window at the riverbank.
"Renee. Look."
I followed his gaze. Marcus had reached the shore. A second car waited near the old maintenance road, and beside it stood a woman under a hooded raincoat. She ran to him. He caught her. She threw both arms around his neck and kissed him.
My brain refused to process what my eyes had already understood.
The woman pushed back her hood.
Isabelle Wren. My half-sister. Eight months pregnant. She'd told me the father was a man who vanished after a short fling.
I understood the lie immediately. The baby was Marcus's.
Isabelle turned toward the river. Toward us. There was no horror on her face.
She knew.
That hurt worse than the water climbing toward my waist.
"Caleb."
"I see her."
"I brought both of them into our lives."
"We'll discuss your taste in people later," he said, and I actually turned on him.
"Later?"
"Yes."
The water reached the bottom of his wheelchair. Caleb took one long breath and released the buckle across his chest.
"Renee," he said. "You're going to hate me for approximately the next decade."
"What are you talking about?"
He put both hands on the armrests. And stood.
For several seconds, the river disappeared. Marcus disappeared. Isabelle disappeared. My brother, who had spent fifteen years in a wheelchair, was standing behind me in a flooding car. Not shaking. Not struggling.
Standing.
"Caleb."
"Later."
"You can walk?"
"Yes."
I screamed it. "You can WALK?"
"Renee!"
"How long?"
"Long enough that this is about to become a very unpleasant family conversation."
He reached into a waterproof pouch strapped beneath the chair and pulled out a compact rescue cutter.
"How long?" I demanded again.
"Fourteen years."
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"That's impossible."
"I know how it sounds."
"You let me redesign two houses for your chair."
"I know."
"I carried you up stairs. I threatened a restaurant manager over a blocked ramp!"
"That one was justified," he said, and I nearly laughed despite everything.
"Caleb!"
The SUV shifted deeper into the current. He gripped my shoulder hard. "You can be furious after we survive."
Fair enough.
He cut through the wire around my buckle. Once. Twice. The last strand snapped and the belt gave way. By then the water had nearly reached my chest.
Caleb moved toward the rear hatch. "Wait for the pressure to equalize."
"You sound extremely prepared for this."
May you like
"I am."
That answer scared me almost as much as Marcus had.
