Chapter 1 - The Door That Would Not Open
The river hit the windshield like a fist.
Rosalind heard metal tear, Garrett swear once, and then the SUV rolled off the highway into open air. For one impossible second, the headlights shone on rain instead of road. Then black water swallowed them.
“Garrett!” she screamed. “I can't get the door open!”
Her husband did not answer. Water rose over her ankles, icy enough to steal her breath. The seat belt had locked across her chest. She pushed the red release. Nothing. She pushed harder, her thumb slipping on the wet plastic.
From the back seat came a groan. “Roz?” Tobias said. His wheelchair was folded and strapped beside him, just as it had been for every trip over the past fifteen years. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I don't know. Garrett, help him!”
Garrett lowered his window. He did it carefully, almost patiently, while the vehicle tilted toward the riverbed. Rosalind stared at the water pouring through the opening.
“What are you doing?”
He finally turned. In the dashboard's dying blue light, the face she'd kissed that morning looked like a stranger's.
“Don't bother trying to open the door, Rosalind,” he said. “It's already too late for you.”
Her heart seemed to stop. “What?”
“You always needed an explanation.” He released his own belt. “Consider this one.”
He climbed through the window with the calm efficiency of a man leaving a parking garage. Rosalind lunged after him. Something sharp bit her wrist. A thin steel wire had been looped through the buckle and anchored beneath the seat.
“Garrett!” She slapped the glass. “Come back!”
He did not look back. Through the wavering windshield she watched him fight the current toward shore. There, beneath a black umbrella, waited a woman in a dark coat. One hand rested on the unmistakable curve of her pregnant belly.
Penelope.
Her half sister stepped forward as Garrett climbed onto the rocks. He embraced her. Rosalind pressed a shaking palm against the glass, unable to make her mind accept the two figures standing together. Penelope's pale face remained perfectly composed.
A small sound came from behind Rosalind: the click of a seat-belt latch.
“Tobias?”
Her brother reached for the front seat. Then he did the one thing he had not done in fifteen years.
May you like
He stood up.
And in his hand was a blade.
