Chapter 1 - The Gold Candelabrum
Celeste Voss raised the gold candelabrum over Mara Quinn's head and screamed, "You should've died on that bus!"
Mara had exactly one second to move. Her silver crutch lay beyond her reach. Her left prosthetic leg had twisted beneath her when she'd fallen against the glass patio table, and broken champagne flutes glittered around her like ice. She pushed backward. Her shortened left forearm scraped the stone.
"Stop!" she shouted.
Nobody at the Voss mansion moved. The guests stared as if violence were another expensive entertainment.
Celeste's teal satin dress flashed in the sunset. She swung.
A hand shot between them and caught the candelabrum by its stem. The candles shook. Hot wax struck the floor.
"That's enough," a man said.
Caleb Reed. Burgundy suit. Open white collar. The man Celeste was supposed to marry in six weeks.
"Move," Celeste hissed. "She came here to ruin us."
"You were about to crush her skull."
Celeste yanked the weapon. Caleb held on. She slapped at his face, clawed for his wrist, and lunged toward Mara again. Caleb shoved the candelabrum aside and drove one desperate kick into Celeste's midsection to force her away.
Her heels slid across wet stone. For one terrible instant she balanced at the pool's edge, blue gown billowing. Then she fell backward into the water.
The splash soaked two shocked donors. Someone screamed. At last, people started moving.
Mara forced herself onto one elbow. She hadn't come to the party to fight. She'd come with a copy of a safety warning, a page everyone claimed had burned in the crash three years earlier. Six people had died that night, including her seventeen-year-old brother, Owen. Mara had lost her left leg above the knee, part of her arm, and her future.
Caleb knelt beside her. His face looked different up close: not heroic, just scared.
"Can you stand?" he asked.
"Why did she say that?"
Across the water, Celeste surfaced, coughing and screaming for security.
Caleb glanced at the mansion, then lowered his voice. "Because she knows what happened on Harbor Bridge."
Mara grabbed his jacket before he could rise. "Then tell me."
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His answer was barely louder than the splashing water.
"The brakes on that shuttle were never fixed. And I signed the paper that said they were."
