Chapter 1 - The Push
Richard kissed my forehead like a husband saying goodbye to fear.
Then he put both hands on my shoulders and shoved me out of the helicopter.
For one stunned second, I saw his face framed by the open door above me. No panic. No regret. Just a strange, almost peaceful emptiness.
Then the California coast tilted sideways and the Pacific rushed up beneath me.
I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant.
My first thought was not about dying.
It was about my daughter.
"Hold on, baby," I gasped, though the wind ripped the words away.
My hands clawed beneath my loose jacket. Three months earlier, after my attorney Evelyn Shaw asked whether I believed Richard could hurt me, I had ordered a compact emergency parachute and taken private training without telling him.
I had prayed the whole thing was paranoia.
Now my fingers found the release.
I pulled.
Nothing happened.
For one horrifying heartbeat, the ocean grew larger.
I pulled again.
The pack exploded open behind me. The canopy snapped into the sky. My body jerked hard enough to make pain shoot through my ribs, but the spinning stopped.
I looked up at the helicopter.
Richard was leaning out the open door.
Even from that distance, I could see his head turn sharply when the parachute opened.
He had seen it.
That meant he knew I was alive.
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And that meant the man who had just tried to kill me was no longer planning a funeral.
He was planning what to do next.
