Chapter 1 - The Kiss Above the Water
My husband kissed my forehead while I was begging him not to open the helicopter door.
"Don't make this ugly, Simone," Darius Bennett said.
His voice was almost lost beneath the engine. Beyond the open doorway, the California coast looked like a thin strip of chalk against an endless blue ocean. I was seven months pregnant. My knees shook so badly that I had to grip the seat frame.
"Close it," I said. "Please. Think about our daughter."
He smiled at the word daughter. It was the same smile he had worn when we learned the baby's sex, the same smile he gave photographers at charity galas.
"That's exactly what I've been doing."
He caught my wrist. I tried to pull free, but my swollen body was trapped between the seat and the doorway. He hauled me upright. My cream maternity coat snagged on a buckle. A button snapped loose and disappeared into the wind.
"Darius, you're hurting me."
"Your father should've given me a seat on the board."
I stared at him. After six years of marriage, I finally heard the sentence beneath every anniversary gift, every apology, every question about my money.
"This is about the company?"
"It's about what you owe me."
He shoved me toward the doorway. I grabbed the seat belt strap and screamed. The pilot glanced backward, his face suddenly white.
"Sir! Sit down!"
Darius leaned close enough for me to smell his expensive cologne.
"You should have signed the papers."
Then he kissed my forehead and pushed.
The cabin vanished.
Wind tore the scream from my mouth. My daughter moved inside me, a small, terrible reminder that I was not falling alone.
Three months earlier, my attorney had asked whether I thought my husband could hurt me. I had said I didn't know. She had insisted that any private flight be arranged through a licensed operator, with a safety briefing and appropriate emergency equipment. I had quietly told her about the trip when Darius announced it.
I did not have a miracle parachute hidden beneath my coat. I had something less cinematic and more useful: a witness who knew where I was supposed to be.
The pilot had seen everything.
As I fell, I heard the helicopter change pitch. Then something bright orange dropped from the aircraft above me.
I hit the water hard enough to steal my breath.
The impact was not the clean splash people imagine. It was a blow from every direction. Salt flooded my mouth. I surfaced coughing, my coat dragging at my shoulders. The orange object bobbed several yards away: an emergency flotation pack, thrown by the pilot.
I fought toward it. Each movement sent pain across my ribs. I caught the strap, hauled the inflated flotation aid against my chest, and screamed until my throat burned.
The helicopter circled once.
For a moment I thought Darius was coming back.
Then it flew toward shore.
A rescue vessel arrived after what felt like an entire lifetime. A crew member reached for me, and I cried out when they lifted me aboard.
"My baby," I kept saying. "Please, my baby."
They wrapped me in blankets. A woman knelt beside me and checked my breathing.
"What's your name?"
"Simone Bennett."
"Stay with me, Simone."
"My husband pushed me."
The woman looked at her colleague.
"Tell dispatch what she said."
I heard the words attempted homicide over the radio. They sounded as though they belonged to somebody else's life.
At the hospital, doctors checked me and my unborn daughter. The baby still had a heartbeat. I wept when I heard it, then wept harder when a nurse told me I needed observation because complications could still develop.
My attorney, Patrice Cole, arrived in a dark coat, her silver braids damp from the rain.
"I called as soon as the operator reported an emergency," she said.
"Did they find Darius?"
"He's telling the police you jumped."
I stared at her.
"He said what?"
Patrice sat beside the bed.
"The pilot has already given a different account."
I pressed both hands against my stomach. The monitor kept recording our daughter's heartbeat.
"Don't tell him where I am."
"The hospital has privacy protections in place. The detective will talk to you when you're ready."
My phone had been lost at sea. Patrice handed me a spare one with a new number.
At eleven that night, she showed me a public statement Darius had released.
MY BELOVED WIFE WAS LOST IN A TRAGIC ACCIDENT. PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR UNBORN CHILD.
Below it was a photograph of him outside our mansion, crying into the shoulder of my best friend, Tasha Monroe.
Tasha wore my mother's diamond earrings.
I had lent them to her for a fundraiser and never gotten them back.
Patrice scrolled to the next image. Darius and Tasha stood together beside a florist delivering white funeral lilies.
"They've scheduled a memorial," Patrice said.
"For when?"
"Christmas Eve."
I looked down at the hospital bracelet around my wrist.
My husband was planning my funeral while my daughter was still kicking.
Then Patrice's spare phone rang.
May you like
The caller identified herself as the pilot's sister.
"He told me to tell you something," she whispered. "Your husband wasn't the only person who wanted that helicopter door open."
