The rescue team found me forty-three minutes after I landed.<\/p>\n
By then my ankle had swollen badly enough that I couldn’t stand.<\/p>\n
The first paramedic who reached me stared at the parachute tangled nearby.<\/p>\n
“What happened?”<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
“My husband tried to kill me.”<\/p>\n
His expression changed instantly.<\/p>\n
From concern to disbelief to professional focus.<\/p>\n
“Your husband?”<\/p>\n
“He pushed me out of a helicopter.”<\/p>\n
Within minutes, everything accelerated.<\/p>\n
Police.<\/p>\n
Emergency transport.<\/p>\n
Questions.<\/p>\n
Doctors.<\/p>\n
Monitors.<\/p>\n
Hands touching my stomach.<\/p>\n
For the next hour, I stopped being Amelia Hayes, CEO.<\/p>\n
I stopped being Amelia Hayes, billionaire.<\/p>\n
I was simply a terrified pregnant woman lying under fluorescent lights waiting for someone to tell me whether my baby was alive.<\/p>\n
The doctor finally entered.<\/p>\n
My breath stopped.<\/p>\n
“Your baby is okay.”<\/p>\n
I covered my mouth.<\/p>\n
He kept talking.<\/p>\n
Bruising.<\/p>\n
A sprained ankle.<\/p>\n
Observation.<\/p>\n
Monitoring.<\/p>\n
But I barely heard him.<\/p>\n
My baby was alive.<\/p>\n
That was enough.<\/p>\n
I cried until my chest hurt.<\/p>\n
Evelyn arrived after dark.<\/p>\n
She walked into the private hospital room carrying no flowers.<\/p>\n
That was one reason I loved her.<\/p>\n
Evelyn never brought decorative gestures to emergencies.<\/p>\n
She brought information.<\/p>\n
“Richard landed forty minutes after the incident,” she said.<\/p>\n
I sat up.<\/p>\n
“What did he tell them?”<\/p>\n
“Initially? Nothing.”<\/p>\n
“He didn’t report me?”<\/p>\n
“No.”<\/p>\n
That hurt more than it should have.<\/p>\n
I don’t know why.<\/p>\n
The man had pushed me from an aircraft.<\/p>\n
Of course he hadn’t called for help.<\/p>\n
But some stupid wounded fragment of the woman who had loved him still expected humanity to interrupt his plan.<\/p>\n
It hadn’t.<\/p>\n
“When did he report me missing?”<\/p>\n
“After the helicopter company began asking questions.”<\/p>\n
I laughed once.<\/p>\n
It sounded ugly.<\/p>\n
“And his story?”<\/p>\n
“You became distressed. You moved toward the open door. There was an accident.”<\/p>\n
“An accident.”<\/p>\n
“He claims he tried to grab you.”<\/p>\n
I stared at the blanket covering my legs.<\/p>\n
I could still feel his hands.<\/p>\n
Not trying to hold me.<\/p>\n
Pushing.<\/p>\n
“He kissed me first.”<\/p>\n
Evelyn didn’t respond.<\/p>\n
“He kissed my forehead,” I whispered. “Then he pushed me.”<\/p>\n
She sat beside me.<\/p>\n
“You don’t have to understand him tonight.”<\/p>\n
“I married him.”<\/p>\n
“That doesn’t require you to understand murder.”<\/p>\n
I looked toward the window.<\/p>\n
“What does he know about me?”<\/p>\n
“Very little.”<\/p>\n
We had requested extreme discretion until law enforcement could coordinate the next steps.<\/p>\n
Richard knew search operations had begun.<\/p>\n
He did not yet know I had been found alive.<\/p>\n
The plan wasn’t to fake my death.<\/p>\n
We didn’t need to.<\/p>\n
We simply weren’t going to rush to correct Richard’s assumption.<\/p>\n
“He’s already contacted the estate office,” Evelyn said.<\/p>\n
I turned.<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
“Not formally. He called one of the administrators asking what documentation would be required if you were presumed dead.”<\/p>\n
My throat tightened.<\/p>\n
“Already?”<\/p>\n
“Yes.”<\/p>\n
I checked the clock.<\/p>\n
It hadn’t even been six hours.<\/p>\n
Something inside me finally broke.<\/p>\n
Not my heart.<\/p>\n
That had probably broken somewhere between the helicopter and the ground.<\/p>\n
This was something else.<\/p>\n
The last illusion.<\/p>\n
The last excuse.<\/p>\n
The last possibility that panic or madness or some inexplicable moment had caused Richard to push me.<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
He had landed.<\/p>\n
He had lied.<\/p>\n
And then he’d started asking about my money.<\/p>\n
“Good,” I said.<\/p>\n
Evelyn studied me.<\/p>\n
“Good?”<\/p>\n
“Let him keep talking.”<\/p>\n
The following morning, investigators interviewed me.<\/p>\n
I told them everything.<\/p>\n
The questions.<\/p>\n
The trust documents.<\/p>\n
The highlighted will.<\/p>\n
The helicopter invitation.<\/p>\n
His hand on my arm.<\/p>\n
His face before the shove.<\/p>\n
My preparations.<\/p>\n
Everything.<\/p>\n
I also gave them the records Evelyn and I had preserved.<\/p>\n
What I didn’t have was a magical recording of Richard confessing.<\/p>\n
Real life rarely provides villains kind enough to explain their crimes into microphones.<\/p>\n
What we had was behavior.<\/p>\n
Pattern.<\/p>\n
Motive.<\/p>\n
And me.<\/p>\n
Alive.<\/p>\n
By afternoon, Richard’s behavior became even more revealing.<\/p>\n
He contacted another attorney.<\/p>\n
Then a financial adviser.<\/p>\n
Then one of my company’s directors.<\/p>\n
The director called Evelyn immediately afterward.<\/p>\n
Richard had apparently said:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rescue team found me forty-three minutes after I landed. By then my ankle had swollen badly enough that I couldn’t stand. The first paramedic who reached me stared at the parachute tangled nearby. “What happened?” I looked at him. “My husband tried to kill me.” His expression changed instantly. From concern to disbelief to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-417","sr_chapter","type-sr_chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/sr_chapter"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/sr_chapter\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fantatv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}