Chapter 2 - Beneath the Surface
The shock of seeing my brother stand on his own two feet was so profound that for three seconds, my brain refused to process the reality of the drowning car.
"Mason—" I gasped again, but his broad hand clamped firmly over my nose and mouth.
"In," he commanded underwater, his head bobbing up into the two-inch air pocket beside mine. "Take a full breath. Now."
I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the damp air trapped against the vehicle's headliner.
Before I could ask a single question, Mason turned toward the rear passenger door. He didn't scramble or panic. He waited—counting silently in his head while the cabin filled completely with water, equalizing the internal and external pressure against the frame.
When the air pocket vanished entirely, Mason planted his left foot against the center console and drove his right heel directly into the latch area of the door with terrifying, explosive force.
THUD.
The door burst open into the black river current.
Mason grabbed the collar of my heavy winter coat, dragging me backward out of the sinking SUV into the freezing, open water of the James River.
The current was brutal, spinning us in the murky darkness. I kicked frantically toward the pale green light dancing on the surface thirty feet above us, desperate for oxygen, but Mason’s arm wrapped around my waist like a steel band, violently jerking me downward toward the muddy riverbed.
I thrashed against him, pointing upward toward the light. Air. My lungs were burning, expanding against my ribs like inflation bags ready to burst.
Mason shook his head underwater, his eyes wide and dark. He pointed with his free hand toward the shore.
Through the distorted water column, I looked up.
Julian was still standing on the embankment under the black umbrella. But he was no longer holding Chloe’s waist. He had reached into the back of his Mercedes sedan—which was parked fifty yards down the access road—and pulled out a long, black hard-shell case.
He popped the latches, lifted out a scoped hunting rifle, and racked the bolt.
He walked to the edge of the muddy bank, bringing the rifle to his shoulder, scanning the swirling eddies of the river where our car had sunk. He was waiting for the air bubbles to clear—waiting for our waterlogged corpses to float up to the surface so he could put a bullet through our foreheads if the river hadn't finished the job.
A cold horror, far worse than the fear of drowning, settled into my bones.
He wasn't just leaving us to die. He was executing a cull.
Mason didn't hesitate. Staying flattened against the silt of the riverbed, he dragged me by my collar, kicking his powerful legs in long, sweeping strokes, moving downstream with the heavy bottom current.
My vision began to darken at the edges again. Little red dots danced across my eyes. My lungs twitched violently, trying to force my diaphragm to inhale water.
Ten seconds. I have ten seconds before my body involuntarily opens my airway.
Mason saw my eyes rolling back. He kicked harder, dragging us behind the submerged pilings of an old, abandoned coal pier thirty yards downstream from the wreck.
We rose behind the rotting wooden timbers, staying within the dark shadow cast by the collapsed concrete decking above.
Our heads broke the surface simultaneously with barely a sound.
I choked, gasping for air, but Mason instantly clamped his hand over my mouth again, dragging my head back into the thick mat of floating river debris and dead reeds clinging to the pilings.
"Quiet," he breathed against my wet temple. "Don't cough. Do not cough, Valerie."
I forced myself to swallow the burning bile in my throat, my body trembling so hard my teeth clicked together.
Through the gaps in the rotting pier timbers, we watched Julian.
He stood on the bank for twenty-two minutes. I counted every single minute by the painful, shuddering thud of my own heart against my ribs.
He didn't move. He stood in the rain, the scoped rifle resting comfortably against his hip, his eyes tracking the river surface as the oil slick from our vehicle's engine floated downstream. Chloe stood beside him, resting her hands on her pregnant belly, sipping something from a silver thermos.
"He's thorough," Mason whispered into my hair. His voice was completely devoid of emotion—cold, calculated, and frighteningly experienced. "He knows the river current in this section loops toward the sandbar a mile south. He thinks if we pop up, we'll pop up there."
Finally, after twenty-five minutes, Julian lowered the rifle. He said something to Chloe. She smiled, kissed his cheek again, and turned toward the car.
Julian pulled a burner phone from his pocket, pressed a single speed-dial button, and held it to his ear as he walked back to his vehicle.
"He's making the call," Mason murmured. "Reporting the tragic accident to 911. He'll tell them the road was slick, the steering box failed, and he barely managed to swim out through his window before the river swallowed his poor, helpless wife and her crippled brother."
Tears, hot and scalding, mixed with the river water on my cheeks.
"Why?" I sobbed silently into Mason's shoulder. "Why, Mason? The shipyard isn't worth this. The insurance... it’s only two million dollars..."
"The insurance is just the appetizer, Val," Mason said softly, his fingers digging into my arm as he kept us pinned against the wood. "Julian doesn't want the two million. He wants the defense contract we signed with the Navy last month. And he couldn't get it as long as you held fifty-one percent of the voting shares."
I stared at my brother in the dim light beneath the pier.
The water was dripping from his dark hair. His jaw was set in a hard, square line I hadn't seen since he was twelve years old. The soft, quiet boy who sat in a wheelchair reading history books in the library for fifteen years had completely vanished.
"How are you standing?" I whispered, my voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of awe and betrayal. "Mason... your legs... the doctors said your spinal cord was severed at L3. I read the MRI reports. I paid the physical therapists for ten years!"
Mason turned his head to look at me. His eyes were gray, cold, and filled with an ancient, unbearable sorrow.
"My spinal cord wasn't severed, Val," he said quietly. "Dad’s friend, Dr. Mercer, forged those MRI scans fifteen years ago."
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"What?"
"The crash that killed Mom and Dad wasn't an accident either," Mason whispered, his voice dropping into a register that made my blood turn to ice. "They were murdered by the same people who just tried to kill us today. And if Julian knows you survived this river... he won't just try again. He'll burn down everything left of this family until there's nothing left to dig up."
