Chapter 1 - The Moving Toes at Midnight
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“Rebecca, close the door.”
Garrett Corbin’s voice was barely louder than the hum of the central air conditioning, but it carried the razor-sharp authority of a man who had built a biotech empire from nothing.
I stood frozen beside the marble vanity in the master bathroom, the damp terrycloth towel still gripped in both of my hands. My breath caught in my throat.
Just seconds earlier, as I gently bathed his right leg and dried the pale skin along his ankle, his right foot had shifted. It hadn't been a spastic twitch or an involuntary reflex caused by damaged spinal cord pathways. It had been deliberate, controlled, and unmistakable: his foot had slid two inches across the bath mat, and his toes had flexed in a slow, rhythmic stretch.
Garrett was staring directly into my eyes. His dark hair was threaded with silver at the temples, his face hollowed by months of confinement, but his dark amber eyes were fiercely alert.
“Close the door, Rebecca,” he repeated, his gaze never wavering. “And turn the lock.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. In twelve years of marriage to Christopher, I had learned how dangerous it was when men kept secrets behind closed doors. Instinctively, my left hand slipped into the pocket of my medical scrubs, my fingers closing around my smartphone.
I stepped backward toward the heavy oak bathroom door, reached behind my back, and twisted the brass deadbolt.
Click.
The lock engaged.
Garrett drew a long, deep breath through his nose. He gripped the polished chrome handles of his high-backed wheelchair, leaned his weight forward, and lifted his right foot completely off the floor. He rotated his ankle in a smooth, effortless circle, then set it down and lifted his left foot.
I pressed my back against the locked door, unable to draw air into my lungs.
“Mr. Corbin...” I stammered, my voice trembling. “Your neurological charts... Dr. Vance’s reports... they said your L4 and L5 vertebrae suffered irreversible cord transection. They said you had complete flaccid paraplegia.”
“Dr. Vance says whatever my brother pays him to say,” Garrett replied in a low, chilling murmur.
He leaned back into the leather upholstery of his chair, watching me with a calculated, searching intensity.
“I have been able to move my legs for seven weeks, Rebecca. Three weeks ago, in the middle of the night while the house slept, I stood up on my own two feet and walked across this bathroom.”
My hand trembled inside my pocket. “Why are you hiding it? If you can walk, why are you sitting in that chair letting your brother run your company?”
Garrett leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, his jaw hardening into solid granite.
“Because eight months ago, the brake lines on my sedan didn't snap by accident on the interstate,” Garrett whispered. “Someone cut the hydraulic pressure valve. And the only people who had access to my private garage that night were the three people sleeping down the hall: my stepmother, my half-brother Douglas, and his wife Gertrude.”
He pointed toward the closed door.
May you like
“I am playing the corpse they wanted to bury, Rebecca. Because the moment they realize I can stand, they won't try to disable me a second time. They will finish the job.”
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