Chapter 1 - THE FLIGHT THAT NEVER LEFT
My flight to London was canceled at 12:38 a.m.
At 1:47 a.m., I opened my front door and heard my mother scream from upstairs.
“Tell me the safe code, Irene, and we’ll be done with this!”
Then came the sound of metal being smashed with a hammer.
I froze with one hand still on the doorknob.
For half a second, my exhausted brain tried to make the noise into something harmless.
A pipe.
Construction outside.
Anything.
Then my wife screamed.
Not loudly.
That was worse.
It was the broken, breathless sound of someone who had already screamed too many times.
I dropped my suitcase where I stood.
My shoes were still wet from the rain outside Phoenix Sky Harbor. My suit jacket clung to my shoulders. I had spent the last two hours cursing an electrical problem on a British Airways aircraft.
Now I was thanking God for it.
I moved toward the staircase.
Another crash.
Then my younger sister Carla’s voice.
“Mom, stop talking and make her tell you. We need those papers before morning.”
My stomach tightened.
Papers?
What papers?
I climbed the stairs without turning on a light.
Our Paradise Valley house was large, but at that hour every sound carried.
When I reached the hallway outside the master bedroom, I heard my mother again.
“Scream all you want. Austin is halfway to London by now. Nobody is coming to save you.”
My blood went cold.
I almost kicked the door open.
Almost.
Then Irene groaned.
I pushed the door inward two inches.
And saw my pregnant wife on the floor.
Irene was three months pregnant.
She had one arm wrapped around her stomach. Her lip was split. Her left cheek was swollen. The shoulder of her pale blue nightgown had been torn nearly to her elbow.
My mother, Margaret Wentworth, stood over her with one fist twisted into Irene’s dark hair.
“Code,” she hissed.
Irene shook her head.
Mom yanked harder.
“You were nobody before you married my son.”
A few feet away, Carla brought a hammer down on the electronic panel of our bedroom safe.
BANG.
“Mom,” she snapped, “we are running out of time.”
Beside Carla sat an open suitcase.
Inside were envelopes of cash from my study, two gold bars I kept as part of an investment collection, passports, and several folders of legal documents.
I recognized one immediately.
My father’s trust.
My knees almost gave out.
Dad had died five years earlier.
That trust controlled nearly eighteen million dollars in family assets.
And neither my mother nor Carla was supposed to have access to it.
I wanted to burst into the room.
Instead, I did something I will be grateful for until the day I die.
I pulled out my phone.
I pressed RECORD.
Then I called 911.
“My name is Austin Wentworth,” I whispered. “Two people are attacking my pregnant wife inside my home. They’re armed with a hammer and trying to break into my safe. Send police and an ambulance.”
The dispatcher asked whether I was safe.
“I’m inside the house.”
“Sir, do not confront them.”
I stared at Irene.
Mom slapped her.
I ended the call.
Then I pushed the door open.
Carla saw me first.
The hammer slipped from her hand.
“Austin?”
Mom turned.
Her fingers were still wrapped in my wife’s hair.
Her face went completely white.
“Why are you here?”
I stepped inside.
Irene looked up.
For one second, relief replaced the terror in her eyes.
“Aust—”
Her body went limp.
I lunged forward and caught her before her head hit the floor.
My mother immediately started crying.
“Son, listen to me. This is not what it looks like.”
I looked at the hammer.
The damaged safe.
The suitcase.
My unconscious wife.
“Police are coming,” I said.
Mom’s mouth fell open.
“Austin, I’m your mother.”
Sirens began rising in the distance.
I looked straight into her eyes.
“Then use the next two minutes to explain why my mother was beating my pregnant wife.”
Carla backed toward the window.
That was when I noticed something sticking out of her purse.
A small plastic bottle.
The label had Irene’s name on it.
May you like
But it wasn’t one of Irene’s medications.
And when Carla realized I had seen it, she grabbed the purse and ran.
