Susan stopped swimming and let the river take her. She tried to inhale deeply and float on the surface like she’d done a thousand times in a hundred hotel pools, but the water was too rough, and pulled her under, and rolled over her face, leaving her even more exhausted and disoriented and sputtering. So she stayed vertical, her socked feet kicking, the boots long gone, arms shoveling water, her head like a human buoy on the surface. There was so much junk and wreckage in the river that she had to stay vigilant just to keep from getting beaned by a log or loose street sign. She kept her paddling arms near the surface and her strokes wide, so that she might brush with her hand anything headed her way. So far she’d swatted away split wood and branches and what felt like the rearview mirror of a car. Her hair was matted with twigs. Her hands felt like they were bleeding. Her skin shuddered. A frigid chill had settled deep inside her bones.

She turned her face up at the midnight sky, the rain hitting her lashes.

It was as black as the water, except for one bright star.

Not a star. A planet.

Venus.

No, Jupiter.

She could never get those two straight.

It was too big to be a planet. It was close. Susan felt the water flatten around her just before the wind from the chopper blades hit her face.

“Hey!” she yelled, swallowing some water. She choked and lifted her hands to wave, but that only made her sink up to her hairline. She kicked hard, as hard as she could, and managed to lift one arm up and beat it against the sky. “Down here!” she yelled. “I’m here!”

But it streaked overhead without pausing, and she was left alone again and without light.

They couldn’t see her. It was too dark. There was too much debris.

She was going to die.

She started to breathe hard, sharp little pants, and her eyes burned with hot tears. Her head felt light. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.

They might never find her body. She’d sink. Get stuck under all that crap and be carried off and end up decaying under a dock somewhere. If she was lucky the bacteria in her stomach would create enough gas for her bloated body to disentangle itself and bob to the surface.

Susan didn’t want to die.

Her legs were cramping up, her lungs throbbed. She needed to calm down, to slow her breathing.

The first stage of drowning was fear.

She thought of Patrick, out there alone, scared, if he was still alive.

Talk to yourself, Susan thought. Talk yourself through this. That’s what reporters did, didn’t they?

They took notes.

They did research.

And they hoped that one day all of that useless knowledge they’d stored up would come in handy.