“I don’t know.” I might have come up with something more clever, but the knife looked sharp. Copeland walked toward me, each step as deliberate as a hammer blow, and I backed away until my heels dangled off the end of the pier.

“It’s none of it criminal,” he said. “It’s business. And those stupid women are going to ruin it for all of us.”

“Whatever you’re doing on the boat, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

I might have asked what I really wanted to know: What drives a father to stray from his family, to lie to those who love him most? But that question was terribly large, and that shaking knife was drawing closer to my dress, and I only had time to ask the question that didn’t matter at all.

“Where do you buy your wife gloves?” I said.

“Gloves? What the hell does this have to do with gloves?”

He growled at me and raised the knife. I looked into his eyes.

And then his eyes were gone.

Copeland’s head had been replaced by a cloud of red mist, and I could taste the blood.

The body swayed, then crumpled. The explosion echoed off the warehouses. Even then, it took two more shots for me to grasp what was happening—two shots that tore holes in the wood to my left.

A gun. A gun on the Westside, and a body at my feet.

I was flooded with fear, but not paralyzed. I tipped backward and gave myself over to the Hudson. As I fell, another bullet roared through the air, passing right where my heart had been a moment before.

A heavy black dress makes a poor bathing costume, particularly when it has spent the day soaking up sweat. It was like trying to swim in a pair of concrete overalls. My boots tangled themselves in my dress, and the current dragged me toward the inky black of the riverbed. My lungs burned, and my teeth ached from holding shut my jaw. A shadow blanketed me as a passing ship blocked the sun, and I felt the luscious chill of the grave.

Open my mouth, and it would be over. I could stop struggling against the dress, against everything. I could leave the sun behind, sink to the bottom, let the mud settle on top of me. I could let the sun stay behind that ship and never see it come out again. It sounds mad, but as my legs grew heavier and my feet went numb, something in me was tempted to give up.

Thankfully, my body was not finished fighting.