Wrong.

I heard a sound behind me and turned in time to see the women’s room door swinging open. The door caught me directly on the jaw. Sparks pierced my vision. At the same time, I felt something happening in my left side. Ratface shoved me to the floor, leaped over me and started running down the hallway. I looked down to see a long black piece of plastic sticking from my side. I tugged on it. It was a kitchen knife. The blade felt cold as I pulled it out. As soon as the blade cleared my jacket, blood began pumping onto my fingers.

Immediately, my mouth went dry. In the darkened hallway, the blood looked like oil. I staggered to my feet. I guessed that the other end of the hallway could only lead to a similar set of stairs and back up into the church. I made the calculation and, clutching my side, plunged through the sparks and back up the winding stairs. I swung myself around the railing at the top and emerged at the altar area, right next to the choir stalls. Off in the pews, shadowy figures were moving about swiftly. Someone cried out, “There he is!” But they might have meant me.

I moved across the front of the altar just as Ratface appeared, running up the far side aisle in the direction of the front door. I veered and aimed for the center aisle but lost my footing as I hit the marble steps leading down from the altar. I went down. Ratface was yanking the door open as I got back to my feet. I looked down and saw a swirl of blood on the marble. Somewhere in the darkness of the church, a woman screamed.

I lurched forward.

Outside.

He was a good block ahead of me, heading east. I took off after him. He dodged the cars on Third Avenue more deftly than I was able to, though at one point he surfed precariously on a patch of ice and allowed me to gain on him. I was grunting like a gimp racehorse, the vapor of my breath coming out in husky bursts. The wound in my side felt like it was packed with nails.

He was opening distance between us. As I dodged a woman pushing a baby stroller, I felt my cell phone vibrating. No time for that. I bore down. There were only two more blocks before we’d hit the FDR Drive, and beyond that, the East River. If he attempted to cross the FDR, my job was done. There was no way he could negotiate all those lanes of speeding traffic. As he neared Second Avenue, he barreled past an Asian woman, and she fell to the sidewalk. An instant later, I grunted, “Sorry,” and hurdled cleanly over her, my lungs warning me they were ready to explode.

At First Avenue, he veered to his right. Son of a bitch. There’s a residential complex called Waterside Plaza at Twenty-fifth Street and the FDR. An angled walkway crossing over the highway leads to the complex. Ratface hit the walkway at full speed. I was losing him. Fear is a mighty fuel, and he was burning it well. I pounded up the cement walkway, which spilled onto a large plaza. I saw my quarry leaping down a short set of steps to a narrow walkway that fronted the river. It also led to one of the complex’s apartment towers.

I pulled my gun and stormed forward, nearly tumbling down the short flight of stairs to the lower plaza. My vision was starting to play games with me. There was a large glass entranceway to the apartment tower. It seemed the only place he could have gone, and I headed for it.

I never made it.

The son of a bitch had ducked behind a stone support pillar opposite the entrance. I saw his reflection in the glass just as he lunged from his hiding spot and hit me full force, his lowered shoulder connecting with my ribs. He drove me sideways all the way to the low cement wall overlooking the river. I hit the wall hard, my gun rattling to the pavement. What little oxygen I had in my lungs left me. Ratface was still with me, still down low. The sparks returned to my vision, and my arms came down on the man’s head and neck as uselessly as if they belonged to a rag doll. When I felt a grip tighten around my ankles, I knew exactly what he had in mind.

As he rose, he brought my legs up with him. I saw his face for just an instant. His cheeks were hot red. Frothy saliva was overflowing his mouth. Then my arms were pinwheeling, and my head whipped backward. I spotted the Huxley Envelope sign upside down across the river, then looked down at the bruise-colored films of ice along the shoreline below me. Ratface let out a powerful grunt.

I saw my feet. They were above me. Then they were below me. In the air. I was falling. The burning in my lungs this time was my own voice crying out into the cold air as the river ice rushed forward. The last thing I remember-funny-was my cell phone vibrating again. My world went black even before I hit.

Part 2

19

NIKKI ROSSMAN SLID down farther in the tub, to the point where the water was just touching her chin. She lifted her right foot and gently eased her big toe into the faucet so that it was snug and secure. She took a shallow breath and held it. She wanted to still the water completely. Her body appeared rubbery beneath the water, like something manufactured in a factory. Nikki recalled a movie she had seen a few years back, a high-tech Pinocchio-like story that had included a large workroom featuring thousands of white rubber torsos hooked on a seemingly endless hanging conveyor belt. The marble-white torsos had produced an inexplicably erotic feeling in Nikki. They were genderless. Breasts would later be added to some; to others, subtle six-pack stomachs and a solid rubber package where the legs came together. Nikki had wondered at the time why it was she found the torsos so disturbing and compelling. She had imagined lifting one of them off its hook and pressing it against her own body, embracing it with all her strength. In her imagination, the artificial torso had proved malleable, a pliant rubber that, in response to her own body’s warmth, would begin to conform to her contours, molding itself around her as she squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

Nikki looked at her pale body rippling under the water. She was still amazed at the marvels of modern science. Or was it modern medicine? Both. Under the water, her slender legs zigzagged like some sort of cubist rendering. Her tiny waist appeared magnified and liquid. Her flat tummy undulated. Calories burned, calories avoided, a love affair with her gym, plus the lucky draw of petite genes. Now, still feeling so new after nearly six months, the beautiful, perfect swell of these fantastic marble-white breasts.

She touched one of them. Pliant. Just as promised. She pinched it, and then she stroked it and cupped it. Then again. Pinch, stroke, cup. Her lustrous hair floated on the surface of the water like an island of golden sand. With her other hand, she reached lower. The toe was snug in the faucet hole. It felt almost stuck there; she could imagine that it was. She lifted her free foot and set it against the tiled wall, as far up as she could manage. She flexed her toes as forcefully as she dared, backing off when she sensed the low flinch of her calf muscle wanting to cramp. The toe in the faucet really did feel stuck now.

He likes it when I can’t move. He likes it a lot.

Arching her back, she tilted her head to the point where the water lapped at the V of her hairline. Her torso rose while her hand stirred and wandered. Bathwater slapped rhythmically against the sides of the tub.

Half an hour later, Nikki got out of the tub. Rain was splattering against her window. She dried herself off and smoothed lotion over her arms, her thighs, her breasts. She removed the tags from the new plaid skirt and fastened it with the oversize safety pin around her waist. She modeled the purchase in the mirror, folding her arms over her breasts and swiveling this way and that, making the thin wool pleats swish. Do schoolgirls still wear these? she wondered. When he had asked her to buy it-giving specific details and insisting on giving her the money-he had told her precisely what he had in mind for the next time they got together.