She dodged the other way, but he blocked her again, and this time an evil smirk took shape on his face. In desperation she looked behind her. There was only the river. As she turned back around, the man charged at her with his full force, toppling her to the pebbled ground.
He’d knocked the wind out of her, too, and she struggled to get a breath. As he lunged toward her again, she hurled her purse at him with all her strength. It caught the edge of his shoulder and then bounced onto the rocks. He smirked again and drew something from his jacket pocket. The light caught the object and she saw that it was a knife—long and glinty and terrifying.
Then there was a sound behind the man, coming from near the trees in the park. He jerked his head back to see. In those few seconds Lake scooted back on her butt a few feet across the rocks and then staggered to her feet. Grabbing another breath, she turned around and stumbled to the river’s edge. She could hear the man scrambling over the rocks right behind her, ready to grab her again, but before he could catch her, she took a huge step and waded into the river. She dragged her legs a few more feet and then suddenly there was no bottom. She dropped into the dark river water and it swallowed her up to her neck. Behind her she heard the man gasp in surprise.
The water was cold and all her muscles clenched in shock. She paddled a few more feet out from the shoreline and then twisted her body so that it faced the shore. The man was at the water’s edge, his hands clenched in frustration. She could still see the knife shooting out, the blade an extension of his right hand.
Would he come after her? she wondered. Treading water, she kicked off her sandals and worked her way out of her jacket. Then, with long, firm strokes she began to swim, parallel to the shore. She was going south and she could feel the pull of a sure, steady current—or rather the outgoing tide, she suddenly realized, because the East River was an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. Her terror ballooned. What if she was dragged down the river into the harbor? She would drown surely—or be sliced in two by a freighter. The trick would be to stay as close to the shore as possible.
Just ahead she saw an area of large jagged black rocks on the shoreline, almost primordial-looking, and then, not far beyond them, wooden pylons beneath another small park that jutted out over the river. If she could make it there, she could hold on to one of them. After about twenty strokes she flipped her body around and peered back toward the shore where she’d started. In the glow cast by the park lights, she saw the outline of the man still watching her, his arms outstretched tensely by his sides. But suddenly he turned and sprinted across the pebbles toward the entrance and disappeared into the darkness. Was he going to try to catch up with her farther south along the river?
She continued to swim, passing the rocks. Finally, exhausted, she reached the pylons. They were slimy and reeked of a horrible snail-like smell, but she flung her arms around one and held on as tightly as possible. It was such a relief to rest. Though she hadn’t swum far, it had been hard to maneuver in her clothes. Farther out on the water a red tugboat steamed along, pulling a black-and-white freighter with Russian-looking words painted along the side. I can’t believe this, she thought in despair. I’m floating in the East River. What was beneath her in the bottomless water? Fish and snakes and garbage? Worse?
Where was the man? By now he might be trying to get into the park above her. She had noticed earlier that a chain-link fence surrounded it, one he could easily scale. At that moment she thought she heard a noise on the walkway above the pylons. She pulled herself farther underneath.
The noise quieted after a moment. If it had been him, he would have seen that there was no way to reach her from where he was. But now what? she asked herself. He may have gone back to the park to wait for her. She had no choice but to stay where she was and pray that