froze her.
She felt a strong hand grab her arm. It brought her back to reality. They had to get to the surface. Courtney was already feeling the strain of having held her breath for too long. They were out of the death car, but if they couldn’t hold their breath long enough to get to the surface, it wouldn’t matter. They’d be just as dead. Dodger tugged, pulling her up. Courtney kicked, and the two rocketed for the surface. With nothing around them for perspective there was no way to know how deep they were. All Courtney could do was focus on the light above and hope they’d hit it before running out of air. She kicked and kicked. Her lungs ached. She wanted to exhale, but feared losing the last remaining bit of air in her lungs.
Dodger kicked just as furiously. They didn’t look at each other. There was no need. They knew where they had to go. Up. Up was air. Down was death. Courtney wanted to scream. She wanted to breathe. She felt she could last a little longer, if only she knew how many more seconds she’d have to hold out for. Two? Five? Twenty? She knew if it were twenty, she’d be dead.
It wasn’t. They both broke the surface, gasping for air. Courtney looked for Dodger. He bobbed next to her, looking just as scared as he had when they were trapped in the sinking car.
The two laughed. They couldn’t help themselves. It seemed like the thing to do. Total relief will do that.
“Can you make it to the pier?” Dodger asked.
Courtney nodded. Now that she could breathe, she was fine. She didn’t even feel the bump on her head. They weren’t far from the pier. It only took a minute to swim to the base of the huge wooden pilings and a metal ladder that reached into the water. Courtney got there first. She grabbed the ladder and held tight. Dodger joined her a second later. The two of them clung to the ladder to catch their breath.
“Saint Dane,” Dodger gasped.
“What about him?”
“You said you thought I might be Saint Dane.”
“I don’t think that anymore. He can do a lot of things, but he can’t be two people at once.”
“So now that we’re square, maybe you could tell me what’s really goin’ on?”
Courtney chuckled. “Yeah, you earned it. But you’re not going to like what you hear.”
“I don’t see how it can get any worse than this,” Dodger said.
“This?” Courtney scoffed. “This was nothing.”
Dodger looked sick.
Courtney pulled herself up on the ladder and made the climb to the top of the pier. Dodger followed close behind. It was low tide, so the climb was a long one. Neither looked down as they made their way up to safety.
When Courtney got to the top, she saw that a group of people had already gathered to see what was going on. More came running along the pier from the street. They peppered her with questions. “Are you okay?” “What happened?” “Do you need an ambulance?” “Did everyone get out?”
Courtney ignored them. It’s not that she was being rude.
Something else had gotten her attention. The people on the pier might as well have been invisible, because the sight before Courtney was too incredible, too breathtaking for her to focus on anything else. Rising high above her, on the far side of the pier, was a vast black wall. The sheer size was enough to make her knees buckle. It stretched nearly the entire length of the pier and reached high into the blue New York sky. At first she didn’t register what it could be. A building? Buildings weren’t black. She gazed up at the monstrous sight, feeling like an ant next to a house.
Reality intruded when Dodger stepped up next to her. “She’s something, ain’t she? Fast, too.”
Along the top of this impossible black wall was a wide, white band. Courtney’s eyes followed this band the length of the wall until she saw two words. Two simple black words against white. The letters had to be three feet high, big enough to be seen clearly from the buildings of Manhattan. Seeing the words made Courtney gasp. Those two words hit her harder than the breathtaking image of the black wall itself. It was like seeing history come to life. It was like seeing the future come to life. Seeing those words told her exactly what she needed to do. They told her the wall wasn’t a wall. It was the hull of a ship. A huge ship. An impossibly huge ship. The words were near its bow, proudly displaying her name for the world to see.
“Queen Mary” Dodger said in awe. “This is the closest I’ll ever get to sailing on her.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Courtney said.
Dodger gave her a confused look. Courtney’s response was to grab his hand and run for shore. The two quickly escaped from the pier before the police showed up and started asking questions they wouldn’t have answers for. Or answers they wanted to give. They headed back to the hotel. On the subway. Neither had the stomach for getting into another cab. They traveled silently, both lost in thought. Courtney thought long and hard about what she was going to tell Dodger. She no longer thought he was Saint Dane. If there was anything good that came out of their cab ride from hell, it was that she now knew for sure that he wasn’t Saint Dane. She couldn’t ask him to ignore reality any longer. That wouldn’t be fair. No, she figured, Dodger was going to want the truth. The question was, how much of it should she reveal? She didn’t want to scare him off, but he needed to know what he had gotten himself into. His allegiance to Gunny aside, he nearly died in that cab. He deserved to know why.
By the time they got back to the hotel, their clothes were dry. Aside from a few scratches and a nasty bruise on Courtney’s forehead, they weren’t much the worse for wear. Both had lost their hats, but hats were replaceable. The two were walking through the garden toward the front door of the hotel when Courtney stopped Dodger.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For helping me even though you didn’t have to.” “But Gunny asked-“
“Yeah, I know,” Courtney interrupted. “But thanks just the same.”
“You’re welcome,” Dodger said sincerely.
“I’ve decided to tell you the truth. All of it.”
“You don’t have to,” Dodger said quickly.
“But I want to,” Courtney countered. “You deserve that.”
“Yeah, maybe, but still, you don’t have to.”
“I don’t get it,” Courtney said with a frown. “Before you were all about wanting to know what was going on. Now you don’t care? Why’s that? Are you giving up on me?”
“Who said anything about giving up? All I said was you didn’t have to tell me.”
“Uh… confused.”
“I’ll show you something, ” Dodger said with a sly smile.
He led Courtney into the hotel and down the stairs toward Gunny’s apartment. But they didn’t go to Gunny’s. Dodger brought her to the hotel vault, where a gray-haired guy in a bellhop suit sat behind a desk, reading the newspaper.
“Hey, Mike, working hard?” Dodger asked.
“Hardly working,” Mike answered grumpily without taking his eye off the paper.
“I need that strongbox you’re holding for me,” Dodger said.
Mike looked up at him, over his half-glasses. “You got some identification?”
“Yeah,” Dodger said. He held up his right hand with his fingers spread. “I got five friends to vouch for me. One, two, three, four, five.” With each number he curled a finger, until he ended up with a fist… and gave Mike a sharp but friendly punch in the arm.
“Ow!” the old guy winced. “Good enough.” Mike pulled himself off the high stool and shuffled into the large vault.
“What’s this about?” Courtney asked.
“Patience,” Dodger said. “It’s my turn to be mysterious.”
Courtney shrugged and waited. A few minutes later Mike shuffled out, carrying a gray, metal strongbox that looked about twenty-four inches square. He put it on the desk and slid it over to Dodger.
“I should make you sign for this,” Mike grumped. “But you won’t,” Dodger replied.
“What you got in there?’ Mike asked. “The family jewels?” The old guy cackled a laugh.
“That’s exactly what I got,” Dodger answered as he slid the box off the desk. “Thanks, Mike. You’re a prince.”
“So they say,” Mike replied. “So they say.” He was already back to reading his paper before Dodger and
