She caught up to me, her face anguished. “He came here. I saw him. He put something through your letter box. I’ve been waiting for you to come home. What did he say? Please tell me the truth.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” I said, and handed her the note, “but for once I can’t come up with a good lie.”
She held it up under the gas lamp to read it and gasped. “He’s taken a little girl?”
“Yes, Young Bridie who lives with me.”
“He had a big sack with him. I never thought—never imagined—what were you going to do? Not the police. He’d kill her.”
“If you really must know, I was going in your place. I was going to try and snatch the child and then find safety in the crowds on Delancey Street. It’s sure to be busy at this time of night.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Katherine said, with that commanding look I remembered so well from the photograph. “I’ll go and make the trade. If Michael wants to take me with him, so be it. It’s my fault. I chose to run away with him. I made my own bed. Now I must lie in it.”
“But you didn’t know his true nature then, Katherine.”
She gave a rueful smile. “He could be very charming when he wanted to. I’d never met anyone like him.”
“But you don’t want to go with him now, do you?”
“Of course not. Knowing that he killed a woman in cold blood, and that he felt nothing at all for our lost child, I could never love him again.”
“Then let me go in your place.”
“Absolutely not. He won’t hurt me. I’ll be all right, I’m sure.”
“I’ll come with you then,” I said. “I’ll be in the crowd behind you and if I get a chance I’ll dart out and snatch Bridie. If Michael tries to grab you, scream and make a fuss.”
She nodded solemnly. “Yes. All right. In fact I’d be very glad if you’d come with me. I have been living in fear for weeks with no one to turn to. Those awful men Michael latched onto—those Eastman brutes—it was like being plunged into hell.”
“I’m sure it was,” I said. I slipped my arm through hers. “We escaped from the fire together, didn’t we? We can come through this. He’ll find out we’re not soft and frightened little women—”
“We are Amazons, not to be trifled with.” Katherine threw back her head defiantly.
We strode out, matching steps, in the direction of Delancey Street. As I had expected, Delancey was bustling with life as we entered it from the Bowery.
“This is the end of Delancey Street,” I said.
“Or the beginning,” Katherine pointed out.
We stood on the street corner, scanning the crowds who hurried past, eager to be home and out of the damp chill. The fog was indeed rolling in, clinging to lampposts and awnings. It muffled the sound of a clock chiming the three quarters. Maybe he hadn’t arrived yet.
“We should walk to the other end of the street,” Katherine suggested. “That would be more logical. He could make an easier escape down on the docks and there would be fewer people around to witness too.”
In my confusion I hadn’t paused to consider that Delancey did indeed end in the dockland. It would be easy to hide a small child on the wharf among piles of cargo. It would also be easy to throw a small child into the river without being seen.
“Then let us hurry,” I said. “Maybe we can intercept him before he reaches the docks.”
We pushed our way along the crowded street, dodging carts, horses, children, and piles of rubbish. The street seemed twice as long as I remembered it. I wished that Jacob had not gone to an unknown meeting tonight. I wished that I had asked for Daniel’s help. I wished we weren’t so very alone. As we approached the far end, the traffic thinned. There were fewer open stores, fewer lights, fewer people. And thicker fog. A mournful foghorn sounded from out on the river. Then the fog swirled, parted, and closed again and I caught a glimpse of a giant structure rising up in front of me—a giant monster from childhood nightmares, reaching out cruel arms. I stared at the fog as if the thing might be a figment of my imagination. Then I remembered, with a cold sinking feeling that clutched at my gut. That was why he had chosen Delancey over any other street. I was looking at the tower being built for the new East River Bridge.
Katherine must have echoed my thoughts. “It’s not built all the way across the river yet, is it?” she asked.
“Just the towers and the cables. No roadway yet.”
“No way to get across then. That’s good. Perhaps Michael thinks it’s finished and he can get out of New York that way.”
“Only if he’s a tightrope walker.”
As we came closer the giant tower loomed above us, the steel girders, ringed with scaffolding, rising into the fog.