Annja didn’t like the vibes he was giving off. At once she sensed a strange tingle to the air. More so than the toxic fumes rising from the canal. It was the man’s weird anxiety, she told herself. It was bleeding off him and onto her.
Just be cool. Who could be watching?
Unless he was a thief, as suspected, and really had stolen this from a dig.
“Tell me how you obtained the thing,” she prompted. Putting her back to the street, she paralleled him, and looked out over the water.
“That’s not important. But I can tell you this.”
He leaned forward. Annja stepped closer because she couldn’t hear well with the water slapping against the canal walls. They stood shoulder to shoulder. His cologne was strong but not offensive.
“I was hired to pass this along to a specific individual. It is what I do.”
Thievespassed things along to others. Annja coiled her fingers, imagining the sword in her grip, but did not call it forth.
“But I have a terrible feeling about this job,” the man said. “Something isn’t right. That’s why I wanted your opinion. Maybe you can identify—”
His head shot up from their close stance. Annja followed his gaze as it soared through the iron bridge girders and traced the line of buildings edging the river.
She didn’t see anything to cause alarm. Darkness softened the edges of buildings and parking lots. Moonlight glinted on a few windows high along the perimeter. All seemed calm. Strange, but not for this part of Brooklyn. It was a quiet, old neighborhood.
The man’s sudden exhalation startled her. He grunted, as if punched. His shoulder jerked against hers. He gripped blindly, his fingers slapping across her shoulder.
He stumbled backward. Annja spied the hole in his forehead. Blood trickled from the small circle. Sniper shot. It could be nothing else.
Instincts igniting, she knew when there was one shot, there could be another. Grabbing him by the shoulder, she directed his staggering movement to swing around her body and stand before her as a defensive wall.
Ice burned along Annja’s neck. She knew the distinct slice of metal to flesh well enough. She’d been hit. But it didn’t slow her down.
Leaning backward over the railing, she slapped both arms about the man’s shoulders. Eyes closed, his head lolled. The dead weight of him toppled her. For a moment, she felt the sensation of air at her back, with no support to catch her, dizzied.
And then she pushed from the sidewalk with her feet.
2
Annja’s belt loops dragged over the bridge railing, but didn’t catch. The man was heavier than she’d expected from such a slender frame.
Bracing air tugged off her ski cap and bruised over her scalp. It hissed through her too-thin-for-winter jacket as she fell, headfirst and backward, toward the water.
With less than twenty feet from railing to water, she worked quickly.
Twisting in midair, still maintaining a death grip on the man, she managed to kick and aim his legs downward. Now she fell over him, positioned as if she’d stepped up to put her arms around his shoulders for a hug.
Impact loosened her fingers from his body, but she scrambled to grip the slippery coat fabric. His horizontal body broke the surface of water and slowed his descent, while Annja’s body crashed hard against his. It felt as if she’d landed on the ground, belly first, after a daring leap from a backyard trampoline.
At least she was making comparisons and not pushing up daisies, she realized.
The water was only slighter warmer than frozen. Some summer heat must yet be trapped in the depths. Or a toxic boil.
Their bodies submerged and Annja immediately struggled with the backpack straps. The first one proved difficult. She couldn’t get the tight strap over the man’s shoulder.
Breath spilling from her faster than she wished, she stopped herself before a frustrating cry would see her swallowing water. As it was, she’d snorted a healthy dose upon submersion and it wasn’t the finest vintage she’d tasted. If she did survive drowning, the toxic cocktail she sucked down her throat would surely kill her, if not at least make her glow electric green in the dark.
With thoughts of hypothermia storming her thinning brain waves, Annja jerked on the backpack strap and tugged it from the man’s arm. His body felt twice as heavy now. He was sinking fast, taking her with him. The canal wasn’t deep—perhaps fifteen to twenty feet—but a person could drown in less than a foot of water.
Utilizing a death grip on the backpack strap, she struggled to release his other lifeless arm.
A wince let out her last ounce of breath. Thanks to some trapped air, the backpack floated and Annja hooked it over an arm and bent her elbow. Kicking, she headed toward the surface, but quickly decided to change course for the murky shadows to her right.
Surfacing under the bridge, she gasped. The icy air pierced like needles at the back of her throat. Spitting out water, she sucked in just as much. Sputtering, she bit on a nasty piece of something she didn’t care to identify.
A kick of her legs slammed her against the slimy log bulkhead hugging the bridge girder.
Shivering, she pushed the hair from her eyes. She wanted to climb out, but didn’t know if the sniper would still be watching. Of course he would. Whoever he was. Was he allied with Sneak? If so, then someone wasn’t playing nice.
She couldn’t risk the chance of emerging in plain sight. She’d have to swim downstream as far as possible.
“Should have stayed home and popped in an episode of Supernatural,” she grumbled.
A cup of hot chocolate sounded too good to be true right now.
Her words stuttered from the cold. But the sound of her voice reassured in a strange way. The sting on her neck had subsided. The bullet must have only skimmed flesh. She was alive, which is what mattered.
Submerging was a difficult choice, but she took a deep breath and let her body drop into the dark, muffling depths.
The murky water and her position under the bridge made it impossible to see. But she didn’t need to see. It wasn’t as though she’d run into a boat or shark down here. Though a whale had been trapped in the canal a few years back. It wasn’t so much taking a bite from a fish that Annja worried about, as the raw sewage in the water.
A slight lightening in the waters signaled she’d cleared the bridge. Keeping close to what she felt was the shore, though her shoes didn’t touch bottom, she kicked swiftly and stroked with her free right arm, while maintaining a secure clutch on the backpack with her left.
A muffled horn honked as a car passed over the bridge. Annja was surprised to hear sound at all. The reminder the real world was so close again bolstered her confidence and made kicking in the cold waters easier.
A branch snagged her ankle. She kicked frantically, briefly panicking. Bubbles of air escaped, and she had to surface to gasp in air. She didn’t bring up her shoulders, only the top of her face. Sucking in the cold November air, she then inhaled deeply and went under.
While she hadn’t planned for an adventure swimming the depths this evening, Annja could only fault herself for not expecting it. When did the world just leave her alone and allow her a normal day?
Finding a surprise smile, she soared forward, turning in the water, to tilt her face to the surface. The world could mess with her all it liked. She was up for the challenge.
Paddling her hands near her thighs to keep her body under as much as possible, she managed to break the surface with only her face. A scan above the lumber edging the shore spied rooftops where she guessed the sniper had shot from.
A gulp of air, and she again submerged. She was on the wrong side of the river. But she wasn’t about to cross it. The current would carry her the way she’d come. Which meant she’d have to go another hundred yards at least, to put her out of sight of the buildings.