Christopher Smith - Fifth Avenue

The anchor struck bottom with a muffled thud. Celina looked down through the swirling murk, grabbed a handful of Spocatti’s hair and began pulling. She wanted to hurt him, stop him, kill him. She tried to dig at his eyes, but Spocatti twisted wildly to the right and his hair slipped through her weakening grasp.

Celina looked up as he kicked away.

She didn’t understand any of this. She didn’t understand why he wanted her dead.

Her chest ready to explode from lack of oxygen, she bent to release the rope. Her hands and fingers grasped and pulled and tugged.

But it was no use. Spocatti had bound her legs together too tightly. She couldn’t loosen the rope. In one terrible, outraged scream, she jerked upward and released what oxygen was left in her lungs. A furious whirlwind of bubbles hurled forth from her mouth and spun to the surface.

And then she inhaled, reflexively, filling her lungs with a horribly wet coolness.

Celina choked, sucked in more water, and her hands began clawing at her throat as every muscle, as every sense, rejected what she’d just done. I don’t want to die!

But the choking ended. Fading images turned to black, her eyes saw nothing and she started to list in the wavering current.

As Jack swam down, down toward the muffled scream, he glimpsed to his right a streak of black, a flurry of white and the rapid scissoring of legs.

For an instant, his gaze lingered on the departing figure and the maze of bubbles that spiraled in its wake. Then he continued downward, the need to breathe rising, his concentration focused and intent.

It was Celina’s hair Jack noticed first.

Fanning out in a half-circle, the light blonde was in sharp contrast to the river’s dark, mucky-brown bottom. Reaching out a hand, he grabbed hold of her arm and lifted her to the surface.

Tried to lift her to the surface.

Her body was unusually heavy, unusually still. As hard as he tried, as hard as he kicked, he could only lift her a few feet off the river’s bottom.

He swam down so they were facing each other and he noticed in horror that her mouth and eyes were open. Every part of his body rejected what he saw before him. Celina’s mouth hung slackly. Her eyes were frozen in sightlessness. She was staring at something that wasn’t there.

He needed air. In one last attempt to lift her to the surface, he put his arms around her…and felt the rope that was secured to her legs.

He glanced down, saw the rope, saw the anchor lying on the pebbly muck, and knew. Knew.

His chest was on fire. If he didn’t get air soon, he felt sure his lungs would burst. He bent down and worked on the rope-his hands pulled, pried and searched.

But it was no use. No matter how hard he tried, he could not loosen the rope. He could not free her. He could do nothing for her now and it tore him apart. This was his fault. This had been his idea.

With one brutal thrust off the river floor, he hurtled to the surface, kicking furiously, wildly-and leaving Celina behind in a whirlpool of bubbles.

The first thing George Redman thought when he returned from his run in Central Park and saw the crowd of reporters gathered outside his building on Fifth Avenue was that someone must have leaked another story about the takeover of WestTex Incorporated-this one probably pertaining to his new partnership with Chase.

During the past week, the press had been relentless. They phoned, they emailed, they Twittered and they even sent notes via messenger in an effort to obtain interviews. One particularly aggressive reporter somehow slipped past security and stormed his office, demanding that his stockholders deserved to know why he wanted to take over a shipping company whose stock had plummeted since the wars in the Middle East.

It was as exhausting as it was stressful and George had had enough. They might be bitching now, he thought, but it won’t be long before they’re saying how they had faith in me all along.

He slowed his stride, considered taking one of the side entrances, but thought better of it. Each entrance would be covered by a group of reporters, word would be texted in seconds of his whereabouts and he would be surrounded in spite of his efforts. And so he quickened his pace, readied himself for the assault, determined to get past them and through the doors and into his penthouse as soon as possible.

It was a female reporter standing at the rear of the crowd who first spotted him. George watched her turn to the cameraman at her right and say something in a sharp voice. By the time the man had his video camera on his shoulder, three dozen other reporters were charging forward, microphones and cameras raised, faces set in determination…and some other emotion George couldn’t define.

They enveloped him in waves, first from the front, then from the sides and back. Strobes of light went off like exploding stars. George squinted from the glare and hurried forward. All week long he had increased security around himself and taken precautions against this very thing happening. But this morning, he thought he would be able to sneak out without incident. A nice jog in Central Park was all he wanted, with no one but himself and the trees and the other joggers for company. Naive, he thought.

He listened, but couldn’t distinguish what the crowd was saying. The roar of questions was too loud, too fervent for him to decipher, but not once did he hear mention of WestTex.

Confused, he pushed toward the doors and heard Celina’s name mentioned once. Twice.

He shouldered his way past a reporter, striking him by accident in the chest and he heard the man say that he was sorry. So very sorry.

For being in my way?

George turned to the crowd. Lightning seemed to light the morning sky as seventy cameras went off in rapid succession. Traffic slowed on Fifth as curious drivers tried to see what was unfolding in front of his building. Horns blared. Someone shouted something from a passing car.

A chill raced up his spine-something was wrong. The reporters were silent, expectant, their eyes searching his. They were just standing there, waiting for him to say something, although he didn’t know what.

It was the man he had struck in the chest who broke the silence. “I think I speak for all of us, Mr., Redman, when I say how sorry we are.”

“For what?” George said. “Sorry for what?”

Glances were exchanged.

The reporter who stepped forward now took a step back.

Beyond the crowd, two police cars pulled to the curb. Although there were no accompanying sirens, their lights were flashing.

“Would one of you please tell me what is going on here?”

Nobody said anything. There was the sound of car doors being slammed shut. At the same moment George saw Jack Douglas leave one of the police cars-face drawn, clothes rumpled-a voice from the back of the crowd said: “It’s Celina, Mr. Redman. We thought you knew. She drowned earlier this morning. Her body was sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office on First.”

And the frenzy began.

The silence in the room was deafening.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Redman.”

George squeezed Elizabeth’s hand harder, drawing on it for strength, but finding little there. Her hand was as cold as the ice in her stare. Her breathing was uneven. She learned the news only moments before he, Jack and the police stepped into the penthouse.

George found her in the second-floor living room, the phone on its side and next to her feet. Her face was pale as talc. Her eyes burned with an odd mixture of emptiness, sorrow, rage and disbelief. Helen Baines was still calling her name into the phone, still asking if she were all right, when George bent to pick it up.

He released his grip from her hand, put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. He kissed her and said they would get through this. It was one of the few lies he had ever told her and not for one minute did Elizabeth believe it. Her face crumpled, she glared at him through tears and then looked at the detective who was sitting on the sofa opposite them.