Chapter 5: Port Newark

Pier Nine was a field of stacked steel boxes under a gray, rising sky.

Dario stopped the car at the end of the access road.

"The gate's past that crane," he said. "I'll be forty feet behind you. If I tell you to get down, you get down."

"If I tell you to stay back," I said, "you stay back."

He looked at me.

For the first time in the hours I had known him, the corner of his mouth moved.

"Yes, ma'am."

I walked.

The cooler bumped my leg, and Lily's rabbit sat warm in my pocket.

At the gate stood three men.

The one in the middle was heavy, with a shaved head and a wool cap in his hands.

He was the Russian from the phone.

He did not look at me the way the other two did.

He looked at something over my shoulder, where Dario stood in the road, and then he looked at his shoes.

"Mrs.," he said. "I am ashamed. Please. This way."

The container was the fourth in a row.

Someone had left the door open six inches.

I pulled it wide, and the morning light fell across a concrete floor and a folding cot.

Lily lay curled on it with her knees pulled up.

She was still wearing the purple dress.

"Lily."

She turned her head.

Her eyes were glassy, and her lips were so dry they had cracked.

"Mommy?" It was almost a whisper. "I knew you'd come. I told the man."

I don't remember crossing the floor.

I was on my knees with her in my arms, and she smelled sour and sweet at once.

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