The rain had turned into a driving squall by the time I reached Pier 42.

The pier was an abandoned finger of rotting timber and corrugated sheet metal jutting out two hundred yards into the gray, churning water of the Hudson. At the far end, half-submerged on rotting pilings, sat the old boathouse where my grandfather had once stored rum during Prohibition.

A single yellow bulb burned above the boathouse door.

Mateo’s black sedan was parked behind a stack of rusted shipping containers, its engine ticking as it cooled.

I killed the Ford's headlights two hundred yards out, coasted into the shadow of a derelict crane, and stepped out into the storm with the shotgun tucked under my arm beneath my wool coat.

I heard Emma before I saw her.

She wasn't screaming. She was doing that continuous, hitching sob that children do when they have been crying for three hours straight and have run out of breath.

"Hush now, sweetheart," Dante’s voice came through the broken transom window above the door. It was soft, gentle, almost maternal. "Your mommy is just sleeping in the back of the car. She’s tired. We’re going to take a boat ride with your uncle Nico in a few minutes."

"I want my bunny," Emma whimpered. "The man took my bunny."

"We'll buy you ten bunnies in Florida," Dante said.

I pushed the door open with the toe of my boot.

The hinges screamed.

Dante was sitting on an overturned plastic drum in the center of the wooden floor, an aluminum thermos between his feet. He was holding a small silver pocket watch in his left hand, timing something.

Emma was huddled on a pile of moldy life vests in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest, her red winter coat soaked through at the hems.

On the workbench behind Dante sat a twelve-gauge flare gun, a roll of duct tape, and Nico’s leather travel wallet, open to reveal his South American visas.

Dante didn't flinch when he saw the barrel of the Remington leveled at the center of his chest. He didn't reach for a weapon. He just closed the pocket watch with a sharp snap of his thumb and slid it into his vest.

"You're thirty minutes late, Alejandro," he said calmly. "The tide is already turning."