Escaping the police station had been no small feat. Rede kept playing the events over in her mind, marveling at the fact that no one had been injured despite the mad dash for the door and the hail of bullets that had surrounded them. Either the team had insanely good luck or the cops were irredeemably bad at their jobs. Rede wasn’t sure which she preferred.

Dawn had just broken, and with it, the city awoke. People ventured out of their drowned houses to fill buckets with water and gather plants growing amidst the ruins. A few waved and gestured for the crew to come over; wincing, the paddlers shook their heads and assured the speakers that the canoe would be making the rounds again soon. The looks of disappointment on their faces cut deep. Rede averted her eyes, focusing instead on the dip and pull of her paddle through the water. Soon, things would get back to normal, she reassured herself. This whole mess was just a temporary setback. Their community was waiting on them, after all. They couldn't afford to let this drag on much longer.

The canoe gradually emerged from the city, drifting across the sparkling expanse of the Willamette with sights set on the east bank.

Shay shifted her weight on the bench behind Rede. Even without looking at her, Rede could sense the nervous energy radiating towards her.

Before Rede could say anything, Shay spoke. “They barely even tried to stop us,” she said.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Rede tried not to speak too loudly — she didn’t want to alarm the others with her own speculations. “Do you think…?”

“Oh, they definitely wanted us to get away,” Shay said. “I’m just confused about why.”

Rede nodded grimly. Nothing the cops had done made any sense. Why try to detain them in the first place, when their connection with Ducky was adversarial at best? Then, if they did decide to keep the crew in holding, why did they let them escape so easily? The cops had used a motorboat to tail Ducky; assuming it still worked, a squad of officers could easily have tailed the canoe.

This whole situation was giving Rede a headache.

The canoe reached the east bank, where a dappling of shade from the ruined buildings provided some cover. Rede slowed down her pace, allowing Mara to maneuver through the wreckage more easily.

Between the pounding in her head and her laser-focus on paddling, Rede didn’t notice the hum of an outboard engine in the background until the boat was nearly on top of them.

The crew all seemed to realize what was happening at the same time. Inna let out a yelp, paddle skipping over the river's surface and dousing the boat with spray; Shay dropped into a crouch at the bottom of the canoe, while Mara forced the canoe to take a hard left behind a half-collapsed wall.

Rede’s eyes flicked between the water in front of her and the boat to their right in an attempt to monitor both situations at once. The river looked shallow here, which didn’t bode well for the team. As for the motorboat, Rede couldn’t pick out any symbols or flags, but given that the hull was pocked with bullet holes and a number of oil drums had been lashed to the deck, it wasn’t hard to figure out what sort of person was behind the wheel.

As the canoe turned, Rede’s paddle struck something hard beneath the water. She cried out as the shock wave carried down her arm and rattled her shoulder. Moments later, she heard a harsh scraping sound and the canoe ground to a halt. Its momentum carried the paddlers forward, each crashing into the person in front of them.

Rede swore and peeked over the gunnel. A pile of rocks, so dark she could barely make them out, lurked mere inches below the surface — just high enough to catch the bottom of the canoe. They were grounded.

Panic rose like bile in Rede’s throat. She threw one leg over the gunnel and kicked at the rocks in a vain attempt to dislodge the canoe. Her foot glanced off a patch of slime, scattering rainbow droplets through the air.

Shay dove forward to join Rede, scrabbling at the rocks with clumsy hands. At the back of the canoe, Mara spat curses and frantically turned her steers blade back and forth — but the boat refused to budge.

The motorboat engine reached a deafening roar as it looped around the wall and pulled up alongside the canoe. Its wake slapped against the left-hand gunnel and doused the paddlers in icy river water.

Rede gave up trying to move the canoe. She wiped a few soaked locks of hair out of her eyes and squinted up at the boat’s deck, gripping her paddle like a lifeline. A pang of longing for Four-Stroke’s gun ran through her.

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That longing, however, was quickly dwarfed by dread as she watched a tall, lanky silhouette stand up from behind the motorboat’s wheel.

The figure took a couple steps forward and crouched on the edge of the boat’s deck. They were close enough that Rede could make out their features: a long beard, bushy eyebrows, a mouth like a slash in the jacker’s face. No visible weapon, though. Rede wasn’t sure whether to take that as a good sign.

The jacker locked eyes with Shay. “We’ve been looking for you for a while.”

Shay’s poker face was impeccable, Rede thought, watching her stare back at the jacker with half-lidded eyes. She almost looked bored.

“Who’s we?” Shay asked.

“All of us an’ the boss.” The jacker grinned, baring a row of gleaming white teeth. With the wave of his hand, the jacker summoned his companion: a bald man in a torn red shirt, combat boots, and a shotgun strapped to his back. He didn’t introduce himself, but then again, he didn’t need to. The crew already knew who Ducky was.

Rede tightened her grip on her paddle, bracing herself for a wave of fear that never came. Instead, a sense of stillness washed over her. Logically, she knew she should be afraid, but her mind refused to give in to instinct, processing sensory stimuli with a computer's linear precision.

“You really came all the way out here just for us?” Shay asked. Her hand twitched; she was visibly holding herself back from grabbing the pistol that she’d somehow managed to hold onto during their encounter with the cops. “Seems like a lot of work for small fry.”

“Don’t stall,” Ducky said. His voice was more nasally than Rede had expected. “Just get in the boat nicely and everyone gets out of here safe.”

Shay snorted. “No way.”

Ducky shrugged. “You had your chance,” he said, right before hoisting his shotgun and sending a slug into Shay’s chest.

Rede heard herself scream as if from a distance as she watched her companion's body crumple to the bottom of the canoe. Shay had already partially drawn her weapon when she was shot; when she fell, her hand went limp, weapon clattering to the floor of the boat.

The cold clarity in Rede’s mind remained, her thoughts sharp and orderly despite her traitorous body’s reaction. She smelled the tang of gunpowder and heard her friends’ screams mingle with her own. Her eyes raked over the scene: the crew recoiling; Ducky and his jacker staring down at them in satisfaction; Shay’s motionless body at her feet. Rede’s gaze fixed on the weapon by her feet. It wasn’t a Glock, but it looked similar enough to figure out.

Rede dropped to her knees and grabbed the weapon. Nine times out of ten, just the sound of a gunshot is enough to get someone off your back, Four-Stroke had said. All she had to do was pull — no, squeeze, not pull — the trigger.

The jacker let out a cry of alarm. Rede didn’t have time to aim; she just swung around, took rough aim at the boat, and fired.

The kickback sent Rede's hands flying over her head. Knuckles white from the strain, Rede barely managed to hang onto the weapon. She caught herself with a squat, bracing her thighs against the benches as she watched both of the motorboat’s occupants reeling from shock.

Beside her, Shay groaned. Her eyes fluttered as she rolled onto her side, clutching at her chest. Rede had expected to see more blood, but it didn’t look like Shay was bleeding at all.

The click of a pistol cocking drew Rede’s attention. She ducked below the gunnel just as the jacker fired. The bullet went sailing over her head, echoed by a curse and the sound of Ducky pumping his shotgun.

Rede gritted her teeth and threw her arms back out over the gunnel to take aim. The jacker had leapt back behind the wheel and restarted the engine as Ducky pointed his weapon at Rede’s head.

With a guttural scream, Inna stood and launched his paddle like a javelin. It arced through the air and struck the broker blade-first in the neck.

Ducky fumbled his gun but didn’t drop it, swearing and listing to one side as he tried to recover from the blow.

The broker's moment of weakness stood out to the cold, analytical thing that Rede's mind had become. She positioned her arms the way Four-Stroke had shown her, squinted between the two notches at the end of the barrel, and fired on Ducky. Blood spread across his shoulder.

A split second later, the jacker stepped on the boat’s gas.

Between the river-sprayed slickness of the deck, the sudden jolt forward, and the bullet’s impact, Ducky lost his balance completely. He toppled off the deck and into the water as the motorboat roared away, its driver either unaware of his boss’s accident or simply not paid enough to care.

The crew stood frozen for a long moment before simultaneously lurching into action.

Inna jumped into the water to recover his lost paddle, then made a beeline for Ducky. Thanh jumped in after him, grabbing the floundering broker around the middle and hauling him toward the canoe. Rede flipped the safety on the pistol and turned to Shay.

Mara, sweaty and wild-eyed, scrambled up beside her. She grabbed Shay’s shoulder and tried to roll her over.

“Ow,” Shay muttered, swatting at Mara’s hand.

“First aid kit? We have to have a first aid kit,” Mara babbled.

Shay swatted again, this time more insistently. She opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbows, limbs bent awkwardly in the confined space. “I’m fine,” she insisted. Her voice, if a bit winded, sounded relatively steady.

Rede stared in confusion. There was a hole in Shay’s sweatshirt, but still no bleeding that she could see.

The realization hit her a moment before Shay hiked up her shirt to reveal a bulletproof vest, the faded Portland Police Bureau emblem glinting on her chest. “I borrowed it from the station,” she said. “Figured it’d come in handy.”

Mara stared in shock. She rocked back on her heels and wiped the sweat off her brow. “Jesus fucking Christ, Shay, you could’ve told us! We all thought you were dead.”

“Hey!” Thanh interrupted. She was crouched on the rocky outcropping the team had been grounded on, both arms wrapped around a still-struggling Ducky. Inna treaded water beside them, holding his paddle in what Rede assumed was meant to be a threatening posture. Thanh jostled Ducky for emphasis, eliciting a groan and a profane outburst from the broker. “We’ve got a prisoner, guys. Little help?”