I slipped the knife into my pocket and pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders.

“I am going now,” I said.

“I am right behind you, Sophia,” Dante said. “I will not let anything happen to you.”

I opened the passenger door.

The cold air hit me like a physical blow, smelling of dead fish and wet iron.

My boots crunched on the wet gravel as I stepped out into the fog.

Behind me, the car door clicked shut, but Dante did not start the engine.

I began to walk toward the yellow spotlight at the end of Pier Four.

The gravel turned to rotten wooden planks that groaned under my weight.

To my left, the dark water of the Chicago River lapped against the pilings.

The fog was so thick I could barely see five feet in front of me.

I kept my hands in my pockets, my fingers wrapped around the small knife Dante had given me.

The silence of the shipyard was absolute, broken only by the distant foghorn of a freighter out on the lake.