She ended the call.
There was a row of hedges on the right and a chain link fence that separated her from the parking lot of a Kroger food market. She sprinted down the length of it, not knowing where to go. She spun around the corner. It was a small parking alley: garbage cans and dumpsters, and a garbage truck making its way down the street, one man driving, the other throwing the contents of each receptacle into the compactor. Dani didn’t know if she could outrun them anymore. The truck chugged down the narrow street ahead of the guy loading the trash, a black guy with a bandana around his head who had stopped to chat with a store worker. Dani ran up to the truck while his back was turned. The men pursuing her couldn’t be more than a couple of steps behind.
Seeing no other way out, Dani pulled herself up on the truck out of the sight of the chatting garbage man. She climbed up a short metal ladder, basically a footstep and a rail for the workmen to hold on to during the ride, and hoisted herself up onto the rim of the truck’s compactor and scrambled onto the top. For someone who’d been rock climbing since her teens, it was an easy task. The driver heard nothing from the cab; the truck’s engine was running and the compactor was churning loudly. Dani lay there, glued to the sloped roof of the truck, breathing heavily, her heart almost pounding its way out of her chest.
She was petrified to even look up. She shifted onto her side, and maybe a block away, across from the food market, she saw the new police department, one of those modern redbrick buildings that seemed so out of place here. She remembered what Ty had said about his encounter with the chief. But they were still the police. They couldn’t just hand her over to people who were trying to kidnap her. The truck began to move with a jerk and loud rumble, the guy who was loading the bags catching up and slapping the side for it to move onto the next store. Dani rolled onto her side and found her phone. She pressed Ty’s number again. Where is he? What happened to him?
She hit REDIAL.
The line connected again. C’mon, please, Ty, pick up. She heard it ring. Once. Twice. Three times. Please … she begged.
To her amazement, this time she heard his voice.
“Where are you?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
“No!” she said, terrified. Her heart beat madly and she peered down the block. “I’m not. I’m being chased in town. Thank God, you’re all right. I ran into Robertson and he said you were—”
“Robertson?”
She saw the two men turn down the street.
“I can’t talk,” she spat in a whisper. She pressed herself against the truck, afraid to even look up. “They’re here. They’re—”
“Are you able to stay there? Just tell me where you are. I’m on my way.”
“No, I can’t stay,” she said again, her voice cracking. “I’m in town.” The loud churn of the garbage compactor concealed it, her body quaking in fright. “Please don’t hang up, Uncle Ty. I’m scared.”
“I’m here.”
Below her, the two men had come up to the truck. Dani flattened against it, the hot, steel roof. They stopped, not seeing her anywhere, probably assuming she had run to the end and turned onto another street. To be certain, they started opening trash cans, kicking them over, peering inside dumpsters. Looking under the cars.
One of them came up to the garbage worker. “You see a girl run down here?”
“Girl …? Just Becky. From the secondhand store …” He threw the contents of a can he was carrying into the mouth of the churning compactor, just a few feet below Dani. She held her ears from the deafening noise.
“You go on ahead, and I’ll check if she ran into any of these stores,” the one said to his partner. “She can’t have gone far.”
He ran ahead. The truck continued down the street. The other pursuer remained behind, kicking the cans to make sure they were empty. She caught sight of him jumping up and looking in the dumpsters.
The garbage worker held on to the side of the truck and it began to rumble away.
Dani pushed herself forward. “Are you still with me?” she asked Ty on the phone.
“Yes. I’m on my way in.”
“I’m—” To her horror, she saw that the truck’s sloped back and the growing distance between her and her pursuer meant she could be visible now.
The man kicked aside the top of a metal can in frustration and stepped out in the wake of the advancing truck. He looked up.
Their gazes collided.
“Oh, God.”
“There she is!” he yelled, pointing at the truck. He ran after it, about thirty yards behind. His partner came back from up ahead, screaming at the driver to stop, then clawing his way up the side.
The truck jerked to a stop.
She was trapped. In a second or two, they’d nab her.
There was nowhere to go, but …
The one behind her hooked on to the back of the truck and began climbing, his partner slowly making his way up the side. Dani threw her phone in her bag and got to all fours, and as they reached the top, leaped off the truck’s roof, landing with a thud on the hood, and then jumped onto the ground. She hit the cement hard and rolled from the impact, coming to a stop against the wire fence. The men climbed down after her. She scrambled to her feet and started to run. The police station was just a block or two away. They couldn’t just follow her in.
Her two pursuers made it to the ground.
Dani sprinted. She made it as fast as she could to the end of the alley and swung around across the street. The police station was only a hundred yards away now. Remembering what Ty had said, she didn’t know if this was the smartest thing, but what other choice was there? However corrupt they might be, they were still police. They couldn’t just hand her over. Ty would come and they would figure out what to do.
She took a glance behind and saw the two men catching up. Fifty yards. Her heart pounded. She darted in between two cars and ran out into the street. It was just ahead of her now.