Kit Ehrman: At Risk

"Oh, shit."

Even thought it was still dark, if they were paying any attention at all, they would see the escape door, which now hung at an odd angle over the speeding roadway. I reached out and grabbed the lower edge, but the weight of the door caused the whole thing to break off and crash onto the road.

The driver hit the brakes. The trailer shuddered and bounced, and the horses were almost thrown off their feet with me right along with them. I grabbed the metal frame, pulled myself upright, and watched as the trailer slowed.

Before it came to a stop, I jumped out. I instinctively rolled when I hit the ground and, by some miracle, landed on my feet. Behind me, voices shouted and doors slammed. I ran past the back bumper and didn't risk a look back. Didn't dare.

A loud noise cracked through the air, and it took me half a second to realize it was a gunshot. The second bullet whined above my head. I darted to the right and stumbled across the shoulder of the road. The ground dropped off into a wide drainage ditch, and as I picked up speed, I realized too late that there wasn't any cover until I made it to the woods on the far side. I'd almost reached the bottom of the ravine, when my foot caught on something hidden in the long grass. I crashed onto my shoulder, and a layer of ice shattered like glass under my weight.

I scrambled through the water, struggled up the far bank, and lunged into the woods. Another crack. This time the bullet splintered a tree limb to my left. I stumbled uphill, crashing blindly through tree limbs and heavy undergrowth, conscious of the noise I was making and could do nothing about. I had gone about fifty yards up the steep incline, when I came to a fallen tree blocking my path. I clambered over the rough bark and dropped to the ground, then cautiously looked back toward the road.

They were closer than I'd imagined. Too close for any margin of safety. Two of them stood alongside the trailer's back fender, and as I watched, the third jumped down from the cab and ran back to meet them. When he flicked on a flashlight and pointed it toward the woods, the largest of the three snatched it out of his hand. He played the beam across the hillside, concentrating on the area to my left.

I sank farther down behind the log and tried to control my breathing. As long as I stayed still and didn't make any noise, they wouldn't find me. Just as that thought crossed my mind, the beam caught me full in the face. I stopped breathing.

The light moved off to my left, and for a moment, its afterimage was all I could see. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to clear my sight. When I opened my eyes, the men had moved past the trailer's bumper. The glow from the taillights bathed them in red. They were no longer wearing masks. The one with the flashlight gestured aggressively, barking commands I couldn't hear. When the other two wheeled around and took off down the road, the skin on the back of my neck tingled. Though I doubted they knew where I was, the image of them sneaking up behind me was overpowering.

I scrunched deeper into the leaves, pressed my shoulder against the log, and waited. When I next heard voices, I lifted my head and squinted toward the road. The two men had returned with the escape door and were loading it through the opening.

Light flashed in the woods to my left.

He was part way up the hill with his damn flashlight, shining the beam across the wooded slope behind me and to my left. If he moved much farther uphill and swung the light to his left, he'd see me. I watched as he ducked under a tangle of tree limbs and came closer. Another thirty feet, and he'd be level with my hiding place. He moved off to the right, toward a downed tree. As he crept around the base of the stump, light glinted off his gun.

If I ran, he'd see me, and he was too close to miss. But if he checked behind my log, I was as good as dead.

The cone of light cut across the ground just beyond my head. I waited for it to refocus on me. Waited for the shouts. When neither happened, I cautiously lifted my head. The flashlight was out, and as I listened, I realized why. A car was approaching. The engine's whine dropped a notch or two as it slowed to pass the trailer. After the car moved off, he switched on the flashlight, studied the hillside above my head, then turned and started back down the slope.

I kept my head down until I heard noises by the trailer. The one with the flashlight swept the beam in broad tracts across the asphalt, and I wondered what he was up to. Twice, he reached down and picked something up.

"Son of a bitch," I whispered.

Evidence. He was making sure they didn't leave anything behind. He found the third shell casing along the shoulder of the road. A pickup sped past as they climbed into the cab. Doors slammed, the truck dropped into gear, and they drove off. They probably figured they didn't have much to worry about, and they were right. I couldn't identify them. Even without the masks, it had been too dark.

As I watched the taillights fade into the distance, the thought of what I had narrowly escaped made my stomach do a quick one-eighty. I began to shake and not just from the cold. I stared at the vacant road, and pain I hadn't noticed since I was free of the trailer reawakened with a vengeance. Ribs, face, head.

I pushed off the log and stood up. My jeans were stiff and unyielding. They had begun to freeze. I'd be next if I didn't hurry. I turned my coat collar up with fingers that felt as if they belonged to someone else and stumbled down the slope. The drainage ditch was too wide to jump, so I waded through the icy water and climbed the embankment. I started walking.

A vehicle rounded the bend in the road ahead and accelerated toward me. I stood, frozen in the bright headlights. I hadn't noticed whether it was a car or a pickup or a dualie pulling a horse trailer. I staggered into the woods and dropped to the ground.

It whizzed by. A car… only a car.

I hung my head and listened to my pulse pound in my ears. After a minute or two, I stepped onto the pavement and tucked my hands under my armpits. My fingers felt like blocks of ice, and my teeth were chattering so hard, my jaw hurt. The idea of curling up in the leaves and going to sleep seemed attractive, and the fact that I was even considering it scared me. I had to get somewhere warm, and fast. Given the right circumstances, cold could kill as effectively as bullets.

I kept walking.

By the time I reached safety, in the form of an all-night convenience store, the sky had lightened into a dull gray. The police arrived, as they typically do, followed by the medics and later, at the hospital, a detective-all of them asking questions, most of which I couldn't remember afterwards. At first, like the convenience store clerk, the cops thought I was drunk and had upended my car in a ditch somewhere. But the ER doctor told them that hypothermia did that. That they shouldn't be surprised that my speech was slurred, reactions nonexistent, memory faulty.

Sunday afternoon, my doctor signed my release papers.

"You're not allergic to any medications, right?"

"Far as I know."

"You're employed?" I nodded, and he said, "Take off for a day or two, and when you go back, take it easy for a couple weeks." He pulled a prescription pad from a pocket in his lab coat and began to scribble. "Occupation?"

"Barn manager… at a horse farm."

He looked up, his pen hovering over his paperwork. "Better take off a full week, then start back slow. Give the ribs a chance to heal."

I didn't tell him I couldn't afford to, that there was just too much to be done, not to mention the fact that I needed every penny I earned.

He saw what I was thinking, tore up the prescription, and wrote a new one. "This will give you more relief. If you have any questions or problems, get in touch with your family physician." He tried to suppress a yawn as he initialed the chart. "You do have a family doctor?"