Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

No, I had to make my way back up into town.

I looked up and saw the back deck of the motel Carrie and I had passed while driving through town. I balanced along the edge, took off my jacket, and hurled it as far as I could into the river. It landed in an eddy and managed to catch on a rock. I hoped it might distract them for a while. Make them believe I had jumped, and spend some seconds looking for me.

Then I started to paw my way up the sharp embankment, groping at rocks, weeds, anything that might hold me.

If they came out now, I’d be a sitting duck. I made it to the top and hurled myself over a small retaining wall onto a gravel patch underneath the motel’s concrete foundation.

My breaths jabbed like needles in my lungs.

I looked below and saw the two cops who had been chasing me finally emerge from the pipe, shielding their eyes and looking up the embankment, gingerly making their way along the rocks over the dam, scanning downriver.

Then they spotted my jacket. The two of them inched closer to the river’s edge and got on their radios, calling it in.

I could see the two anglers downstream, waving at them. Their words were unintelligible, but I knew exactly what they were trying to tell them, pointing up the hill at me.

Finally grasping it, the two cops looked up the hill, and I ducked behind some brush and rolled away from the bank.

Someone shouted my name!

I spun, and was face-to-face with another policeman, this one young, crew-cut light hair and sunglasses. Maybe forty feet away. He leaned out over the edge above the embankment, his gun drawn. Shouting down to the other two, “Up here! Up here!” He was about two storefronts away, his weapon trained on me.

“Henry Steadman, get down on your knees! Stop! ”

I stood, completely frozen, realizing that he was at an awkward angle leaning over the edge, still maybe forty feet from me.

And more alarming, every cop in two townships was going to be here in about twenty seconds!

I took off, throwing myself out of his line of sight as the young cop squeezed the trigger, a shot ricocheting behind me off one of the posts supporting the motel.

God, Henry, are you insane? He’s shooting!

My heart was in a sprint, my thoughts jumbled and unclear. All I could think of was Hallie, and how I had to get out of here… And if I couldn’t…

Well, then it didn’t matter what happened to me!

I ran around the side of the motel and hoisted myself over a redwood fence and onto a balcony-the restaurant. I hurried through an open sliding-glass door to the main room, hurrying past a young kid, probably an off-duty waiter or kitchen help, who smiled accommodatingly. “Anything we can do, sir?”

“No,” I said, hurrying past him. “No. Thanks.”

“Kitchen opens at five o’clock,” he called after me.

I rushed out through the dining room, knowing that the cop who had shot at me was probably only a minute away, probably followed by several others. Surely the two who had been in the spill pipe behind me had to be up here by now as well.

I figured my one reasonable chance was to somehow get out of town, then call Carrie and hope she could pick me up somewhere. Or, at this point, hand myself over to her brother, which all of a sudden seemed like a far better option than ending up in a local jail.

But even that seemed a million-to-one now.

I ran into the main lobby and looked out the sliding front doors, and saw the cop who had shot at me running up the driveway, his gun drawn.

Oh no, no…

I looked down the hallway and heard the two cops who’d been behind me in the drain coming up the outside stairs.

It’s over, Henry.

I was cornered. I thought about putting my hands in the air and ending it all right here. I was so damn beat from all this running… I felt like a prisoner who’d been forced to hold his arms up, over his head, for hours, and if he let them drop he’d be killed, and all he wanted to do was let them down, just for a second, to feel what life was like, regardless of the cost or the outcome, whatever fate was in store.

I looked at the guy behind the desk, tears welling in my eyes, and was about to simply say, It’s me! It’s me they’re here for! And raise my arms.

Then I realized that I couldn’t do that. No matter how much my arms hurt. No matter how long this had to go on.

Because the outcome wasn’t about me, but about Hallie.

The cost of dropping them was my daughter’s life.

I turned to the guy behind the counter. I said, “Something’s going on! There are police all over here. I heard shots. I think the guy they’re after is that doctor from Jacksonville. I think I just saw him run upstairs.”

The guy looked alarmed and then craned his head to look out the front door, at the policeman coming up the driveway. I went over to the staircase, pretending to head after the culprit, and while the desk clerk’s attention was focused on the cop, I ducked down a hallway around the back and found a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Which, thankfully, was open! I slipped through it and found myself in a janitorial staging area, with buckets and mops, shelves stocked with cleaners, and another door that seemed to lead outside to a delivery staging area.

A driverless white van marked CAROLINA PIE COMPANY was pulled up there, clearly delivering that night’s desserts. As I passed by I looked in for the keys.

And then I saw it.

A black delivery guy in a gray work uniform was saying to a hotel employee in the delivery bay, “So this is all, then? Guess I’ll see you Monday, sugar.” He had a large laundry bin with him, stuffed to the brim with white sheets and linens.

And just outside there was a delivery truck, R &K INDUSTRIAL LAUNDRY, CHARLOTTE, with its cargo door open and a metal ramp leading into the bay. While the driver had the female hotel staffer signing for his pickup, I slipped outside and looked into the truck, its cargo bay filled with identical large laundry bins.

Jesus, Henry, you’ve got to do this now.

I heard a commotion back inside the hotel-people shouting-and I realized that at any second the town’s entire police force was going to converge right where I was standing.

I hoisted myself up, crept to the back of the truck, pulled up some dirty sheets from one of the bins, and jumped in, covering myself up.

Now, if the driver could just get on with it and get the hell out of here!

It took a few agonizing seconds, seconds that seemed to stretch into minutes as I lay curled up in the bin, until I heard the grating metal sound of the loading ramp being yanked up and the heavy cargo door slamming shut.

The bay went dark and silent, and all I could do was pray for the driver to get moving!

It seemed like an eternity, and then I finally heard the cab door close and the truck’s engine start up. Yes! The cargo bin rattled.

Let’s go! Get the hell out of here, I begged from inside the bin.

Then the truck lurched forward.

I was sure that at any second I would hear someone order him to stop and the truck brake to a halt.

But I didn’t. We just went on. The truck stopped for a second at what I took to be the main street and slowly made a left turn.

My God, Henry, you’re going to get away!

I allowed myself a yelp of joy inside the bin as it chugged into third gear and steadily picked up speed, my mind flying back to the motel, which must now be flooded with cops, closing it off from all directions, the three who were first on the scene calling to their partners from the second floor. “Up here! Up here!”

I’d made it!

Ibounced along for what seemed like an eternity, alternately exhilarated at my escape and petrified that at any second I’d be surrounded by police cars with blaring sirens and the truck would come to a stop.