One Mile Under

by Gross, Andrew

  “Nice and easy now …” Robertson said in her ear. He locked his hand on her arm and led her toward the door.

  Dani’s heart was in a frenzy.

  He’s going to kill me, she told herself. Just like Trey. And maybe Ty. Poor Ty … Oh, please don’t let that be true … She desperately wished she could find a way to contact him. He hadn’t called her back, which only made the possibility seem worse. Something could well have happened to him. Her legs slid, wobbly and without strength, passing tables, people not looking or just going on with their normal business, not knowing anything improper was going on. Can’t they see!

  She thought of screaming out. They were ten feet from the front door. They couldn’t all just sit there and let him take her. Blind to what was happening. Just like with RMM. And if they saw, well, then Robertson couldn’t just do what he said, like what he had done to Trey. Too many people. As she walked, everything in slow motion, Dani’s eyes darted around to anything she could use against him. There was silverware on every table, knives and forks, but she knew she’d never get a full grasp on something in time—and even if she did, Robertson was a trained special ops guy. She’d never have a chance to use it.

  I’ll break your arm off right here, he said.

  She also saw those old-fashioned metal napkin dispensers on every table, the edges pointed and sharp.

  Six feet. Robertson dug his grip into her arm ever harder. “Almost there now.”

  She couldn’t let him take her.

  As they reached the door, it suddenly opened, and a woman stepped in, maybe in her fifties, in a blue blouse and open sweater vest. She gave them a smile in the doorway. Robertson smiled back as if nothing was happening.

  Once she was out that door it was over for her. This was her only chance.

  Now.

  Her heart pounding, Dani lunged and reached for the table closest to the door, grabbing on to the napkin dispenser, and swung it up with her free hand as Robertson, one hand on her, held the door.

  She hit him with the sharp edge in the forehead just above the left eye.

  He shouted out, letting Dani go, the hand he had around her shooting up to his eye.

  The woman screamed as Dani wrenched out of Robertson’s grasp, flinging her against him.

  Then she bolted out the open door.

  Outside, she almost ran headfirst into the black SUV pulled up there. There were two people in the front seats. She knew she had only seconds before Robertson, momentarily staggered, would come out after her. Even fewer before one of the two in the SUV would realize what was going on. The café was mid-block. Even though it was the town’s main street there was virtually no one milling around and a only few vehicles on the street. She looked desperately for a police car. For anyone she could run to. The passenger door to the black SUV opened. A man stepped out.

  Dani took off down the street.

  She ran past the storefronts, a knitting supply shop and a State Farm insurance office. At an alley, she glanced behind her. Robertson had now come out of the café, a hand to his head, and the guy from the SUV came up to him.

  They pointed toward her.

  She had to find a way out of here now.

  She sprinted down the alley, which was behind the storefronts on the cross street perpendicular to Main Street. She had about fifty yards on them. They hadn’t even made it to the alley. She tore past the backs of the stores, searching frantically for a place to hide, her blood pumping feverishly. She knew she had to try Ty again. She only prayed he was somehow okay. She stopped and looked behind her; she saw two men turning into the alley. A back door was open to one of the shops and Dani ran in, locking the door behind her. It was an outdoors store, selling clothing and camping equipment. She pushed her way through a back storage room filled with boxes and garments on racks, toppling them in her panic, and then ran through a short hallway and into the main store. A female clerk looked toward her, hearing the agitation. “Ma’am, can I help you?”

  Dani didn’t even know what to say. She was too panicked to even remain there the few seconds it would take to either call Ty or tell the woman what was happening.

  “Call the police!” she said to the woman. “Please. There are two people chasing me.”

  Suddenly, she heard pounding on the door in the back. “Call them!”

  She bolted out the front.

  She found herself on the street that was perpendicular to Main Street. The stores were even older and less busy there. She didn’t know if Robertson and the other man had come through the store, but there was another alleyway a couple of stores down where they’d be able to cut through and intercept her. She heard the two men coming down the alley, shouting. She ran across the street. She came upon a small side street and headed down it. She passed a bakery and a small crafts store with cheap, beaded jewelry in the window. She pressed against the building, keeping her breath still, fumbling in her purse for her phone. She grabbed it, finding Ty’s number in her recent history, and punched at the keys, frantic, clumsily, until finally pushing the call icon with both thumbs to make sure it went through. Heart racing, she peered around the corner and saw the two men come out onto the street. To her surprise, Robertson wasn’t one of them. They both had to be from the SUV.

  Where the hell had Robertson gone?

  To her anxiety, Ty’s voice mail came on. Dammit, no … Under her breath, she started to tell him what had happened.

  Suddenly they seemed to spot her across the street and pointed.

  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.

  Thirty yards.

  She looked around one last time and saw the two men slow to a stop. She’d made it. Whatever would happen, she was away from them.

  Suddenly there was a screech. From out of nowhere, the black SUV pulled out of the food market lot and blocked her way.

  Dani virtually crashed right into it.

  A second car sped out of an alley, wedging her in, in a V.

  “No! No!” she cried out, slamming her fist against the side. She spun quickly around to try and break free.

  The rear door of the SUV opened and someone took her by shoulder and pulled her in.

  He had the same gray T-shirt she had seen just minutes before with a skeleton on it and the letters SXSW. A bright red gash over his eye.

  “So I owe you that trip.” Robertson winked, slamming the door shut. “Man, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you weren’t so eager to go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  They bound her hands with a nylon rope that dug deep into her wrists, and almost seemed to enjoy it when she winced, maybe a smirk of payback for the welt above Robertson’s eye.

  Someone Dani hadn’t seen before in a white, short-sleeve shirt and tie was at the wheel. She let her head fall back against the headrest—nervous, spent, completely out of breath.

  And scared. She knew what they had done to Trey and those people in the balloon. Robertson sat next to her in the back. It gave her the creeps just to feel their legs come together when the car turned. They drove through town without seeing as much as a police car on the road and got onto Route 34 toward Greeley.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Don’t you worry your little head about that,” Robertson said. “You’ll find out soon enough. Just enjoy the ride.”

  “I said, where are you taking me?” she asked again, with defiance.

  He rubbed the mark above his eye. “You were asking about the water supply, so we thought we’d give you a look, firsthand. Up close and personal, as they say.” He ripped her bag away and pawed through it quickly, and tossed it to the floor underneath his legs. “Don’t think you’ll be needing any of this now.”

  Trepidation and uncertainty pulsed through her, where seconds ago adrenaline had held her together. She watched the familiar landmarks go by. On the edge of town, Robertson took out a walkie-talkie and spoke into the receiver. “Cargo’s on board. We’re on our way out to the Falls. Everything set up there?”

  A scratchy voice came back. “All ready. Whenever you arrive.”

  “The Falls? Where is that?” Dani asked warily. She knew she was in extreme danger now. “What do you mean, are you ‘set up’? People know I’m here. They saw me.”

  “Don’t ask so many questions,” Robertson said, stowing the walkie-talkie. “Trust me, you’ll need every breath.”

  Inside, her stomach tightened into a knot. She inspected her bound, useless hands, the binds digging into her. Up ahead of them, she spotted a black-and-white state police car on the side of the road. State, not town. Beat on the windows, she told herself. Scream. There had to be some way to contact it as they passed.

  “Up ahead …” the driver glanced behind and said to Robertson, alerting him to it.

  “I see it.”

  As they got close, to her dismay, Robertson reached over and forced her down against the seat, well below the windows, which were darkened anyway, so that no one could possibly see in.

  Or hear.

  “Help! Help me! Goddammit, help me!” Dani screamed in vain, her pleas muffled into the leather.

  “Scream all you want,” Robertson said, releasing her when they’d passed. She sat up and looked behind. The police vehicle had made a U-turn and receded into the distance the other way. “Go ahead, exercise those lungs of yours … Trust me, you’ll need every breath.”

  A feeling of deep helplessness set in. What were they going to do with her …? Her only hope now was Ty, and there was no way to contact him. She eyed her bag on the floor next to Robertson. Suddenly it dawned on her she had never turned off the phone from when she had called him on the truck. It was a long shot, but what if he had kept his on as well? Maybe there was a chance he was hearing everything that was happening to her. And tracking where they were taking her. It was the only shot she had now. “Where the hell are the Falls?” she asked, trying to direct him to where they were heading. “Greeley?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions.” Robertson just looked straight ahead.

  “Please …”

  Finally he
snorted brusquely. “The two of you are fools. You’re lucky they don’t let me do what I’d like to do to you. For this.” He tapped the red mark over his eye. “You come up here and think this is all some kind of game. You think you’re playing with kids, huh? You more than anyone should have known. You saw what happens …”

  What happens … She realized what he meant. “You’re talking Aspen?” she said, praying that the cell phone was somehow live. “Trey.”

  C’mon admit it, she said inside. Say it.

  “You should’ve just done what you came up here for and left. The two of you.” He looked back ahead. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I know you killed him. I know you were on the river. I saw the tape.”

  “Tape …?” Robertson turned to her with renewed interest in his eyes.

  “The ranger station keeps a running record of who goes in and out. Your car is on it. You do anything to me, and people will know. Everyone knows I was looking for you up here. They’ll put it together.”

  He shook his head. It was clear he didn’t know. “Useless piece of shit …” he muttered disgustedly under his breath.

  Useless piece of shit … Dani realized that he had to be talking about Wade. That’s why Wade had dragged his feet the way he did. Why he went and hid the tapes.

  “Anyway, nobody knows,” the Alpha man sniffed. “So don’t worry yourself. And even if they did … it doesn’t lead anywhere.” He looked at her and shrugged with a philosophical smirk. “Least it won’t anymore.”

  They were going to kill her. That much was clear. Just like Trey. Fear pounded up inside her. She felt tears in the backs of her eyes, tears of helplessness and fear and the total futility of her situation. She didn’t want to show them to him. This bastard who had killed Trey and Ron and those others. She blinked them back as best she could. She begged herself not to give him the victory of seeing her cry.

  “They’ll know,” she said back defiantly. “They’ll all know.”

  “Hard to prove much,” the Alpha man said with a shrug, “when there’s not a trace in the world of anything left behind. And where you’re going …”