I was rummaging around the fridge and had gulped down half a pint of milk when the trailer slowed and came to a standstill. My heart raced as I heard the car door open and close, and heavy footsteps making their way in my direction. The driver, the big man called Sal, would immediately spot me when he opened the door. My body reacted in the same way as when I’d seen the police car, signaling an acute urge to run, but I wouldn’t make it out of the back window in time and I had nowhere else to go.

The door opened, and as I was about to put my hands up and reassure Sal I wasn’t any kind of threat, I heard his wife, Rita, yell something from the car. “I found them,” she screeched. “They’re in here, you moron. Come on. I want to get home already.”

“You left the trailer unlocked again,” Sal shouted back before slamming the door shut. I heard him turn the key before he meandered to the car at a glacial pace, not in any apparent hurry to do as Rita commanded. As the air rushed from my lungs I collapsed on the bed, vowing the next time the trailer stopped I’d be ready to push open the back window and run. Sal didn’t appear or sound like the kind of person you messed with. Come to think of it, Rita didn’t, either.

With the jam safely stowed in the cupboard, I forced myself to leave the rest of the bread, making sure I wiped away any crumbs from the counter to remove all signs of my intrusion. As I went to put the take-out menu back where I’d found it, I caught sight of the restaurant’s phone number, which began with 207. A sequence flashed in front of my eyes. Two, zero, seven, followed by six other digits, a combination that came over and over, drowning out everything else trying to make its way into my head. It became a steady pattern that made no sense until I realized it was a phone number, I was sure of it, except I was missing a digit. But which one? The first, last, or another somewhere in the middle? Trying to figure out how many possible combinations that represented made my headache start up again, so I jotted down the numbers on a piece of paper in case I forgot them, and stuffed the note in my pocket. Exhaustion invaded me once more, and I headed back to the bed, falling asleep before I’d stretched out my legs.

Sal stopped briefly at another service station, and I watched him and Rita, who were no longer on speaking terms, and stayed close to the back window in case I had to jump out. They didn’t approach the trailer again, and I settled in for the ride, incapable of staying awake.