The Dog Bait by the ATM

I'm thirty now; when this happened, late in 2024, I was twenty-eight. At the time I worked a second job cleaning bank branches a few nights a week, and because of my full-time schedule I usually did it in the dead hours — very late at night, bleeding into the early morning. One of the branches sat in a rough part of town, the kind of area with elevated rates of robbery, homicide, trafficking, all of that. I'd worked that location for months without any real trouble, though I'll admit the walk out to my car always made my skin crawl a little.

One night, around three in the morning, I was scrubbing down the lobby when I glanced out through the glass and noticed a German Shepherd sitting outside by the ATM. He was completely alone — no owner anywhere in sight — just sitting there, staring straight at me, his open mouth hanging in a way that almost looked like a grin. A rope was looped around his neck, its end chewed and frayed through. I'm a total animal person; I've scooped up strays before, dogs and cats both. So of course I rushed outside to check on him. I bent down and gathered up the ragged rope, and the dog never budged from his spot — calm, friendly, planted right where he sat. But as he looked up at me, a wave of pure dread hit me like a punch to the stomach. Something deep in me screamed to get back inside. Right now. I let the rope fall from my hand and hurried back through the doors.

Minutes later, a rust-eaten white van rolled up in front of the ATM — no markings on it, nothing official about it whatsoever. Two men loaded the dog inside, and then they drove off. I noticed the windows were fitted with metal covers, bolted straight onto the frames, and the side panels carried a few bullet holes. Strange, I thought — but I still had floors to finish, so I finished them and went home.

My next visit to that branch was completely uneventful. The one after that, though, is still one of the most terrifying nights of my life. It was about half past three in the morning. I'd finished cleaning and was loading bags of trash into my car to haul over to the dumpster. As I worked, I noticed a white van turning into the business park where the bank sat — but I thought nothing of it. There were other businesses around, and at that hour there were usually still a few cars and pedestrians drifting through.

Then I caught it in my rearview mirror. The headlights were dark, and the driver had wedged me in — van on one side, dumpster on the other, no room to maneuver. I knew that vehicle instantly: the bolted-on window covers, the bullet holes punched through the sides. It was unmistakably the battered white van from the other night. Thank God my car was small, because I managed to whip it sideways out of the trap. The second I broke free, the van was right on me — riding my bumper, tailgating me all the way out of the business park. I swerved onto side streets at random; they mirrored every single turn. Through the mirror I could make out two men in the front seats, their headlights still black.

I didn't call 911, because in this city the police might as well not exist for emergencies like mine. Call and you sit on hold; if anyone answers, they either don't take you seriously or the response takes hours and accomplishes nothing. My whole mind was fixed on one thing: getting away. I tried to shake them — speeding, jerking onto random streets, even holding my phone up to my ear like I was calling someone. The chase went on for maybe five minutes before I finally lost them. I kept driving aimlessly for a while after that, making sure I was truly clear, and then I went home. I quit that cleaning job not long after.

I've turned it over in my head ever since, and I keep landing on the same awful suspicion: a trafficking or kidnapping setup. They had probably been watching that branch for a while, learning my routine and my schedule — and they must have figured out how much I love animals. When the dog-as-bait trick didn't work, they tried to corner me by the dumpster themselves. So to the men — and the dog — in the white van: let's not meet again.