Author's Note: This one went somewhere I wasn't expecting it to. Still don't know where the whole thing is going.
When the car in front of them started to swerve, Grace let out a yelp. Her father's arm shot out, pinning her back to her seat as he yanked the wheel, jerking their car off the road to keep from hitting the car in front of them. Their car bumped to a stop in the patch of grass alongside the road, and Grace let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding.
"You all right, Monkey?" Danno asked, and Grace nodded, distractedly. Her attention was caught by the car that had been ahead of them, now wrapped around a telephone pole.
"Danno, the other car," she said, and she watched a look of concern flash across her father's face.
"Stay here," Danno told her, as he got out of the car, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. "Stay in the car."
Grace nodded, obediently hunkering down on the floor between the seat and the dashboard. She watched her father make his way across the street and over to the other car, pulling the door open. He had his phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder as he checked on the man driving the other car, and his mouth was moving like he was talking to someone. Grace hoped it was nine-one-one, or Uncle Steve.
Hearing the crunch of gravel from behind her, Grace peeked through the rear window of the car to see another car pulling to a stop behind them. A tall man with dark hair got out of the passenger side of the car, jogging across the street to where Danno was. Danno turned to look at the man standing behind him.
Then, Grace watched in horror as the man lifted his hand, holding a slim crowbar, and then he hit Danno over the head.
Grace's eyes went wide, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she watched her father crumple to the pavement. There was blood slowly leaking from his head, where the man had hit him, onto the pavement, pooling beneath his face. Grace wanted to scream in horror, but she couldn't seem to make her voice work. She couldn't seem to make anything work, completely frozen where she was crouched in the car.
She watched as the man scooped Danno up off the ground, slinging her father over his shoulder like he was a bag of rice. The man who was in the crashed car got out, grabbing the crowbar that the second man had dropped on the ground after he'd hit Danno, as well as scooping up Danno's phone and putting it in his pocket. Then, they headed back to the car parked behind the one Grace was hiding in.
They disappeared out of her line of sight, and Grace shuddered at the thought of losing sight of her father. Before she knew what she was doing, she was crawling carefully into the backseat, peeking above the back dash to keep an eye on the men. She could faintly see them moving around at the back of their car, and it looked like one of them had opened the trunk. Then, there was the sound of slamming metal, and she knew that they'd just stuffed Danno into the trunk of the car.
Then, she heard something that made her suddenly go very, very cold.
"I'll get rid of his car," one of the men was saying, as he walked around the back of their car and headed up toward the Camaro.
Grace's heart raced in sheer terror. Her mind went completely blank as she listened to the man's slow footsteps on the pavement, watched his slow approach to her hiding place. Then, she thought she heard Uncle Steve's voice in her head.
"Remember, Monkey," Steve was saying, "more important than getting away from someone trying to catch you, is to not let them catch you in the first place."
"What Uncle Steve is trying to say," Danno said, with a sigh, "is that you run. When you think you're in some kind of danger, you run as fast and as far as you can."
"And if they do catch me?" Grace asked, quietly, remembering how afraid she'd been when Danno's old partner had locked her in the storage shed.
"Then you bite, you kick, you scream," Steve told her, solemnly. "You do whatever you have to to get them to let go, until Danno and I can get there."
Grace nodded, wordlessly. "And then the bad guys better watch out, right?" she ventured, with a small smile.
"Right," Steve confirmed, reaching out and ruffling her hair. "Now, lesson one in kicking some ass…"
Run. Uncle Steve's voice kept echoing in her head, and Grace reached out and carefully opened the back door. She half-climbed half-fell out of the car, landing hard on the pavement and scraping her elbow when she hit the ground. She bit back a whimper of pain as she crawled along the ground, staying low to keep out of sight.
In order to move the Camaro, the man would have to come around to the driver's side, which meant that she needed to get where he couldn't see her. Because if he or his partner did see her – Grace didn't know exactly what could happen, but she could certainly imagine, and she knew that it was going to be bad. She scurried along the side of the road to drop into a ditch, pressing against the rock-studded dirt as her chest heaved with exertion and fear.
She risked a quick peek over the edge of the ditch to see the man getting into Danno's car and starting the engine with the keys that were still in the ignition. The man drove away, and then his partner got into the car that he'd crashed, backing it up and pulling away from the telephone pole.
Once the men were gone, Grace clambered out of the ditch and ran back to their car. She headed back to the trunk, but when she tried the door, it didn't budge. The trunk was locked, and she couldn't see a key when she opened the driver's side door to look inside the car. Slamming the door shut in frustration, Grace ran back to the trunk, crouching down by the keyhole.
"Danno?" she whispered, waiting anxiously for the sound of her father's voice. "Daddy? Can you hear me?"
But, there was no answer, and Grace felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of her father lying dead inside the trunk.
"Danno, please," she pleaded.
She wished, desperately, that the men had left Danno's phone lying on the ground. A second later, she remembered her own cell phone, but when she pulled it out of her pocket, the screen was cracked clear through the middle, and it wouldn't turn on when she pressed the button. She'd probably broken it falling out of the car.
"No, no, no-" Grace moaned, feeling panic beginning to set in.
Then, she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, gravel sliding roughly across the road, and she was running back to the ditch and jumping down inside before she even knew what she was doing. She landed wrong, her ankle twisting underneath her, and she bit down hard on her tongue to keep from crying out.
The first man was back, the one who'd driven off in their car, and he walked back to the trunk, thumping on the metal with a heavy fist.
"Still living in there?" he asked, laughing cruelly when his action produced a soft groan. Grace barely heard it, but it was enough to tell her that Danno was still alive. Badly hurt, but alive.
She watched as the man climbed into the driver's seat, drumming his hands on his knees as he waited for his partner. Several minutes passed with agonizing slowness, and then a cell phone rang with a shrill sound that made Grace jump. She watched as the man checked the ringing phone, and then he slammed the phone down on the dashboard without answering it, rolling down the window and throwing the phone into the ditch.
Grace hunched over as she crawled to where the phone had landed, blinking back tears when she picked up Danno's now-broken phone. Two cell phones, and she still had no way to call for help. She crawled back to her vantage point to spy on the man, again, to see him talking on his own cell phone.
"-yeah, I dumped the car a few blocks away," he was saying. "Stripped the stereo out, made it look like a jacking." The man was silent for a moment, listening to whoever was on the other side, and then he scowled. "Yes, I wiped down the car. What do you take me for, an idiot? Look, where the hell are you? I'll come pick you up, and then we can start on the cop."
'Repeat what he says,' Grace chanted to herself, as she and the man both waited for an answer. 'Please, please repeat what he says to you.'
But, clearly the men who'd hurt Danno were smarter than the villains in the movies, because the man just grunted after he heard his partner's reply, clicking off his phone and throwing it onto the seat beside him. Then, he started the car, gunned the engine, and roared off down the street.
'I need to get help,' Grace thought, as she scrambled out of the ditch and stared after the departing car. 'I need Uncle Steve.'
She thought for a second about waiting and flagging down a passing car, but none had come along the road since the accident, and Grace had a sinking suspicion she wasn't going to see anything. Besides, she – and Danno – couldn't afford to wait. The restaurant was just a few streets over, she thought. And she knew Uncle Steve was going to be there.
'Hang on, Danno,' she thought, determinedly, as she began to run. 'Me and Uncle Steve are going to find you.'