Run on Red

by Noelle W. Ihli

“Green River,”

“Or Gary Ridgway, same guy.

thought of every Dateline episode I’d ever watched, every crime blog I’d ever read. So many started just like this. And they all ended in predictably similar ways.

I’d been bracing for something bad to happen for as long as I could remember. Ever vigilant, ever anxious,

Don’t let them take you to a second location. Your chances of surviving an assault at any given location are 97%. Your chances of survival, if you are taken to a second location, drop to 30%. It was abduction 101.

But sometimes the trouble came to you—for the simple fact that it could and it wanted to. When you were the one caught in the crosshairs of the gun, the biggest factor that determined whether you survived, escaped, died—was the person with their finger on the trigger.