It was not them.

An older man stepped out of the car, his hands raised in a calming gesture.

“Miss, don’t move,” he said.

“I’m calling an ambulance right now.”

His name was Don Ernesto.

He worked as a night watchman at a warehouse nearby, and he had been driving home when his headlights caught something in the alley that most people, I think, would have driven past.

He did not drive past.