"I told you how," I said. "Please. Listen to me."
"You're lying!"
"I'm not--"
"You tortured him, but he wouldn't talk. Todd couldn't help you anyway. He didn't know. He was just helpless and brave, and you, you bastard . . ."
I was seconds from death. I could hear the torment in his voice and knew that he wouldn't listen to reason. I had to do something, had to risk going for the gun, but I was flat on my back. Any move would take too long.
"I never hurt him, I swear."
"And I guess you'll also tell us you didn't visit his widow today."
"No, I did," I said quickly, happy to agree with him.
"But she didn't know anything either, did she?"
"Know about what?"
Again the muzzle dug in a little deeper. "Why did you go down to talk to the widow?"
I met his eye. "You know why," I said.
"What were you looking for?"
"Not what," I said. "Who. I was looking for Natalie."
He nodded now. A chilly smile came to his face. The smile told me that I had given him the right answer--and the wrong one. "Why?" he asked.
"What do you mean, why?"
"Who hired you?"
"No one hired me."
"Jed!"
It wasn't Cookie this time. It was the guy at the computer screen.
Jed turned, annoyed by the interruption. "What?"
"You better take a look at this. We have company."
Jed pulled the gun away from my head. I let out a long breath of relief. The guy by the computer twisted the monitor so Jed could see the screen. It was a surveillance video in black-and-white.
"What are they doing here?" Cookie asked. "If they find him here . . ."
"They're our friends," Jed said. "Let's not worry until--"
I didn't wait for more. I saw my chance and I took it. Without warning I jumped to my feet and ran toward the guy blocking the door. It seemed as though I were moving in slow motion, as if it were taking much too long to get to that door. I lowered my shoulder, ready to ram into him.
"Stop!"
I was maybe two steps from the guy guarding the door. He was in a crouch, bracing himself for my attack. My brain kept working, calculating and recalculating. In something quicker than seconds--quicker than nanoseconds--I laid out the whole upcoming scenario. How long would it take me to put the guy down? At best, two or three seconds. Then I had to reach for the knob, turn it, fling the door open, run outside.
How long would that all take?
Conclusion: Too long.
Two other men and maybe two women would be on me by then. Or maybe Jed would just shoot. In fact, if he reacted fast enough, he could probably fire a round before I even reached the guy.
In short, calculating the odds, I realized that I had no chance of getting out through the door. Yet here I was, still running toward my adversary with a full head of steam. He was ready for me. He expected me to go for him. So, I assumed, did Jed and the others.
That wouldn't do then, would it?
I needed to surprise them. At the last possible moment, I veered my body right and without so much as a backward glance or even the slightest hesitation, I leapt forward and dived straight through the window.
Still airborne, with yet another window shattering around me, I heard Jed shout, "Get him!"
I tucked my arms and head, landing on the roll, hoping to use my momentum to get smoothly back on my feet. That was a fantasy. I did manage to roll up to my feet, but the momentum didn't suddenly stop. It kept me going, knocking me back to the ground, sending me tumbling. When I finally stopped, I struggled to get back up.
Where the hell was I?
No time to think. I was in the backyard, I guessed. I saw woods. The driveway and front, I assumed, were behind me. I started in that direction, but then I heard the front door open. The three men appeared.
Uh-oh.
I turned and ran into the woods. The darkness swallowed me whole. I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me, but slowing down wasn't an option. There were men--at least one of whom had a gun--behind me.
"Over there!" I heard someone yell.
"We can't, Jed. You saw what was on the screen."
So I ran. I ran into those woods hard and fast, and eventually I ran face-first into a tree. It was like when Wile E. Coyote runs into a rake--a dull thud followed by vibrations. My brain started shaking. The blow stopped me cold, and I fell to the ground. My already aching head screamed in pain.
I saw the beam of a flashlight coming closer to me.
I tried to roll into some kind of hiding spot. My side hit another tree or, hell, maybe it was the same one. My head screamed in protest. I rolled in the other direction, trying to stay as flat as possible. The flashlight beam sliced through the air right above me.
I could hear footsteps moving closer.
Had to move.
Back toward the house I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. A car was coming up the drive.
"Jed?"
It was a harsh whisper. The flashlight stopped moving. I heard someone call out to Jed again. Now the flashlight went off. I was back in the pure darkness. I heard the footsteps recede.
Get up and run, dumb ass!
My head wouldn't let me. I lay still another moment and then looked back toward the old farmhouse in the distance. Now I could finally see it from the outside for the first time. I stayed still and stared. Once again, the floor beneath me seemed to fall away.
It was the main house of the Creative Recharge retreat.
I was being held in the place where Natalie had stayed.
What the hell was going on?
The car came to a stop. I rose just enough to get a look. When I did, when I saw the car, I felt an entirely new sense of relief.
It was a police squad car.
Now I understood their panic. Jed and his group had a surveillance camera by the entrance. They had seen the cop car coming to my rescue and had panicked. It made sense now.
I started toward my saviors. Jed and his followers wouldn't kill me now. Not in front of cops who had come to rescue me. I was almost to the edge of the woods, maybe thirty yards from the cop car, when another thought entered my head.
How had the cops known where I was?
For that matter, how had the cops known I was in trouble? And why, if they were here to rescue me, had the car driven up at such an unhurried pace? Why had Jed made that comment about their being "our friends"? As I slowed down, the relief now ebbing away, a few more questions entered my head. Why was Jed walking toward the squad car with a big smile and casual wave? Why were the two cops getting out of the car waving back just as casually? Why were they all shaking hands and exchanging backslaps like old buddies?
"Hey, Jed," one called out.
Oh damn. It was Stocky. The other cop was Thin Man Jerry. I decided to stay where I was.
"Hey, fellas," Jed said. "How are you guys?"
"Good, man, when did you get back?"
"A couple of days ago. What's up?"
Stocky said, "You know a guy named Jake Fisher?"
Whoa. So maybe they were here to rescue me?
"No, don't think so," Jed said. The others were all outside now. More handshakes and backslaps. "Guys, you know a . . . what was the name again?"
"Jacob Fisher."
They all shook their heads and muttered their lack of knowledge.
"There's an APB out on him," Stocky said. "College professor. Seems he killed a man."
My blood went cold.
Thin Man Jerry added, "The dope confessed to it even."
"He sounds dangerous," Jed said, "but I don't get what that has to do with us."
"First off, we spotted him trying to get on your land a couple days back."
"My land?"
"Yep. But that's not why we're here now."
I ducked down in the brush, not sure what to do here.
"See, we got a GPS working a
trace on a cell phone," Stocky said.
"And," Thin Man Jerry added, "the coordinates are leading us right up here."
"I don't understand."
"Simple, Jed. We can track his iPhone. Not that hard nowadays. Hell, I got a tracker on my kid's phone, for crying out loud. It tells us that our perp is here on your property at this very moment."
"A dangerous killer?"
"Could be, yep. Why don't you all wait inside now?" He looked back toward his partner. "Jerry?"
Jerry reached back into the car and pulled some sort of handheld device into view. He studied it for a few moments, hit the touch screen, and then declared, "He's within fifty yards--in that direction."
Thin Man Jerry pointed right to where I was hiding.
Several scenarios flew through my brain. One, the most obvious: Surrender. Throw my hands up, walk out of the woods with them held high, and shout, "I give up," as loud as I can. Once I was in police custody I was, if nothing else, safe from Jed and his group.
I was seriously considering doing that--raising my arms, calling out, surrendering--when I saw Jed take out his gun.
Uh-oh.
Stocky said, "Jed, what are you doing?"
"It's my gun. I own it legally. And we're on my property, right?"
"Right, so?"
"So this murderer you're after . . . ," Jed began.
Now I was a murderer.
"He might be armed and dangerous. We aren't letting you guys go after him without backup."
"We don't need backup, Jed. Put that away."
"This is still my property, right?"
"It is."
"So if it's all the same to you, I'm staying right here."
The obvious scenario suddenly didn't seem so obvious. Jed was intent on killing me for two reasons. One, he thought that I had something to do with Todd's murder. That was the reason they had grabbed me in the first place. But now, two, dead men tell no tales. If I surrendered, I could tell the cops what had happened tonight, how they had kidnapped me and fired shots at me. It might be my word against theirs, but there'd be the bullet at Cookie's house matching his gun. There'd be the phone records of Cookie calling me. It might be a tough sell, but I bet Jed didn't want to take the risk.
But if Jed shot me now--even if he fired as I tried to surrender--it could be viewed as either self-defense or, at worst, a jumpy trigger finger. He would shoot and kill me and say that he thought I had a gun or something like that and, really, I already killed one man, according to Stocky and Thin Man Jerry. And all of these Vermont buddies would back Jed's story and the only guy who would contradict them--yours truly--would be worm food.
There was more to consider. If I surrendered, how long would I be jammed up with the police? I was getting closer to the truth. I could feel it. They thought that I killed someone. Heck, I sort of confessed to it. How long could they hold me? A while, I bet.
If they nabbed me now, I'd probably never have a chance to confront Natalie's sister, Julie.
"This way," Thin Man Jerry said.
They started walking to me. Jed lifted his gun, keeping it very much at the ready.
I started to backpedal. My head felt as though it'd been encased in molasses.
"If someone is in those woods," Stocky shouted, "come out now with your hands up."
They moved closer. I slid backward a few more steps and ducked behind a tree. The woods were thick. If I could get deep enough in them, I'd be safe at least for a bit. I picked up a rock and hurled it as far as I could to my left. All eyes turned. Flashlights came on and shone in that direction.
"Over there," someone yelled.
Jed led the way, gun pointed.
Surrender? Oh, I don't think so.
Stocky moved next to Jed. Jed hurried his step, nearly running, but Stocky put up an arm to stop him. "Move slow," Stocky said. "He might be armed."
Jed, of course, knew better, didn't he?
Thin Man Jerry didn't budge. "This thing says he's still over here."
Again he pointed in my direction. They were forty, fifty yards away. Staying low in the thicket, I quickly buried the phone--my second lost in the past three days--under a pile of leaves and hurried away, trying to make as little noise as possible. I started moving backward, deeper into the woods, again trying my best not to make any noise. I kept a few rocks in my hand. I'd throw them if I needed to distract.
The others gathered back around Jerry, all moving slowly toward the phone.
I picked up my pace, getting deeper and deeper into the trees. I couldn't see them anymore, just the flashlights.
"He's close by," Thin Man Jerry said.
"Or," Jed added, seeing the light, I guess, "his cell phone is."
I kept moving, kept low. I really didn't have a plan here. I had no idea what direction to take or how far the woods went. I might be able to escape them, might be able to keep moving, but eventually, unless I found a way out of here, I didn't have a clue how I'd get out of this.
Maybe, I thought, I could double-back to the house.
I heard voices mumbling. They were now too far for me to see them. That was a good thing. I could see the movement stop. The flashlight was lowered.
"He's not here," someone said.
Stocky, annoyed: "I can see that."
"Maybe your tracker is off."
They were, I guessed, right on top of where I'd haphazardly buried the phone. I wondered how long that gave me. Not much time, but probably enough. I rose to keep running and then it happened.
I'm not a doctor or a scientist, so I really can't tell you how adrenaline works. I only know that it does. It had helped me move past the pain from that blow to the head, from my jumping through a window, from my landing hard on the ground. It helped me recover from running face-first into that tree, even as I felt my lip fatten, could taste the bitter blood on my tongue.
What I do know--what I was learning at that very moment--was that adrenaline is not limitless. It was a finite hormone found within our bodies, nothing more. It may be the most potent surge we know, but the effects, as I was quickly experiencing, were only short-term.
That surge eventually peters out.
The pain didn't so much ebb back in as announce itself with the thrash of a reaper's scythe. A bolt of pain ripped through my head, knocking me to my knees. I actually had to cover my mouth with my hand to prevent myself from crying out.
I heard another car coming up the drive. Had Stocky called for backup?
In the distance, I could hear voices:
"It's his phone!"
"What the . . . he buried it!"
"Spread out!"
I could hear rustling behind me. I wondered how much of a lead I had and how well that lead would stand up to flashlights and bullets. Probably not very big or well. I once again considered the idea of surrendering and taking my chances. I once again didn't like it.
I heard Stocky say, "Just back off, Jed. We can handle this."
"It's my land," Jed replied. "Too much land for you two to cover."
"Still--"
"My property, Jerry." There was snap in Jed's voice. "You're on it without a warrant."
"A warrant?" It was Stocky. "You serious? We're just worried about your safety."
"Me too," Jed answered. "You got no idea where this murderer is hiding, right?"
"Well--"
"For all you know, he could be in the house. Hiding. Waiting for us. No way, bro--we are staying out here with you."
Silence.
Get up, I told myself.
"I want everyone to stay in sight," Stocky said. "No heroes. You see something, you scream for help."
I heard murmurs of agreement, then flashlights sliced through the dark. They were spreading out. I couldn't see people in the dark, just the bouncing beams of light. It was enough to know that I was really screwed.
Get up, dumb ass!
My head reeled in agony, but I managed to get to my feet. I stumbled forward like some kind of stiff
-legged movie monster. I had made it about three steps, maybe four, when the flashlight sliced across my back.
I quickly jumped behind a tree.
Had I been spotted?
I waited for someone to call out. No one did. I kept my back against the bark. The only sound now was my own breath. Did that beam of light hit me? I was pretty sure that it had. But I didn't know for sure. I stayed where I was and waited.
Footsteps coming toward me.
I wasn't sure what to do. If someone had spotted me, I was finished. There was no way I could get away. I waited for someone to shout for help.
Nothing, except for the approaching footsteps.
Wait a second. If I had been spotted, why hadn't anyone called out? Maybe I was okay. Maybe I had been mistaken for a tree or something.
Or maybe no one was calling out because they wanted to shoot me?
I tried to coldly consider that for a moment. Suppose, for example, it was Jed. Would he call out? No. If he called out, I might run and then Stocky and Thin Man Jerry would be on me too and it would be harder to kill me. But suppose he had spotted me with his flashlight. What then? If he had indeed seen me, if he knew that I was hiding behind this very tree, well, maybe Jed could sneak up on me alone, gun at the ready, and . . .
Ka-boom.
The footsteps were growing louder.
My brain tried to do that quick-calculating-reptilian thing again--it had already saved me, right?--but after a second or two of neuron burning, I came to a rather startling yet obvious conclusion: I was finished. There was no way out.
I tried to gather my strength for a big-time sprint, but really, what would that do? I'd expose myself for certain and in the condition I was in I'd never get far. I'd either get shot or captured. Come to think of it, those seemed to be my only two choices now: shot or captured. I preferred captured, thank you very much. The question now was, how could I maximize my chances of captured over shot?
I didn't have a clue.
A beam of light danced in front of me. I pressed my back into the tree and went up on my tippy-toes. Like that was going to help. The footsteps were getting closer. Judging by the sound and the brightness of the light, I would guess that someone was within ten yards of me.
Options flew in and out of my brain. I could stay here and jump the guy. If it was Jed, for example, I could disarm him. But any struggle on my part would not only reveal my location for sure, but if it wasn't Jed--if it was, for example, Stocky--then it would be open season on using deadly force on me.