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
