Jed looked at Cookie. Now I saw confusion on their faces.

“I saw his obituary,” I continued. “It was on the college website. That’s how I got to his funeral.”

Jed wound up to kick me again, but Cookie stopped him with a shake of her head. “I’m not talking about that,” Jed spat. “I’m talking about before.”

“What before?”

“Don’t play dumb. How did you find Todd?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

The rage behind his eyes exploded. He pulled out the gun and pointed it at me. “You’re lying.”

I said nothing.

Cookie moved closer to him. “Jed?”

“Back off,” he snapped. “You know what he did? Do you?”

She nodded and did as she was asked. I stayed perfectly still.

“Talk,” he said to me again.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I glanced at the guy sitting by the computer. He looked scared. So did the guy by the door. I thought back to Bob and Otto. They hadn’t looked scared. They looked ready and experienced. These guys didn’t. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, that meant, except that either way, I was in huge trouble.

“One more time,” Jed began through gritted teeth. “How did you find Todd?”

“I already told you.”

“You killed him!” Jed shouted.

“What? No!”

Jed dropped to his knees and put the muzzle of the gun against my temple. I closed my eyes and waited for the blast. He moved his lips close to my ear.

“If you lie again,” he whispered, “I will kill you right here and now.”

Cookie: “Jed?”

“Shut up!”

He pressed the muzzle hard enough against my temple to leave an indentation. “Talk.”

“I didn’t . . .” His eyes told me that another denial would seal my fate. “Why would I kill him?”

“You tell us,” Jed said. “But first I want to know how you found him.”

Jed’s hand was shaking, the muzzle jangling against my temple. His spittle was getting tangled up in his beard. My pain was gone now, replaced by naked fear. Jed wanted to pull that trigger. He wanted to kill me.

“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.