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I heard a horrible crinkling sound, like dozens of damp twigs snapping. Otto’s windpipe gave way like wet papier-mâché. My arm hit something hard—I could actually feel the floor of the van through the skin and cartilage of his neck. Otto’s entire body went slack. I looked down at the pretty-boy face. The eyes were open, and now they did not just appear lifeless—they genuinely were.

I almost hoped for a blink. There was none.

Otto was dead.

I rolled off him.

“Otto?”

It was Bob. From the driver’s seat, I saw him reach into his pocket. I wondered whether he was reaching for a gun, but I was not in the mood to hang around and find out. I grabbed the lock on the back door of the van and pulled it up. I pulled the handle and took one last look back as the back door opened.

Yep, Bob had a gun, and it was aimed right at me.

I ducked as the bullet landed above my head. So much for not wanting me dead. I rolled out of the back of the van and landed hard on my right shoulder. I saw headlights heading toward me. My eyes widened. A car was headed directly for me.

I ducked and rolled yet again. Tires screeched. The car passed so close to me I felt the dirt kick up into my face. Horns began to honk. Someone cursed.

Bob’s van began to move. The feeling of relief flooded my veins. I clawed my way to the relative safety of the left shoulder. With all the cars flying by, I figured Bob would drive away.

He didn’t.

The van was now on the same shoulder, maybe twenty yards from where I lay sprawled.

With the gun still in his hand, Bob jumped out of the driver’s-side door. I was spent. I didn’t think I could move, but here’s the thing: When someone has a gun, stuff like pain and exhaustion become, at best, secondary.

Again I had only one option.

I leapt straight into the bush off the side of the road. I didn’t look first. I didn’t test it out. I just leapt. In the darkness I hadn’t seen the incline. I tumbled down through the brush, letting gravity take me farther away from the road. I expected to reach the bottom soon, but it seemed to take a long time.

I tumbled long and hard. My head smacked against a rock. My legs hit a tree. My ribs hit . . . I don’t even know what. I kept rolling. I tumbled through the thicket, tumbled and tumbled until my eyes began to close and the world turned black and still.

Chapter 15

When I saw the headlights, I let out a gasp and tried yet again to roll away. The headlights followed me.

“Sir?”

I lay flat on my back, staring straight up in the air. That was curious. How could a car be approaching me head-on if I was facing the sky? I raised my arm to block the light. A thunderbolt of pain ripped down my shoulder socket.

“Sir, are you okay?”

I shielded my eyes and squinted. The two headlights merged into one flashlight. The person pointing it moved the beam away from my eyes. I blinked up and saw a cop standing over me. I sat up slowly, my entire body crying out in protest.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You don’t know where you are?”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. It was pitch-dark. I was lying in shrubbery of some kind. For a moment I flashed back to my freshman year of college, that time I ended up in a bush after a night of too much inexperienced drinking.

“What’s your name, sir?” the cop asked.

“Jake Fisher.”

“Mr. Fisher, have you been drinking tonight?”

“I was attacked,” I said.

“Attacked?”

“Two men with guns.”

“Mr. Fisher?”

“Yes?”

The cop had that condescending-patient-cop tone. “Have you been drinking tonight?”

“I was. Much earlier.”

“Mr. Fisher, I’m State Trooper John Ong. You appear to have some injuries. Would you like us to take you to a hospital?”

I was trying hard to focus. Every brain wave seemed to travel through some kind of shower-door distortion. “I’m not sure.”

“We will call for an ambulance,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” I looked around. “Where am I?”

“Mr. Fisher, may I see some identification, please?”

“Sure.” I reached into my back pocket, but then I remembered that I had tossed my wallet and phone into the front passenger seat next to Bob. “They stole it.”

“Who?”

“The two men who attacked me.”

“The guys with the guns?”

“Yes.”

“So it was a robbery?”

“No.”

The images flashed across my eyes—my forearm against Otto’s neck, the box cutter in his hand, the tool chest, the handcuff, that naked, horrible, paralyzing fear, the sudden stop, the squelching sound as his windpipe collapsed like a twig. I closed my eyes and tried to make them go away.

Then, almost more to myself than State Trooper Ong, “I killed one of them.”

“Excuse me?”