BARE HUNTER

Greg, my boss, had called to tell me we needed to discuss what the company's owners were up to. He was going to pick up a pizza and come to my place to clear the air once and for all.

Instead of a visit, I got a text from him telling me he had the surveillance van and wanted to go for a drive to talk. When I got to the van, Greg was not there. The driver was the phony psychologist, who had tried to kill me in the hospital, and the other guy was the dude who rear-ended my vehicle during a rainstorm.

They ordered me to hand over my cell phone and showed me a picture they had taken of me with my son at Burger King. They threatened to visit my ex-wife's house to rape and kill her, then kidnap my son.

Once we got to the location where they planned on killing me, I wrapped the seat belt around the passenger's neck and escaped, finding a large maple tree to hide behind. They were loud and clumsy. One of them tripped over a tree root, landing on his ass and dropping his rifle, causing it to fire in the other fellow's direction.

The clod called out to his partner and got no answer. Either the other perp was out of play, or he was faking it, to pull me deeper into the woods. Trying to keep the road in view, I hopscotched from one shelter to another; boulders, stumps, and trees kept me invisible to the two men as I closed in on the one who dropped his weapon. Kneeling behind a boulder, I listened for his clumsy footsteps while scanning all around my hiding place for the other.

I’d lost sight of the road and hoped to end this stand-off before daylight completely disappeared. Leaves rustled to my three o’clock. I breathed through my nose, exhaling through my mouth as I searched for signs of the target. The last rays of sunshine shone off a face peering in my direction from behind a sapling, about twenty feet away. I put three holes in it and hugged the boulder with my back, glancing in all directions, in case the other shooter was sneaking up on me.

In the blink of an eye, dusk took over the sky, making this hunt far more dangerous than it should have been. I stayed motionless behind the boulder until the sky darkened and twinkled with stars. If the other man were still alive, he would have called out to his friend or checked on him somehow.

Hearing nothing, it was time to clean up my mess and find the van. I crept out from behind the boulders cautiously and pulled my pocketknife out to do some posthumous surgery. The three shots had landed squarely dead center, making a large, cratered wound that I forced the tip of the blade into. After digging around through the mush his brain had turned into, I retrieved the first bullet and popped it into my pants pocket.

The other two had lodged deeper inside his skull, making me employ a sturdy twig to fish them out, along with a jelly-like gray substance that housed many filthy secrets. After pocketing all the evidence from my legally registered weapon, I checked the area one last time for traces inadvertently left behind by my presence.

I hoofed it quickly to the spot where they left the van. Looking up and down the road I realized, with a sick feeling in my stomach, that the big guy wasn’t dead or hiding. He had taken the van to Sandy’s house, to make good on his promise to kill Timmy if I didn’t do what they wanted. My scalp prickled and my eyes began closing involuntarily when it hit me. Without my phone, I was helpless to call the police.

I started running like never before, hoping to get there in time to at least save Timmy.