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  Stunned, then frustrated, I slammed the phone back on its base, cracking it in the process. What in the world is he talking about? Kill me? Cop killer? And why does he keep calling me Musor? I suddenly regretted throwing the strange greeting card away earlier. Maybe it could have helped the police figure out this mess.

  I lost another three years of my life when the phone rang again. I grabbed it and growled, “Look, you idiot—”

  “Jason?”

  I knew that voice. It was a familiar one. When it suddenly dawned on me who it was I’d just started yelling at—my ­principal—I stood straight and cleared my throat quickly. “Mr. Bell. I’m sorry. I’ve been getting . . . some calls lately—”

  “Jason, the police were just here. Several of them. They were asking where you were. They looked very serious, Jason. Are you all right? Is there some kind of problem that . . . ?”

  I didn’t hear anything else my principal said as my hand slowly fell away from my ear. I was seeing everything around me for the first time. My trashed apartment, the call threatening my life, the strange voice on the other end of the line accusing me of being a cop killer. And then, of course, there was the odd greeting card I’d received at work.

  I suddenly remembered hearing something on the news about an officer getting killed a few days earlier.

  Somehow my stunned mind put all of these seemingly disjointed pieces together. I wanted to talk to the police, to straighten all this out, but I had the strongest impression that I needed to get out of there. And quickly!

  I sprang for the door and happened to notice a small red daypack on the floor behind a kicked-in closet door. I grabbed it and my jacket and bolted out the front door. I was about to head for my car when I caught a glimpse of my mountain bike in the bike rack near the laundry room.

  They’d be looking for my car. And with over 309,000 miles on it, it wasn’t exactly something I could rely on to get me very far fast.

  It took several seconds longer than usual for my shaking hands to get the key in the bike’s padlock, but after that it was only a few seconds before the chain was pulled free. I slipped on my thin jacket and threaded my arms into the straps of the daypack. Mounting the bike in a single move, I headed toward the large, worn cedar fence that lined the back of the complex. Pulling aside two loose boards, I slipped my bike through a space perhaps only I—and every kid in the apartment complex—knew about. I had just replaced the two loose boards when I could clearly hear the screaming of police sirens in the distance. I stood behind the fence long enough to see three squad cars pulling abruptly into the mostly vacant parking stalls. Several officers poured out of them and raced toward my apartment, weapons drawn.

  I turned, mounted the bike once more, and quietly made for the safety of the warren of narrow streets that made up my neighborhood.

  My only thought was to get as much distance between them and me as I could. I headed northwest—without ever looking back—until I eventually ran into Ford Street. Adjusting the gears, I willed my burning legs on, as I’d done in football years ago, imagining them as two large pistons in an engine that only I could control. I headed north for a while until finally turning right on the first cross street I encountered. I had biked into Mesa Meadows Park, a fairly large subdivision that lay at the base of North Table Mountain.

  At the nearest corner, I came to a stop and proceeded to get my breathing back under control. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I could feel the sweat flowing down the sides of my face, my jugular vein pulsing in my neck with a strong and unnervingly determined rhythm. I had only ridden a little over a mile according to the small odometer on my handlebars, but with all the turning and braking, it felt like ten.

  Paranoia came next. There were many homes in this neighborhood, and for all I knew, several pairs of eyes could be watching me. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself, and I suddenly felt the need to alter my appearance in some way. Trying to look as casual as possible, I removed the daypack, slipped off my jacket, and tied it around my waist as I took a moment to stretch my legs and cautiously look all about me—for what, I didn’t know. After all, I was new to this fugitive business.

  There was no mistaking what had just happened. The police had only moments ago pulled into the complex to arrest me. Right?

  Cop killer?

  But how could they suddenly suspect me of doing something so heinous? Surely when they saw the apartment they’d . . .

  I wiped the sweat from my face with the rolled-up sleeves of my shirt and concentrated on lowering my heart rate before I started hyperventilating.

  As I turned around, slipping the daypack onto my shoulders, my eyes locked onto a blue pickup as it made its way around a corner nearby. The color of the truck was an instant reminder.

  The blue and white pills. They’ll find the pills! I realized. Maybe they’ll think I overdosed or . . .

  But they aren’t mine! There’s no way!

  My mind was spinning, along with everything around me, and I had to close my eyes and focus for a minute only on my breathing. Seconds later, wishing I had the water bottle I usually clipped to my bike frame whenever I went biking, I felt my rattling train of thought come to a sudden, screeching halt. That was when I realized my mistake—a very big mistake.

  I’d picked up the pill bottles. I’d touched them.

  Why wouldn’t they believe they’re mine? I realized, feeling slightly nauseated. My fingerprints are all over them!

  CHAPTER 3

  I stood there straddling my mountain bike, sweat dripping steadily from the bottom of my chin, my shirt damp and clinging to my body, my mind in a state of absolute confusion. What in the world is going on here? I thought. One minute I’m looking over my junk mail, the next I’m running from the police!

  Common sense was screaming at me just to return to the apartment, turn myself in, and try to explain everything that had happened to me. After all, it was clear I was being set up for something. The death threat, the destruction of my apartment, the pills, the phone call, the ludicrous suspicion that I, a second-year junior high teacher who loved my job, was a cop killer. It was absurd!

  This is what common sense was telling me. I even went so far as to turn my bike around when I found myself asking some vitally important questions: What if they don’t believe me? What if I can’t prove myself innocent? What if this setup goes deeper than just a trashed apartment and a phony drug prescription? And once the police have me, am I really going to be able to contact anyone for help? I don’t know any lawyers or cops. Who am I going to call?

  Call me paranoid, but I’d seen enough television and movies to make me a bit skeptical about just how I would be treated once the police got hold of me. Killing a police officer was tantamount to slapping all of law enforcement in the face, wasn’t it? What had started out as fear was now bordering on terror. Whoever was behind all of this knew what they were doing. The single most logical place I could turn to for help had just been eliminated.

  Unconsciously, I turned my mountain bike in the opposite direction of my now-distant apartment and began pedaling, trying to clear my head, trying to figure out what in the world I should do next.

  I found myself scrunching up my shoulders in a weak attempt at hiding my face. I also tried to control my breathing, all the while fighting the incessant urge to look over my shoulder. Leaning over my handlebars in a racing posture helped some, but I was also fighting for control over my feet as they would occasionally slip off the pedals.

  After another half mile of pedaling, my mind kept returning to the strange phone call I’d received. Is that the person responsible for all this? And if so, who is he? Why is he after me? I think I owed a late fee for a video, but other than that, I was just your plain vanilla citizen. I went about my own business, paid my bills and taxes, went to church on Sunday, and did my part for society by educating its youth.

  I stopped the bike abruptly and looked behind me once more. I wanted so badly just to ta
lk to those police officers that I knew had to be poring over my apartment that very minute. After all, if everything that was going on seemed this ridiculous to me, then surely . . .

  As I began pedaling again, a few cars passed by me, making me feel very exposed, and I was again having trouble controlling my feet. They were beginning to feel like concrete blocks. My erratic breathing had finally caught up with me, and I was certain I was either going to black out or vomit if I didn’t find someplace to collect myself. I pedaled behind a small convenience store I saw ahead of me.

  The back of the store showed signs of recently painted-over graffiti, and the smell of rotting garbage from a battered dumpster made me gag. But I wheeled myself in behind the dumpster anyway. I needed a place to stop and collect my thoughts, a place where I could be less conspicuous than I was on the street.

  I felt stupid. I felt like a grown-up playing a bizarre game of hide-and-seek. Only in my case, no one had told me that the game had started or had even bothered to explain the rules.

  At that moment, as I struggled to get control over my breathing, I made up my mind to stop reacting so quickly to what was going on around me. Sure, my world was being turned inside out, but I’d already made a few foolish mistakes that only seemed to have tightened the invisible noose strung around my neck.

  For one thing, I should have kept that stupid greeting card I’d received. Where had it come from? The postal mark on the outside would have at least told me that. Did it even have a postal mark? If nothing else, I could have used it to try to convince the police I was the one being threatened.

  I briefly thought about returning to the school before the janitors emptied the garbage cans.

  I glanced at my watch. They would have emptied them by now. Besides, I couldn’t exactly go digging around in the dumpster without attracting attention from the houses that surrounded the school.

  What about the prescription? Had it actually been my name printed on the label? I couldn’t remember! Was it a phony label? Because if it wasn’t and it could be traced to an actual doctor, that would only tighten the noose.

  Why hadn’t I grabbed a few of the pills so I could try to find out what they were? Why had I picked up the pill bottles with my bare hands, leaving a clear set of prints for the police to pull?

  The answer to all of these questions was obvious. I wasn’t qualified for anything like this. I wasn’t some super spy with years of training and zillions of dollars worth of equipment at my disposal. For crying out loud, I was a school teacher who was lucky to get to the copy machine each day! I simply wasn’t prepared to take in this kind of information or to look beyond what I saw directly in front of me.

  Something was going on and somehow I was in the middle of it. I didn’t know why. Nor did I know who was responsible for it. All I knew for certain was that I had to start thinking differently. I had to try to anticipate the results of each move I made from this point on. Someone wanted to kill me. I had to think before I reacted or I wasn’t going to last very long.

  I closed my eyes, forcing myself to ignore the stench from the dumpster, and offered up a quick prayer. I might not know what I was supposed to do next. But at least I knew who I should ask.

  When I opened my eyes, a small piece of me had expected everything to be normal. But I was still wearing the clothes I’d put on that morning, and I was still straddling my mountain bike with a bright red daypack slung over my shoulders.

  Right now I need distance, I thought. Distance between both the cops and whoever was obviously setting me up.

  Feeling the need to alter my appearance once more, I removed the daypack, wrapped it in the jacket I’d tied around my waist and then, using the sleeves of the jacket, tied it securely to the front of my bike.

  Casually, I began working my way south, passing the Coors Brewery—a popular stop with tourists, surpassed only by Heritage Square on the west end of town and the Buffalo Bill museum to the southwest atop Lookout Mountain. I wound my way through the various streets, stopping occasionally to readjust the daypack that would shift on my handlebars, all the while struggling to accept what was taking place.

  I’d biked another two and a half miles before I realized the sky had an orange tint to it. Evening was approaching and I had nowhere to go. I thought of various friends and family, but then the thought of the knife sticking out of my headboard made me promptly dismiss that idea. I didn’t want anyone else hurt because of what had to be one colossal misunderstanding.

  Besides, most of my family lived on the east end of Denver, almost thirty miles away, or in Boulder, twenty miles to the north. Straddling my mountain bike there in the middle of Golden, I felt that both places might have been on the other side of the globe.

  I loved living in Golden. It is where mountain and city living come together. With a population around 18,000, most now consider Golden a suburb of Denver, overlooking the fact it had at one time been Colorado’s territorial capital. It was the birthplace of the Jolly Rancher and where Buffalo Bill Cody was buried and, thanks to the Colorado School of Mines—one of the world’s foremost engineering schools—is a primary contributor to our nation’s mineral industry. For me, though, Golden is simply a great place to fish, camp, and ride some of the best mountain biking trails around.

  I was the one who wanted to be closer to the great outdoors. Now here I was, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with nowhere to turn. Where Golden had once been instrumental in the opening of the West to settlement, for me it was looking more and more like a dead end.

  To the east, toward the base of South Table Mountain, the glow of a sign caught my eye. I biked a few blocks until I was finally able to make out that it was a motel.

  The thought of a quiet room, someplace where I wasn’t out in the open, seemed very appealing. If I can hide away someplace where I can think this through and rest a bit, I thought, then maybe I’ll do a better job of untangling myself from this mess.

  Before my foot hit the pedal to cross the busy street, my mind threw up a few of the mystery and espionage movies I had seen throughout my life.

  Cash. I need cash!

  I had only a few dollars in my wallet. I knew that the moment I used a credit card to pay for the room, law-enforcement authorities would be all over me. At least that’s how it was in movies or on television. But to get any cash, I’d have to either cash a check or use my ATM card, and all of the banks had been closed for nearly an hour.

  After rolling the predicament over in my mind, I finally settled on the only solution I had left.

  Feeling the chill of the evening, I slipped into my jacket, readjusted the daypack, pulled the bike around, and began heading north toward an ATM machine back near the Coors Brewery. I knew the police could find out I’d used the ATM, but at least it would only tell them where I’d been, not where I was staying.

  It was dark by the time I reached the ATM. Housed in a small metal-and-glass room, it was well-lit within. While biking I had thought through how I was to proceed next.

  I knew most ATMs took your picture as you made your transaction. The last thing I wanted was a photograph of me revealing exactly what I was wearing. Before entering the large glass cubicle, I removed my jacket, untucked my shirt, and carefully parked my bike well away from the machine. When I was certain no one was heading anywhere near the cubicle, I slipped inside and quickly fed the ATM my bank card. I was sure a million eyes were on me, and I ended up having to enter my PIN twice. I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally saw the familiar menu of options displayed.

  From this particular machine I could withdraw only three hundred dollars. I anxiously snatched up the cash, my card, and the receipt as quickly as they slid through the stainless steel door at the bottom of the machine. Then I bolted for my mountain bike.

  In minutes I was pedaling at top speed down darkened streets. I had little doubt someone, somewhere, had somehow noticed the withdrawal, and I knew the farther I was from that machine, the better.


  For a moment, as I rounded a corner and began to head south again, I considered stopping at another nearby ATM machine. It was sponsored by a different company, and I could pull another three hundred dollars. But I nixed the idea. Two points of withdrawal, or even attempted withdrawal, would only serve in my mind as an arrow pointing in the direction I was headed. Oh, I knew I could zigzag around, but I decided not to press my luck. Instead, I continued pedaling in a roundabout way back to the motel I’d spied earlier at the south end of town.

  Ten minutes of riding felt more like an hour as I concentrated on the road in front of me. It was quite dark by then. And even though I had a small headlight on the front of the bike, I wasn’t about to use it for fear of attracting attention—any kind of attention—from the light traffic and the occasional passerby. I had by this time given up on trying to camouflage myself, relying on darkness and shadow for protection.

  Finally, I spied the red neon sign belonging to what had to have been one of the oldest motels in Golden. It was a cheap motel, but I needed a quiet, out-of-the-way place to hide and collect my thoughts, appearance notwithstanding. The Mine Motel fit that bill perfectly.

  I left my bike behind one of the buildings and walked to the manager’s office. A young man, likely an engineering student from the School of Mines in town, was deeply involved in a book entitled Mineral Science when the door chime announced my arrival. By now I was becoming more or less accustomed to inspecting my whereabouts, noticing details. The wood-paneled walls of the tiny office were covered with faded art prints. A stand of pamphlets and postcards filled a wire rack just to the side of a battered counter. Completing the decor were two dead plants and a couple of worn chairs from the seventies lined up under the front windows. The desk manager had hardly given me a glance before lapsing into a routine he obviously knew very well.

  “Room?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

  “Non.”

  “Just one night?”