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He tried not to limp too obviously as he slipped out the rear exit of the thrift shop. There was a hardened-dirt parking lot there and, immediately behind it, a thickly wooded area. That way, he knew, lay the Pemi Wilderness.

For perhaps a tenth of a second, Paul considered whether he should surrender. His instinct had always been to obey law enforcement. Most people would. Also, the FBI agents would expect him to try to evade them in town, on foot, and by vehicle. What they would not expect him to do was go back into the woods.

So that was precisely what he would do.

Paul wished he’d bought more articles of clothing than he had, but he hadn’t planned on this. He had a warm parka and a good new backpack and not much else. In his pockets he had an apple and a KIND bar (Double Dark Chocolate), the latter because it looked healthier than a Snickers, though he wasn’t sure.

But he had been taught a long time ago how to survive in the woods.

So he plunged into the forest. He went as fast as he could, but this wood was dense with vegetation. When he was far enough in that he knew he couldn’t be seen from the parking lot, he immediately set about building a debris shelter. This was challenging because if he gathered too much debris from where he was settling down, it would leave a telltale clearing. So he had to collect the branches and twigs from a few hundred feet away, which took considerable time. Slowly, he built a frame, stretched his tarp over it, and camouflaged it with branches and leaves. He stepped back, took an assessing look, was satisfied. Because the sun had begun to set, he got into the shelter and lay down, wearing his parka, and tried to rest.

Maybe they’d given up looking for him.

Yeah, right.

Finally, his thoughts stopped spinning enough for him to fall asleep.

It was the crackle of a two-way radio that jolted him awake. In the crackle, he distinctly heard his last name.

He’d been asleep for two hours. The light had gone. He remembered suddenly where he was.

Now he heard the tread of multiple pairs of feet on the forest floor, the snap of branches. His heartbeat thundered.

He froze. He couldn’t judge how close they were. He had no idea whether they’d made out his hiding place. So he decided to wait in place, breathing silently. If they’d found him, they’d found him, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

He waited in fear for twenty minutes. Were they Russians? Feds? The transmission from the portable radios had faded. So had the audible tramping of feet. Whoever it was seemed to have passed by.

Then he heard a male voice in the darkness. “Let’s go.” The voice was close to where he was hiding, within mere feet.

Paul held his breath, hoped against hope that the order wasn’t directed at him.

“I mean it, let’s go now .” Even closer.

Another male voice, just as close: “They’re on to you. Get up and go.

Wait. Were they speaking to him ?

“We can help you,” the voice said, “but only if you move your fucking ass.”

They were speaking to him. Paul was perplexed. Maybe it wasn’t the FBI. Anyway, what choice did he have? He made a decision and spoke:

“Who the hell are you?” he croaked.

In the next instant, he felt himself grabbed on both sides. Four sets of arms reached into the shelter beneath the tarp. Someone had his left arm, someone else had his right, and as they pulled at him, he stumbled to his feet, his entire body vibrating with fear.

“Hey!” he protested. “What the hell?”

“We’re trying to help you, man,” one of the men grunted. “Keep your fucking voice down.”

Someone else said, “Grab his backpack.”

Both men had full beards, one man’s black and white, the other’s entirely gray. Paul had a vague feeling he’d seen them before.

Now, suddenly, they were trundling him through the dark woods. He limped, trying to keep up with their pace. They torqued him in one direction, pulled him into a stand of trees, then yanked him in another direction through another bunch of trees, then uphill.

“Who the hell are you?” Paul said again.

One of the men hissed at him to shut up.

The other muttered, “They’re after you.”

“Fucking feds are coming,” the first man said. “They’re fanning out across the terrain. They know you’re in the Pemi.”

In a couple of minutes, they came to what looked like a tiny, narrow log cabin in a dense, dark copse. The first man fiddled with the lock on the cabin door, and the door, built of split logs, swung open.

“Get in there,” the second man said. “The feds don’t have keys. Move it.”

Paul wanted to ask these men again who they were, why they were helping him. Were they themselves fugitives, too?

Instinctively, he trusted these guys. He didn’t understand their motive, but his gut feeling was to go along with what they were telling him to do.

It was either that or give in to being arrested by the FBI.

“Move it!” the second man said again.

Paul stepped into a darkness that smelled of pine tar and heard the click-click of a door being locked behind him.