David rubbed his face in exhaustion, he had been driving for most of the day back from Salt Lake City and into night. He had worked for the LAPD for 15 years as a detective and traveled to many cities the west to help solve cold murder cases. He looked at the blue digital numbers above the console of his car and read the time was 3:34.  He pressed the touch screen on the console in order to find a radio station that was not static or country, the only type of music he hated. He was in the middle of the Utah desert and there were no signs of life for miles, other than the asphalt road he was driving on.
He reached down, grabbing his coffee that he grabbed at his dinner stop at McDonalds, as he continued to drive along the long, dark and straight road David glanced in his mirror to see a set of lights far in the distance behind him. He thought that it was strange to see someone on the same road as him, he tried to think of the last time he saw a car since he turned on this road and he couldn’t remember seeing anybody for hours..
He didn’t think much of it as he went on his way. Out of habit, David continued to look in his back mirror at the car lights behind him and over the last hour they had gotten closer and closer to his car. When he came to a three way stop, looked at the signs in front of the him to see which was he needed to go and turned right.
He drove on the new road and a pair of lights caught his eyes in the mirror as the car turned down the same road as he did. He thought it was kind of strange that the first car he saw went down the same road he did. The car was still behind him as the sun started to break over the horizon and it spread colors of red and yellow across the new sky.
The car was still behind him after it had gotten light enough that he could see that the car was a beat up old white van. There was no way of knowing it was following him, or if it was the same car is saw in the past hours, so David didn’t think too much of it.
The car soon got closer and closer until it was tailing him. He got annoyed, he his arm out the window,signaled the van to pass him and waited for the van to pass him since there was nobody coming in the other lane. That was when the car drove into the other lane and hit the back left side of his car. The car spun and David felt when the car went off the road into the desert sand.
He opened his eyes in confusion to see no car around, just him. He tried to start his car again but it wouldn’t start, he groaned after a couple of failed attempts to get his car started. He got out of the car and popped his hood, there was no smoke or any sign of failure. Confused he looked around wires and parts, he wasn’t knowledgeable about cars so he couldn’t tell that his battery had been taken out.  All of a sudden someone came up from behind and put a dark bag over his head, knocked him to the ground where he tied his wrists and ankles together and drag him on the ground.
The bag was taken off and he finally saw the man who took him. The man was bald wearing a blue baseball hat and had a dark brown beard, he had many age marks and wrinkles on his face.
“Why are you doing this to me?” David asked. “Why have you been following me for hours?”
The man said nothing to him, as he got out of the van and closed the back doors. That’s when David noticed all of the pictures and news articles on the wall of the van. The pictures were of him, his family, his car and pictures of a man who looked familiar to him but he wasn’t sure. He scooted his way over the wall to take a closer look, the newspaper article were all about a man named Justin Newmeyer. David froze, the man did look familiar to him. Newmeyer’s father was a CEO of a successful business in Los Angeles and was accused of killing 3 people. He was on the run for weeks and was found around in his brother’s house. He was eventually found guilty and it was David who put him behind bars.
The man opened the back doors of the van. “What is this all about?” David asked, “Is this all about all those pictures and newspapers?”
“This is about Justin,” the man said. “You got him arrested, he was my brother, you ended his life, and he never killed those people. I’m going to make you feel the same way that I do, hopeless.”
He grabbed David’s tied arms and put the bag back over his as he dragged David out of the van and onto the ground, after a minute the man took off the bag and threw a bag at sitting on the ground with his arms and legs were free.
“What’s all this?” David asked
“It’s a bag, there’s about 2-3 days worth of food and water, a knife and a box of matches,” the man explained,  “good luck trying to get back, there isn’t anything around for miles.” The man turned around and drove away.
David was now alone, he grabbed the bag getting up off the ground and followed the tire trails of the van, hoping it would lead him back to a town.