JACK KILBORN ~ AFRAID

 

 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Kilborn

Excerpt from
Trapped
copyright © 2010 by Jack Kilborn

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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,
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First eBook Edition: April 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-54354-5

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

Copyright Page

 

Begin Reading

 

About the Author

 

 

A Preview of
Trapped

 

 

 

 

“A true page-turner, a novel that offers a million-mile-a-minute action and suspense. Definitely, a must have with constant thrills and chills.”

—Heather Graham, #1
New York Times
Bestselling Author

 

Fran screamed.

 

 

 

  
She thought of her son. She thought of his teenage years, just around the corner, which he’d have to face without any parents if she died.

  
Fran couldn’t let that happen.

  
Reaching behind her, she felt along the shelves, her hands clasping around a five-pound can of tomato paste. The flashlight came on again, less than five feet away from her. Fran threw the can as hard as she could. She didn’t wait to find out if she’d hit the killer. She was already running away from him, climbing on the desk, seeking out the window to the alley.

  
Her fingers met cool glass. She found the latch, tried to turn it.

  
Painted over. Wouldn’t budge.

  
Frantic, she reached around, found the phone, and cracked it hard against the window.

  
Glass shattered. The window was small, and shards jutted from the pane, but Fran forced her upper body into the hole. Her hair snagged, but she pushed forward as glass cut her palms and elbows. Then her hands touched the brick on the outside of the building, and she was dragging her hips out, thinking that she’d actually made it, and her fear transformed into a crazy, almost hysterical sense of relief.

  
That’s when the killer grabbed her ankle.

—from
AFRAID

 

 

 

 

 

This book is dedicated to four very smart publishing folks.

 

 

Miriam Goderich, for making me do it.

Jane Dystel, for never giving up on it.

Jaime Levine and Vicki Mellor, for seeing its potential.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For their help, support, and suggestions, thanks to fellow writers Raymond Benson, Blake Crouch, Barry Eisler, Henry Perez, Marcus Sakey, James Rollins, and especially JA Konrath—without whom this book couldn’t have been written.

 

For inventing the horrific thriller genre, thanks to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and David Morrell.

 

Special thanks to my wife, Maria Kilborn, for her years of encouragement and enthusiasm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

—MARK TWAIN

 

 

There is no decent place to stand in a massacre.

—LEONARD COHEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he hunter’s moon, a shade of orange so dark it appeared to be filled with blood, hung fat and low over the mirror surface of Big Lake McDonald. Sal Morton took in a lungful of crisp
Wisconsin
air, shifted on his seat cushion, and cast his Lucky 13 lure over the stern. The night of fishing had been uneventful; a few small bass earlier in the evening, half a dozen northern pike—none bigger than a pickle—and then, nothing. The zip of his baitcaster unspooling and the plop of the bait hitting the water were the only sounds he’d heard for the last hour.

Until the helicopter exploded.

It was already over the water before Sal noticed it. Black, without any lights, silhouetted by the moon. And quiet. Twenty years ago Sal had taken his wife, Maggie, on a helicopter ride at the Dells, both of them forced to ride with their hands clamped over their ears to muffle the sound. This one made a fraction of that noise. It hummed, like a refrigerator.

The chopper came over the lake on the east side, low enough that its downdraft produced large eddies and waves. So close to the water Sal wondered if its wake might overturn his twelve-foot aluminum boat. He ducked as it passed over him, knocking off his Packers baseball cap, scattering lures, lifting several empty Schmidt beer cans and tossing them overboard.

Sal dropped his pole next to his feet and gripped the sides of the boat, moving his body against the pitch and yaw. When capsizing ceased to be a fear, Sal squinted at the helicopter for a tag, a marking, some sort of ID, but it lacked both writing and numbers. It might as well have been a black ghost.

Three heartbeats later the helicopter had crossed the thousand-yard expanse of lake and dipped down over the tree line on the opposite shore. What was a helicopter doing in Safe Haven? Especially at night? Why was it flying so low? And why did it appear to have landed near his house?

Then came the explosion.

He felt it a moment after he saw it. A vibration in his feet, as if someone had hit the bow with a bat. Then a soft warm breeze on his face, carrying mingling scents of burning wood and gasoline. The cloud of flames and smoke went up at least fifty feet.

After watching for a moment, Sal retrieved his pole and reeled in his lure, then pulled the starter cord on his 7.5 horsepower Evinrude. The motor didn’t turn over. The second and third yank yielded similar results. Sal swore and began to play with the choke, wondering if Maggie was scared by the crash, hoping she was all right.

 

M
aggie Morton awoke to what she thought was thunder. Storms in upper
Wisconsin
could be as mean as anywhere on earth, and in the twenty-six years they’d owned this house she and Sal had to replace several cracked windows and half the roof due to weather damage.

She opened her eyes, listened for the dual accompaniment of wind and rain. Strangely, she heard neither.

Maggie squinted at the red blur next to the bed, groped for her glasses, pushed them on her face. The blur focused and became the time:
10:46
.

“Sal?” she called. She repeated it, louder, in case he was downstairs.

No answer. Sal usually fished until
midnight
, so his absence didn’t alarm her. She considered flipping on the light, but investigating the noise that woke her held much less appeal than the soft down pillow and the warm flannel sheets tucked under her chin. Maggie removed her glasses, returned them to the nightstand, and went back to sleep.

The sound of the front door opening roused her sometime later.

“Sal?”

She listened to the footfalls below her, the wooden floors creaking. First in the hallway, and then into the kitchen.

“Sal!” Louder this time. After thirty-five years of marriage, her husband’s ears were just two of many body parts that seemed to be petering out on him. Maggie had talked to him about getting a hearing aid, but whenever she brought up the topic he smiled broadly and pretended not to hear her, and they both wound up giggling. Funny when they were in the same room. Not funny when they were on different floors and Maggie needed his attention.

“Sal!”

No answer.

Maggie considered banging on the floor and wondered what the point would be. She knew the man downstairs was Sal. Who else could it be?

Right?

Their lake house was the last one on

Gold Star Road

, and their nearest neighbors, the Kinsels, resided over half a mile down the shore and had left for the season. The solitude was one of the reasons the Mortons bought this property. Unless she went to town to shop, Maggie would often go days without seeing another human being, not counting her husband. The thought of someone else being in their home was ridiculous.

Reassured by that thought, Maggie closed her eyes.

She opened them a moment later, when the sound of the microwave carried up the stairs. Then came the muffled machine-gun report of popcorn popping. Sal shouldn’t be eating at this hour. The doctor had warned him about that, and how it aggravated his acid reflux disease, which in turn aggravated Maggie with his constant tossing and turning all night.

She sighed, annoyed, and sat up in bed.

“Sal! The doctor said no late-night snacks!”

No answer. Maggie wondered if Sal indeed had a hearing problem, or if he simply used that as an excuse for not listening to her. This time she did swing a foot off the bed and stomp on the floor, three times, with her heel.

She waited for his response.

Got none.

Maggie did it again and followed it up with yelling, “Sal!” as loud as she could.

Ten seconds passed.

Ten more.

Then she heard the downstairs toilet flush.

Anger coursed through Maggie. Her husband had obviously heard her and was ignoring her. That wasn’t like Sal at all.

Then, almost like a blush, a wave of doubt overtook her. What if the person downstairs wasn’t Sal?

It has to be,
she told herself. She hadn’t heard any boats coming up to the dock or cars pulling onto their property. Besides, Maggie was a city girl, born and raised in
Chicago
. Twenty-some years in the Northwoods hadn’t broken her of the habit of locking doors before going to sleep.

The anger returned. Sal was deliberately ignoring her. When he came upstairs, she was going to give him a lecture to end all lectures. Or perhaps she’d ignore
him
for a while. Turnabout was fair play.

Comforted by the thought, she closed her eyes. The familiar sound of Sal’s outboard motor drifted in through the window, getting closer. That Evinrude was older than Sal was. Why he didn’t buy a newer, faster motor was beyond her understanding. One of the reasons she hated going out on the lake with him was because it stalled all the time and—

Maggie jackknifed to a sitting position, panic spiking through her body.
If Sal is still out on the boat, then who is in the house?

She fumbled for her glasses, then picked up the phone next to her clock. No dial tone. She pressed buttons, but the phone just wouldn’t work.

Maggie’s breath became shallow, almost a pant. Sal’s boat drew closer, but he was still several minutes away from docking. And even when he got home, what then? Sal was an old man. What could he do against an intruder?

She held her breath, trying to listen to noises from downstairs. Maggie did hear something, but the sound wasn’t coming from the lower level. It was coming from the hallway right outside her bedroom
.

The sound of someone chewing popcorn.

Maggie wondered what she should do. Say something? Maybe this was all some sort of mistake, some confused tourist who had walked into the wrong house. Or perhaps this was a robber, looking for money or drugs. Give him what he wanted, and he’d leave. No need for anyone to get hurt.

“Who’s there?”

More munching. Closer. He was practically in the room. She could smell the popcorn now, the butter and salt, and the odor made her stomach do flip-flops.

“My … medication is in the bathroom cabinet. And my purse is on the chair by the door. Take it.”

The ruffling of a paper bag, and more chewing. Open-mouthed chewing. Loud, like someone smacking gum. Why wouldn’t he say anything?

“What do you want?”

No answer.

Maggie was shivering now. The tourist scenario was gone from her head, the robber scenario fading fast. A new scenario entered Maggie’s mind. The scenario of campfire stories and horror movies. The boogeyman, hiding under the bed. The escaped lunatic, searching for someone to hurt, to kill.