Jack Kilborn

by Afraid (lit)

  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.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com [http://www.HachetteBookGroup.com]

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  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

  The 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.

  Maggie 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.

  Maggie needed to get out of there, to get away. She could run to the car, or meet Sal on the dock and get into his boat, or even hide out in the woods. She could hurry to the guest bedroom, lock the door, open up the window, climb down—

  Chewing, right next to the bed. Maggie gasped, pulling the flannel sheets to her chest. She squinted into the darkness, could barely make out the dark figure of a man standing a few feet away.

  The bag rustled. Something touched Maggie’s face and she gasped. A tiny pat on her cheek. It happened again, on her forehead, making her flinch. Again, and she swatted out with her hand, finding the object on the pillow.

  Popcorn. He was throwing popcorn at her.

  Maggie’s voice came out in a whisper. “What … what are you going to do?”

  The springs creaked as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Everything,” he said.

  General Alton Tope had barely poured a finger of twenty-five-year-old Glenfarcas into his crystal rocks glass when his pager went off. He unclipped the device from his belt and squinted at the display. The number 6735 appeared. Following procedure, he mentally added the four digits of today’s date, coming up with 6762 and frowning at the unfamiliar code. What the hell was a 6762?

  General Tope headed for his bedroom, the scotch forgotten. He made sure the blinds were drawn, sat down at his desktop, and punched in his password. A military virus detection program automatically ran, deemed his equipment secure, and allowed him to log into USAVOIP—the U.S. Army Voice Over Internet Protocol. He snugged on the headphones, noted the attached microphone smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, and automatically reached for the pack of Winstons next to the monitor. He punched in another password and listened to the phone ring through the foam speakers hugging his ears.

  “Good evening, General,” came the same soothing voice that always answered. “Please speak the alert code.”

  General Tope sometimes imagined a buxom young blonde owned the voice. But the likely culprit was probably computer-generated, programmed by some overweight civilian geek with posters of Wonder Woman in his bedroom.

  “Six-seven-six-two,” he said, shaking out a cigarette and hanging it in the corner of his mouth. The lighter was in the same place he always left it, in a paper-clip container next to the mouse. A plastic disposable. He’d had the same one for over three years; Tope smoked only during these encrypted calls, and they didn’t come often.

  “We have a Fallen Angel, General,” the voice said. “Highest Priority.”

  General Tope drew deeply, filling his lungs with heat. When he answered, he tried not to exhale.

  “What type of unit?”

  As the computer on the other end of the conversation processed his question, Tope closed his eyes, waiting the twelve seconds for the nicotine in his lungs to hit his bloodstream and activate the pleasure receptors in his brain. Four seconds prior to that happening, the reply came.

  “Red-ops.”

  General Tope coughed so hard that spittle flecked his monitor.

  “Repeat.”

  “Red-ops.”

  General Tope disconnected from USAVOIP, sucked in more smoke, and clicked on the icon to connect him to the White House.

  • • •

  Big Lake and Little Lake McDonald formed a horseshoe around the small town of Safe Haven—a sixty-thousand-acre horseshoe that effectively acted like a peninsula, cutting off the town from the rest of northern Wisconsin. Safe Haven had a single road coming in and out. For years there had been talks of widening the road and adding some attractions. The lucrative tourist trade enjoyed by neighboring towns never reached Safe Haven, partly because it was so secluded, but mostly because the 907 full-time residents preferred it that way. At town meetings, the value of the U.S. dollar was always outvoted by the value of privacy, so the road stayed narr
ow and the town stayed isolated, even at the cost of economic depression.

  Sal was one of those residents, and the seclusion, along with the decent fishing, was the main reason he and Maggie bought property here. They enjoyed the solitude. No neighbors to exchange fake pleasantries with. No strangers to worry about. No excitement, no crime, and no surprises. Sal had spent the first half of his life hustling in the big city. Retirement in isolation was his reward to himself.

  It was October, and the snowbirds had all gone back to California or Florida or wherever they lived during the cold months, which left only a handful of people still on this part of the lake.

  When the screaming began, Sal knew of only one person within shouting distance.

  He adjusted the touchy throttle on the Evinrude and squinted toward home, still several hundred yards away.

  Another scream. A terrible scream. The scream of someone in horrible, agonizing pain.

  Sound did strange things over water. It echoed, amplified, reverberated, and made it damn near impossible to pinpoint its location. But when Sal heard that second scream he knew whose it was and where it was coming from.

  Maggie.

  The realization made his stomach roll. He pushed the engine as hard as it would go, beelining toward home.

  What could make Maggie scream like that? Had she fallen, broken something? Burned herself? Appendicitis? A toothache?

  Or was it something to do with that helicopter?

  As the screaming continued, Sal felt his stomach go from sour to ulcerous. He had to get home. Had to make sure she was safe. Had to—

  The motor chugged twice, then died.

  “Goddammit! Goddamn hunk of junk!”

  Sal lifted the large red tank by the handle and found it still half full. He reached for the fuel hose, squeezed the bulb, discovered it firm. The motor was getting gas. He pulled the starter cord four times, and each time it failed to turn the engine over.