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
“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.