JACK KILBORN ~ AFRAID (2 page)

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.

G
eneral 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.

• • •

B
ig
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 narrow 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.

Then Maggie’s screams changed. They went from incoherent and bestial to forming words.

“STOP STOP STOP GOD STOP STOP!”

Sal touched his chest. The pain in his gut had shot up into his heart. Who was Maggie yelling at? What was happening to her? He stuck the oars in the locks, turned around on his seat, and began to row.

“NO NO NO NO STOP NO!”

Sal had to get home. He hadn’t rowed in years, maybe decades. When the Evinrude refused to work, Sal would pop the cover and futz around until it started again. Sometimes it took an hour. Sometimes he had to flag down another boat and get a tow back to his dock. But rowing—never. That was for young men or those without patience. But he had to get to Maggie and had to get to her
now.

“PLEASE PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD!”

Sal’s chest and arms screamed at him. His lungs were two burning bags, unable to get enough air. His back and his knees pleaded with him to stop, to rest. But Sal kept rowing. He glanced painfully over his shoulder, saw he was less than fifty yards away.

“KILL ME! KILL ME! KILL ME!”

Sweet Jesus, Maggie, what is happening?
Sal’s arms shook, and he could barely lift the oars out of the water, but he kept the rhythm, kept the pace.

Stroke.

Stroke.

Stroke.

Stroke.

Each stroke closer to home, closer to the woman he loved.

I’m coming, honey. I’m coming.

Sal hadn’t thought anything could be more terrifying than his wife’s screams. But he was wrong. It was much more terrifying when the screams stopped.

Sal put his entire body into one final stroke, and momentum took him to his pier. He fumbled with the line, hooked it to a cleat on the dock, and then pulled himself out of the boat.

“Maggie!” His shout came out more like a wheeze.

On wobbly knees, Sal shuffled up to shore, toward his house. The door was open wide. Maggie would never leave it like that. Someone was in their house. Someone doing something terrible to his wife. He looked around for a weapon. On the porch, next to the tables, he saw the two-by-four. He used it to club fish before he filleted them. Sal picked it up, reassured by its weight. Then he went into the house.

The living room and kitchen were empty. He smelled burned popcorn, and something else. Something he’d smelled before, but never so strongly.

Blood.

“Maggie! Where are you!”

No answer. He went up the stairs as quickly as his old legs could carry him, up to the bedroom.

Something was sprawled out on the bed.

“… kill … me …” it said.

Sal couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It didn’t look human. When he realized what had been done, that the thing on the bed was what remained of his wife, the board fell from his hand and hit the floor with a dull thud. He was barely aware when someone came up behind him and pressed a blade to his throat.

“You must be Sal,” the man whispered. “We need to talk.”

A
shburn County Sheriff Arnold “Ace” Streng had just settled down in his easy chair for a cup of microwave chili and a marathon of
MythBusters
on the Discovery Channel when his cell phone rang. He set the chili on the TV table next to his chair and squinted through his reading glasses at the number. His phone blinked FIREHOUSE 4.

Safe Haven.

Streng sighed. Safe Haven required a forty-minute drive, and it probably wouldn’t be anything more than a cat in a tree or some campers annoying the residents with their fireworks. He hit the
accept
button.

“This is Streng.”

The line disconnected. Streng brought the phone closer, saw he had two black bars indicating reception. It flickered to one bar, then back to two. Good enough. The fault was probably on the other end. Why anyone in this county voluntarily used cell phones was beyond Streng’s comprehension. A typical three-minute conversation usually involved being dropped eight or nine times. Streng often joked that instead of cells he was going to give his deputies tin cans tied together with string.

The phone rang again. Streng craned his neck so the phone was a precious two inches higher up, that much closer to the satellite signal.

“This is Streng.”

“Sheriff, it’s Josh VanCamp from the Safe Haven fire station. We have, um, a situation here.”

Josh was a good kid, tall and strong like his late father.
Kid
was probably a misnomer—Josh had to be over thirty. But Streng was nearing seventy, and that meant he considered almost everyone a kid.

“Is this an emergency, Josh? I’ve got my old carcass parked for the evening.”

“It is, Sheriff. There’s been a … helicopter crash.”

Streng didn’t know of anyone in the county who owned a helicopter. He looked longingly at his chili. The cheddar cheese he’d crumbled on top had melted perfectly.

“A helicopter? You’re sure?”

“I’m standing at the wreckage site. And there’s been some …
fatalities
.”

Streng sat forward in his chair. “People are dead?”

“Two.”

“Did you call for an ambulance?”

“Uh, no. They’re dead, that’s for sure.”

“Where are you at, Josh?”

“Off the big lake, on

“Gold Star, you said?”

Streng hadn’t been down Gold Star in a while. The last time was to visit his cousin Sal Morton. They’d caught some walleye, tilted a few back, and promised to do it again real soon. That had been two months ago. Streng had planned to call him, see how things were going, maybe set up a date to get on the lake once more before it got too cold. They’d been close friends since childhood, and it was wrong they didn’t try harder to stay in touch.

“Yes, Sheriff. Should I call the staties?”

Streng considered it. The state police were the ones who dealt with highway accidents, but Gold Star was a private road. They wouldn’t want jurisdiction any more than he did.

“No, this is ours. I’ll be there in half an hour. Anyone with you?”

“Erwin.”

“Tell him not to touch anything. Same goes for you.”

Streng hung up, then pulled himself out of the recliner. He dipped his spoon into the chili, blew on it, and took a single bite. Delicious. Then he put the cup into the fridge, strapped on his sidearm, and went out to his Jeep Wrangler, reminding himself that he only had three more weeks until retirement. Then it would be someone else’s job to take care of these late-night calls, and he’d be able to enjoy a little chili in peace.

E
rwin Luggs made up for his deficiencies in the brainpower department by being helpful, dependable, and an all-around nice guy. He didn’t have the strong jaw and athletic build of his buddy Josh, but his oversized frame and an abundance of hair accentuated his friendly demeanor. The ladies thought of him as a big, cuddly teddy bear. One particular lady, Jessie Lee Sloan, liked him so much that she had agreed to be his wife, and their wedding was set for next month.

The wedding troubled Erwin, because it was costing a lot more than he originally thought. He had the part-time-fireman gig and taught gym at the junior high nine months out of the year, but Jessie Lee had just added a string quartet to the growing list of wedding expenses. Even without totaling up the final numbers, Erwin knew he’d need at least two more jobs to cover all the bills.

But all thoughts of money, and the wedding, and Jessie Lee, vanished as he stared into the cockpit of that chopper.

“Don’t look at it,” Josh told him.

“I can’t help it. Never saw nothing like that before. You?”

Josh was staring past the wreck, into the dark of the forest surrounding them. He shook his head and spat.

Erwin asked, “Which head belongs to which, you think?”

“Coroner will figure it out.”