JACK KILBORN ~ TRAPPED by J.A. Konrath, Jack Kilborn Read Free Book Online Page B

woods with some crazy cannibal—that was horror movie bullshit.
    So Tyrone stayed put, squeezing Cindy’s hand, watching as his friend clenched his fists and stomped toward the darkness.
     
    The light came on, faint and yellow, shining on the bone Sara clenched in her hand. It was long, over eighteen inches, covered on one side with clumps of dirt. The other side, the side Sara stared at, had strips of dried brown flesh clinging to it.
    The smell was an assault, so overpowering and fetid that Sara dropped the bone immediately, violently turning away and retching onto the ground.
    “ Was that a leg?” Laneesha moved closer to Sara. The girl was clutching the Maglite she’d obviously found.
    Sara wiped her mouth with her sleeve, her throat feeling raw, her tongue foul with stomach acid.
    “ I don’t know.”
    “ Looked like a dude’s leg.”
    “ I don’t know.”
    “ Why is there a dude’s leg on the ground? Where’s the rest of him?”
    Laneesha played the light across the ground. Sara followed the beam as it washed over twigs, dead leaves, chunks of dirt, coming to rest on a single, brown shoe.
    “ Holy shit! There a foot in that shoe?”
    The shoe looked old. Leather decayed and laces gone, flattened by time.
    Sara summoned up a bit of strength from some inner well and forced herself to speak calmly. “The light, Laneesha.”
    Laneesha didn’t move.
    “ Laneesha. Give me the light.”
    Sara reached for it, and the girl complied. Still on her knees, she hobbled over to the shoe. Using a stick, Sara poked at the tongue, peering inside.
    Empty.
    “ Maybe the cannibals ate the foot,” Laneesha said.
    Sara spit—the foul taste in her mouth wouldn’t go away—then got to her feet. She pushed away all questions and doubts and focused on the facts, fighting not to leap to conclusions. “The shoe is old. Really old. That bone still had meat on it. They aren’t related to each other.”
    “ How you know the shoe is old?”
    “ Look at the laces.” Sara captured the shoe in the beam. “They’ve rotted away. So has some of the leather.”
    “ How long does that take?”
    “ I don’t know, Laneesha. A long time.”
    “ Maybe it takes a long time for meat to rot off the bone, too.”
    Sara rubbed the hand that grabbed the bone onto her jeans. “No. There are birds on the island. Raccoons. The bone would have been picked clean if it was as old as that shoe.”
    “ So what you sayin’?”
    “ That probably wasn’t a human bone. Could have been from a deer. Or a pig.”
    “ Be a big freakin’ pig.”
    Sara considered looking for the bone again, to prove Laneesha wrong. And to prove herself wrong, that she didn’t really see cloth clinging to the bone along with strips of meat. But she decided not to. Some things were better not knowing.
    “ Maybe the cannibals…”
    “ Laneesha!” Sara knew she was raising her voice, and silently cursed herself for her tone even as she continued. “There are no cannibals. Got it?”
    Laneesha wasn’t so easily chided. “Martin said…”
    “ Martin was trying to scare us. That’s all. We’re the only people on this island right now.”
    “ So who grabbed Martin?”
    “ No one grabbed him. He was playing a prank, took it too far, and is now lost in the woods.”
    “ Like us,” Laneesha whispered.
    Sara opened her mouth to dispute it, but stopped herself. Were they actually lost? She resisted the urge to shine the flashlight in all directions, hoping to find the path back to the campfire. But there was no path, and every direction looked exactly the same. She silently cursed Martin for his stupid tricks, and for bringing them all here.
    “ Camping,” Martin had said, a big grin on his face.
    “ You want to take a bunch of inner city kids out into the woods?”
    “ It’ll be good for them. We roast some hot dogs, sing some songs. I know the perfect place. I went there before, with my brother. It’s beautiful Sara. You and the kids will love