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

thing they’d brought along was some fingernail clippers, but those were back at the campsite.
    Another nail bent and cracked, and Sara felt like screaming. The agony Martin was in must have been unbearable, and if he’d been strung up there for as long as they’d been searching for him chances were good his hands had lost all circulation. No blood flow meant tissue death. Sara felt like whimpering. If they didn’t get him down fast…
    “ Try this.”
    Laneesha stood next to Sara, and held a dirty rock about the size of a softball.
    “ It’s got a sharp edge,” Laneesha said, pointing.
    Sara traded Jack and the flashlight for the rock, took a deep breath, and tried to keep her emotions under control.
    “ Good work, Laneesha. Hold this on the rope for me.”
    Sara raised the rock up and struck the rope where it wound around the trunk. She hit it again, and again, and again, the bark slowly chipping away but the rope seemingly unmarred. Cramps built in her hands and shoulders, but Sara had to save Martin and she wouldn’t relent, gritting her teeth against the pain, willing the rope to break, not daring to stop until—
    The twang sounded like a bass string being plucked, the rope whipping past Sara’s face as it shot upward. Martin fell to earth. He made an umph sound when he hit, tumbling onto his side, his back to her.
    Sara ditched the rock and scrambled over, awash with concern. Laneesha came up from behind with the Maglite, shining it onto Martin’s shoulders, then around to his face.
    “ Oh, shit.”
    Laneesha dropped the light, and Sara wasn’t sure what she’d seen. She picked it up off the dead leaves and knelt next to Martin, focusing the weak beam on his face.
    Jammed into her husband’s mouth and protruding from his lips was a ball of nails. They jutted out of his cheeks like cat whiskers, dark with dirt and blood.
    “ Oh, jesus, oh baby…”
    Sara’s first instinct was to help, to nurture, which she would have done with anyone in this situation. She worked soup kitchens every Thanksgiving. She spent a summer in Peru with the World Health Organization, helping to care for a TB epidemic. Sara had endless resources of empathy, and equal measures of strength to keep from breaking down. But seeing Martin—her Martin—like this, hit her right in the heart, and the tears came so quick and fast she wondered how she could have been so resolved to divorce this man if she still cared this deeply.
    Sara put a hand on his forehead, her touch gentle so as not to hurt him any further. Her husband’s eyes found hers, locked on.
    “ ara…”
    Sara handed Jack off to Laneesha. “Shhhh. It’s all going to be okay. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
    He made the slightest of nods, then brought up his bound hands, tied together at the wrists. They were swollen, and the color of ripe plums.
    Sara wasn’t able to hide her wince. She examined the rope, saw it was a simple slip knot.
    “ Okay, I’m going to count to three, then free your hands. When your circulation returns, it’s going to hurt really bad. You ready?”
    Another nod. And Sara saw something in his eyes, something beyond the fear and pain. Trust. Trust, and unconditional love.
    “ Do you know I love you?”
    She nodded, unable to answer because of the lump in her throat.
    “ Then we don’t have anything to talk about.”
    Sara blinked away her tears, clamped the light under her armpit, and held his wrists.
    “ One…two…”
    Sara went on two, pulling at the rope with one hand and pulling his right arm with the other. The rope resisted at first, then slipped off.
    Martin’s eyes went glassy, then rolled up into his head as he let out the most chilling, agonized howl Sara had ever heard in her life. Sara bit her lower lip and kept her own cry inside, patting Martin’s chest, wishing she could bear some of the pain for him.
    His back arched, bending at an almost impossible angle, and then, mercifully, he passed out.
    Sara seized the