Free WEBCAM by Jack Kilborn Page A

she’d never be able to unsee, enough for a lifetime’s worth of nightmares.
    How could Tom stomach that?
    Why did he continue to expose himself to such evil?
    Joan didn’t ever think about marriage, and especially not children. But if Tom was the guy she was going to spend the rest of her life with, how could she allow that kind of darkness in her family? Joan had a hard enough time separating work life with private life, and a bad day for her was a superstar throwing a hissy fit on set. Tom was dealing with some seriously dark shit. She’d seen him moody. How long before the moodiness became the norm? At a Christmas party, Joan had met Tom’s former boss, a woman named Jack Daniels. Joan’s impression was that Jack had burned herself out. Jack was a tough broad, but the job still beat her down.
    Was that the road Tom was headed down? Where catching psychos outweighed being happy? Where dealing with human misery put a permanent stain on your soul?
    That’s when a spider chose to crawl up over her hand
    It was less than a centimeter long, brown, and its hairy legs tickled as it strolled across her thumb.
    Joan yelped, then did the I’m a girl who hates icky things dance, flapping her hands, then her arms, then her hair, graduating into a full body shudder.
    She immediately hated herself for her wimpy reaction. Joan had faced some scary things in her life. Scary in a life-threatening kind of way. To overreact to a bug made her feel weak and embarrassed.
    Still, she could never get over being bitten by a spider when she was in third grade, and a kid at school telling her it had laid eggs under her skin and baby spiders were going to burst out. As the bite swelled up, Joan became hysterical and her mother had to pick her up.
    Joan once had a chance to produce a horror movie about killer spiders, and turned it down without any serious consideration. The picture had gone on to become a minor hit. She never saw it, and had thrown away the screener DVD.
    She checked her hand; the spider was gone, of course, because she’d flung it across the room. Then she did a quick inspection of her body, and the surrounding area. If Tom had a spider infestation, she would refuse to stay there for another night. This was Illinois, home to the infamous brown recluse. The bite of the brown recluse was so venomous, it caused more annual fatalities than the black widow. And almost as bad as death was permanent disfigurement. Unlike her third grade tormentor’s fairy tale, brown recluse bites were real and serious. She’d researched Midwestern spiders—and snakes—before her first extended stay with Tom. Joan had seen pictures on the Internet of swollen-to-bursting spider bite wounds with blackish necrotic tissue that had to be surgically removed.
    Could that have been a brown recluse? Joan hadn’t looked long enough to notice any distinctive violin shape on its back. There was also another biter known as, believe it or not, the aggressive house spider . Just thinking the name gave her the willies. If Tom had—
    Her cell rang, startling Joan so badly she yelped again. She took a calming breath before she looked who it was.
    Tom.
    And Joan could guess why he was calling.
    Irritation chased away the fear, and she picked up.
    “Hey, babe. Something big just came up. I’m going to be a little late.”
    “Of course you are,” she said. “See you whenever you get home.”
    “I can still make a late dinner.”
    “I already ate,” Joan lied.
    “You did?”
    “Did you know you have spiders in your house? One almost bit me.”
    “I… uh… I didn’t know that. Should I call someone? An exterminator?”
    “You know I don’t like spiders, Tom.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine. Go catch your bad guy.”
    Joan hung up, then went to find her jacket. She’d go grab a Starbucks, and a scone. Maybe several scones.
    Erinyes watches her through the laptop webcam.

CHAPTER 18
    The sting of Joan’s words still fresh, Tom climbed into