Excerpt from Phobia: A Jake Hawksworth Thriller

CHAPTER 1

Angela Cooperman white-knuckled the steering wheel, her heartbeat thrumming in cadence with the sweep of the wipers. The rain pounded the windshield with a vengeance so fierce Angela feared the glass would implode, the mighty torrent washing her away in a blur.

She was already running late for her appointment with Doctor Weston, and this weather wasn’t helping. Luckily, she didn’t have a fear of the rain like that goth girl Amber from group therapy. Unfortunately, she had bigger issues of her own.

Angela glanced at the dashboard clock. Shit. She was really cutting it close. If that damn meeting hadn’t run over, she’d be there with time to spare. She just hoped Doc Weston didn’t cancel like she had once before when Angela arrived three minutes late for a session. Three minutes. Seriously?

A chill tickled the back of Angela’s neck. She instinctively swatted at the imaginary tentacles that ran across her neck and down her spine. Although it was only late afternoon, it may as well be midnight. Tempestuous leaden clouds rolled over one another in an angry dance, releasing their violent rage on the hapless drivers below. 

Angela’s muscles tensed as she approached the bridge. Bridges. Fucking bridges. Just one of a handful of phobias she suffered from. With Doctor Weston’s help, she’d made significant progress on most. The bridge thing was still a work in progress. And then there was that other one—the whopper of them all.

As the Jeep rolled across the bridge, Angela’s heart banged around inside her ribcage. Though the bridge was a sturdy steel structure, the fear that it would collapse sending her to her doom was overwhelming. Logically, she knew it wouldn’t, but that didn’t quell the all-encompassing sense of dread coursing through her body. 

That nagging tickle again. This time across her arms. Down her legs. Ignore it. Mind over matter. Just like Doc always says. She dismissed the rumble of the bridge beneath her, the sizzle of the rain on the roof overhead, and went to her happy place. 

She and Dina are in their favorite spot on a pristine white beach, the sun kissing their skin. And not a damn bridge in sight. Or spider.

Her breath cinched. Her eyes zeroed in on her arm. Was it a trick of the light? A reflection of the rain drizzling down the windshield? Then she saw another. And another. Little black dots running up and down her right arm. That tickly, crawly sensation again on her neck, her legs, her head. More dots skittered across the edges of her vision. Across the dashboard.

A sharp pain stabbed her right calf. Then another. The realization hit her like a one-two between the eyes. Her greatest fear a stark reality. She flicked on the overhead light, illuminating the cabin. Hundreds of spiders of various shapes and sizes skittered chaotically around her. Angela screamed, instinctively slammed on the brakes. The Jeep fishtailed, ricocheted off a concrete barrier, and reentered the traffic—into the oncoming lights of a large truck.

Angela struggled to regain control of the vehicle as the spindly creatures danced across her body. One hand swatting, the other gripping the steering wheel like a vise. She maneuvered the SUV back into her lane, out of the path of the ten tons of steel bearing down on her. She had to get out of the car now. Get these things off her. Another creature bit into her, this time her neck. The pain was agonizing. She let loose a guttural wail. 

The Jeep drifted back into the truck’s path, as if being guided by the creatures crisscrossing across the steering wheel. She heard the warning of the horn, the flashing of the truck’s lights. But her hands no longer gripped the wheel. Instead, they clawed at her face, swiping at the gummy organisms relentlessly traversing her face, burrowing in her ears, her nose, her mouth. 

The truck’s lights encompassed her. Her mind flashed to that beach again. To Dina. Her one true love. The only one who had ever had the patience to weather all her neuroses and phobias. The last thing Angela saw was a pair of black orbs flanked by hairy tentacles. Her scream was shrouded by the crunch of metal on metal and the escalating storm. And then all her fears were gone.

CHAPTER 2

A light mist blurred the mid-summer evening, a colder-than-usual snap in the air. The day’s relentless deluge had trickled down to a drizzle, making the drive to the crime scene a little more bearable. Red-and-blue flashes ahead disrupted the greyish pall, signaling he was close.

Jake Hawksworth groaned at the weary sight in the rearview. The circles under his eyes looked a few shades darker. The deep lines carved into his forehead were more pronounced than usual. His face was thinner, but not in a healthy way. It was framed by thinning, grayish-white hair that didn’t know which way to go. The patchy stubble on his jaw looked as if it had been scribbled on.

Since the death of his wife, sleep did not come easy. Without the rhythmic breathing or the sense of warmth beside him, nights were endless and vacant, as if all life on earth ceased when the bedside lamp clicked off.

His right index finger clawed at the adjoining thumb, picking away at the rough, calloused skin until it bled. It was one of two compulsions he’d wrestled with for years. He’d finally beaten the battle with the bottle. Only now, a new adversary had entered the ring, taking over where the booze left off.

Jake spotted his partner’s souped-up, highly polished Mustang curbed ahead and pulled his battered Nissan behind it. He stepped out into the chill air, as raw and ugly as his right thumb.

Frank Geoffreys, Chief of Detectives, greeted him at the bridge’s entrance. Unlike Jake, Geoffreys’ appearance was serious and professional, the tie cranked a few notches too tightly on his massive neck. Two meaty hands shook.

“So, is there a reason you dragged me away from my Sox game, Frank?” Jake said, motioning to the spectacle on the bridge. “Looks like a traffic accident to me. Last I checked, I work homicide.”

Frank frowned. “You may think differently when you take a closer look.” Frank’s eyes looked past Jake. “Here comes your sidekick.”

Kyle Henderson, Jake’s much younger and better-looking partner, bounded toward them. Though thrown together in a hurry like Jake, Kyle pulled off the just-rolled-out-of-bed look effortlessly. In fact, it probably made him even more desirable to the opposite sex.

“What’s shaking, gentlemen?”

Jake shrugged. “Beats me. Come on, let’s go have a look-see.”

Even up close, the crime scene looked like a typical weather-related accident. The crumpled remains of a black Jeep Cherokee rested against the Jersey barrier. Shattered, fogged-up glass made it impossible to see the wreck’s inner contents. An eighteen-wheeler sat haphazardly across the bridge’s two lanes. Beyond that, dozens of cars idled, likely filled with angry drivers trying to make their way home for dinner and a date with Jeopardy!

Jake and his partner approached the destroyed vehicle, Geoffreys steps behind. “Who’s the vic?” Jake yelled over the gusting wind.

“Angela Cooperman,” Geoffreys said. “Late twenties, appeared to be on her way home from work.”

Jake shrugged. Again, why was he here? Was he missing something? Kyle brushed by him and peered through a gaping hole in the Jeep’s front passenger window, that looked as if a giant fist had punched through it. Splintered lines mimicking a spider’s web radiated from the hole. Kyle peered inside and jumped back in horror.

“Shit!” he said, backing away from the wreckage.

Jake stepped forward and approached the vehicle. He looked inside. The movement inside the vehicle both horrified and mesmerized him. Hundreds of crawling creatures zig-zagged around the interior, across the gape-mouthed victim rigid behind the steering wheel. A furry spider the size of a golf ball sprung from the dash, leapt through the opening. It skittered past Jake and ran up Henderson’s leg.

Jake’s partner danced about wildly, swiping at his legs. Instinctively, he stomped on the grotesque arachnid. Its hairy, bulbous body deflated with a sickening crunch.

Frank Geoffreys sighed. “You just killed the evidence, genius.”

Jake, still in disbelief at what he’d seen, turned to Geoffreys. “What the hell, Frank?”

Geoffreys shook his head. “Now you see why this isn’t your typical driver-loses-control type of situation. I’d say this was deliberate, wouldn’t you?”

Jake nodded dumbly. “But how did they get in there? How didn’t she notice?”

“It appears there’s some type of intricate device in the back storage area. A large wooden box with a hinged door that was set to open on a timer,” Frank said. “So, whoever planted this device knew just where Ms. Cooperman would be when they released their prey.”

Kyle, still shaking off the heebie-jeebies, said, “What kind of sicko would do something like this?”

“My guess is someone who knew her,” Jake replied. “And what pushed her buttons.”

“But how did they know she wouldn’t notice that box in the trunk area?” Kyle asked.

Jake shrugged. “Maybe they knew her routine. This seems personal.”

Darius Johnson, driver of the semi, paced nervously before the detectives, clearly distraught and anxious. “Like I told the other cops, I saw this car approaching, weaving and jerking,” Johnson said. “It was hard to make out through the rain, but it looked like the young lady was waving her arms about. And she looked…” His voice trailed off, the sobs at last coming from the burly trucker.

“She looked what?” Jake said.

Darius Johnson swiped at his eyes and said, “Terrified. Absolutely terrified. Like she’d seen the Devil himself.”