The Midnight Effect

by Pamela Fryer

  She heard him on the carpet and a second later his hand touched her arm. “Lily.”

  She turned and gave her hardest stare, even though his gentle touch turned her insides to mush.

  “The truth is I’m worried about you.” His hand withdrew and he looked at the crook of her elbow where he’d touched her. “I don’t want to see you hurt. You’re no good to Annie dead.”

  She closed her eyes. I don’t want to see you hurt because I care about you would have been better to hear.

  “You have no obligation to me, Miles. You’re not a police officer anymore.”

  “I might not wear a badge anymore, but I’ll always be a cop,” he said firmly. “At least let me help you. I know a thing or two about questioning people.”

  “You mean questioning people the right way.”

  He took her duffel bag as she opened the front door. “You have to remember who this woman worked for.”

  “As if I could forget.”

  “She might keep silent out of loyalty to IntelliGenysis.”

  “Believe me, I’m going up there expecting the worst.” She used the remote to unlock the doors and stopped to look at him over the car’s roof. “Is she going to be questioned by a cop?”

  “That’s confidential police business.” He winked. “Be thankful I’m willing to fudge the rules a little bit.”

  Lily opened the car door. “I don’t want you to fudge the rules at all.”

  He grinned. “You can’t get rid of me so easily.”

  Her stomach gave a tiny jump. “I’ll just have to try harder next time.”

  Miles settled into the passenger seat. “I think we should stop at your bank before heading out of town. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but you’d make me feel better if you used cash instead of credit when you’re not in Seattle.”

  “I’m one step ahead of you. My assistant rented this car for me with her credit card.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  “Like you said, we have no idea how far reaching Colton’s resources are.”

  When Lily emerged from the bank, what little sunshine had appeared that morning had been snuffed away by fast-spreading clouds. The first drops of rain hit the windshield as she turned onto highway 90.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said to break the silence. She didn’t take her eyes from the road as he looked at her. “It was a horrible thing for me to say.”

  “I’m the one who should apologize.” Miles sighed. “You were right. I would never sit still if it was Michelle who had been taken. I shouldn’t have expected you would. It was just me being a cop again.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw him look out the window.

  “It’s frustrating to lose my chance with her,” Lily risked in a whisper. “I just had a glimpse of her. I had only imagined what it would be like to have her in my life and then she was gone.”

  Miles sat up taller with a squeak of leather. “You’ll get her back, Lily. I only hope you can be patient if it doesn’t happen right away.”

  His voice came in a low timbre that resonated over every nerve ending. Not only was the man drop-dead sexy, but his voice was alluring and seductive as well. She imagined in the bedroom that voice couldn’t be refused.

  Unbidden and unwelcome, she pictured him with his wife. She had no idea what the woman had looked like, and in her thoughts there wasn’t even a solid image, but the reverie brought a stab of something unfamiliar she was loathe to admit as jealousy. Simple things like afternoon walks and Sunday morning breakfasts with Miles must have been magical.

  “I know Chief Billings meant well in advising me to hire a lawyer, but I feel the situation is more critical than that.” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. As lenient as he’d been with her so far, Miles was still a cop. “I believe Annie is in some kind of danger. Why else would my sister suddenly risk her life to get them out?”

  A baited silence stretched as tightly as a freshly strung violin string.

  When Miles spoke, his voice was low, almost regretful. “You know whatever happens I can’t serve as a material witness for you. I’m no longer considered impartial where you’re concerned.”

  The words were as clinical as they could possibly be, but they still warmed her insides. “Because we’re friends?” she said, risking her hopes.

  She glanced over and he smiled. “Because we’re friends.”

  The rain grew more intense as they drove deeper into the mountains. By noon the sky was dark and heavy with rolling clouds and visibility was diminishing rapidly.

  “Do you want me to drive for a while?”

  “I’m fine,” Lily lied. She was hungry and she had to pee.

  “We should stop for lunch. I can hear your stomach grumbling.”

  “I prefer to keep going.”

  Miles adjusted himself in the seat. “Lily, don’t worry. No one is following us.”

  Her stomach flip-flopped. The previous day’s events were too horrific to consider again. “I want to get there as soon as possible.”

  “There’s a small town up ahead with a decent Mexican restaurant. Do you like Mexican? I’m in the mood for some warm tortilla chips and salsa.”

  She laughed. “I see what you’re trying to do.”

  “I’m not trying to do anything.” He glanced out the window, smiling. “Refried beans and Spanish rice sound great right about now too.”

  Her stomach grumbled again. Her mouth watered for chips and salsa and refried beans with gooey, melted queso fresco. “All right, we’ll stop.”

  Lily expected a greasy chain restaurant with mediocre food, but Mt. Pleasant Taqueria proved to be a friendly eatery with delicious homemade food and a comfortable, almost romantic ambiance. She and Miles were shown to a booth in the back corner of the restaurant which was filled mostly by blue collar workers on their lunch break. It was busy, but not noisy.

  “Mexican food is a staple in all cops’ diets,” he said as he scooped a mountain of salsa onto a thick corn chip. “You’ve got to know the best place to get it.”

  “This seems a long way to go outside Seattle for Mexican food.”

  “We’re only a half hour from Parkmont.”

  The romantic décor suddenly turned unwelcoming. Miles had probably taken his wife here. She looked down at her iced tea and stirred the lemon around with her straw.

  Their server delivered steaming plates large enough to feed four people. Miles dug in like a starved man while Lily tried to decide what to eat and what to take in a to-go package.

  “I’m thinking about reapplying to the force.” He said it quietly, as if he suspected she was going to say, “You don’t seem ready.”

  “I think that’s a great idea.” She took a bite of her chicken burrito and blew the steam into a napkin as it scalded her mouth.

  “I have you to thank. I didn’t realize how much I missed police work. And now that I’ve lost my garage, I have nothing else to do.” He winked.

  “Happy to be of service,” she returned dryly.

  Miles’ smile faded. “The last three years have been hell, and I let myself wallow. I never should have quit the force, but for a while I was unfit to carry a badge. I’m ready to put it on again.”

  “You’ll be a great cop.” She knew it without a doubt. Miles had a powerfully honorable character. She felt lucky to call him friend, even luckier to have his help. “I’ve been thinking about Annie’s appearances. She’s never been to my townhouse. How do you think she knew where to appear?”

  “I wondered about that too. I think she’s tapped into us more than the physical location.”

  Lily nodded. That would make sense. She doubted Annie had ever been outside the compound before Cassie snuck her away.

  A needling of worry had been eating away at her. What if her sister truly had stolen a child she had no right to? It wasn’t like Cassie to keep quiet about something as significant as having a baby, yet she hadn’t said a word at their last Christmas visit.

&n
bsp; Lily had to accept the possibility she had no ties to Annie and no right to her.

  But if that were true, why was Annie so connected to them she could visit them on a mental plane? Then again, Lily had to consider her abilities had nothing to do with biological ties. Annie had appeared to Miles, not to her, and they’d had no connection to him until they’d crashed into his station.

  “Don’t you think it’s strange she appeared to you, not me?”

  “Sweetheart, this whole thing is strange.”

  A wave of heat rushed from head to toe at his subtly placed endearment. “You seem so calm.”

  “Police training. Calm on the outside, no comment on the inside.”

  The waiter appeared and Lily waited while he cleared their plates.

  “I almost feel selfish saying this, but I’m glad you saw her too. I might not believe any of this was real if I didn’t have a witness. I’d probably be wearing a fitted jacket by now.”

  He issued a forlorn chuckle. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. More than I gave you credit for. I won’t keep anything from you again.”

  Another surge of ticklish warmth rolled through her middle. “Thanks, Miles.”

  She held his gaze over the table. His eyes, now faded to the color of a pale Wyoming sky, bore into hers. His was a face she could look into forever.

  The more time she spent with Miles the deeper she fell under his spell. His handsome good looks were enough to turn any woman’s head, but there was much more to the attraction growing inside her. He was the most courageous man she’d ever known. He’d risked his life for her, dropped everything to help her.

  Each minute spent with him magnified her appreciation a hundred fold. Each minute would make it harder to say goodbye. He’d already become much more than an acquaintance, much more than just a friend.

  Her heart grew heavy as she realized they would probably part ways before the end of the day.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took almost three hours to reach Manning. Smoky black clouds made the afternoon seem more like evening and icy sheets of rain forced drivers to a crawl on the highway. Once they reached the quaint bedroom community, Miles guided Lily to Meiling Wong’s home with the map she’d printed from the internet.

  He’d been having second thoughts for the last hour, but he knew Lily couldn’t be persuaded to abandon her plan. At best, he might convince her it would be a risk to his reinstatement, but then she would only insist on going without him.

  She slowed the car on an impeccably maintained street where young cherry trees bent in the ferocious wind, desperately clinging to the last of their leaves.

  “That’s it, the one with the fountain.” Water sprayed sideways from its two level tiers. All the tract homes looked the same, right down to the association-managed lawns and boxwood hedges. The only differences were small personal touches. He recognized the fountain in the center of Meiling’s lawn, directly in front of the door, as Feng Shui decorating.

  “Keep going,” he said when she headed for the opposite curb.

  “Why?” she asked, but swung the car away from the curb and continued down the street.

  “You’ve never been on a stakeout, have you?”

  Lily gave him a pursed smile that tickled his insides. “Of course not.”

  “Trust me on this. The house is dark. The first thing we need is food and coffee. We have no idea what time she’ll be home. I want to see who comes and goes from the house before I go pounding on the door. The last thing I want is to have it answered by a husband who looks like a Sumo wrestler.”

  “All right, Officer Goodwin. You’re the man in charge on this caper.”

  “I’d prefer if you didn’t use the word ‘caper’,” he said wryly, making Lily laugh. The sound was pretty, and something jumped in that little place at the juncture of his ribs.

  More laughter in his life would be a good thing, Miles realized. The melodious sound chased away the gloom seeping into the car from the bad weather outside, and a good chunk of the gloom tagging along with him the last three years of his life.

  They left the residential area and found a strip mall with an Italian restaurant. Lily headed for the restroom while he ordered food to go and asked to see a local phone book. He flipped through the yellow pages and found several mid-range hotels nearby. With the weather worsening by the minute, he wasn’t eager to spend any more time on the highway to Spokane than necessary.

  Lily emerged as the waitress was ringing him up. “I’ll pay,” she said, nudging him aside. She picked up the bags and made a face at the weight. “I don’t know what you ordered, but after the lunch we had, I won’t be able to eat for two days.”

  “Trust me, you’ll get hungry sitting in the car.” He held his hand out for the keys. “I’ll drive back.”

  Strong winds buffeted the Lincoln as they made their way back to Meiling Wong’s house. Miles parked a few houses down and set his coffee cup on the dashboard. They sat in comfortable silence as the storm rattled the car. It might not be official, but being on a stakeout brought back pleasant memories and convinced him his choice to reapply was the right one.

  “After your sister was struck by lightning, did she have any physical injuries?” he asked Lily.

  “Do you mean something that would indicate why she changed?” Lily shifted toward him and brought one leg onto the seat. “Only burns to her hands and thighs where she was in contact with the ground. She was kept in the hospital for two days to monitor some irregularity in her heartbeat, but that was merely a cautionary standard.”

  Lily looked past him at the empty house. Her eyes took on a far-away wistfulness. “My mother and I were more worried about her emotional state. She took her boyfriend’s death hard. A psychiatrist told us she had survivor’s guilt.”

  “How long after the lightning strike did she become convinced she could hear other people’s thoughts?”

  Lily took a deep breath as she thought about it. “I’m not exactly sure. She acted differently from the moment she came home.” Her mouth quirked downward. “We didn’t know what to do. We probably assumed all the wrong things, but she wouldn’t talk to us. We had no idea how to deal with her problems.”

  Lily flipped a lock of hair back from her face. “She wasn’t being any more difficult than a typical girl her age, but that was the thing, Cassie had been such an all-American girl before. She had been popular, smart, absolutely beautiful. She liked frilly things. She was a varsity-squad cheerleader. She dramatically changed her appearance and not for the better. She became sullen and bitchy all the time. She was so difficult it was easier for us to ignore her than to try and communicate with her.”

  “What you describe sounds like the experiences of families of drug addicts,” Miles said cautiously. “The person’s sudden change in behavior shocks the family, making them withdraw.”

  “If only it were drugs.” She pulled a piece of thread from the seam of her jeans and twisted it between two fingers. “I was only fifteen. I didn’t know any better. There are a million things I wish I’d done differently, but it’s useless to dwell on it now.”

  Miles sighed. Truer words were never spoken.

  “Cassandra finished her senior year of high school at home.” Lily went on. “She’d been an honor student and earned a scholarship to Berkeley. There’s a special classification for students who suffer life-altering injury before going to college, so she didn’t lose her scholarship.”

  “Lucky for her,” Miles interjected.

  “I guess it was over the summer we first noticed the depth of the changes in her. Each year there was a picnic at the park our community surrounded. Cassie and I were arguing about a neighbor’s recipe for brownies. She claimed the woman lied about her ingredients—she had to be using lard even though she said she hadn’t. Finally, Cassie said she knew the woman lied because she could read her thoughts. I told my mother and of course she questioned Cassie about it. She acted like it was no big deal. As cas
ually as if she were saying she wanted steak for dinner, she told my mother ever since the strike she could hear other people’s thoughts. I thought Cassie was just being…Cassie.”

  Lily gave him a secret look and smiled. Miles felt an unexpected lurch all the way into his toes. She had a dimple in her right cheek which only came out occasionally.

  “She looked at us and said we were thinking she was crazy. Well, of course that was what we were thinking.”

  Miles laughed and then realized it was inconsiderate. “Sorry.”

  But Lily only shook her head and gazed out the window, smiling. “Don’t be. I know how crazy it must make her sound.” She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. “Only now, after what I’ve seen, I know she wasn’t crazy at all.”

  She turned back with complete seriousness in those fathomless brown eyes. “It had to be real. How else could she have given birth to such a gifted child?”

  Gifted wasn’t the word Miles would have used. He wasn’t sure what word was the best to describe Annie, but he did know the little girl’s abilities made him shiver.

  He placed his hand over Lily’s where it rested on her thigh. Immediately, he knew it was a mistake, but it was too late to move it without seeming odd. “Lily, you need to consider—” He broke off when he remembered how angry she’d become at Chief Billings’ suggestion the day before, not sure how to put it without angering her all over again.

  “That Annie wasn’t really her daughter?” Lily clearly knew exactly what he meant. She glanced out the windshield as leaves blew past the car. “I have. But I was also thinking about how much she looks like Cassandra did at her age. Actually, she looks even more like my mother.”

  Miles drew his hand away. The warmth of Lily’s skin slowly faded from his fingertips.

  She looked down at her hand where he’d touched her. The forlorn reservation covering her features proved she had picked up on his aversion to physical contact.

  Her gaze rose to his and a tiny smile touched her lips. It faded immediately. His heart hardened as he realized she might be attracted to him. He had nothing to give her.