The Midnight Effect

by Pamela Fryer

  He mustered a smile. It felt odd on his face.

  Miles considered his approach. He’d almost forgotten how to talk to a child. Thank God, he’d had little practice talking to a frightened one. Until the day she’d died, his daughter’s greatest fears had been imaginary monsters under the bed.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but decided on a different tactic. He turned to the dresser unit against the wall and pulled open the top drawer. His mouth went dry. The black leather wallet was still there.

  Of course it was. Where would it go? He flipped it open. His badge had tarnished. The face in the ID photo looked twenty years younger. Fitting. He felt twenty years older.

  He knelt in front of the frightened little girl and forced another stiff smile.

  “Annie, my name is Miles Goodwin. I’m a police officer.”

  “Is Aunt Lily going to be okay?”

  He nodded, even though he wasn’t entirely sure. Head injuries were always an uncertainty. “I’m going to take good care of you both. I know someone very bad is trying to hurt Lily.”

  Annie chewed her lower lip. He showed her his badge.

  “I work for a big police station in the city. There are lots of policemen there who can help keep you safe. But I have to ask you a question, and it’s really important you give me an honest answer. Okay?”

  “’kay.”

  “Did Lily take you away without permission?”

  Annie shook her head.

  “How come you’re with your aunt instead of your father?”

  “Because the lady from the office said so.”

  “What lady?”

  Annie returned a blank stare like all kids did when they didn’t know what was going on. Fair enough. New tactic.

  “Is Lily nice to you?” Talking to a little girl felt foreign, almost like a betrayal to his daughter’s memory. He ground his teeth and swallowed against the sourness rising in his throat.

  Annie nodded. “She’s my mommy’s sister.”

  “Where’s your mommy?”

  “In heaven. Aunt Lily says it’s a good place.”

  Miles took a deep, shuddering breath. “And your daddy, what’s he like?”

  She pouted. “He puts me in the water. Please don’t make me go back there. I don’t like it there. Please, it’s a bad place. They make us do bad things.”

  Annie’s face scrunched up like she was going to cry. Her desperation squeezed at his heart.

  “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, except eat your vegetables.”

  The kid didn’t even crack a smile. No wonder, considering. After he said it, it sounded dumb even to him.

  “I’m going into the bathroom to get some bandages. Wait right here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  He retrieved the first-aid kit under the sink, hoping the woman wouldn’t need stitches. The wound at her head was bleeding badly, but butterfly tapes would have to do.

  Miles sat on the edge of the tired, old couch while Annie shyly explored the main room.

  Eddie had kept the place neat, but Miles could tell the retired cop had taken special care not to change a thing. All of it was exactly as he remembered…too well.

  He unzipped the folding kit and laid it open. Lily stirred but didn’t open her eyes. He soaked a cotton swab with antibacterial cleanser and leaned over to reach the wound on her head. His hip made contact with hers, sending his emotions out of control. She was soft and feminine and utterly helpless.

  Dammit, he didn’t like these reminders he was still a man, still alive. He would give anything to crawl back into his self-inflicted emotional coma and be left alone.

  But at the same time, he couldn’t turn a blind eye to this situation. His police training wouldn’t allow him, nor would the man he used to be.

  If only this hadn’t happened to a beautiful woman and a golden child, it would be easier to step into his old role.

  Miles touched Lily’s cheek and turned her face. Her skin was soft and supple, a foreign thing under his fingers. She moaned and shifted, pinching her brow. He swabbed gently with the antibacterial. Her lips parted and she caught a sharp breath as the stinging ointment touched the wound. She shifted on the couch and tried to move away.

  “Easy now,” he said. “It only hurts for a second.” He touched her cheek again, preventing her from turning away.

  He leaned over and reached with the cotton. His forearm came into contact with the lush swell of her breast. Miles jerked back, stunned and ashamed of the electric zing racing through him. He swallowed past the sudden dryness in his mouth and reached again, more carefully this time.

  Miles swabbed the cut clean and closed it up with two butterfly tapes. They didn’t stick well to her hair, but the wound wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought. She’d be on her feet, and more importantly, on her way, first thing in the morning.

  Thank God. He would pretend none of this ever happened.

  In his peripheral vision he saw Annie hesitantly exploring the cabin. She stopped at the half-wall dividing the kitchen from the small family room and bent to retrieve something that had fallen behind the credenza there.

  She’d found Michelle’s Tigger the Tiger doll. Annie held the stuffed toy in her hand and picked a dust bunny off its paw.

  A bittersweet ache swept over him so powerfully he nearly cried out. Michelle had been heartbroken when the toy went missing. He wanted to scream at Annie to put it down, but his jaw was locked and his breath cut off.

  The rational part of him knew Annie was just a frightened little girl and there was no reason to punish her for touching a stuffed toy. The irrational part of him saw the Tigger as one last graspable piece of his daughter that hadn’t been stolen from him.

  Annie looked up, her face an angelic vision of innocence in its purest form. “What happened to her?”

  A chill rolled over his flesh. His dead heart struggled to beat. “She… There was an accident.”

  Annie set the doll down carefully on top of the credenza and arranged it in a sitting position. Her fingers combed the orange fluff of its forelock straight up. She turned and walked toward him, smiling. “You were a good dad.”

  Miles couldn’t draw a breath. The eeriness of her words was forgotten for the crippling sadness squeezing the life out of him.

  He hadn’t talked about Michelle to anyone since her death. Had never said those words aloud before.

  My wife and daughter died in a car crash.

  The people in town knew what had happened and never spoke about it. Those who knew him well smiled uncomfortably and intentionally brought up mundane topics. Those who didn’t looked at him with pitying eyes and didn’t talk at all.

  Annie dropped to her knees beside the couch and placed both hands on Lily’s forearm. “Aunt Lily?”

  The woman shifted and opened her eyes. “I’m here, honey.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I bumped my head a little too hard.”

  Miles stood and stalked to the kitchen. The tenderness they displayed for each other was too much for him to bear. He braced both hands on the counter, but his eyes strayed back to them against his will.

  In the fifteen minutes since they’d careened into his life, he’d been a different man than the one who had drifted aimlessly for the last three years. He’d risen each day, shaved and eaten three meals, but he hadn’t been alive. He’d existed in despair, dulled to emotion and sensation and thought.

  Now his pulse was racing, and he felt like he’d just come off a training maneuver. His every sense was on high alert. That had to be why, when he looked into Lily’s warm brown eyes, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such a beautiful woman.

  Not since Sara.

  Miles swallowed past the choking realization. I can’t do this. I’m not the man I used to be.

  Lily turned onto her side and hugged Annie.

  “I’m scared,” Annie said in a tiny voice.

  Lily’s
deep brown gaze found him. “Shh. I know. It’s going to be all right.”

  Miles withered under those soft, doe eyes. He turned and ran a hand through his hair. His stomach grumbled. He hadn’t had dinner yet, but it was the excitement that had left him ravenous.

  Without speaking, he opened a can of beef stew and dumped it into a saucepan. He rifled through the cabinets. Eddie had promised to keep the cabin stocked even though Miles had assured him he didn’t care, the cabin was his now. It held too many painful memories for Miles to ever enjoy being here again.

  He found a tube of biscuits in the freezer and used a can opener to remove both aluminum ends before sticking it in the microwave to defrost, then turned on the electric oven.

  In the fifteen minutes it took to prepare their meager meal, the silence was painful.

  He looked over at his guests. Annie had moved into the spot on the edge of the couch he’d vacated. She touched her aunt’s cheek with one hand. Another eerie sensation washed over him and he thought back to her uncanny statements. The way she sat now, one palm against her aunt’s head, was almost purposeful.

  What had made her think Miles had a little girl? A Tigger doll could appeal to a boy as much as a girl. And what on earth made her think Michelle was gone? Was his despair etched so deeply in his face even a child could read it?

  Annie leaned back. She looked over at Miles, and then to the two bowls he’d filled on the counter.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She nodded.

  He grinned. It still felt odd, wrong even, but it was getting easier. “Well, come on.”

  She hopped off the couch and skipped over to the table as happily as a girl scout at a picnic. He set a bowl before her then went to the couch and knelt beside Lily. She watched him cautiously.

  “Whose cabin is this?”

  “Mine.”

  She sat up. “We aren’t safe here.” Lily swayed and placed her fingertips to her temple. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder and just as quickly jerked away. Each touch of her warm, feminine softness sent a bolt of electricity racing through his nerve endings. She reminded him what a woman felt like. That he enjoyed what a woman felt like.

  He had to get rid of her, pronto.

  “Take it easy. The deed is in a friend’s name. No one knows I own the place.”

  She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and let out a long breath.

  “Can you eat?”

  Her stomach growled. He took it as a yes. “It isn’t much.”

  She touched his arm. The contact was another lightning strike to senses that wanted to be left numb.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “That’s not what I want you to tell me.”

  She met his gaze. God, she was a beautiful woman, and those melted-chocolate eyes threatened to drown him.

  “I want the truth.”

  Chapter Three

  An explanation was the least she owed him. She had destroyed his business and risked his life, involving him in something that should have been her problem alone.

  At the same time, Lily didn’t like being treated like a criminal. She’d heard him ask Annie if she was taken without permission. His suspicion added insult to the astronomical injury she’d experienced over the last three days.

  But Lily bit her lip as she sat at the table opposite Annie and picked up her spoon. She needed him. Without this man’s help she had nothing. Her transportation, and her evidence, had just been destroyed in a flaming inferno.

  Miles ate in the kitchen. He alternated between tidying up and spooning stew into his mouth over the sink. Lily saw it for what it truly was—avoidance. For some reason he was uncomfortable around her.

  Was it because he suspected her of committing a crime? She supposed it was cop detachment. He didn’t want to become friendly with her if there was a chance he would have to slap her in cuffs.

  “It’s good,” Annie said, beaming. Lily laughed. As bad as their situation was, Annie was a beacon of light. Lily had only known her niece three days, but already she couldn’t imagine life without her.

  Annie was as puzzling as their mysterious savior. When the social worker had produced her, the little girl was wearing an olive green suit almost like hospital scrubs, and plain slip-on sneakers. She hadn’t known what a hamburger was. She had never watched Sesame Street.

  She was not your ordinary six-year-old.

  At first Lily had thought her quiet reservation was from the shock of losing her mother and shyness at meeting a new person whom she was told, by yet another stranger, would be her new mommy. But then glimpses of Annie’s remarkable uniqueness began to slip through. She was twice as intelligent as the average six-year-old and eerily mature.

  Lily looked up in time to see the man glance away quickly. He turned his back and washed out the pot he’d used to heat the stew.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” she said gently.

  His attention jerked. It almost seemed he didn’t want to.

  “Miles. Goodwin.”

  Lily noticed it then, a stuffed Tigger the Tiger doll on the credenza behind Annie. She should have realized he had his own family. She’d nearly killed him earlier today. Nearly made a widow out of his wife and orphans out of his children.

  She glanced up and found his eyes boring into her. “I’m Lily.” Her voice came out a whisper.

  He didn’t respond as he cleared away their bowls and started to wash them.

  “Can I help?” she asked.

  “No need.”

  Annie scooted out of her chair. She hugged Lily around the waist. “That was good. What was it called?”

  “It was beef stew.”

  “I like beef stew.”

  “Me too. It’s yummy.” She smiled at her precious niece and then glanced up to find a disbelieving expression on Miles’ face. She would have to explain what she knew about Annie, too.

  He wiped his hands on a towel, and his expression turned to something bordering disapproval. He was an incredibly handsome man, but his eyes were edged with sorrow that seemed permanently fixed there.

  “The bathroom is in back. You can take the bedroom tonight.”

  It would be stupid to argue. She and Annie couldn’t both take the couch and issuing frivolous protests would only be rude.

  “Thank you.”

  She took Annie by the hand and led her into the bedroom as Miles knelt at the credenza and retrieved a radio handset. His gaze landed on the doll and froze there for a long moment.

  Annie went into the bathroom as Lily turned down the bed. It was a queen, and the sheets appeared freshly changed. Still, she wondered if she’d be able to sleep.

  She had known from the start she would have to hire a lawyer and expected an ugly court battle. But never in her wildest dreams did she expect Colton Reilly would try to kill her.

  None of the witnesses to her sister’s accident had been able to recall any important details. Cassie had insisted on making the video for Lily, but had died before giving details of her hit-and-run. Was it possible her sister’s death wasn’t a tragic accident as the police in Spokane suspected, but something more sinister?

  In the other room the radio crackled with static. She heard the words “fire” and “gas station,” as Miles listened to the police band, but nothing about the shooter. She knew Colton’s henchman was smart enough not to wait around to get caught.

  Lily sat on the edge of the bed and leaned her elbows on her knees, rubbing her face. She was bone weary and didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to do.

  A week ago her life was normal. Happy. She had a thriving business and a gorgeous townhouse in Seattle’s expensive Rose Crest development.

  Then, in the span of two days, she’d received two life-changing blows. Her sister had died. And she was the guardian of the niece she never even knew she had.

  “What time does she go to bed?”

  Lily tensed. Miles stood in the doorway. His expres
sion held forbidding suspicion.

  Lily glanced at the clock. It was eight fifteen. “I’ll put her to bed early. I know you’ll want to get home to your family as quickly as possible.”

  “No need.” He looked away and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “My wife and daughter…” His voice cracked with emotion so powerful she felt it in her own heart.

  She understood. The pain in his eyes had been put there.

  “Don’t—” He held up a hand. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

  She glanced at the floor, not sure what to say at all.

  “You might find some clothes…” he trailed off. “I’d prefer if you didn’t wear them.”

  “All right.”

  He scowled, wiping the sadness from his face, and crossed the small bedroom with severe steps. Miles opened the closet and pulled a flannel button-up shirt from a hanger. His gaze fell on the blood stain on her blouse as he tossed the shirt onto the bed beside her.

  “You’ll need something more. Could get cold.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think there’s a new toothbrush in the bathroom. Help yourself to whatever you find there.”

  She nodded, but he’d already turned away.

  Annie bounded out of the bathroom. “There’s a shower in there like in the hotel room.”

  Lily smiled as she scooped her up and sat her down on the bed. “It’s been a really scary day, hasn’t it?”

  Annie’s exuberance faded and she nodded.

  “Tomorrow we’re going to go to the police in Seattle and they’re going to protect us.”

  “What if he finds us before then?”

  It wasn’t the first time she noticed Annie didn’t refer to Colton Reilly as “Daddy”. Lily slipped off the bed to kneel in front of Annie and unlace her new sneakers.

  “He won’t. He doesn’t know where we’ve gone now, and you need a special car to get here.”

  “Like Mr. Miles’?”

  “Yep.” Lily tried to keep an upbeat expression, but feared Annie saw right through it. “I know it’s earlier than you usually go to bed, but I need to go talk to Mr. Miles.”

  “Okay.” Annie flopped down on the pillow. “I’m tired anyway.” The impish grin she offered reached right into Lily’s heart and squeezed.