by Pamela Fryer
It didn’t matter. With Lily Brent at his new facility, they would succeed very soon.
He took his time on the metal staircase. He much preferred his plush leather and mahogany office with its gentle, recessed lighting to the laboratory. The bluish white light in here felt clean, but the stench of children had permeated everything. With each step down, the grubby odor grew worse.
Dr. Shapiro stood at the control panel on the floor level reading a clipboard. He glanced up, grinned and hurried to the foot of the stairs as Colton strode down.
“B4-5 moved three blocks last night,” he said excitedly. “She—the subject reacted accurately to verbal stimuli on two separate occasions. So far B4-5 has surpassed all the others in physical reactions.”
All except one.
Colton took the clipboard, but strolled to isolation chamber A2-6 without looking at it. “Any change?”
“Ah, er, no results. Just an increase in heart rate and blood pressure when electronic stimuli were administered.”
“Apply an intravenous with two-hundred-fifty milligrams Ketamine for tonight’s test.”
The scientist visibly recoiled. “I thought you didn’t want drugs used in Project Midnight. Why, starting Annie—er, A2-6 on Ketamine will render all previous controls irrelevant.”
Lily Brent had already done as much with junk food and television.
“Years of properly controlled tests will all be for nothing,” Shapiro went on. “All my research will be wasted.”
“Your research is still quite relevant. A2-6 is my most successful subject.”
“She’s also the most defiant,” the scientist risked adding.
Colton narrowed his eyes, a silent reminder he didn’t like his people referring to the test subjects with personification. They were laboratory animals. He shoved the clipboard against the scientist’s chest and Shapiro staggered back a step.
“Consider it an introduction of a restricted element. I want this subject brought back under control and performing again by any means necessary.”
A2-6 had become an uncontrollable hazard. If the subject couldn’t be made obedient, it wouldn’t be transported to the new laboratory in Calgary.
But once he had Lily Brent, the offspring she produced would far exceed any results A2-6 had displayed. He was certain. All the experiments so far had proven a naturally developed product was much more powerful than one carried by a surrogate.
Colton turned without examining B4-5. “Administer the IV immediately. Provide all sustainable nutrition intravenously. The subject is to remain in isolation until further notice.”
Chapter Seventeen
Turning away from Lily was one of the hardest things Miles had ever done. He descended the stairs, crossed the snowy parking lot and hiked down the main street, rubbing his hands together to keep warm. The icy air was just the thing he needed.
Happy people passed him on the sidewalk. Children frolicked in the first snowfall of the year. Everything was pristine white, except his mood.
He arrived at the rental car office as it was opening. Miles rented a pickup truck he could return to the office near his house and set out with robotic movements, only half-seeing the road in front of him.
The highway moved slowly even though a plow had cleared it before dawn. It was nearly two in the afternoon when he drove into Parkmont. But instead of heading to his little house, Miles took the road leading into the mountains.
After a night spent with Lily, the entire world looked prettier, even his burned-out dump of a station.
She needed more than he could give her. Though three years had passed since Sara and Michelle’s death, his emotions were still raw. He was incapable of giving Lily what she deserved.
Could he have made things right with Sara if he’d had the time? He would never know.
Miles turned off the road at a fire access and then followed the path he and Lily had taken the day they’d encountered the deer. At the same flat meadow, now blanketed in pure white, he slowed the truck and looked into the forest. He thought he saw the flutter of a dun hide moving through the trees, but he couldn’t be sure. The meadow was otherwise unmarred, except for his own tire tracks laid behind him.
He gave two short honks as he pulled up at the cabin. Eddie emerged, wearing a flannel jacket. His breath plumed on the air and his face was colored with vitality.
“I was getting worried about you.”
Miles shut off the engine and jumped out.
“Where’s the Jeep?”
“I had it towed. It needs new tires. I’ll pay, of course.”
“I don’t give a crap about that. Come inside; chili’s simmering in the crock.”
“Only coffee for me,” Miles said as he followed his friend inside. He hadn’t eaten yet today and chili would do him in, especially Eddie’s chili.
Miles wasn’t hungry anyway. His stomach had been in knots since leaving Lily.
“Where are the women?” Eddie asked lightly, but Miles heard the undertones of worry.
“Lily is at a hotel in Manning.” He sat at the table and rubbed his tired eyes. “Annie is…” He sighed. “She was taken.”
Eddie froze, a pot in one hand and the can of freeze-dried coffee in the other. “What do you mean?”
“Colton Reilly grabbed her. His goon did anyway. We’d stopped at a rest stop. He must have found us by tracking Lily’s cell phone.”
The pot clanged on the tabletop as Eddie sagged into a chair across from him. “Jesus.”
“The bastard shot me.”
Eddie’s eyes went wide.
“Only grazed me.” Miles squeezed his hand into a fist. “You going to finish that coffee, or what?”
Eddie rose without a word but Miles could practically see what was running through his mind. Procedure.
He told Eddie the rest of the story, leaving out only Annie’s strange appearances and the intimacy he’d shared with Lily last night.
The memory invaded his mind and his limbs went noodley. He’d made love to her until there was nothing else in the world but their two bodies. Even now he itched to touch her again, imagined a hundred more magnificent things he would do with her.
“How is Lily taking it?”
“Not well.”
Eddie snorted. “What are you going to do?”
Miles brought his fist down on the table. “I don’t know, dammit!”
“Annie’s special, Miles. You’ve got to save her from that bastard.”
The fight in Miles wilted. “I know.”
“She cured me.”
His gaze flicked up. He noted again the obvious improvement in Eddie.
The old man frowned. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. You think I wouldn’t know a thing like that? It was a blessed miracle.” Eddie poured him a mug of coffee and slid it across the table as he took the seat across from him again. “Can’t you see? This is bigger than Annie alone, bigger than you and me and Lily all put together. This is God’s work, Miles. Colton Reilly is a monster. He can’t be allowed to keep her.”
Miles drew a shuddering breath. He wasn’t sure if he shared Eddie’s religious convictions, but the gist was the same. Annie couldn’t be left to that bastard. None of those children should be.
“I believe you about the cancer, and I’m a thousand times more glad for it than I look.” He lifted the cup to his lips and gulped a scalding mouthful. He wrapped his hands around the mug’s belly and let the warmth seep into his fingers. “And no, I’m not surprised. I’ve seen her do things topping the weird charts.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Miles shook his head. “I’d need a week.”
Eddie pursed his lips. “You have feelings for Lily. Don’t run from them.”
Miles gazed up at his friend. Maybe Annie had given him the power to read minds.
“You have to save that child, Miles. Work out what’s between you and Lily later.”<
br />
He looked down at his fist as he clenched it again. “I can’t.”
***
Colton Reilly flipped open his GSM phone and pressed the answer button. “Give me some good news.”
“Wish I could. There was a cruiser at her place all night. This morning the place is empty.”
“She’s on here way here.” Idiot. Did he have to do everything himself? Colton took a calming breath. He sometimes forgot the rest of the world didn’t share his psychic abilities and not even a tenth of the population had his superior intelligence. Though how he could forget Vincent Luggo was an ignoramus was beyond him. He hadn’t slept well in the past few days. That must be the reason he was slipping. Each day Lily Brent eluded him, his irritation grew.
“If she is, she’s driving a rental,” Vince said. He snorted back a loogey and loudly let it fly. Futwaap.
Colton gagged. Slack-jawed troglodyte.
“Once Quinlan gets the info, I’ll find her.”
“I’m more concerned about her cop friend,” Colton barked. “I want him out of the picture.”
The man was a dangerous threat. Official investigations were one thing, a man with a personal interest in him was quite another.
Miles Goodwin had lost his own daughter. Add that to a cop’s mentality and you had a person who would do anything for a child. And most likely the man had his sights on Lily. She was an exceptional beauty with an unintentionally seductive manner.
A living Miles Goodwin would not allow Lily out of his sight and wouldn’t rest until the child was removed from IntelliGenysis.
Therefore, he had to be a dead Miles Goodwin.
“I’ll take care of it,” Vince said with telltale eagerness.
Colton cursed under his breath. “Be sure you do.”
***
Lily made it out of the hotel room and down to the main office before the tears. She checked out and asked the girl to reserve a room at the Country Place Suites in Woodland Park before the tears.
She made it into her car, pulled out of the parking lot and found the highway, all before the tears.
Then they came in a rush.
How was it she’d fallen headlong in love with Miles in a matter of days? She’d known other men. Handsome, intelligent, available men. Yet she had never experienced such powerful feelings. Never even come close. Overpowering, all consuming, soul-shattering feelings.
The pain squeezed her heart, robbed her of coherence and sucked the energy out of every molecule in her body.
Miles was one of a kind. His image was burned in her mind—the laughter in his eyes, the contours of his face, the shape of his hands. There wasn’t a man on this earth who was more appealing and less available than Miles Goodwin.
His confession only made it hurt more. She didn’t know the details about his marriage, but she knew Miles didn’t deserve this pain. And yet there was nothing she could do to ease it.
She swiped the tears away. Annie was her first priority, and Lily didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was going to do.
She flipped on the dashboard heater and switched it to the upper vents. She ran it until it dried her tears and ran it some more, until her eyes and her sinuses were painfully dry. There was no time for tears, but she wasn’t strong enough to keep them away her own.
She drove straight through Spokane without stopping and into the small town of Woodland Park. The young man at the hotel’s counter there was much nicer about accepting cash for the room.
The suite looked different, yet it felt the same. She looked at the king-size bed in the center of the room and anticipated a cold, lonely night. She wondered if she’d ever feel warm in a bed again.
She closed her eyes as the memory of Miles’ roaming hands came to life on her skin. His mouth on her most sensitive places. The thick, heaviness of him filling her. The exquisite surrender to ecstasy.
She tossed her duffel bag into the chair and sat at the table. Lily took the notepad and angrily scratched out her notes.
Annie had always been her first priority; now she was the only one. It should have been this way from the start. Then maybe she wouldn’t have been taken. Then maybe Lily wouldn’t be hurting so badly right now.
She organized her list in three sections. What she knew:
1. Annie is a test subject in Project Midnight.
2. According to Meiling Wong, Project Midnight is in the main lab on the north corner.
What she didn’t know:
1. How to get inside.
2. How to get Annie.
3. How to get out without being caught.
What she guessed:
1. Colton Reilly wants me to give him a child.
2. Colton killed my sister because she was no longer valuable, or simply because she defied him.
She’d known as much, but seeing the last item written down on paper gave her chills. The deadly reality was terrifying.
Miles’ handsome face drifted past her mind’s eye. He didn’t want her going anywhere IntelliGenysis. He didn’t even want her in Woodland Park.
Maybe she was better off going home and hiring the best lawyer she could.
Without Miles by her side, her courage had fled.
She’d thought things were bad before, but without Miles in it, her life had gone dark.
With thick, angry clouds sealing off the sky, darkness claimed Parkmont early. The temperature had risen, melting the thin crust of snow, but a soft drizzle steadily peppered his windshield.
By the time Miles arrived at his small house he was chilled to the bone and eager for a toothbrush and a hot shower. He stepped under the hot spray, regretting it would wash away the last traces of Lily from his skin.
But he would never forget her sweet scent. The feel of her hot skin, the weight of her full breasts in his hands. The velvety mysteriousness of her soft body accepting him.
He didn’t know how she had crept under the steel shell he’d built around his emotions, but she was already there. There was no denying it, no escaping it.
He emerged from the shower, towel-dried his hair, and then brushed his teeth until the toothpaste frothed like whipped cream in his mouth.
Eddie had insisted he be part of the rescue, gone as far as to say if Miles wouldn’t do anything, he would take matters into his own hands. Annie, and Lily too, meant that much to him.
Miles had finally appeased him by taking the keys to his house on the condition Eddie stay at the cabin. There couldn’t be any interaction between them if his place was to serve as a safe house.
He picked up the phone and got the jolt of his life when the front desk said Lily had checked out of the hotel. The girl told him Lily had gone to their sister hotel in Woodland Park, and he was grateful he’d identified himself as her husband when he’d called.
The next front desk person he spoke to wasn’t as generous, but he was grateful the man was secretive about his guests and “agreed to check the roster” when Miles asked for Lily. A minute later he was patched through.
“Miles.”
“Lily, Jesus, you scared the hell out of me when I found out you’d left the hotel.”
“I didn’t think I needed to check in with you.”
He clenched his jaw and drove his fingers through his hair.
“You made your position clear,” she said to his silence.
“Lily, I’m sorry. I know I hurt you—”
“This isn’t about us, Miles. I’m a big girl, and I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know you are, but don’t do anything without me, okay?”
“I have to get Annie out of there.”
“Look, I’ll be back in the morning. Wait until I get there.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
“Lily. Promise me you’ll wait.”
“All right. I promise.”
He struggled for the right words to say he was anxious to see her, but he didn’t know how. Not after what he’d done to her.
She didn
’t give him the chance. She said, “Good night, Miles,” and hung up.
A flurry of emotions whipped through his tired mind, but he couldn’t focus on any of them. Miles did what he always did when he needed to think. He cleaned his guns.
The smell of gun oil brought back memories he’d thought had been filed away for good and helped him out of his funk. There was a reason he’d been promoted to detective.
He had been strong, once.
You’re strong now, an inner voice shouted. Quit acting pathetic.
Like a beam of light, Annie appeared before him. He didn’t dare glance away, knowing instinctively it was midnight.
He didn’t know what to say to her. What could he say?
She smiled. “They want you to be happy, Mr. Miles.”
Oh God. Shame struck like bolt of lightning, bringing with it a thunderclap of regret. “Annie. I’m so sorry.”
“Why?”
He noticed an intravenous line in her left arm. “Sweetheart, what is that?”
“It’s dark in here. I’m scared. They make me sleep in here all the time now.”
“Think of light, Annie. Bright yellow light. Think of Tinkerbell.”
“Who?” She cocked her head and frowned. Her delightfully perplexed little voice pulled at his heartstrings. Almost immediately her face registered fear. She whipped around to stare at his living room window. “He’s coming, Mr. Miles.”
“Colton Reilly?”
“A bad man. He’s outside the door.”
She means here. Jesus, she’s warning me.
Annie turned and bolted to the left, but before her first step touched the ground her image shimmered into a silver ripple and vanished.
Miles quickly loaded six rounds into the .38 and snapped the cylinder. He thumbed the hammer as the motion sensor at the garage detected presence and light spilled across his front walkway. An instant later it blinked off with a tinkle of broken glass. Someone had shot out the thick lens with a silencer-equipped pistol.
A shadow rose and fell at the living room window. The intruder was headed to the back of the house.
