The Midnight Effect Read online

  A wounded cop. A frightened woman. A desperate race to save a child in danger…

  In a single phone call, Lily Brent’s entire life—past and future—becomes foggy with confusion and danger. Her estranged sister is dead, and the body is lacking one definitive mark: a surgery scar from the kidney Lily thought she’d donated to her sister long ago.

  There’s more than a mystery on her hands. There’s a niece she never knew she had, and a madman on her trail who’s hell-bent on getting the child back.

  When a beautiful woman crashes her car into his remote mountain gas station, followed closely by a man with a silencer-equipped pistol, three years of inactive duty fall away as Miles Goodwin springs into action. He saves Lily and her golden child, but nothing can save him from the painful reminder of the family he lost. Retreating to his emotional coma, however, isn’t an option; they’re far from safe.

  There’s something strange about a six-year-old girl who’s never eaten a hamburger or heard of Tinkerbell—and who seems to be the source of psychic phenomena so powerful, someone’s willing to kill to get her back.

  Warning: Contains heart-pounding suspense, a charm-your-socks-off kid, and a compelling romance that may inspire you to combine your DNA with someone you love!

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  The Midnight Effect

  Copyright © 2009 by Pamela Fryer

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-656-3

  Edited by Heidi Moore

  Cover by Natalie Winters

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2009

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  The Midnight Effect

  Pamela Fryer

  Dedication

  To a real hero who cooks and cleans and does his own laundry so I have time to write. These are the very least of the reasons I love you so much. And of course to my writer friends in the San Francisco Area RWA; it is because of your support that I made it this far. Jennifer, you especially.

  Chapter One

  Miles Goodwin tipped his chair back as he took a slug from his beer. Across the tree line the remainder of the day was a bloody smear on the horizon. The setting sun drifted away mockingly. Another day and you’re still here because you don’t have the courage to put your revolver in your mouth.

  He smacked at a mosquito on his neck. The bugs were relentless at dusk, but this was Miles’ favorite time of day. Swallowing darkness was moments away, when he wouldn’t recognize each agonizing minute in the passage of time. Night was limbo in the personal hell his life had become.

  It was a chore to drag himself out of bed every morning, painful to endure every endless minute. The mark of each sunset brought him one day closer to the end he longed for. Closer to the end he didn’t have the courage to seek on his own. Suicide was a sin, and if there was a sweet hereafter, he wouldn’t join Sara and Michelle there if he took his own life.

  The roar of an engine pulled his attention to the dark tunnel of Northern pine where the highway wound out of sight. The front legs of his chair fell onto the porch with a thunk. He rarely saw a customer at his little gas station after six. By now most of the tourists were already in town at the expensive restaurants, sipping their second martinis.

  A classic Mercedes two-seater raced around the bend and went into a drift on squealing tires.

  The car fishtailed before regaining traction. Clouds of white smoke poured from the exhaust as though it had blown a head gasket. As it barreled down the highway at breakneck speed, chunks of rubber flapped at the right rear wheel. The car was out of control, but the driver wasn’t trying to stop.

  Sparks flew from the rim as the last shreds of the tire disintegrated. The car careened down the embankment on the side of the highway and launched itself off the incline, headed directly for his small station.

  “Jesus!” Miles leapt to his feet and dove off the porch, narrowly missing the rusted edge of a twisted bumper as he hit the ground. He scrambled to his feet and ran, still clutching his foaming beer bottle, as the car crashed into the pumps.

  A dull whuff pressed on his eardrums as the pumps exploded. For the space of a heartbeat the dusky forest was as bright as high noon.

  Miles hit the emergency shut-off lever at the side of the garage and the tanks sealed off, but the car was already on fire. There were no sprinklers at the historic station’s stand-alone island.

  Nobody could have lived through an explosion like that. At that horrific moment, he knew there was at least one dead body at Goodwin’s Garage.

  The irony hit him—there could have been two. What had made him run? He’d been longing for death for three years, aching for it more with each day that passed. Yet at the first sign of danger he’d been on his feet, preserving his sorry ass. It had been instinct as much as police training.

  Dammit to hell.

  Momentum had taken the car past the worst of the flames. The windshield was a shattered milky spider web, but still held.

  Conditioned by police training, he ran toward the car without thinking, more concerned for the driver than for himself.

  Movement shifted behind the white-green kaleidoscope of safety glass. A hand passed over the steering wheel, and Miles knew it was a woman in the car.

  She’s alive—there must be a God in Heaven.

  The driver’s door opened as flames burst across the hood. She staggered out and fell to her knees.

  A second explosion rocked the quiet mountainside. Still running, Miles threw up his arm to block the intense heat.

  His heart caught in his throat as he rounded the coupe’s door and saw she had a little girl clutched under her arm.

  The woman braced herself on the ground with her other hand as she tried to get away from the burning car. He grabbed her by the forearm and hauled her to her feet. She wobbled unsteadily as he pulled her arm over his shoulder. The child scrambled past him, headed for the backside of his garage.

  A confusing mixture of past and present rocked him like a punch to the gut. She wasn’t his beloved daughter, but the sight of her blond hair tossing as she ran ahead of him sent coherence spinning away.

  The woman moaned and her weight sagged on him, bringing him back to the here and now.

  “Help…”

  He dragged her away from the car. “Jesus, lady, what the hell? Are you trying to get killed?”

  He was practically carrying her by the time they arrived at the corner of the building where the little girl waited, shielded from the scorching heat.

  “Aunt Lily!” She threw her arms around her aunt’s waist.

  The woman knelt and gripped the child by her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, sniffing.

  “I’m so sorry.” She pulled the child close. “It’s okay, Annie. We’re going to be okay.”

  “Not if you keep driving like that,” Miles growled. “You just blew up my gas station.”

  The woman glanced at him. The horror in her eyes made him flinch. A trickle of blood ran down the woman’s temple and spattered her blouse.
<
br />   “You’re hurt,” Annie said. Her voice trembled with the precursor to tears. She reached out and touched the woman’s face with tiny, hesitant fingertips. The gesture caused his shriveled heart to jerk.

  Without removing those wide, brown eyes from his, Lily took her niece’s hand and stood. Only then did she glance past him.

  “Is that your truck?”

  His mouth fell open. “Lady, you need an ambulance.”

  Would the phone still work, or had the destruction of his station knocked out power and phone lines? Services were finicky enough up here without being rocked by a two-megaton blast.

  “He’s coming,” Annie whimpered.

  The horror in Lily’s eyes deepened. She glanced at the child and started past him.

  “I need your vehicle.”

  Before he could have guessed this night would get any weirder, she snatched up a rusted sliver of metal and whirled around, pointing it at him.

  “Give me the keys.”

  She’s robbing me with an old antenna? “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Aunt Lily,” Annie persisted with greater urgency.

  Slivers of wood exploded from the corner of the building above his ear. Miles heard the muffled chirp over the roar of the fire. He knew what it was even before a second shot whizzed past his head. The sound sent him careening back to his eight years with the Seattle PD.

  Silencer.

  Chapter Two

  Lily gasped as wood chips sprayed over her. In the shadows of the darkening forest, she saw Colton’s assassin advancing on the burning station. He’d left his SUV on the side of the highway, driver’s door standing open.

  “Mister, we need to get out of here now.”

  The gas station attendant was already moving, already sifting through the ring of keys clipped to his belt. With the other hand, he seized her forearm and dragged her along.

  Her legs were wobbly and her body wouldn’t respond to the commands her brain was sending. None of this seemed real. It felt more like a bad movie on a television with only one channel.

  She struggled against him, trying to shield Annie while somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it wasn’t Annie that Colton’s assassin was trying to kill.

  The station attendant opened the driver’s door, scooped Annie up and tossed her inside. Lily’s foot slipped on the tall truck’s chrome stirrup. He caught her around the waist, shoved her in with one hand on her rear and leapt in behind her.

  He slotted and turned the key. The engine came to life with a throaty roar.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry, she wanted to yell, but didn’t have the breath to manage the words.

  A shot shattered the driver’s window and punched a hole in the windshield as it exited. Annie screamed. Lily looked out the rear window to see the shooter walking casually toward them, eerily silhouetted by the licking orange inferno behind him.

  Their rescuer dumped the clutch and wrenched the wheel, rocketing the truck into a spin and spraying a wave of gravel over their attacker. While fumbling with the seatbelt, she glanced out again to see Colton’s assassin recoil from the rocks. The muzzle of his gun flashed white as he squeezed off a wild shot.

  “Hold on,” the man said, almost too calmly.

  Lily wrapped her arms around her niece. The truck had a customized interior with two deep bucket seats. No safe place for Annie to sit.

  The man launched them over the plateau behind the station and down toward a valley of black pine. The radio blared, churning out rock ’n roll. He shut it off.

  “All right lady, who wants you dead?”

  Lily gripped the passenger handle as he tore through a fallen log like it was tissue paper. “Shouldn’t you turn on the lights?”

  All she needed was for him to slam into a tree. Colton’s henchman had been driving a luxury SUV. It wasn’t equipped for this kind of hard four-wheeling, but she wouldn’t put it past him to try and follow.

  “I know where I’m going.”

  This isn’t happening.

  She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry.” Only after she’d said it did she realize how ridiculous her apology sounded. Her brain was functioning on overload and she almost didn’t believe they had escaped.

  We haven’t. Colton Reilly will find us. It’s only a matter of time.

  Annie wriggled in her lap. “Where are we going, Aunt Lily?”

  “To the police station,” the man answered for her.

  “No!” Lily jerked upright. “Look, I’ll pay for the damage, but you can’t take us to the police. We haven’t committed a crime. She won’t be safe there.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, someone is shooting at you.” He growled the words with sarcasm, as if she were too stupid to realize it. “You need help.”

  “Yeah, I do. But I’m not going to get it from some two-bit hillbilly cop.”

  “You’re looking at a two-bit hillbilly cop, lady.”

  Lily’s heart gave a painful kick. How much worse could her luck get?

  “I’m not active,” he clarified almost reluctantly. “I’m on leave from Seattle PD.”

  He righted the wheel as the truck lurched over a ravine. She didn’t know how he could navigate through this darkness. She screamed as a pine bough struck the windshield in front of her face.

  He turned the truck onto a fire road and Lily drew a relieved breath as the ride became smoother.

  The man was pissed off, and rightfully so. She’d destroyed his garage and nearly killed him. But there had to be a way to appeal to him. He was good looking enough. Maybe she could seduce him into letting her go?

  Right. She was a computer nerd, not a seductress. Besides, he was a cop. He’d seen and heard it all.

  “I’m really sorry about your station. I didn’t mean to hit it, but he’d shot my tire out and I lost control.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Please, don’t take us to the police station. It’s the first place he’ll look. We need to go someplace he can’t track us.”

  He tossed a wary glance her way. Was her voice soft enough, her eyes pleading enough? Try harder, Lily. Annie’s safety and your very life depend on it.

  If he took them to the police station, it was all over. Colton Reilly would waltz in with his money and his lawyers, and she would be escorted away in handcuffs.

  “Please. I’ll pay you twice what your station was worth.”

  “I don’t give a crap about that dump. I have insurance.”

  She was making a mess of this like she made a mess of everything. She smoothed Annie’s silken blond hair. Her niece looked up at her with terrified eyes, rendering Lily mute.

  I’m sorry, Annie. I don’t know how to be a mommy. I don’t know how to keep you safe.

  “I’ll make you a deal.” He blasted an angry sigh, as though on the brink of changing his mind. “You tell me who that was, and I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  Hope blossomed in her chest. But could she trust him?

  He carefully angled the truck around a sharp bend in the dirt road. He looked at her when she remained silent.

  “He works for Annie’s father.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Shit.”

  “Her father is Colton Reilly.”

  The man frowned. “Colton Reilly, the loony scientist from Intelli something?”

  “IntelliGenysis,” she confirmed, even though scientist was the wrong way to describe him. From what Lily had learned in the last few days, Colton Reilly was more of a cultist whose operation read like a John Grisham novel. In recent months, mysteriously disappearing personnel and questionable experiments within the sealed-up research facility had caught the attention of the FBI.

  She hoped the ex-cop had heard the same things.

  “Mister, please,” Annie whimpered.

  His gaze flicked over and fell on Annie. He clenched his jaw and his Adam’s apple rose and fell.

  “Ah, Christ.”

  Miles angled the truck around the backside of the cabin
. As soon as he turned the engine off, Annie started shrieking.

  “Aunt Lily, wake up! Aunt Lily, please!”

  The woman sagged against the door, eyes closed. The blood dripping down her temple had soaked the shoulder of her blouse.

  Miles jumped out and ran to the passenger door. He caught Lily as she slumped toward him. He reached over and released the seatbelt, and she fell into his arms.

  Emotions stabbed him like lightning strikes. He hadn’t touched another woman since Sara’s death. Hadn’t even stood close enough to touch one.

  Annie jumped out behind her, apparently none the worse for wear. Thank God.

  He cradled Lily against his chest, too aware of the softness of her body and the light scent of flowers coming from her hair. The danger had left a wild feeling in his gut, but being so close to this woman was what brought on the nausea.

  Dammit, I don’t need this.

  Touching her brought back memories he’d rather have left dead. It was absurd. Lily meant nothing to him and there was no reason he couldn’t carry her to safety, but he’d wound himself into his numb cocoon so tightly it hurt to come out.

  He hefted her up and fumbled for the key to the cabin with one hand.

  “Can you unlock the door, sweetie?”

  Annie took the key he’d singled out and ran ahead to the door. Her little Sesame Street sneakers made hollow thumps on the porch steps.

  She pushed the door open but didn’t go inside. “It’s dark. I don’t like the dark.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll put on a light.” He angled past her and eased Lily onto the couch.

  The woman turned her head and her eyes fluttered. “Mmm. Cassie.”

  Miles hit the light switch by the door. The bulb in the lamp flashed and burned out. Annie gave a fearful squeak. He crossed to the kitchen and flipped on the work light over the stove. Dingy yellow light pooled in the tiny kitchen and strayed into the cabin’s family room. Only then did Annie step through the doorway. Miles moved around her to close the door, constantly watched by her wide eyes.