Midnight Fear by Leslie Tentler Read Free Book Online

continued searching. His children were being raised mostly by nannies now, and his in-laws were seeking custody. Of their children. They were the only things he had left of her. His hand closed more tightly around the perspiring tumbler he held, half-full of gin and tonic, mostly gin.
    She had suffered a brutal death. Afraid. Cold. He realized some time ago that he’d died right along with her in that dilapidated building. The bastard had destroyed them both. Sometimes he believed his pain and anger were the only things tethering him to this world.
    Leaving the tumbler on the dresser, he reached onto the shelf, his hands touching the solid presence that represented what his life used to be. For a moment he considered a walk through memory lane, but he didn’t take the box down. He didn’t want to open it. Not yet. The cardboard felt like a coffin to him. The flat, static photos of her were dead. He wanted warm skin against his body, the feel of silken hair slipping through his fingers. When he closed his eyes he could almost hear the husky sound of her laugh. What he wanted was answers.
    He wanted to keep looking for her.

6
    C aitlyn drove on the two-lane rural highway toward her home. The night out with Sophie and Rob had been relaxing, although she’d stayed longer than intended. After dinner at a local bistro, they had gone to an outdoor symphony concert that was part of the Middleburg Fall Arts Festival. The digital clock on the BMW’s dashboard indicated it was already after 9:00 p.m. Overhead, an obsidian blackness had set in that not even the occasional streetlight could penetrate. Growing up in the District, Caitlyn hadn’t realized how dark nighttime could be without the endless cityscape surrounding her.
    At the stacked-stone and wood sign announcing the Rambling Rose stables, she took a left onto the long, private road that led to her house. The car’s headlights illuminated tall oaks and maples, their branches moving in the breeze that had picked up. Fall leaves rustled in the air and crunched under her tires.
    Something on the road suddenly darted in front of her, two large shapes in the darkness. Caitlyn gaspedand slammed on her brakes. The tires slipped on the canvas of leaves, causing the car to fishtail slightly before coming to a screeching stop. Two white-tailed deer froze in her beams before leaping gracefully back into the woods.
    Breathe, Caitlyn, she chided herself as the deer vanished. She accelerated and continued along the drive, albeit more slowly. But the ease she’d felt during the evening ebbed away. If she had lost control of the car, skidded into the forest and crashed into a tree, would anyone even notice she was missing?
    She had come to the countryside seeking privacy and refuge from her family’s very public drama, but there were times the isolation out here was unnerving.
    I’m still a young woman, thirty-three, and living alone in an old farmhouse like a spinster. Instead of cats, I have horses, Caitlyn thought glumly. At the concert, as she sat on the wool blanket Sophie had brought and sipped Chardonnay, a man had come by and asked her to dance. He had been good-looking enough, she supposed, but Caitlyn politely refused. Later, Sophie had scolded her and Rob insisted she dance with him, if only to bring her out of her shell. She’d let him lead her into the swaying crowd as Sophie watched. She’d felt out of place, like a third wheel.
    Would she always punish herself for Joshua’s crimes, closing herself off from others and retreating from any opportunity to have a normal life? Lost in thought, Caitlyn gripped the steering wheel harder as she exited the wood-lined drive and the farmhouse came into view.
    The main floor of the house, with its wide, wraparound porch and black-painted shutters, was dark. But on the second floor, a pale light emanated from her bedroom. Caitlyn slowed the car. She had turned the light off after getting ready to go out that evening. She was