Midnight Fear by Leslie Tentler Read Free Book Online Page A

certain of it.
    The fine hairs on the nape of her neck rose as a shadow passed behind the room’s closed curtains.
    For several seconds, she stared up at the window, unsure of what she had just seen. The deer had already spooked her—was it only her overactive imagination? Still, the image of Aggie’s bloated corpse filled her mind.
    Ed Malcolm thinks it was a cult….
    Caitlyn turned off her headlights and backed the car slowly away from the house, until it was hidden in the dense shadow of trees.
    She made an instinctive decision. Her fingers clumsy with nerves, she opened her purse, searching for her cell phone and the piece of paper on which Reid Novak had written his number.
     
    “Are you all right?”
    Reid looked at his sister, Megan, who sat across from him at the kitchen table in her home in the D.C. suburb of Silver Spring. Two years his junior, her dark hair and slate-gray eyes mirrored his own.
    “I can always tell when you have something on your mind,” she added, tapping a spot on her forehead. “You get this line right…here.”
    “I’m fine. Just a little preoccupied,” he admitted. “There’s a case—”
    “Honestly, Reid. You’re not even back to work yet. Are you?”
    He stared at the remnants of the apple cobbler on the plate in front of him, then took a sip from the coffee mug he held cradled between his palms. Over the past six months, he and his sister had grown even closer as she helped him to recover from his surgery. For the first twelve weeks, he hadn’t even been allowed to drive. Reid didn’t know what he would have done without her.
    “Oh, God. You are back to work—”
    “I’ve been called in as a consult, that’s all,” he said, downplaying things with a small shrug. “The crime scene had similarities to an investigation I handled a couple of years ago.”
    “It’s too soon.”
    “It’s not. I’d be going back in another few weeks officially, anyway.”
    “Couldn’t stay away any longer, could you?” Reid’s brother-in-law, Cooper, quipped as he passed through the kitchen, grabbing a bag of potato chips on his way to the den. He grinned at his wife. “Meg, you owe me fifty bucks.”
    “Shut up, Cooper.”
    Reid raised his eyebrows. “You had a bet on me?”
    “He was sure you wouldn’t make it all the way through your leave. Cooper’s been saying as soon as you got half a chance, you’d be back on the job.” Megan gave him a pointed stare. “I guess he was right.”
    “Cooper just thinks everyone loves their job as much as he does.”
    “It’s football. What’s not to love?” he called from the comfort of his leather recliner in the den. A former player at the University of Virginia, Cooper now headed up the football program for one of the suburb’s largest high schools. “Hey, are we going to watch the game or not? Halftime’s almost over.”
    “Let me know when it’s back on—”
    “Reid,” Megan said quietly as he stood from the table to take his plate and mug to the sink. “You are okay, right?”
    “Are you going to keep asking me that?”
    “It’s just that your illness…it scared all of us. Especially Dad. And you’ve been so quiet tonight.”
    Reid paused as his two nieces, Maddie and Isabelle, ages nine and seven, strolled into the kitchen wearing their pajamas and carrying a board game.
    “Don’t worry about me,” he assured her. “And as long as we’re on the subject of Dad, where is he? Missing one of your family nights doesn’t fit his M.O.”
    “He had a retired police officers’ meeting.”
    “So he’s drinking beer in a pub somewhere, arguing about politics and playing pool?”
    “You got it.” Megan laughed softly, then her eyes grew serious again. “I guess I’ve just gotten used to having you around without the crazy schedule and a gun attached to your hip. You know what it was like with Dad when we were young. I always worried he might get hurt on the job and not make it back to us.”
    “But he