Midnight Rain Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Midnight Rain

  Kate Aeon

  Contents

  Praise for Midnight Rain

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  2017 Reprint Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Books by Kate Aeon

  Praise for Midnight Rain

  “Chilling.” — Lisa Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Morning After

  “Midnight Rain is an engrossing read. It’s every woman’s dream — and every woman’s nightmare.” — Linda Howard, New York Times bestselling author of Kiss Me While I Sleep

  “Haunting suspense fills the pages of Midnight Rain... a spine-tingling and riveting reading experience. The characters are deeply detailed, and the reader is drawn into the plot, the emotions, and the intensity of the story from the first page. The pace is fast, the story enthralling, and the conclusion explosive! For a tale that will keep you reading late into the night, I highly recommend Midnight Rain, and award it [a] Perfect 10. A novel of intense emotion, chilling suspense, and ghostly hauntings, Midnight Rain is a guaranteed winner.” — Romance Reviews Today

  “Wonderfully moody and atmospheric... Her writing is strong and her characters are compelling. This is an emotional and suspenseful read.” — AllAboutRomance

  “Midnight Rain is dynamic romantic suspense.” — Midwest Book Review

  “This thriller has just about everything you could ask for… suspense, intrigue, a broad brush stroke of the paranormal, and topped off with a great romance that makes it sizzle. To put it bluntly, this was one heck of an absolutely riveting suspense/paranormal romance — totally awesome! Such an adrenaline rush, I could have jumped out of my skin. Bottom Line —This is a superb, fascinating ride of a suspense filled romantic thriller. Do yourselves a big favor and find this book for a great read by an author who I predict has a fabulous future in front of her.” — SuspenseRomance Writers

  “[She] explodes onto the suspense scene with a book so chilling and a voice so original that she’s sure to become a major player. Creepy and thrilling, this book is truly unforgettable.” — Romantic Times

  “Though this is her first foray into romantic suspense, [She] proves herself a master... Her story does everything right. [She] has also created one of the creepiest bad guys to come along in a good while — Michael could give Hannibal Lecter lessons. Midnight Rain is the first in what I hope will be many more thrillers from this very talented author.” — BookLoons

  Published by OneMoreWord Edge

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62456-038-5

  Midnight Rain, by Kate Aeon

  Copyright © 2004, 2017 by Holly Lisle

  Cover Design: Shayne Rutherford, Wicked Good Book Covers

  Holly’s Author Photo: © Holly Lisle

  2nd Edition Editor: Ky Moffet

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTICE

  This is a work of fiction. Resemblances to real characters, real locations, and real situations are entirely coincidental. Names, characters, places, and story conflicts are products of the author’s imagination.

  For Matthew

  Chapter One

  Phoebe Rain sat with her back to the bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room, watching the first traces of pink creeping across the Florida sky. She shuffled the tarot cards on the table in front of her and shifted on the kitchen chair. Her right knee was hurting again, but she didn’t dare get up to stretch. Her call volume had been steady all night — she knew that as soon as she moved away from the table the phone would ring. Out west, where it was still dark and the insomniacs were pacing the floor, people were still looking for psychic comfort to get them through the night.

  She smiled sadly at that. Sometimes she wished she, too, could have a little companionship, a little comfort, in the lonely hours before dawn. But she wouldn’t consider paying Psychic Sisters Network prices for it.

  So she straightened her right leg the way the physical therapist had taught her, concentrating on contracting the muscles as hard as she could, then relaxing them completely. Fire lanced out from the joint as she forced it to do what she wanted, burning down into the calf muscle and up into the thigh. She tightened the muscles again, gritting her teeth against the pain, and when it became too intense to tolerate, relaxed. One more time — then the phone rang, and she grabbed her pen, depressed the headset switch on the phone, and lowered her foot to the floor.

  “Fifty-five... minute... YES... club,” a recorded voice said as she wrote down the time: 5:57 a.m. She glanced at the flowchart again, noting the script she had to follow, and said, “Thank you for calling Psychic Sisters Network. My name is Ariel, and my extension number is 723884. May I have your name, please?”

  A nervous-sounding woman said, “Clarise.”

  Phoebe wrote down the name. “Clarise, I need your date of birth.” The woman sounded older than eighteen. The birth date she gave made her late thirty-something.


  “Okay, Clarise,” Phoebe said, scooping up the tarot cards. She shuffled the round deck and cut the cards with her left hand while she said, “I read tarot, and what I would like for you to do is focus on the question or questions that you wish to have answered. While you’re doing that, I’m going to concentrate on you and begin a general reading for you. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” that timid voice said.

  “Fine.” Phoebe put a card on the table. “The first card in the reading is the Significator, which tells us who you are right now. The card that comes up for you is the Hierophant at about one o’clock. This card says that you are under oppression in some way — that some person or some organization is telling you how you should think, how you should act, what you should believe...” Phoebe paused, then asked, “Does that sound about right?”

  “I... yes.” That soft, scared voice. “Yes. About right.”

  Phoebe put another card down. “The next card is the Three of Swords, straight up. This card refers to your Atmosphere — that is, to what’s going on with you right now — and it indicates a disagreement. It can either be an argument you’re having inside your mind, where part of you wants to do one thing and the other part wants to do something else, or it can be an actual physical argument with other people. Because it comes up in the upright position, I read this struggle as being very painful for you.”

  “Painful...” Clarise said thoughtfully. “Yes.” And then, under her breath, so that if the phone connection hadn’t been so clear Phoebe wouldn’t have heard the words at all, “You should see the bruises.”

  Phoebe’s stomach knotted.

  A picture flashed in front of her eyes then, as if she were looking at a movie screen. This call wasn’t some cheerful girl wanting to know the sex of her unborn baby or whether she ought to take that new job offer. In Phoebe’s mind Clarise became suddenly and terribly real: pale, about thirty pounds overweight, her lank brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, flyaway tendrils brushing the corners of her mouth. Hunched over her telephone, speaking in a soft voice not because it was her natural voice but because she had grown accustomed to listening for the sound of footsteps behind her. Something in the back of Phoebe’s mind said that Clarise lived in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. And that the people who knew her didn’t know about the private hell that lay behind her go-to-Publix dress and her Taurus station wagon and her brief appearances at parent-teacher conferences and the Presbyterian church on holiday Sundays.

  Clarise wanted comfort, wanted someone to talk to — and she sought it from a complete stranger at a four-dollar-a-minute psychic hotline because the only kindness that hadn’t come back to haunt her had come from strangers.

  Phoebe kept putting the cards on the table, reading their meanings by habit, while most of her attention focused on trying to come up with something genuinely useful to tell Clarise. She wanted to be able to say, “Everything in your life is going to turn out great,” but the cards were falling ugly. In the Recent Past, the Ten of Swords reversed — suggesting Clarise wanting to die rather than have what had happened to her before happen to her again, and not being able to die, even though the horrors had returned.

  Phoebe studied the cards for a moment, noticing that there were two Daughters and a Son in the layout.

  “The problem is the kids, isn’t it?” she said. “You can’t take them; he has money and power and position in your town, and... you don’t.”

  A soft gasp. “Yes.”

  “And you can’t leave them; they’re your children.”

  A sniffle. A muffled sob. “I have to do something. He’s good to them as long as he has... me... to take his anger out on...”

  But Clarise believed that if she left, he would hurt them. And if she tried to take them, he’d hurt her. They were his power over her. And he was killing her with them, with the things he held over her, killing her with her own inescapable love a little more every day.

  Phoebe gave Clarise an 800 number for a national women’s resource center and suggested that she look through her local phone directory for the addresses and phone numbers of women’s shelters. And she offered as much sympathy as she could. She kept her voice upbeat and tried to find something positive to tell Clarise, but Clarise already knew that she needed to get out of the house. She knew she needed to take her kids and run to someplace safe, but she couldn’t imagine finding a place where he couldn’t find her.

  And I am not the person to tell you that you’re wrong for being terrified, or for staying put, she thought.

  Phoebe’s knee throbbed, a painful reminder that sometimes when a woman ran, her abuser followed.

  When Clarise finally hung up, Phoebe sagged. She didn’t want to take any more calls. Not for a while, anyway.

  She picked up the other phone — her home phone, which wasn’t dedicated to the Psychic Sisters Network — and dialed the number that connected her to the system. She wanted to log off before another call came in, and if she was going to get off at all, she needed to do it fast.

  “Welcome to the Psychic Network Center,” the recorded voice on the other end said. “You must have a touch-tone phone to interact with this system. At this time, please enter your ID number.”

  She punched in 7-2-3-8-8-4 and waited.

  The system felt slow to her. Call volume might be high, or maybe a lot of other people were trying to log on or off at the same time.

  “The number you have entered is 7-2-3-8-8-4. If this is correct—”

  Phoebe punched 1, cutting a hundredth of a second off of her log-off time. Her other option would have been 2, had she entered her number incorrectly, as she sometimes did when she was really exhausted.

  Don’t ring, she told the Network phone. Don’t ring. Don’t ring. Just let me get off the system.

  “Now enter your password.”

  9-4-7-7-5-2.

  A long pause. Hurry, she thought. Come on. Hurry.

  “The number you have entered is 9-4-7-7-5-2. If this is corr—”

  She punched 1.

  “To hear the daily message, press 1 now. Otherwise— ”

  She pressed 2. The computerized voice seemed suspended in molasses, dripping out one word at a time. Another Clarise was going to call, and Phoebe would have to take the call because she was technically still on the system. She wouldn’t be able to finish her log-off, and she’d have to try again, and again. She didn’t dare refuse calls — if she didn’t answer each call by the second ring while she was logged on, she would lose her job.

  And she had to have the job.

  There was no way to cheat. Every call showed up in the computer log, as did the numbers clients called from, the length of time they stayed on the phone, and God only knew what else. Phoebe was supposed to capture addresses by requesting them and then writing them down, but she suspected that was only for legal purposes; the Network could probably have gotten home information on clients from any of a number of databases simply by backtracking the phone numbers. She figured the reason she was supposed to have the callers give her the information was that if the clients gave their addresses to her, the Network had implied consent to use them.

  “The computer shows that you are currently logged on at 1-954-9— ” and droned out her phone number.

  I know where I am, she thought. Let me log off.

  “To log on—” the final prompt started, and she slammed her finger against the 2.

  “I’m off,” she whispered and waited for the voice that would confirm this.

  Before it could, the Psychic Sisters phone rang.

  “You are now logged off the system, and will not be receiving any further calls until you log on again,” the computer voice said. “If this is correct—”

  She pressed 1 and hung up, and the Network phone rang a second time. “Shit,” she whispered. She depressed the head-set switch on the Network phone with a sense of resignation. “Fifty-five... minute... YES... club,” the voice said.

  She put the sm
ile back on her face. It would be the last call, anyway. No more would come through. She said, “Thank you for calling the Psychic Sisters Network. My name is Ariel, and my extension number is 723884. May I have your name, please?”

  She marked in the time the call started, then waited. “Hello? Are you still there?”

  She heard a chuckle. “I thought you were psychic, Phoebe.”

  That voice. It couldn’t be.

  “I found you again,” he said. “I found you, sweetheart. You would not believe how far I’ve had to come... but I found you, just as I promised I would. And now you’re going to come back to me. Walking or crawling — you’re going to come back.”

  She cut the call off and sat staring at the phone.

  It couldn’t be him. There was no way. None. But if it was him—

  It can’t be him.

  Her first impulse, even all these years later, was to call home. To beg her father to come get her.

  Her dad would have been there as fast as humanly possible. He would have stood between her and the nightmare. But her father, her mother, her younger sister, Nicki — a late-night drive through a wild storm, wet leaves on a winding Ohio back road, and bad brakes in an old car had taken the three of them away from her forever. Their passing had marked the beginning of Phoebe’s hell.