Midnight Fire Read Online Free

thought was disturbing. It was disturbing for anybody, but for Jack Delvaux...he’d been destined by DNA to lead a long, happy, golden life. Isabel too, and yet look at her. She’d been in a coma, had lost her entire family, had quit her food blog. Her life shattered.
    Isabel. Isabel had been so nice to her that summer. Then they’d lost touch, of course, as people do. But if Isabel, who’d disappeared from view, thought her brother was dead, and he was alive...
    Summer had to tell her. It was a moral obligation, wasn’t it? Except how could she do that unless she were certain? It would be cruel beyond words to tell Isabel that her brother was still alive unless Summer were absolutely certain.
    And just because a man made her tingle wasn’t exactly proof of life, was it?
    She dragged the groceries out from the back of her Prius. It had been a long sad, startling day. A nice meal at the end of it would put her in a better mood. After eating, she’d tackle the Jack problem, though it was going to be hard to find one homeless man among so many others.
    Maybe check video footage at some shelters, to start. Since the Massacre ten new ones had opened for the masses of men and women who had suddenly lost everything in the economic shock. So...shelters. And then?
    The security at her door was, as always, reassuring but balky. Keypad and deadbolt, which always meant putting on the floor whatever she had in her hands. What an English friend had called “belt and braces.” It did make her feel safe, though.
    Finally, she was through the door and in the calm, fragrant quiet of her apartment. Her refuge. She loved coming home to her pretty apartment, where everything was orderly and clean and sweet-smelling, so unlike the kind of places her parents had lived in. They hadn’t cared that they lived in squalor. Why not? It was a question she still couldn’t answer.
    But she wasn’t her parents. In no way was she her parents.
    Shaking her head, she put the groceries on the kitchen counter, intending to cook and eat because she knew she’d be awake until morning doing research and would need her strength.
    She moved into the living room to switch on a few lights and froze.
    A man. A very big man was standing there, unmoving.
    Oh God!
A nightmare! Somehow someone had gotten past her layers of security. That took knowledge and focus and that meant nothing good.
    She kept a loaded gun in a small safe on the opposite wall. The man was standing between her and the safe, so the gun could have been on the dark side of the moon for all the good it did her.
    He was huge, shoulders a yard wide in outline, head shaved, enormous hands loose at his sides. With the bookcase lights at his back, his face was in shadow. All she could see were hard planes. She felt, more than saw, the intensity of his gaze. It was like being in a dark beam of light.
    She’d taken self-defense courses and could hold her own against a normal-sized man but this guy was not only huge but built. Those enormous shoulders tapered down to a lean waist, the neck muscles strong even in shadow.
    Summer’s heart hammered as she ran through the options open to her. It went fast because she had none.
    The gun was behind him. She had plenty of sharp knives but they were in a butcher block at least ten steps behind her. He could cut her off in a second if she made a dash for the kitchen door. And foolishly, foolishly, her cell wasn’t in her pocket as it usually was. It was in her purse, on the kitchen counter, out of reach.
    About the only thing she could do was scream, even knowing that one of the selling points of the condo was noise insulation. Her throat was closed up and she could barely breathe, like those nightmares where you couldn’t scream, couldn’t run.
    She took in a deep breath and it froze in her throat.
    “Summer,” the man said in an unusually deep voice.
    Her hand went to her throat where it felt as if someone had grabbed her, was throttling her. She