Midnight Crossing Read Online Free Page B

without talking. Josie wished the TV was on, but it wasn’t, and if she turned it on it would feel like she was silencing him. This was the part of relationships that she disliked. Always second-guessing herself, tensing up over her inability to do the right thing, or even knowing what the right thing was.
    “Look. We’re no good at this. Right?” Nick asked.
    She turned to look at him. “At what?”
    “At this. At talking about”—he shrugged—“whatever this is.”
    She sighed. “I think you’re right. We should probably quit talking before we say something that gets us into a fight.”
    He grinned. “Exactly. We’re no good at whatever this is. So let’s skip it.”
    “Skip it,” she repeated.
    “That’s what I said. You’re getting mad. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. So we skip it and go to bed. You give me a back rub. I’ll give you a foot rub. And then we go to bed happy instead of mad.”
    “You could be a marriage counselor.”
    “Call me Dr. Nick.”
    *   *   *
    Once they finally made it to bed they skipped the back and foot rubs. Nick curled around Josie’s body and they both settled into an almost instant sleep. Until Josie awoke with the same jolt she’d experienced the previous two nights. She’d intended to tell Nick, but had forgotten with her mom’s visit.
    As she lay in a tangled mess of sheets, trapped under Nick’s leg, Josie’s skin prickled and her body was suddenly covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She pulled her leg from under Nick’s and rolled over on her back to focus on the sound. Across the room the clock on the bureau read 2:13 a.m. She was certain it was the same person coming down the gravel road.
    She laid her hand on Nick’s arm, which was stretched out beside her. “Nick,” she whispered.
    She felt the instant flex of muscle in his forearm, an automatic response from too many years of working in law enforcement. “What’s the matter?” His voice was hoarse with sleep but already worried.
    “Do you hear the car coming down the road?”
    He propped himself up on an elbow, and they both lay completely still, listening through the open bedroom windows to the faraway engine.
    “I hear it,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
    “People don’t come down this road at two in the morning. It’s just Dell and me. This is the third night in a row I’ve heard it.”
    Nick rolled out of bed, stepped into his jeans, and grabbed his pistol off the nightstand in one smooth motion. Josie slipped a T-shirt and shorts on, grabbed her Beretta, and shoved her bare feet into a pair of work boots beside the door. She quietly shut the bedroom door so that Chester wouldn’t follow them, and walked behind Nick down the hallway. In the living room she placed her hand on his back.
    “Let’s go out the back door,” she whispered.
    Nick put on his boots while she disengaged the alarm system and they stepped outside.
    The night spread before her in black and gray shapes, making depth perception difficult. From where she was standing ten feet from Nick, his form was clear, but the features of his face were not. Without a word she took off walking around one side of the house and Nick took the other. She held her Beretta at the ready position, her right hand gripping the gun, her trigger finger extended along the side, and her left hand held underneath to support.
    She hugged the side of her house, controlling her breathing as she saw the headlights appear around the curve of Schenck Road. The headlights went off.
    Josie and Nick both reached the front of the house at the same time and crouched behind his black SUV, an armored vehicle necessary for his job. She wanted to run to the side of the road to catch the make and model of the car, but the driver was driving slow enough to signify he was looking for something or someone and might have night vision gear.
    “We need to stay behind the SUV. There’s nothing for cover out in the front yard,” she