Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh Read Free Book Online Page A

job.
    Hunter worked methodically. Her first target was a low stone wall overgrown with vines and brambles. Squatting, crawling, sometimes snaking along on her belly, Hunter worked the crevices, especially down low. She checked for loose stones, and when she found one she pulled it out, checked the crevice, then replaced the stone. After finishing the wall she went to work on what the map identified as the second schoolhouse, starting at one corner of the stone foundation.
    Sully watched a little longer, then joined her, moving in the opposite direction around the low stone foundation.
    He was grateful it was the middle of winter, otherwise they’d be taking their lives into their hands jamming their fingers into crevices. Timber rattlers and copperheads would be all over these woods in the summer.
    “Hey!” Hunter called. She held up an Army Green (resistance to the common cold, rarity one) for Sully to see before stashing it in her backpack. “At least now we know this place hasn’t been picked over by a pro.” Sully’s cut of the sixty dollars they’d probably get for it would cover gas.
    After a couple of hours of hunting, Sully’s toes were numb. He and Hunter went from headstone to headstone in the cemetery, running their fingers along the base, seeking chipmunk holes. Some of the headstones were from the late 1700s. None were hiding spheres.
    Hunter jotted notations on the map, plumes of condensation wafting from her mouth. “Let’s take a look at this mine.” She spun, headed into the woods to the left. She was always looking around, scanning the ground by her feet, the low branches of trees. Always hunting.
    Sully had pictured the mine as a cave that ran horizontally in the side of a hill, but it was nothing but a hole going straight into the ground, roped off so no one would accidentally stumble into it.
    Hunter pulled a coiled length of blue and black cord out of her pack and tied one end to a nearby tree.
    “You’re going down there?” Sully asked, peering into the hole.
    Hunter paused, shot him a questioning look. “Don’t worry, Yonkers. Just me. You stay up here in case someone needs to run for help.”
    When Sully had told her he’d grown up in Yonkers, she’d nodded, saying she knew he wasn’t a city boy.
    “Whatever you say, Bronx,” he shot back.
    Hunter turned. “That’s
the
Bronx. It’s the only place important enough that they had to put a
the
in front of it. You don’t say
the
Manhattan, or
the
California, only
the
Bronx.”
    Sully cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I have to go to
the
bathroom and use
the
toilet.”
    “You ought to get into stand-up comedy.” With that, Hunter lowered herself hand over hand, quickly disappearing into the mine. He’d expected her to pull out more equipment—clamps and a harness, maybe—but the cord was it.
    Grasping the cord with one hand, Sully watched it rub against the stone, shifting back and forth as Hunter descended.
    Ten minutes later, she reappeared, pulling herself out of the hole with ease.
    “You’re like Spider-Man,” Sully said.
    Hunter laughed as she untied the rope from the tree. “I do a decent amount of climbing in the city.”
    Sully knew not to ask where in the city she’d need to climb. Hunter had made it clear information related to hunting was strictly on a need-to-know basis.
    Consulting the map, Hunter pointed downhill. “The other schoolhouse is that way.” They were running out of places to look. Sully was disappointed they had only found the one common, but relieved that before too long they’d be in his heated car.
    As they headed down the hill, he stifled a yawn.
    “You look tired,” Hunter said.
    “I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Some nights it takes me a couple of hours to fall asleep, then I wake up at three or four and the thoughts start spinning and that’s it, I can’t get back to sleep.”
    Her eyes softened, the mischievous twinkle gone. “Yeah. I know about that.”
    They cleared a