Read The Midnight House for Free Online

gun. Fisher felt the touch of the silencer against his temple. He turned his head, tried to pull it away, but the pistol followed him.
    He knew now he would die. He wasn’t even afraid, too far gone for that. In the fading twilight of his consciousness, he understood he was being mocked. The shooter wanted him to know he was dying as helplessly as a lobster boiling in a too-small pot. Even so, Fisher wished he could understand why death had found him this way, wished someone would tell him. And so he opened his mouth and asked, or tried to ask, or imagined asking—
    The third shot tore open his skull and scattered his brains over the Lexus’s smooth leather. The shooter looked down, making sure that Fisher was dead. Unscrewed the silencer and tucked away the pistol. Looked up and down the empty street. Noticed the phone on the passenger seat and, the only unplanned moment in the whole operation, reached across Fisher’s body and grabbed it. Switched it off so it couldn’t be traced. Closed the door of the Lexus and smoothly walked away, to the mountain bike propped against a utility pole a half block down. Start to finish, including all three phone calls, the murder took barely a minute.
     
     
    AT 7 : 15 PRECISELY, Rajiv Jyoti walked out of his front gate, tapping away on his iPhone. He reached for the door. Then he looked at Fisher. And screamed and dropped his phone and trotted shakily around the Lexus. He opened the door carefully, even in his distress wanting to be sure that none of Fisher’s blood wound up on his six-hundred-dollar hand-tailored pants.
    Jyoti wasn’t a doctor, but he could see that Fisher was beyond help. He looked at the body and up and down the empty street, wondering why no one had heard the shots, wondering if whoever had killed Fisher would be coming back for him, wondering if he had been the real target. The seconds stretched on and still Jyoti stood motionless, until the drip of blood on the pavement shocked him to life. He ran back into his front yard, slammed the gate shut, and ran into the house.
    Then, finally, he dialed 911.

2
    MOUNT ADAMS, NEW HAMPSHIRE
    T he trail wasn’t much, faded white chevrons every hundred yards, their paint hardly visible in the cloud-beaten light. They beckoned John Wells up the mountain half heartedly, with New England reserve. Come or don’t, it’s all the same to us, they said. Their lack of enthusiasm didn’t bother Wells. He stalked upward, eating ground with long strides, ignoring the mud sucking at his heels. A clot of clouds covered the sky, and a moist wind blew from the north, promising rain or even snow.
    Wells hadn’t dressed for snow. He had deliberately left himself exposed. He wore jeans, Doc Martens, a T-shirt, a light wool sweater. Wool socks were his only concession to the weather. He didn’t mind being cold. In fact, he wanted to be cold. But he didn’t want to lose a toe to frostbite.
    Wells wasn’t properly equipped, either. He was thinking about camping overnight, but he hadn’t brought a sleeping bag or tent, only a cotton sleep sack and a foil blanket. No stove, only a bag of dried fruit and PowerBars. No GPS, only a torn map, a compass, and a pen-light. His gear fit easily into his blue daypack.
    And no gun. Not a sleek black Beretta, not an old pearl-handled Smith & Wesson, not an M-16 or a 12-gauge. No knife, either. No weapons of any kind. His Glock and Makarov were tucked away in a lockbox at his cabin. Since coming to New Hampshire six months before, he’d touched them only twice, to clean them.
    For twenty years, Wells had surrounded himself with guns. He’d put them to use in Afghanistan and Chechnya and China and Russia, Atlanta and New York and Washington. Now he was trying to imagine life as a civilian.
    But he had to admit that more and more he found himself missing the feel of the pistols in his hands, their heft and balance, especially his favorite, the Makarov, an undeniably lousy gun but one that had seen