Read Burning Midnight for Free Online

“Nothing like the Forest Green this time, but I take what I can find.” On the rarity chart it was a two, but scarce, as twos went. Sully could get about a hundred seventy-five for it.
    Samantha slipped away, saying she’d let them get down to business.
    “I’ll skip the part where we haggle, if that’s okay with you,” Sully said.
    “That’s fine with me. I’m all about minimizing the bullshit in my life.”
    “One twenty?”
    She pointed at him. “You read my mind.”
    Sully dropped a hundred-dollar bill onto the table, added a twenty from his wallet. “Is this typical for you, finding two marbles in a couple of weeks?”
    “I average two or three a month. Course, three years ago, I was averaging five.”
    Sully nodded. “They’re really drying up.”
    Hunter swept the bills off the table. It was hard to believe she was seventeen. There was an awkwardness in kids their age, as if they wanted to look and act like adults but couldn’t quite pull it off. That awkwardness was completely absent in Hunter.
    “They’re drying up faster in the city,” Hunter said. “More people in less space.”
    “You live in the city?”
    Hunter nodded. “The Bronx. Webster Avenue.” That was a rough neighborhood, a twenty-minute train ride from the flea market, plus a hike from the station to Webster Avenue. “I wish I could hunt past the suburbs. Much less competition out there.”
    Sully shrugged. “Why don’t you?”
    She waved her hand. “It costs thirty-five dollars to take the train there and back. I can’t clear enough to make that work.”
    Wheels began to turn in Sully’s head. This girl clearly knew how to find spheres. “I could give you a ride out once in a while.”
    Hunter gave him a big smile. “It’s good of you to offer, but what are you going to do out in Stony Point or wherever while I’m off hunting for ten hours?”
    Sully shrugged. “I could go with you. I’ve always wanted to do some hunting.”
    Laughing, Hunter folded her arms. “You’ve always wanted to do some hunting? You mean, besides the time you found the Cherry Red?”
    Sully felt that old familiar sting. He never knew if he was going to feel proud or embarrassed when the Cherry Red came up. “That was a fluke. I was hunting carp when I found it.”
    “Carp.”
    “You know, big fish that taste bad?”
    “Yeah, I know what carp are.” Hunter studied him, her gaze making him uncomfortable, like he was on a job interview. “I guess we could try it, see how it goes.” She raised a finger. “But I get sixty percent of whatever we find, and you pay for gas out of your end.”
    Sully raised his eyebrows. “How do you figure?”
    Hunter unzipped a side pocket on her pack, pulled out a spiral-bound notebook. She turned it toward Sully, riffled through a few dozen pages. Lists, crude maps, and blocks of neat writing flew by.
    “I’ve been doing this for five years, recording the details of every find, watching the news for details about big scores. You get the benefit of all that experience.” Hunter gave him a subtle one-shouldered shrug. “I should be charging you instead of giving you a cut.”
    Sully thought of the Forest Green, the sphere she’d brought today. If she was right about having better luck in the suburbs, it could be lucrative, and he sure needed cash. The notebook was nothing compared with the database Alex Holliday had compiled—he claimed to have information on every one of the millions of spheres his hunters had discovered over the past nine years. But no one outside his organization had access to that information, so Hunter’s notebook was about as good as it got for amateurs.
    Sully stuck out his hand. “Okay. Sixty-forty.” Something about this girl told him she was the type who could make a big hit, given the chance. She was…dynamic. That was the best way he could describe it. The direct, no-bullshit way she spoke; the fierce look in her eyes, like no one was going to stop her, and she’d