Burning Midnight (9 page)

Sully had hoped Hunter would like what he got her, but her reaction took him by surprise. She cried. She pressed the gloves to her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “I just love these so much. They're perfect.” She scooted over to Sully, hugged him, kissed his cheek. “Thank you for this, for all this. It's the best Christmas I've ever had.”

She scooted toward the tree, grabbed a present in cartoon snowman wrapping paper, and handed it to Sully. It was surprisingly heavy.

Smiling, Sully held the package next to his ear and shook it before setting it down. He tore open the wrapping, opened the flaps on a plain cardboard box.

Inside were two Teal spheres. Fall asleep more easily, rarity level one. Hunter must have paid at least a hundred dollars for the pair, unless she managed to find them in the wild.

“The day we found the Hot Pink, you said you were having trouble sleeping. I know you can't go burning your stock because you've got to make a living, but I figured if you got a pair of Teals as a
gift
”—Hunter shrugged—“well then, you'd
have
to burn them, 'cause they were a gift.”

Sully couldn't believe how much thought, and money she couldn't afford, Hunter had put into this gift. “Wow.” He lifted the spheres out, held one in each hand. He wanted to tell her it was too much, but he didn't want to spoil the pleasure she was so obviously getting from his reaction.

“Wow,” he repeated. “This—I wasn't expecting this. Thank you.”

“Go ahead,” Mom said, leaning forward on the couch.

Sully looked from one Teal to the other, then up at Hunter. “Should I?”

Hunter nodded. “Go for it.”

“My first ever. I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life.” He lifted them slowly, touched them to his temples. They felt cool, smooth. As he'd heard from so many others who'd burned spheres, there was no sensation; he didn't feel any different.

The spheres' brilliant blue-green hue began to fade. He set them down on the carpet carefully, reverently.

“Your first, but not your last,” Hunter said. She leaped up. “Now go take a nap.”

“I can't take a nap.” Sully laughed. “I've never been so wide-awake. I just burned my first marbles.”

“That's the whole point of them, though. Even when you're pumped up, or your thoughts are racing, you can fall asleep.” She held out a hand. Sully took it, and Hunter pulled him to his feet and nudged him toward his room. “Go ahead. We'll come in ten minutes and wake you.”

So Sully went to take a nap, although he wasn't the least bit tired. It took him about two minutes to doze off.

Feeling warm, Christmassy, and utterly content, Sully curled up on the recliner and flipped open his new book to the first page. The first color it covered was Cherry Red, which made sense, given that Cherry Red was responsible for reproduction, for seeding Earth with a second wave of spheres.

His name was mentioned as the discoverer of one of the two Cherry Reds. It was kind of cool to see his name in print.

The thing about it was, Sully was afraid the Cherry Red would define his entire life. When he was thirty, he didn't want someone pointing him out while he stacked soup cans at Price Chopper and saying, “See that guy? When he was thirteen, he found the Cherry Red.”

He and his mom had had a rough year after the Cherry Red. It was amazing what it did to your head to believe you'd been handed $2.5 million, only to have it snatched back.

Sully thumbed through the pages, stopping at random: Mint (more outgoing), Magenta (night vision), Plum (erase memories).

“I don't know why someone would want to burn Plums,” Sully said to Hunter, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, watching
A Christmas Story
on Sully's little TV. “Who wants to erase a part of their life, whether it's good or bad? You couldn't pay me to erase even my worst memory.”

Very slowly, Hunter closed her eyes. “That's because you've never had something bad happen to you.”

Sully laughed. “Are you kidding me? My father's an alcoholic. He once kicked me in the ass so hard he lifted me right off the ground. My life was miserable before Mom left him.”

As Hunter turned to face him, Sully could see he'd hit a nerve. “So tell me. Do you wake up screaming from nightmares of your drunken father kicking you in the ass really hard? Do you think about it every day? When you think about it, do you still break out in a sweat and get sick to your stomach after all these years?”

Sully regretted opening his mouth. He didn't appreciate Hunter making him feel like he'd just drowned a puppy or something. “You know, you don't have a monopoly on hard times. My mom just lost her job. If not for the Hot Pink, we'd have no way to pay the rent next month.”

“You think that's something we have in common, don't you? That we both grew up poor. You're not
poor.
You're just growing up in the crappiest part of a tony suburb. You get three meals a day; you stop in at McDonald's for french fries on the way to your soccer league.” The way she said it, she made
soccer league
sound like a particularly pussy disease. “You have your own
room,
for God's sake. You're not poor. You just feel poor because everyone around you is rich.”

Sully held up both hands. “Hey, you don't have to jump down my throat. I was just saying that, to me, Plums aren't worth the price.”

Hunter's scowl softened. “I'm sorry. It's just…I have friends who would trade a kidney for a set of Plums. They've been through things you wouldn't believe, that they'd do anything to forget.”

Sully could see this was something Hunter wanted him to understand. Needed him to understand.

“Sorry. Sometimes I just think out loud without thinking through what I'm saying first.”

Hunter relaxed. “Me too. All the time. I didn't mean to bust on you. I'm really sorry.”

There was tightness in Sully's chest as he drove. He didn't want Hunter to go home. Seeing her away from the flea market, away from hunting, he realized he'd had her all wrong. She wasn't hard and closed down and serious by nature; she was that way because she had to be. Given the chance to kick back, she was funny and honest. Easy to be with. The apartment was going to feel empty with her gone.

When they had gone Christmas shopping, Dom had said Sully was madly in love with Hunter. Sully didn't know her well enough to go that far, but he liked her. He liked her a lot.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she said.

“You made my mom's Christmas. She wasn't just being polite when she said you're welcome back any time.”

Hunter nodded, pleased.

“You made my Christmas, too.”

She pulled her backpack into her lap, took hold of the zipper. After a long pause, she seemed to decide something, and unzipped the pocket. She pulled out her hunting notebook.

“I think I know where we might be able to find something rare. I mean really rare. Like maybe an eight.”

Sully leaned forward in his seat. “Where?”

“In the city.”

“I thought you said the city was picked clean?”

“I think there's a place everyone's overlooked.”

Sully's heart was thumping. Hunter had led them to a Hot Pink. If she said there was a place where they could find an eight, he believed her. “Come on, don't keep me in suspense.”

Hunter typed on her phone, then held it where Sully could see the screen while driving.

It was a photo of a water tower on a tenement roof. The tower was round, with a roof that looked like the Tin Man's hat, and stood on crosshatched metal stilts. He'd seen towers like it all of his life; they were all over the city.

“Holy—” Sully swallowed.
Inside
the water towers? Never in a million years would he have thought of that. “But they're filled with water, aren't they?”

“Duh, yeah. We'd have to buy a wet suit, and a waterproof flashlight.”

He studied the picture of the tank. It was big, and tall. How deep was that water? Ten feet? Fifteen? “You mean we're going to swim to the bottom of these things?”

“
I'm
gonna swim, Yonkers. I've been waiting for someone I trust who can help me get up on the roofs and help with the hatches. The hatches are heavy as hell.”

“And you know that because?” Sully said, laughing.

Hunter shrugged. “Reconnaissance.”

It was a wild idea; he was breathless just thinking about it. “Wait. Aren't the tanks cleaned out every so often?”

Hunter messed with her phone again, held it up. It was an article in the
New York Times:
INSIDE CITY'S WATER TANKS, LAYERS OF NEGLECT
. “They're supposed to be, but most of them aren't.”

Sully laughed. That figured. “How many tanks are in the city?”

Hunter covered her eyes. “Ten to fifteen thousand.”

“Yikes. Ten to fifteen
thousand
? That would take
years.
”

“That's one of the reasons I think they've been overlooked. That, and because no one wants to swim down ten feet in dark water in those tin cans.”

It made sense. It wouldn't be easy, but she was right—it was the sort of place you might find the rarest of the rare, because the low-hanging fruit had all been picked. There were no more eights hidden in people's bushes.

“A lot of roofs have two or three towers on them. Some have six,” she went on. “I figure we could search ten a night if we work three or four hours, say from six p.m. to nine or ten.”

There was no way his mother was going to let him do that. The only way he could pull it off was to lie, and he wasn't sure he could tell Mom such an enormous lie. He would die from the guilt.

At the same time, an
eight.
Aquamarine (quick healing), or Vermillion (need little sleep), or Olive (pain control). They were million-dollar spheres.

Maybe he wasn't giving his mom enough credit. Maybe she'd understand….

Understand that he was climbing onto tenement roofs at night, in the city, so Hunter could
dive into water towers
? No way. She'd probably be okay with it if they were going somewhere safe to hunt, like the suburbs.

What if he didn't lie, exactly? What if he told her they were going hunting all over, that it was the only time they both had open? He'd have to do his homework during free periods, and work in the dark (and the cold in wintertime) until bed, then do it all over again the next day. It would be grueling.

But damn, they needed the money. An eight? That would solve their financial problems forever. And as an added bonus, it would annoy the hell out of Holliday if Sully and Hunter found a rare one right in his own backyard. Almost no one was finding rare spheres anymore except for pro hunters.

“Okay. I'm in.”

Hunter held up her gloved hand, and Sully slapped it. She caught his hand, squeezed it for a second before letting go.

Perched behind his table of spheres, one foot propped on a folding chair, Sully watched Maurice Trudell clean up his painting supplies after staining a coffee table. Trudell put the lid on the can of stain, tapped it shut with the handle end of a screwdriver.

It reminded Sully of the time he'd been so eager to help his dad with some do-it-yourself project that he splashed white paint on Dad's truck trying to use a hammer to tap the lid down on a can of paint. Sully could still remember his dad's exact words: “You stupid ass.” Then he'd smacked Sully's face and told him to get the hell out of the garage.

Hunter had said Sully's years with his dad hadn't been that bad. They'd sure seemed bad. Hunter was right, though: he wasn't haunted by them. They didn't define him. They were in the past, and he kept them there. Being homeless had likely given Hunter a different barometer of what constituted awful.

Sully stared down the aisle, remembering the moment he'd first seen Hunter. He'd noticed her as soon as she was in sight, almost as if he'd been expecting her.

For the hundredth time he thought about sitting on the swings with Hunter on Christmas Eve, the snow falling. There had been a moment when he'd wanted to lean over and kiss her. Had there been something in her expression, maybe a slight lean toward Sully, that put the idea in his head? Maybe it was wishful thinking.

Someone paused in front of Sully's table, drawing him out of his daydream. The guy studied the sign Sully had hung from his table, announcing a Hot Pink for sale. The guy was tall and skinny, with curly brown hair bursting from the top of his head like a mushroom cloud.

“A friend of mine saw this and gave me a call.” He pointed at the sign. “You really have a Hot Pink?”

“I sure do. Not here, but I have one for sale.” The guy didn't look like someone with wads of cash to spend, but you never knew who was a highly paid tech genius or who owned the patent on a new iPhone app.

“How much you asking?”

“Fourteen five. In Holliday's they go for almost seventeen.”

The guy nodded, put a hand on his chin. “You take thirteen five, cash?”

Sully kept his expression neutral and his voice steady even though it wanted to shake a little. “I'll take fourteen.”

The guy took a huffing breath, looked down at the sign, as if considering. Sully waited.

The guy looked up. “Okay.”

Sully held out his hand. “If you have the cash, you've got a deal. David Sullivan.”

“Aiden Oberon.” They shook hands. “I can go withdraw the cash. Shouldn't take me more than twenty minutes.”

Sully nodded. “I can get the marble here within an hour after that.”

As Aiden wandered off, head bobbing side to side, looking like he was out for a leisurely walk, Sully got on the phone to Hunter.

She sounded out of breath as he filled her in. Sully couldn't blame her; if this guy was serious, she was about to be handed $8,400.

Next he dialed Dom, who answered on the second ring. “How would you like to make two hundred bucks?”

Dom laughed. “As long as it doesn't involve nudity or swallowing condoms full of heroin.”

After Sully filled him in, Dom insisted on starting out for the bank right away to save time.

As he hung up, Sully tugged at the front of his shirt, which was stuck to his chest. He was sweating.

“Sounds like good news,” Neal called over.

“I think I sold the Hot Pink.”

Neal held his fist in the air. “There you go. Good for you.”

Neal's praise made Sully flush with pride. When Sully had first showed up at the flea market, a fourteen-year-old kid, Neal and Samantha had pretty much adopted him. They taught him how important it was to display your merchandise in an eye-catching way, how you could “create” sales just by being friendly and getting to know the flea market's regular customers. He'd come a long way, thanks to them.

Fifty-six hundred dollars. Almost eight months' rent. Handing that money to his mom was going to be one of the best moments of his life. She'd told him she wouldn't accept more than half to put toward their living expenses, that he should save the rest for college, but she couldn't hide how desperate their situation was. Even when Mom finally found a job, it was going to be half of what she'd made at Exile Music.

Sully spotted his buyer heading toward the table.

“All set,” Aiden said. He pulled a bank deposit envelope out of his back pocket and opened it, displaying crisp, new thousand-dollar bills.

Sully nodded. “Let me make a couple of calls.” He felt like Matt Damon in a big-budget thriller as he stepped away from his table and called Hunter.

“We're all set. Dom is on his way to get you.”

“We made a good call, not taking the quick sale on eBay.”

Sully had to agree, even if it had taken him right down to the wire on rent. “Use the vendors' entrance, not the main gate. It's quicker.”

Next he called Dom and confirmed, then turned back to Aiden. “Figure half an hour, forty-five minutes tops.”

Aiden nodded. “I think I'll walk around. I'll stay close.”

As Aiden wandered off, Sully wondered if he was an investor, or if he planned to get a pair and burn them. In all likelihood he was an investor. The way prices kept rising, nine out of ten buyers these days were investors. You had to have serious cash to spend $28,000 on the ability to call up an adrenaline rush, cool as it would be to have that power.

Sully paced his stall, unable to sit.

Sully heard Dom before he saw either of them.

“Screw you!” Dom's shout cut through the murmur of flea market chatter, jolting Sully. That didn't sound like excitement; it sounded like anger. Sully scanned the flea market anxiously, looking for Dom and Hunter.

He spotted Hunter running toward him, cutting between shoppers. She bumped into a guy in a knit cap and continued running without a word. Dom was a dozen feet behind her, shouting something Sully didn't catch.

As Hunter drew closer, Sully spotted a bloody scrape on the left side of her forehead. He left his booth and headed toward her.

“What happened?” Sully shouted as they converged. He already knew, though, and he was already feeling sick. They'd lost it. Somehow they'd lost the Hot Pink.

Hunter just kept coming. She raised both hands and drove them into Sully's chest, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“Do you think I'm stupid?” Hunter shouted.

“What happened?”

“You know what happened!”

Dom pushed between them. “We got rolled. Two guys in the parking lot pulled guns on us.”

Sully had known what Dom was going to say, but the words still doubled him over. He braced his hands on his knees to stay on his feet.

It was the Cherry Red all over again.

“Don't do this,” Hunter said. “I'm warning you.”

Sully raised his head. “What are you talking about?”

“She thinks we're in on it,” Dom said.

“What?”

Hunter was shaking. She looked on the verge of tears. “How did they know what I looked like? Hmm? A thousand people here, and they come right at me and tell me to hand it over? How stupid do you think I am?”

“You're not stupid, you're just paranoid,” Dom said.

“They knew you had it?” Sully asked, speaking over Dom. He looked around for Aiden. If that was really his name. A friendly-looking doofus with a crooked smile to put Sully off his guard. He was nowhere in sight.

How
had
they known what Hunter looked like? He hadn't said a word to Aiden about her.

Sully turned back to Hunter. “I don't know how they knew what you looked like, but I didn't have anything to do with this. This guy came to my table, we agreed on a price. He went off, came back, and showed me fourteen thousand-dollar bills.”

Hunter glared, shaking her head. Drops of blood oozed from the scrape on her forehead.

“What happened to your head?” Sully asked.

“Hunter wouldn't give them the marble, so one of the guys pistol-whipped her,” Dom answered.

Hunter spun to face Dom. “
I
wouldn't give it to them, but
you
sure were eager to hand it over. ‘Just give it to them, just give it to them.' I gotta say, you're not a very good actor.”

Dom threw his hands in the air. “I didn't want to get
shot.
”

Hunter turned back toward Sully. “ ‘Use the vendors' entrance, not the main gate.' That was the last thing you said to me on the phone. So they'd know which way I was coming.”

“I said that because it's quicker to go that way. I was trying to move fast on the deal.”

She turned away, pressed her hand to her forehead. “How could I be so stupid? I should have known better than to trust some random dude I met at a flea market.”

“Hey,” Sully said, “I could say the same about you. Maybe
you
set this up.”

Hunter spun, gestured violently at the lump on her forehead. “I got
hit.
With a gun.”

“And isn't that the perfect touch?” Sully said. “Like no one's ever taken a punch to make an inside job look convincing.” He knew Hunter had had nothing to do with it. At least, he thought he knew that. But he didn't appreciate being called a thief while dealing with losing $5,600 that was going to allow him to go on living in the town he'd lived in his whole life.

Hunter went on staring him down, the anger in her eyes almost as hard to take as the loss of the Hot Pink. “You and I both know that's not what happened. We all know what just happened here.” She glanced at Dom, then back at Sully. “Don't ever talk to me again.”

As she stormed off, she added, “You're just like Holliday.”

“You're wrong, Hunter!” Sully shouted after her. “You're dead wrong about this.”

As he turned away from her retreating form he realized people were watching. A dozen sets of eyes looked away; people who had paused went on walking.

Dom squatted on his haunches. “Jesus, I'm so sorry. All of a sudden they were just there, one in front of us, one behind, pointing guns.”

“No, I'm sorry I put you in the middle of that. You could have been shot.”

They returned to Sully's booth. Neal and Samantha were standing in the center of the aisle, keeping an eye on his booth as well as their own.

“We heard most of it from here,” Neal said. “You going to call the police?”

“What are
they
going to do?” Spheres had no distinguishing marks. You couldn't leave fingerprints or DNA on them. Not that anyone would conduct a DNA test to solve a robbery. Sully didn't even have proof he'd owned a Hot Pink, unless you counted eyewitnesses.

He steadied himself, palms on his table. All the strength had gone out of his legs. The rent was due in a week, and he and his mom had nothing left in savings. They were done. Broke.

And Hunter had the gall to accuse him of being in on it?

Howling in frustration, Sully grabbed the edge of the table and toppled it, sending crates and display cases filled with the shitty assortment of bargain-bin spheres he had left crashing to the ground.

Dom, Neal, and Samantha watched in silence as Sully dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.