ON YOUR LAST BREATH | Mike Schmidt ✔️

chapter six .. run or hide

CHAPTER SIX - " run or hide "

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          RUBBING THE BURNING SENSATION from staring too long at those screens off her eyes, Haley leant into the sensation of Mike's hand on her back. Had she known night got this cold at the reception, she would have insisted he brought a proper winter jacket with him to work, instead of his glorified vests and spring jackets tossed over a flimsy pullover; but then again, Mike's hands were warm and it was her whose teeth cackled uncontrollably to constant shivers, as soon as the hands of the clock passed midnight. Though Mike had had the right gentleman idea of letting Haley take his usual chair so she may sit more comfortably and closer to the supposed heater under the desk, that heater was criminally outdated, bringing only a faint hue of auburn on the floor beneath them rather than any significant heat.

"You know," Haley mumbled, "if we had some food with us, we could have counted this as our alone date night for the month." Her words ended with a soft chuckle; it never failed to amuse her that monthly 'alone date nights' were an actual thing that the two of them agreed to call that way. If her memory didn't fail her, it was Mike's turn to fabricate a date idea for them, and almost instantly she giggled once more, realizing him pitching going Christmas tree shopping early might have been it. Thinking about December being her month of ideas only made her smile linger a little longer, even as her hand lowered from her face and dropped in her lap.

Tucked away in her much welcomed happy thoughts, Haley didn't even notice Mike's hand has retreated from her back and he bent over to rummage in his own backpack, not until she heard the aluminum foil and sniffed the faint scent of toast. Mike extended the sandwich to her just as she turned around to look at him and simply couldn't contain a little chuckle, "Am I romantic or am I romantic, huh?"

Haley took the sandwich and placed it on the table, searching first with her eyes the right drawer, "How come we never considered going ghost hunting as a date before?" Finally, locating the drawer she needed on Mike's side of the booth, she leant over his lap and dragged her chair closer until she grasped the handle of the drawer and pulled it open.

Mike was too entranced by Haley to actually remember checking the two monitors. After all, it's been hours of staring at them and not a single movement. They were, at that moment, the last two people awake in the whole building.

"Do you have a lot of haunted places in this town?"

"None of the creepy stuff you see in movies," Haley admitted. "But since most of the big buildings in town, outside the new residential area, are old and have been re-purposed, if ghosts are real, this town might have gotten plenty of them spirits confused about how much the places they used to know changed. Got it!" She straightened up, back in her own seat with a cutter in hand. "Gotta clean it up and then we get that sandwich cut in half."

The sudden dive their conversation has taken into the paranormal not only stiffened Mike up behind the reminder that he was yet to start discussing the past with her, but also had him check the security cameras with a supposed glance turned to a shocked stare. "We've got movement," he blurted out, pulling onto Haley's chair to get her out of the way of him pointing towards the first screen. "Camera 8. That's on the second floor," he deducted without much thought.

"The boys rooms," Haley squinted at what looked like nothing more than a moving shadow by the time they both started observing its motion. Mike reached forward to the keyboard and switched the view on that square of the screen to Camera 9, immediately getting a better focus on the culprit of this unexpected night traveller. "It's just Freddy," Haley sighed out, far more relieved than she wished she had sounded; she didn't lie — she really didn't want either Mike or Abby to be right about this.