Magic Tricks 🔮 Book 2 || gxg

The Mining Office

Rain speckled Ada's sweaty cheeks. Her thighs were burning from exertion. She leaned on her forearms on the handlebars, lax hands holding her phone, which had the map open. The trip was a straight shot, but in the dark, Ada couldn't be sure where the turnoff was without stopping at every offshoot of the highway. Not far past the rest stop where Sam parked to go for runs was an unmarked dirt road wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Here, she paused to turn off her phone. She removed the magnetic lights from her bike and threw them into her bag, followed by her windbreaker. Her heart raced for the thrill, now.

The cool air was welcome as she rode slowly. She wanted time to react in case she encountered a vehicle, or perhaps a security guard. She had no way of knowing the level of security they kept, whether it was cameras and locks, or patrolmen. No way of knowing whether security guards would be armed with flashlights and batons, or stun guns, possibly pistols.

So Ada took her time. She had all night, after all. The later it got, the better off she probably was. If there was someone on patrol, they were bound to get bored eventually. How exciting could the job be? The mine was too far out of town to get a lot of trespassers.

The road ended in a tall iron gate. Unlike the gate at the Richardson farm, this one was connected to an equally tall fence that stretched off into the trees on either side. The grounds beyond were clear and barren as far as Ada could see from where she stopped. The floodlight ended a few feet ahead of her front tire. Ada rolled the bike off the road and hid it in the trees. There was a large chunk of quartz near the treeline, and she placed it at the edge of the road with the tapered end pointed right at the bicycle. Hopefully no one hit it with their car or she might be there all night just trying to find her bike again.

The buckles around her chest were constricting, but necessary to keep her bag from jangling or slowing her down. She jammed her toes into the gaps between the fence bars out of the pool of light. Branches scraped her neck as she scrambled as fast as she could to the top before she lost her grip. She sure came close a couple of times.

The drop jarred Ada's ankles. Coarse dirt and gravel crunched under her boots, and she stepped back into a growing puddle. She was in the middle of a crude parking lot. She could only tell as much by the concrete dividers with their chipped yellow paint in long, even rows in either direction. A shabby building to her right was completely dark. Ignoring it, she hunched and moved as quickly as she could without disturbing the ground too much. The growing din masked most of the crunching.

Floodlights lit intermittent patches of the parking lot and the road around the vast building. It looked much smaller in photographs. If not for the sign in the top right corner of the unassuming face, it would be impossible to tell what sort of work was done there without further exploration.

The front doors were covered by lights and an obvious security camera. The offshoot at the back she knew should be a secondary entrance, and she could only hope it was in the darkness. Ada followed the road as it curved between the fence and the edge of the building, hugging the fence where necessary to avoid the light. The road branched off. To her left it hugged the building, connecting to another which appeared to be a large garage. The road before her continued to the steep hill face, and the first and largest of multiple mine shafts.

Puddles were abundant in the mucky road. Though she was getting soaked, Ada didn't dare move faster. There were four cars parked in the small lot back here. She cursed as she drew closer, finally able to tell that, yes, the back entrance was also lit and under surveillance. Son of a bitch, this was not how she wanted to start things.

When she was near enough that she was confident in her aim, Ada scooped up some larger stones and rolled them in her hands. She was shrouded in darkness between two lamps, and the camera was angled toward the base of the short steps. Judging by the model, it likely had to be adjusted manually. Ada begged to be right and hurled a stone.