Page 5 of How to Annoy a Mountain Man

“Part of the job, along with kicking people out who don’t belong.”

“I have every right to be here,” she reiterated. She even stamped her foot in her little black witchy boots. I had a feeling what she lacked in size she made up for in attitude and it was all directed at me.

“Yeah, so you said, but whatever you’re up to has to wait. These people have been dead for hundreds of years, you can wait until Halloween is over. I don’t want more people attracted to this place.”

She laughed. “This place is all over social media already. I’m trying to find the truth, not add more hype.”

I stepped closer, making out more of her face in the pale glow of dawn. “And what is the truth?”

She blew a lock of her burgundy hair out of her face and studied me for a long moment. Finally, she jerked her chin in the direction of the cemetery and took off in that direction. She moved silently, despite the leaves and brush, graceful in a weird way. Curiosity was part of being a guard. I went with her to find out what I was dealing with, not because I could smell a hint of her perfume following behind her.

Briar walked past a row of stones, faded, sure, some a little crooked but still visible, until she reached one that was different.

I squatted down and ran my hand over the stone. My jeans pulled tight over my thighs and the cold bled through the fabric. “So this is the infamous grave.”

She nodded. “You’ve heard of it?”

“I have. The grave with no name.”

“Not just no name, look.” She brushed more of the leaves that had blown over it. “The name was there, someone removed it.”

The reason for the interest became clearer. Crude gouges had been cut into the stone, removing chunk after chunk of stone until whatever was written there was gone. “So this is why I was hired to keep out people looking to exploit the place.”

“I guess we have a common goal…or a common enemy, anyway.”

I stood and faced her. “So you’re not friends with this Midnight Mercer guy?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s disrespectful and doesn’t care about the dead or their families. We’re not friends.”

The passion in her voice made me believe her.

“If you’re not here to take advantage of this place, why are you here?”

“To give this person their name back.” It was an honest enough answer; a simple enough goal.

“Why do you care? It’s just a name.”

“It’s not just a name. If it didn’t matter, somebody wouldn’t have tried to take it away. It was important. It was part of who this person was, and I’m going to give it back to them.”

* * *

“What do you have for me?” I asked Alden when I stepped into HQ the next day. The building was a renovated brick mill with views of the river, containing everything we needed to keep us sharp.

“Not much, honestly.” He sat down and opened a file. Despite all the advanced tech we used in our job, Alden often preferred a good old-fashioned piece of paper. “All right, we’ve got Briar Hart. She’s thirty-five, a photographer. She’s got a decent following on social media and is known for slightly macabre subjects.”

“Macabre, like a cemetery?”

He nodded.

“But aside from her social media, I can’t find much. Not to sound like a cliché cop show, but she doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket.”

I had suspected her less after the way she talked about this Mercer guy, but had to be thorough. I ran a hand over my jaw. “Why the hell would a good-looking woman want to spend her time poking around an old cemetery?”

The corner of Alden’s lip ticked up under his beard, and I realized what I’d said.

I only meant she was good-looking objectively.

An observation.