Obstacle Course
Page 19
Leila was halfway to the darkness under the bridge. Finny started after her, then darted back to the car. She'd just as soon bed down in a haunted house as wander around under that bridge without a flashlight. As the door swung open, she thought she heard something behind her. She whirled around, heart pounding, and peered into darkness moving with the throb of the warning lights.
She waited for a moment, listening, then reached inside for her flashlight. It was just her nerves. This little adventure was on a par with going through a graveyard on Halloween night. She slammed the door shut and hurried to catch up with Leila, her breath clouding the chill air.
Their footsteps crunched in the gravel under the unused bridge.
"It's around here someplace," Leila said suddenly.
Finny looked quickly around her, fighting back the impulse to hush her. She felt they should be very quiet.
Finny was shivering with more than the cold. It was so unearthly isolated here. The distant sounds of traffic were the only reminders of the city around this spot.
The ground was uneven in the elongated circle cast by the flashlight as they passed into the gloom under the bridge. Finny tripped and fell to her hands and knees. The flashlight landed beside her, shining at nothing. The stinging of her palms triggered a brief flash of childhood, of falls from roller skates and bicycles, when scraped skin was the only failure known. She got up and, without thinking, spat on her palms and blew again the hurt.
Behind her was the sound of shifting gravel.
"Did you hear that?" There was no answer. Finny turned and saw Leila at least ten yards away, near more mounds of gravel.
Finny scooped up the flashlight and swung it around in a circle, holding it at the end of her straightened arm like a weapon. There was nothing to see but the dirt road and the piles of broken rock.
Finny's hand crept over her heart. It was leaping like Baryshnikov in a solo. She took a deep breath and turned on her heel to stride over the rough ground to Leila. "We've got to leave." She tried to catch her breath. "We're not going to find anything in the dark."
Leila ignored her. Her pale skin was orange, then gray as the light from the traffic barrier blinked off and on. She was sidling around one of the bridge supports. She stroked the surface of the rough concrete with her fingers as if reading Braille.
Finny shone the light over the support. The hole in the concrete was the size of a saucer, with cracks radiating from its edges like the filaments of a spider's web.
A groan came from behind her.
Scavenger Hunt
A Finny Aletter Mystery
Book One
by
Yvonne Montgomery
~
To purchase
Scavenger Hunt
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Yvonne Montgomery's eBook Discovery Author Page
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Yvonne Montgomery is the author of two Finny Aletter mysteries: Scavengers and Obstacle Course, as well as co-author of a Colorado saga, Bridey's Mountain, awarded the Top Hand Award from the Colorado Authors' League for Best Book Length Fiction of 1993.
Yvonne is a past Rocky Mountain regional Vice-President of the Mystery Writers of America and has served as a judge for the Edgar Allen Poe Awards. She is a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Colorado Authors' League.
A native of Boulder, Colorado, and graduate of the University of Colorado, Yvonne lives in Denver's historic Capitol Hill with her family. She is at work on a paranormal trilogy, the Wisdom Court Novels.
Table of Contents
Cover
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Excerpt from Scavenger Hunt - A Finny Aletter Mystery, Book 1
Meet the Author