Hit

by Delilah S. Dawson

  Wyatt’s eyes meet mine, both our mouths open and empty of words. He looks as confused as I feel. I guess neither of us has a working cell, which is just ridiculous. Telling this lady that we don’t have a phone is about the same as announcing that we’re space aliens.

  Still, whether it’s because he can’t pay the bill and Valor cut off his service, or he’s smart enough to know I’m being tracked, it’s a relief that Wyatt is just as disconnected as I am.

  That means he can’t call his brother.

  “We’ll wait outside in our truck,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’m allergic to cats,” Wyatt offers.

  “I’ll let you know what I find, but I think things should go smoothly. You did well, getting her here quickly. We’ll take good care of her.”

  With murmured thanks and one last pet, Wyatt and I walk out the door, through the waiting room, and back out to the truck. I don’t realize until he lets go that he’s been holding my hand ever since we put Matty on the examining table.

  7.

  Tom Morrison

  I’m exhausted but filled with nervous energy, still too spooked to talk. Without a word to Wyatt, I pick up my yarn bag and grab a ball of black yarn to add to the flagpole scarf. I stare into space as my needles click furiously, row after row of tight stitches appearing from thin air.

  Wyatt watches me for a few minutes and says, “I’m going across the street to Subway. You want anything?”

  “I just can’t,” I say, and he nods once and leaves.

  My stitches are so taut that the flagpole scarf pulls in at the ­middle, like it’s wearing a black corset. With a sigh that turns into a groan, I set the needles down before I ruin it. I want to finish this piece and get it up on the flagpole before my assignment is over. For some reason, it’s really important to me that it gets done. Like some small part of me thinks everything will change afterward, and I just want to finish one thing for myself, instead of taking care of a big, stupid bank’s bloody business.

  Speaking of which, there’s a blood smudge on the floor where Matty fell over. I scrounge up some fast-food napkins from the trash and try to wipe it clean, but I need something wet, because it’s all crusty and I don’t have any saliva left to lick the napkins. By the time Wyatt gets back and erupts from between the front seats with a plastic sack and two large drinks, I’m scratching at the bloodstain with my bare fingers, crying.

  “Out, damned spot?” he says with a frightened chuckle.

  All I can do is growl at him, a ragged, feral sound that starts in what used to be my heart.

  Gently, his hands catch mine and hold them still.

  “Don’t do this,” he says, his cheek warm against mine. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Everything is my fault.”

  “No. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Valor. It’s this big, faceless corporation that’s using dirty tricks to make you do horrible things.”

  “But those guys back there . . .” I trail off with a sob.

  “They were going to hurt you, Patsy. I mean, this is kind of my fault.”

  I glance up in surprise. “What? Why?”

  “I saw them whisper and go into their front door, and I thought I didn’t have to worry about them. I just figured they were dumbass tweakers. And they snuck right out the back door and trapped you in that hell house.” His hands rotate around mine, from holding them away from the bloodstain to holding them gently and warmly. “Jesus, I’m so sorry that I let that happen.”

  “Not your fault,” I whisper.

  “Then we both agree it’s neither of our faults,” he says, and he trips over it like it doesn’t make sense grammatically or seriously. “Shake on it?”

  “You’re already holding my hand,” I mumble, and he smiles and shakes both of my hands like a dork before sheepishly letting them go. They drop to my lap, useless. That’s when I realize that the gun has been in the back of my jeans this whole time, that I walked right into an animal hospital with a loaded gun casually tucked into my pants and sliding around in butt sweat and Dr. Ken Belcher’s fancy lotion. Suddenly it’s the most uncomfortable thing ever.

  “Excuse me a minute.” I pull it out and check the clip like it’s as normal as brushing my teeth.

  “You got more bullets?” Wyatt asks, and I pull a cardboard box out of my backpack and put it between us on the floor. He opens the box and looks at me quizzically. “So they gave you two guns and two hundred bullets to take care of ten people?”

  I smirk.

  “Nope, they gave me one gun with a loaded clip. I already had the bullets, so I brought them, just in case.”

  “Where’d this one come from, then?” He holds up his gun, careful to point it away from me and to keep his fingers far from the trigger.

  “It was my dad’s. Only thing I have of his besides my locket.” I flinch at the way he’s waving it around, even if he’s doing so safely. “That one isn’t stamped.” I show him the words VALOR SAVINGS on my gun. The gun he’s been using is also a 9mm, but it’s a different brand, much older and more dinged up.

  “Smart move.”

  He slips the bullets into his clip one by one and slides it home like a pro, confident and sure. I load mine up too. After shit went sideways at Sharon Mulvaney’s, I never want to be caught by surprise again. If I’d run out of bullets in there, I’d probably be just another dead thing in a dead house. The dashboard clock is already ticking down on my next assignment. I’m going in angry, and I’m going in fully loaded. Provided Matty is okay, that is.

  There’s a distinct smell of gun oil and metal in the truck as Wyatt opens up the Subway bag. His hands are covered in oil and dog hair and dried blood, and I hurry to hand him a shower wipe before he can touch the food. I need one too, considering all the crap I touched in that nasty house.

  Wyatt sucks down two foot-long sandwiches with his usual, freaky grace, and I manage to get down half a meatball sub and some chips. I’m so hungry and messed up that I don’t even notice the cheap, plastic taste. I wonder, for just a moment, when food will start having an appeal again. As soon as I’m done with my service, I’m going to gather up whatever money I have left and take my mom out for a big-ass restaurant meal, the kind where they ask you how you want your steak cooked and you order an appetizer and an entrée and a dessert and eat three baskets of bread and don’t worry if you finished everything. And I’m getting a big ol’ doggy bag for my dog, too.

  I drink all of my Coke and go into the animal hospital to see if I can use their bathroom.

  The receptionist lights up when I walk through the door. “Oh, good! Dr. Godfrey was just about to go out and look for you. Your dog is out of surgery.”

  “Is she okay?” I ask, just about peeing myself. “Is she alive?”

  With a motherly smile, she pats my arm. “She’s just fine, honey. She won’t be awake for a while, and she’ll need to stay overnight for observation, but she’s going to be just fine.”

  I’m so grateful that I hug her, and she just laughs and pets me like she’s used to that sort of thing. I can’t think of the last time I hugged someone besides my mom or Wyatt, and it’s weird to feel her hair against my face and smell her old-lady perfume. But I really am about to pee my pants, so she points me to the restroom.

  “You want me to go out and tell your boyfriend?” she asks, and I just blush and nod.

  When I come back out, Wyatt is looking at some X-rays with the lady in scrubs, who I guess must be Dr. Godfrey.

  “You’re just in time,” she says to me with a big smile. “Everything went great. The bullet just grazed her. No organs or major arteries were damaged, just some soft tissue. She only needed a ­couple of stitches. For getting shot, it was about the best place to take a bullet.”

  My face starts scrunching up for an uglycry as I think about poor Matty, charging toward those stairs to save me, never
knowing how many bullets were flying around. Not even knowing what bullets are, but knowing that I was in danger. That’s bravery, right there. That’s love. And she’s only known me for a couple of days.

  Whatever it costs to fix her, it’s worth it.

  Dr. Godfrey tells us we can pick up Matty tomorrow afternoon, after two. She hands me some forms on a clipboard, and I fill them out with my address and a bunch of made-up answers about Matty’s age and health, but I leave all the phone numbers blank. I don’t want them calling my mom, making her wonder what the hell is going on. The receptionist looks over the form and asks for a cell number, and Wyatt rattles one off, and I wonder if it’s real or made-up.

  “I hate to bother y’all, but we’re going to need to go ahead and run a credit card to cover the surgery and boarding,” the receptionist says, looking pained, like requesting payment gives her indigestion.

  “No problem,” Wyatt says, handing her a credit card.

  Seeing the Valor Savings Bank logo flash for just a second between their hands makes a cold chill shudder through me. The receptionist swipes the card. As Wyatt waits to sign the slip, he rocks back and forth on his heels, tapping his fingers nervously on the counter. He signs, and the receptionist says, “Thank you, Mr. Beard. We’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll take real good care of Matilda.”

  “She goes by Matty,” I holler back.

  Once we’re in the parking lot, I curl angry fingers into his shirt. “A Valor card? Do you really think that’s a smart idea, Mr. Beard?”

  “Do you want your dog alive or not?” He whips his shirt back out of my grasp.

  “I don’t want you on someone else’s list.”

  “Maybe I deserve to be on someone else’s list,” he says. “Did you ever think about that? Maybe I’m one of the bad guys. My dad and my brother are on there. Why not me?”

  Something’s got him pissed off, and I just want everything to be normal. I want to soothe him. I want to hug him. I want a few moments of peace before I have to go kill someone else.

  “I don’t think you’re a bad person,” I say softly. “Any more than I am.”

  He almost says something but stops himself. We climb into opposite sides of the mail truck, him on the driver’s side and me on the passenger side. For just a moment, I flash on a lesson from world history when an overexcited Dr. Terry showed us a picture of a chariot in which the warrior shot a bow and arrow while his trusted charioteer drove and carried the warrior’s shield. And that’s us. Wyatt drives and protects me, and I’m just here to kill. I slump down farther.

  “I don’t see the point in getting philosophical about it,” he says. “It’s all going to end the same, either way. Let’s just get the next one out of the way. Three in one day is enough, right?”

  “I don’t know.” I flick on the GPS. “It’s just one long-ass nightmare. I’ve got ten hours. But you’re right. Let’s get the next one over with. If I’m going to feel crappy anyway, I might as well do all the crappy things at once.”

  The GPS barks out the first line of directions in that weird, British accent, and Wyatt takes off driving. He normally seems relaxed when he’s behind the wheel, and I would imagine he’s one of those guys who digs cars and goes for long drives when he needs to think. I bet he loves road trips. But he’s tense now, and I feel like there’s something he both wants very much to say and never, ever wants to say. I don’t know much about guys, but I know that pressing him will probably make him explode like a popped balloon, so I just sit back and try to get mentally prepared for the next assignment and not think about my mom or my forever lost locket or poor Matty all doped up on doggy drugs and alone in a cage.

  As always, my thoughts stick to the list like duct tape, like it’s a catechism. Lucky number seven is Tom Morrison.

  The name conjures up a school teacher, maybe a principal. The kind of guy who wears a tweed jacket with those silly brown patches on the elbows. The kind of guy who smokes a pipe. In my head, Tom Morrison becomes a first-class swindler, using his credit cards to wine and dine unwitting students before trading BJs for good grades in his all-wood study. I can kill this version of Tom Morrison. I can kill him without crying about it afterward.

  Wyatt turns down a long driveway deep in the woods. The truck rumbles over the pavement, then bumps over the dirt tracks when the driveway disappears. Tree branches scrape the roof, making my teeth itch.

  “At least the neighbors aren’t going to sneak up on you out here,” Wyatt says.

  A house appears, framed by the trees, and it’s like the place I’ve always dreamed of living. It’s almost a tree house, or a fairy house, with beautiful wood shingles and fancy shutters and a porch swing. It’s in a little clearing surrounded by berry bushes, and the sun shines down on a perfect circle of soft green grass where stuffed bears are having a picnic at a tiny set of table and chairs. I imagine Disney animals dancing out of the woods to sing a song about how whoever must live here is the happiest kid on earth.

  “I so do not want to shoot this guy,” I murmur. Wyatt wisely doesn’t comment.

  I shrug into my Postal Service shirt and cap before I can guilt myself out of it. Every assignment so far has had some sort of personal connection to me, and I no longer believe there’s any way it could be a coincidence. What exactly is hiding behind that door that’s going to kill a little piece of me even more than murdering a stranger should?

  With the fully loaded gun in my jeans and a fake smile plastered over my face, I walk along the perfectly placed paving stones and up three steps to the front door. When I ring the doorbell, it plays the song “Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty.

  “I’ll get it!” a small voice cries from inside.

  I almost expect a fairy or an elf, but the truth is even more painfully adorable.

  The door opens, and I’m met with two smiling faces. Level with my eyes is a kind-looking man with a beard and glasses. Hovering around his waist is a little girl with dark curls and bright blue eyes wearing a pink princess dress.

  “Did you bring me a present?” she asks, and I choke on nothing and go into a coughing fit. All I’m holding is his card, my fingers sweating against the green printing.

  “Are you okay?” asks the man. “Do you want to come inside and have a glass of water?”

  I look back at the truck, and Wyatt is biting his lip. He holds up his hands as if to say, “I got nothing.”

  “Sure, thanks,” I say. I can’t shoot this guy in front of his kid, that’s for sure.

  I step inside, and he shuts the door behind me. The little girl grabs the end of my shirt, which I’ve forgotten to tuck in. Her tiny, pink hand is wound up in the blood-spattered cloth, but she doesn’t notice as she tugs me down a hallway lined with photographs and framed drawings of stick figures and hearts.

  “You can use my Belle glass,” she says, chin up like a queen. “But I get Rapunzel.”

  She escorts me to a cheerful table under a skylight. There are only two chairs, and one of them is covered in dried-jelly fingerprints and globs of granola bar, but that’s the one she pulls out for me, so I sit. Her father places a plastic glass on the table and watches me with the innocent, curious eyes of a deer in the forest. Belle’s face smiles at me as I sip water I don’t need and don’t want.

  “So is that for me?” he says, pointing at the card.

  The little girl perks up. “Did Mommy send our check this time like she promised?”

  He picks her up and snuggles her in his lap, and she buries her face in his shoulder, giggling.

  “Don’t worry, Jilly Bean. We’ll be fine,” he says.

  “Are you Tom Morrison?” I ask.

  “That’s me.” He smiles and nods at the machine weighing down my pocket. “Do you need me to sign?”

  I slide the signature machine across the table, and he signs it, one arm snug around Jilly Bean. But I do
n’t give him the card. I don’t want him to read it yet. I don’t want to see the little girl’s face fall.

  “Can we talk somewhere private?” I ask.

  He glances from the official-looking card under my hand to the top of his daughter’s curly hair.

  “Run outside and show the nice lady how high you can swing, okay, Jilly?”

  He stands and opens the French doors, and she runs outside, yelling, “Watch this!”

  Goddammit. She’s wearing lady bug galoshes with her pink princess dress. I would have given anything I owned for that kind of getup when I was a kid. But my mom didn’t have the money for clothes that weren’t practical, and she would have scolded me for looking silly. There’s a nice wooden play set out there, and the kid climbs on the swing and starts pumping, but she can’t quite get the rhythm right, and it reminds me of myself at that age, somewhere around five, trying to teach myself to pump after my dad left and there was no one left to push me anymore.

  “What’s all this about?” Tom asks, and I blink out of my sunny reverie. “Is it another subpoena? I swear, my ex-wife doesn’t want custody of Jilly so much as she just wants to drive me crazy.”

  I clear my throat and hold up the card, but I can barely read it through wet eyes.

  “Tom Morrison, you owe Valor Savings bank the sum of $43,575.98. Can you pay this sum in full?”

  His laugh is gentle, disbelieving. “Right now? No. Of course not. Am I missing something? They usually just call when my payments get this late.” His eyes dart to Jilly as if wolves are waiting in the forest to grab her away the second he isn’t looking.

  “By . . . um . . .” I don’t want to say it, and I can’t remember the words. I have to hold up his card and read it while he squints at the fine print on the back. “By Valor Congressional Order number 7B, your account is past due and hereby declared in default. Due to your failure to remit all owed monies and per your signature just witnessed and accepted, you are given two choices. You may either sign your loyalty over to Valor Savings as an indentured collections agent for a period of five days or forfeit your life. Please choose.”