I don’t think he was lying to me. I don’t think he has debt. I don’t think he’s a crackpot.
I think he knew exactly what’s going on, and I only wish I had all day to search through his trailer.
But I don’t want Valor or Second Union to know anything about him that they don’t already, and I would bet my life that the helicopter getting louder and louder is stamped with one of their logos.
“I’m coming in,” Wyatt yells.
I shout back, “No. I’m coming out now!”
I rush to the front of the trailer and unplug the power strip that controls all three laptops. After closing and stacking them and dumping all their cords on top, I chuck them into a box and shove it out the door and into Wyatt’s waiting hands. Before he can ask me what the hell I’m doing, I say, “Did you bring your lighter?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Just go put that box in the truck and get ready to run.”
“Why?”
“Do you trust me?”
He looks at me, eyes narrowed. Of course he doesn’t trust me. I killed his dad.
“I shouldn’t, but I kind of do,” he admits. “Just tell me what’s in the trailer.”
“I will after you put those in the truck,” I say.
He hurries away with the box, and I rush back to the fridge I saw under a stack of folders. I take a Sunkist for each of us and a beer, too. Wyatt is waiting outside the door by the time I get back.
“Help me get him inside the trailer.” I pick up Alistair’s feet, and Wyatt grabs him under his arms, and he’s all floppy and wet, but we manage to get him inside and close the door.
The helicopter is getting louder.
“So what’s going on?” he says.
“This guy’s a conspiracy theorist.” I pop open the beer can. “Lighter, please.” Wyatt puts the silver rectangle in my hand and looks from it to the beer can like I’m six shades of crazy, but he doesn’t stop me.
“Grab that towel out of the window, will you?” I say. I point to the open window where Alistair must’ve stood to shoot out our tire. Wyatt yanks it out, and I pour beer all over half of it. I light the other half with the lighter, although it takes me three tries to get the damn thing to light. Apparently, beer isn’t very flammable. Then I throw the towel through the door, aiming for a pile of paper. It catches fire with a whoosh. I light the carpet, too. Bright orange flames are licking up the walls when I finally close the door again.
“So why are you burning down his trailer?” Wyatt asks.
“Because I don’t know if Valor knows what he knows, but I don’t want them to know that I know anything.”
“So what’s on the laptops?”
“I have no idea. They just seemed more portable than a thousand pounds of paper and maps and crap. If we can crack the passwords, I bet we can find out a lot more about our new government.”
“I don’t know if you’re crazy or crazy,” Wyatt admits. “But I think you’re pretty cool.”
About that time, we realize we’re standing next to a trailer that’s going to explode, and we run for the mail truck in nothing like the slow motion you see in movies. Wyatt leaps into the driver’s side as I land in the passenger seat, and I look at the reset red clock and realize that wherever this truck goes, they can find it. With one tire shot out, it’s practically useless anyway.
“Stop. Grab your stuff and the laptops. We’re abandoning ship.”
Bless his heart, he doesn’t question it. We roll up the back door and start throwing all our shit out into the yard. There’s not much. My backpack, my knitting bag, Jeremy’s shotgun, Wyatt’s backpack. On last thought, my quilt.
He jumps down with the box of laptops, and I say, “Go make sure that old truck has keys in the ignition. I bet it does. Dude knew he might have to run.”
As he jogs over, I grab one of the concrete blocks that serve as the front step of the trailer.
“Yup. Got keys. It runs,” he hollers.
“Load it up with our stuff and get ready to floor it.”
Hands shaking, ears pounding with helicopter rotors, I use the concrete block to pin down the mail truck’s gas pedal, crank the key, put it in gear, and jump the hell out of the door. I trip and fall on the rough ground but scramble up and away with my heart busting and the gun slipping against my butt crack.
The mail truck barrels into the flaming trailer and catches fire, still trying to ram through and digging holes in the dirt. I run to the camper truck and jump in, and Wyatt guns it in a cloud of dust. It’s clean but worn inside, anonymous and well preserved. The keys jangling in the ignition have a red rabbit’s foot on the chain. I roll down my window and lean out to look back, and it’s kind of beautiful, the trailer and mail truck ablaze in the old orchard, billowing black smoke. I hope it doesn’t set the whole field of trees and grass on fire. But it’s too late now. What’s done is done. If Valor doesn’t like the fire, they can put it out. The shadow of the helicopter sniffs the corner of the orchard, and I duck back inside the truck just as we scoot under some pine trees. Maybe they’ll think we died in the truck.
I lean back, grab the handle, and take a deep breath. “That went well.”
“At least nobody shot at you this time,” Wyatt says.
“I just don’t get why he was so stupid.” I open the glove box, but it’s empty, aside from the registration, made out to Axel McDaniel. I wonder what his real name was. “He could have told me what was up first. You can’t just grab jumpy people with guns who already want you dead.”
“No telling,” Wyatt says.
And that’s when I wish I had more fully searched Alistair Meade’s body for clues. He might have had more information in his back pockets. Jesus, and I just tossed his wallet away without looking past the fake IDs and the money. I didn’t even check to see if he had a phone—maybe the one that would ring if you called the number on the business card he tried to give me.
I shake my head. Maybe they succeeded in making me an assassin, a cold-blooded killer. But they didn’t make me a decent detective. I just did something impossibly rash and, yeah, kind of stupid. And now all the clues are on fire, including my mail truck and all my posters and my stuffed turtles. I guess I didn’t really think that through. I just knew that I had to keep Valor out of that trailer and that truck away from me.
They wanted to keep me in the dark. Now, as much as possible, I’ll take a gleeful turn at keeping them in the dark. I still have the possibly bugged button on my wadded-up shirt, but as long as I get the next two people on the list today, I should be able to toss it by nightfall.
But, Jesus—what about the truck? They never said that I had to turn it in at the end. Was there something about it on that paper I signed without looking? Are they going to be pissed? What if they think that without the GPS, I’m going to fail? What if they go after my mom before my time is up?
It’s too fucking late to worry about that now.
The truck is gone.
The best I can do is finish the last two names and hurry home to check on my mom once I’ve done what I promised to do. As long as I have the button on my shirt, they have to know I’m still in the game.
Repress, repress, repress. Keep moving. Next name.
I’m not ready to think about the next person on the list, even though I know I have less than twelve hours to face her.
I can’t even begin to imagine what will happen when I’m done.
The old truck bumps back onto asphalt, and my butt’s glad for a smoother ride. I yawn and stretch and put my feet up on the dashboard. The gun digs into my back, and I slip it under my thigh instead. The other two are on the floorboard under my feet, and I assume the shotgun is sliding around in the truck bed. It’s kind of funny how just a few short days ago, I had a healthy respect for guns. I wasn’t afraid of them, and I kind of liked shooting them w
ith the guys after work, but I understood that they were to be transported unloaded, with the bullets locked in the glove box. That was the legal, safe way to do it. Now I’m slinging my Glock around like it’s last year’s fancy phone, something I need that kind of gets in my way but isn’t particularly exciting.
It’s lunchtime, but I’m nowhere close to hungry. I bet Wyatt is, though. Maybe he’s going to get a second breakfast, since he’s a bottomless pit. Or maybe he’s headed back to the vet. I have no idea where we are right now, on back roads in the country. Or maybe he’s going to another secret hiding spot in the wilderness, now that we can’t go back to the Preserve. I try to think of what I would be doing today if I were at school. But does it even matter? After this week, after what I’ve done, does schoolwork even signify? Could I just go back to school like nothing happened, like I don’t know what I know, my hands washed utterly clean of blood? Will I sit in a desk, pencil in hand, focusing on quizzes and tests and homework and answering questions about the week I spent at home with measles? Could I get through five minutes of US history without laughing my ass off? Do I even want something as regular as school anymore, now that I know that the future is out of my control? Precalculus seems like the dumbest thing on earth when a murderous bank runs your country.
Will Valor and Second Union even let me have a future?
And yet, at the same time, it’s not like I’m going to go work for Valor Savings, become a willing cog in their machinery. I’m still the same person I’ve always been, in my heart. Each of those people I’ve killed—they had a choice. If they wanted to pretend it wasn’t real, that I wasn’t serious, that’s not my fault. Choice after choice, it was always in their hands. Two out of eight people seems like a pretty high rate of acceptance, and they were the two people who I thought deserved their Valor card the least. That can’t be a coincidence.
And that makes me wonder how many people like me opted out on the first round. Was it just kids my age, like on that list in Alistair’s trailer and like the Black Suit told my mom? Did they give that career aptitude test to every kid between sixteen and eighteen? Or did they choose all sorts of people to become homemade assassins? How many people didn’t live past that first Glock, held in the hands of a black-suited man who didn’t quite seem to breathe? And why, of all the people in America, had they targeted me? What did that test tell them? I wasn’t dangerous. I wasn’t trained. I wasn’t particularly brave.
I was, however, expendable.
And I don’t look like someone your average American would want to shoot, even though most of them wouldn’t want me hanging around their neighborhoods.
Teen daughter of a single mother, no father, no other family. No money to hire lawyers. A mom too proud and ashamed to ask for help and sick enough to be grateful for any shred of hope. We’re poor, and we live in one of the poorest neighborhoods of a poor suburb. Wyatt’s Preserve is like a king’s castle to most of us, and Chateau Tuscano might as well be Disney World. Ashley Cannon, Sharon Mulvaney, and Alistair Meade—they’re at the rougher end of the spectrum, but they’re closer to the real heart of Candlewood than Robert Beard and Dr. Ken Belcher. Personally, I’ve never let myself dream higher than Kelsey Mackey.
And that can’t be a coincidence, either. All of my assignments have been in the five-mile radius of my house, and all of the people are somehow connected to my life. Whatever’s happening to me is not the same as what happened to Jeremy. According to what I read in Alistair’s trailer, my situation is playing out all over the country, where undesirable teens are being sent out to cull the debt-ridden herd, activate new assassins, and generally spread mayhem and fear. It’s pretty smart, if you’ve quietly taken over a country known for freedom but dependent on the government employees on the other end of the phone to get help. If no one answers 911, if the police really were assassinated, people are going to start freaking out pretty quickly. But since most people don’t need 911 on a daily basis and Valor appears to be controlling the media, the average person wouldn’t know about the problem until they’d already become collateral damage.
The more I think about it, the bigger it gets and the more tiny and helpless I feel. And the more I wish I had had time to ask Alistair Meade a few questions. But Valor was coming, and he told me to burn it all. Maybe destroying the evidence in his trailer helped uphold his memory. Maybe it continued whatever he was fighting.
The truck rolls to a stop, and I look up. I’ve been so busy thinking that I wasn’t really paying attention. I should have been, though. I gasp, and my feet slam down on the floorboard.
“Drive!” It comes out strangled. “Drive fast.”
With a confused shake of his head, Wyatt steps on the gas just hard enough to keep it from squealing. He turns so fast in the cul-de-sac that the truck is practically on two wheels, and I have to hold on to my oh-shit handle to keep from falling into his lap. All the stuff in back clatters around, the shotgun banging against the metal. He doesn’t say anything until we’re out of the neighborhood and onto the road.
“Sorry,” he says. “I figured you’d want to knock one more out, so I pulled the directions out of the old GPS before we left the truck. No lucky number nine?”
I just shake my head.
“I want a milk shake,” I say darkly.
Maybe a milk shake will settle my stomach. Because the house we were just in front of? Seeing it again was just about enough to make me crap myself. I haven’t let myself think about the ninth name on the list. Part of me hoped that something would happen before it came down to this. A Deus ex machina, as my English teacher calls it.
I don’t want to go there again.
I don’t want to talk to her, much less kill her.
My ex–best friend can wait.
9.
Amber Lane
To his credit, Wyatt doesn’t ask me any questions until we’re in the drive-through line.
“What flavor?” he asks, and I mutter, “Surprise me.”
After careful consideration, he orders one chocolate, one vanilla, and one peppermint chocolate chip, not to mention a pretty big meal for himself and, on second thought, one for me. I stop stewing and brooding long enough to thank him, and I watch for that Valor credit card, but he’s onto me. He hands it to the girl front-side down and slides it back into his jeans pocket.
He hands me all the food, and the smell turns my stomach. I drop the bags on the floorboard and start in on the peppermint chocolate chip milk shake, stirring in the whipped cream and shoveling it into my mouth with a spoon because I know it’s too thick to suck up yet. Wyatt just drives, his face flat and passive. Still, it’s like he can read my thoughts, because he parks at the vet even though they’re closed for lunch. It softens me up enough to tear the straw wrapper and blow. It hits him right between the eyes, and he can’t help grinning.
“Are we cool now?” he says. “Did the milk shake work?”
“The milk shake is starting to work.”
I stick the straw in and suck so hard my cheeks hurt. A brain freeze would be really good right now. Any excuse to avoid the discussion that’s about to start.
“So what happened back there at number nine, Patsy Klein?”
Grabbing the bags of food and the milk shake carton, I hop to the ground and head around to the back of the old blue truck. Wyatt follows me, and when I jab my chin at the truck bed, he pulls down the tailgate, lifts up the camper hatch, and spreads out my quilt so we can sit. It’s a beautiful day, with a perfect blue sky and the unusually warm sunshine that sometimes makes November feel like late summer in Georgia. I take my time with the food, pulling out my sandwich and squeezing mayo onto it, getting the little puddle of ketchup ready for my fries. I’m trying to organize my thoughts, too. Where am I even supposed to start?
“I know her, okay?” I take a big bite and chew so long that he makes a “go on” gesture with his hand. His mouth
is full too. He’s already on his second sandwich. “Amber Lane. We used to be best friends, a long time ago. Before her family got too rich and we stayed too poor. We look a lot alike, and we used to pretend to be sisters. And then in seventh grade, her grandmother died, and suddenly her family had money, and her mom stopped inviting me over, and Amber said my clothes weren’t good enough to be her best friend anymore. She fought it at first. But then she got popular and ruined my life worse.”
“She ruined your life . . . worse?”
“I kept following her around like a lovesick puppy, and she trashed me in the cafeteria, in front of everyone. Reminded me that I gave her lice in first grade, told everyone how poor I was, then called me a bastard. Said my dad left because I was such a loser, even though there’s no way that could be true or that she could even know. Everybody laughed. I cried. Total movie moment. And I guess that’s when I figured that I should just stop trying to fit in.”
He puts down what’s left of his sandwich and ropes an arm around me.
“And she’s on the list? Damn, girl. It’s like they’re trying to punish you.”
“Maybe they are,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
I’ve been pussyfooting around whether or not to tell him about all the connections. I glance at the box of laptops, which is nestled between our backpacks like a really ugly Oreo cookie. Alistair Meade’s trailer didn’t say anything about me in particular as compared to all the other names, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’m different. That something about my current predicament is personal. But I need to make sure we’re really, seriously alone before I open my mouth.
“Where’s the shirt?” I ask, on the brink of going frantic. I don’t remember what happened to it at the orchard, but I know I can’t go back for anything we might have left there. And even if I’m terrified that I’ve already messed up and doomed my mom, my only chance at sanity and survival is to keep pushing forward like I can still win this game. Until all ten names are done, I need that shirt. My mom might be in trouble now, but I’m completely sure that without that shirt, she’ll be dead.
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