Hit

by Delilah S. Dawson

  And what did Amber mean about my dad? He was rich and worked for Valor? And that’s why he left us? My mom never said anything about him, ever. I just have vague, sunny memories, an old gun, and the photo from Ashley Cannon’s house. I know Ashley is dead, but who is the third man in the photo? All the questions I’ve asked over the years have been met with stony, tight-lipped silence. For all that my mama was always loving and went out of her way to find answers to most of my questions, she really stuck to her guns on that one thing, the thing I wanted most to know.

  But if he was rich, why wouldn’t he help us out? Why wouldn’t he send checks, or pay off the house, or even drop anonymous birthday cards in the mail? If he had extra money all this time, what was more important than me? Did I get my amazing math skills and tenacity from him? And if he worked for Valor, why would he allow them to target me like this? I wish for the hundredth time that I’d had more time to poke around at Ashley ­Cannon’s house.

  I tug the folded photo out of my back pocket and stare at the three people smiling in front of the dead buck. My dad’s face in the photograph is the face I remember from when I was four, the face I always saw in my dreams—but more haggard. Uncle Ashley looks about five years younger than my dad. The third man is clearly their father—my grandfather, I guess. He’s a broad guy with gray, military hair and a beard that makes him look like a wolf. But it’s not like they were posed in front of a Valor-branded Humvee. They could have been hunting in the woods behind the soccer field at school, or they could have been on a private estate somewhere, for all I know. And Uncle Ashley did have a mighty large television for a poor guy, not that that means much anymore.

  Could they all be related to Valor somehow?

  The truck crunches to a stop, and Wyatt gets out and walks around to open my door like we’re on some freaky date. Or maybe he can sense that my hands don’t work anymore.

  “Are you—”

  I interrupt him by jumping out and throwing my arms around his neck. I don’t think I’ve stopped crying since Amber’s house, but now I really let it all out. He freezes at first, like he’s not sure what to do, like maybe I’m a bomb that’s about to explode. Then his arms wrap around me, warm and sure and strong, and he edges back into the passenger seat and pulls me into his lap. I bawl my eyes out into his two-day-old band shirt. He smells ripe as hell, but there’s something comforting about it, something raw and real. He rubs my back and murmurs things to me, nonsense words, just “Come on, now,” and “It’s going to be okay,” that sort of thing. Matty’s nose and tongue flop around, hunting for us through the window, but she can’t reach us. I’m glued to the boy at every possible juncture like a frightened octopus.

  I finally get myself together enough to snuffle, “This fucking sucks.”

  “I know it does,” he whispers in my ear. “I know. But the hard part is over.”

  Now it’s my turn to freeze. I swallow hard and pull back to look at him, wiping my nose on the corner of my blood-spattered tank like it doesn’t matter. I guess I always figured I would throw all these shirts out afterward, anyway. Wyatt tries to pull me back close, but I can feel the tension in his body. I heard what he said, and he knows I heard it, and he knows he’s going to have to explain.

  “What do you mean the hard part is over?” I ask. “Isn’t your brother the next name on that list?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant the hard part for you. Not me. I mean, you don’t know you’re going to have to kill Max. He can be pretty smart. And tough. Maybe he’ll take the deal.”

  “Yeah.” I cock my head. “But you don’t look worried.”

  “I’m worried about you right now,” he says. “We’ll worry about Max when it comes to that.”

  I push back from his chest, scoot away, and stand just outside the reach of his arms. We’re back at the end of the dirt road where we started this morning. It feels like that was a million years ago.

  “It’s now, Wyatt. It comes to it now. He’s the last one. I deal with him, and this nightmare is over. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Jesus, girl. You just killed your childhood best friend. You’re shaken up. Do we have to talk about this now? Do you want some food? Sleep?”

  My eyes narrow at him. “I want the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “The truth about Max. This whole time, you’ve kind of ignored it, danced around it. But you’ve never said much about him, aside from y’all hanging out in the woods. You never told me what your brother was like, or how old he is, or if he lives with you, or what he did to run up all that debt.”

  “I guess I’m guilty of focusing on you,” Wyatt says, but he’s nervous. His knee is jiggling, and Matty is staring at him solemnly with those big brown eyes of hers. She’s like a living lie detector, and she knows something is fishy.

  “Do we trust each other, or not?” I say. More tears sting my eyes, but I wipe them away. “I mean, I trust you. I gave you my gun. And now you’re not telling me something, and I’m starting to feel like a total dumbass. Do you even like me?”

  “You know goddamn well I do!” he growls. “I don’t mean to keep bringing it up, but I ran into a gunfight for you. Twice. I’ve driven you from place to place and watched you kill people. I’ve helped you chase them. I’ve fed you. I shot a man because I thought he was going to lay a hand on you. It’s the worst damn timing on earth, but you have to know I like you! You feel it too. I know you do.”

  “What do I know?” I say, bitterness seeping out of me like pickle juice. “I’m just a murderer with bad luck. Why would a guy like you want to get involved with me, outside of keeping his brother alive and maybe getting to second base a few times?”

  “Is that really what you think of me?” he asks, just as cold as frozen ground.

  My heart screams no, but my mouth whispers, “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  He looks at me, his eyes hard and dark. Everything about him is bigger than me, and in a different world he would be my champion, my knight, my protector. But here he’s just been my chauffeur, my chef, my shield. Maybe I pretended he was my boyfriend, but I was naive, and whatever the world is going to become, right now it’s all-out war.

  Or maybe that’s just in my heart.

  Real gentle, he moves me aside so he can get out of the truck. He pulls his gun, my other gun, out of the back of his jeans and places it softly on the passenger seat.

  “You think about what you just said. And when you realize you’re lying to yourself, you come find me. You know where I’ll be.”

  Turning his back on me, Wyatt walks away for the second time while Matty howls like her heart’s breaking too.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” I shout at the afternoon sky.

  He left me in the truck with my dog and a dead girl. And he took the keys when he left. I’ve got no idea where I am, it’s going to be dark in a few hours, and all our food burned up with the mail truck. Maybe I should just go to Wyatt’s house and kill his brother and go the fuck home. I pull the postal shirt out from the glove box and look at the last card. Maxwell Beard owes Valor $18,325.63. It doesn’t seem possible, unless Robert Beard took out a loan in his older son’s name. What does a rich man’s kid need that much money for, anyway? Then again, Amber’s debt didn’t seem possible either. I almost tear up the card in anger, but I’m so close. So close to saving my mom’s life.

  If she’s still alive. If the house hasn’t been burned down. If I’ve followed all the rules closely enough. If they’re not mad about the truck. If I can find Max Beard.

  If, if, if.

  Repress, repress, repress.

  The sun is almost down, the air clean and clear and cold. Normally, I love nights like this. It’s just the right temperature so that we don’t need the air conditioner, heater, or fans, which means I don’t fret about paying for them. I love snuggling under
thick blankets and sleeping so deeply that I don’t dream, that I can’t bolt up in the early morning, driven awake by nightmares and worry. Last night I woke up to bullets and tragedy. This morning I woke up in Wyatt’s arms. Tonight I’ll sleep alone under a quilt, the doppelgänger of the one wrapped around Amber’s corpse.

  I pull down the tailgate, and Matty jumps to the ground before I can stop her. She whimpers when she lands but charges off into the forest and squats, tail wagging gratefully, poor girl. I think about making a bed in back, but there’s no way I could sleep next to Amber. Instead, I pull out my knitting bag and get back in the passenger seat to hunt around for a color that seems right. None of them do, not really, but I grab a new set of needles and cast on twelve stitches in dark green. I knit furiously by the light of the truck cab, the door open to what should be a beautiful night. I knit like my needles are on fire, like something will explode if I don’t knit fast enough. At home it was so plodding and normal. Now it’s like knitting on crack while Matty watches me patiently from the ground outside, her tail occasionally thumping the dirt. But it’s soothing, and I find my thoughts unwinding with the yarn. I wish it were mohair or angora, something soft and lovely, but acrylic will have to do.

  I knit it straight through, hundreds and hundreds of rows. I switch back and forth between the green and a ball of heather gray, stripe after stripe after stripe until I’m out of yarn. By the time I finish the scarf, I know exactly what I have to do.

  November got cold, fast, especially considering I’m walking up a pitch-dark dirt track in the middle of nowhere. Matty plods by my side, and only the fact that she’s perfectly chill keeps me from wigging out. I just hope that when I reach the main road, I’ll know where I am, and it won’t be too far to where I’m going.

  The only comfort is that whatever happens, it will be over soon. I’ve technically got ten hours left, but I don’t want them. And after being confronted by Jeremy, I suspect that Second Union and Valor don’t play by the same rules. One name is left on the list. One more task before I can ditch the bugged shirt. Either I take care of Max Beard, or my mom’s not going to need any expensive treatments. I haven’t allowed myself to consider it before, but now I have to. For her, knowing what she has to go through and having met Eloise Framingham, a quick death by a Valor bullet might be preferable. For about three seconds, I think about crushing the button, burning the shirt, going home, getting in the car with my mom, and running away, going into hiding. But people hiding from the new government can’t get chemo.

  Max Beard it is.

  I see the turnoff to the real road up ahead, a strange silhouette waiting under the lone streetlight at the top of the hill. It’s one of those flashing construction cones, and on it sits an extra-large energy drink, a banana, and the truck keys. So Wyatt came back. Not all the way, not close enough to touch, but close enough to leave transportation and food, both of which I need much more than some stupid love note from a guy who couldn’t possibly love me. I’m a practical girl, and I learned at an early age that actions speak louder than words.

  Banana in one hand and crappy flavored drink in the other, I walk back down the dirt road with keys in my pocket and a slightly lighter heart. It’s full dark now, which means I have to take care of my final task by the truck’s dome light. I feed Matty some water-soaked kibble, finish the banana, do my business in the grass, and give myself a chilly but thorough wipe-down with my shower wipes. I don’t exactly feel clean, but I feel better. Another pair of white panties out of the package, a fresh white tank, my last pair of jeans. I pull the Postal Service shirt from under the passenger seat and hold it out at arm’s length. It’s wrinkled, and the black thread on the resewn button gives it an air of Frankenstein. The blood of two people and a dog are impossible to miss against the cheap, light blue fabric. I think about putting it on, but I ball it back up around the signature machine instead.

  I’m going in as me, the real me. Not the assassin. Just Patsy. And anyway, he has to know I’m coming. He told me to.

  I stare at the blanket-wrapped form nestled in the truck bed. One last adventure for Am and Pats. It doesn’t even feel real anymore. Whatever there was of Amber is long gone. But I can barely lift her by myself, and I don’t have any way to dig a grave, and I can’t leave her out here for the animals to ravage. Bringing her with me made sense at the time, but now I feel like it’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s impossible to forget for a single second that there’s a body just inches away. There’s no way I could sleep out here. So now she’s going with me.

  I haven’t driven a big truck like this before. I feel like a little kid sitting in the driver’s seat, figuring out which levers to pull. I have to scoot the seat forward just to reach the pedals. It’s weird not to have the GPS for the last name on my list. But I know where he lives.

  “Turn around at your earliest convenience if you wish to kill Maxwell Beard,” I say in a fake British accent. “Take the motorway to break Wyatt’s heart.” I giggle madly and choke on a sob.

  The truck bumps over rocks and grass as I turn it around in a wide circle and follow the tire tracks through the mud and back up to the street. I edge the truck around Wyatt’s traffic cone and reach into the passenger seat to pat Matty before turning onto the road that leads to the Preserve.

  A few short minutes later, I’m parked in front of the house where it all began. I was so scared then. I remember fumbling everything, waiting until the last possible moment. Juggling the basket and the machine and the card and the gun. I was an amateur. Now I’m a professional. An assassin. A stone-cold killer. So why are my hands shaking just like they did then? Why am I on the verge of puking?

  Because it’s personal now, I guess.

  Because Valor Savings made sure it would be personal.

  The door is closed, and I wonder what happened to Bob’s body. Did Wyatt and Max drag him inside the house and wrap him up, like I did with Amber? If the police weren’t answering the phone, was the coroner? Is there a shortage of coffins and preachers? Has anyone outside of the conspiracy wackos even made the connection between Valor Savings and the hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe millions of people killed at their front doors, puzzlement and outraged shame etched in their foreheads forever?

  It occurs to me now—I never asked.

  I never asked Wyatt what he had done with his dad. If he had cried. If he needed help digging a grave. If he wanted me to come to the funeral, or if there would even be one. I was so wrapped up in what I had to do to keep my mom safe and stay alive that I completely ignored the fact that he had just lost a parent. Because of me. Even if he claimed not to like his dad, it still had to hurt, somewhere inside that he kept hidden. If there’s one thing I can relate to, it’s the pain of losing a father.

  I pretended to be Wyatt’s girlfriend for a few days, just for myself. For my own comfort and curiosity and selfishness. And I was a really shitty girlfriend.

  I fluff my hair and smooth my bangs. I wish I had some ChapStick, as I can’t seem to stop chewing my lip. But at least I’m not covered in blood anymore. Not visibly.

  The walk to the front door is the same as before, except that it’s midnight, and there’s a black Lab at my side, trailing a borrowed leash. The yellow grass, the fallen tree, the strange combination of wealth and absence, the excruciating pain and fear at what awaits—they all combine with the cold stars to make the world seem bleak and past its prime. Matty sniffs everything energetically, and I’m glad that she, at least, can be happy in this moment. I knock on the door, heart in throat, hoping Wyatt will answer.

  Not Max. Please don’t be Max.

  The door swings open, and there he is. Wyatt. Half of my imaginary “we.” Freshly showered, in another pair of plaid pajama pants, bigger than life and taller than I remember with a gold and brown snake wrapped around his arm. But why is he wearing the shirt of a band I hate?

 
“You’re early,” he says as if nothing happened, and I wonder if this is a trait unique to him or something all boys do, this stubborn ignorance that refuses to face the facts. He kneels to ruffle Matty’s neck fur.

  “I tried to call you on my banana, but you didn’t answer,” I say, and he laughs, which is gratifying, because I spent the entire drive over trying to think of a way to thank him that wouldn’t make me break down crying. I look down, and he absentmindedly rubs the snake’s head.

  “Yeah,” he says with a grin. “I ate mine.”

  He stands back, and I walk in with Matty at my side, stepping over a shiny place in the wood where I last saw Robert Beard’s body. A lacrosse stick and a rifle lean together in the corner by the door, as if he was expecting trouble. I didn’t set a foot inside this house last time, but I remember the unseasonal warmth. It smells like a house without women, without potpourri or fabric softener or perfume. Kind of stale, too warm, with trash left in the kitchen too long.

  Wyatt shuts the door behind me and says, “Did you know Matty is the first dog ever to be allowed in this house? Max is hella allergic.”

  “Is that Max?” I point to the snake.

  Wyatt laughs. “That’s Monty. Max is taller. Nice attempt at levity, though.”

  “Is he here?” I ask nervously. “Not because I want to . . . I mean . . .” I look down, hold out my arms. “No ugly shirt, no bugged button, no gun. I just want to talk. Promise.” I spin around and hold up my shirt to show that the waistband of my jeans is empty. When I turn back to face him, there’s a warm hunger in Wyatt’s eyes that makes me blush. I guess these jeans are low­riders, after all.

  He swallows hard and says, “He’s not here now. We can talk. You still hungry?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “Starving.”