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“What about when a deer runs across the road?” he asks.

“Yeah, but that's out of your control. And you might hit it and destroy your car.”

“But that's free meat.”

I can't tell if he's serious or not until his mouth twitches.

I knock my shoulder back against his. “Ew. They have ticks, weirdo. But yarn bombing is thoughtful. Planned. You can almost guarantee that you're going to make people think, maybe even feel something. At the very least, they'll question it.”

He's silent, but he puts his chin over my head and nuzzles back and forth. I watch the fire and enjoy the quiet. After a few moments, he says, all in a rush, “Do you think you would knit a scarf for me, one day?”

I laugh against him.

“Sure,” I say. “I can take time out of my busy assassination and yarn bombing schedule for that. But what about you? What do you do? What's your middle name? And did you actually go to all the concerts, or did you just get the shirts online?”

He drags me onto his lap and wraps both arms around me, and
for just a moment, I feel like a little kid. Cared for, hugged, wanted. In between Wyatt and the fire, I've never been so warm from head to toe.

“My name is Wyatt Dane Beard,” he says. “I like music, I play bass, I have a pet snake, and I used to skateboard a lot. Now I do lacrosse so I can take out my anger by beating on other guys with a stick. It was my therapist's idea. My parents got divorced when I was eleven, and it royally screwed up my life. I wasn't a decent person again until I turned sixteen and watched my friend Mikey OD. I'm nineteen now but a year behind in school. I get good grades and hope they'll balance out my old grades. I've never worked a day in my life, and I kind of hate myself for it.”

“You shouldn't.”

“It's just one more thing I've got to fix,” he says firmly, and I settle myself against his chest.

“I don't know if I would work if we weren't poor.” I sigh, thinking about how weird my hands feel when I get home every night, powdery and greasy at the same time, aching from making dozens of pizzas. “It's not like I have a passion for crappy pizza or anything. And the customers are major jerks.”

“Are they paying you for this?” he says suddenly.

“Valor, you mean?” I shrug, my shoulders rubbing against his chest. “Kind of. They said there might be a bonus, but they didn't say how much. I mean, it was basically a case of
do this or we kill
your mom and then you
, so I didn't ask about the pay scale. The guy who came to my house said her medical bills would be covered, so maybe they're paying something. I guess I didn't think that far ahead.” I swallow. “He had a gun. To her chest. I would have signed anything.”

“What about the truck? Do you get to keep it?”

I look past the fire to the hulking shadow of the mail truck. So normal and trustworthy and boringly governmental. Such a brilliant way to sneak up on people. Everyone's excited to get a package. The fruit basket was pretty clever, too, and I consider that I might want to find a fake box or something, to make it look less like “It could be a check or a subpoena” and more like “Happy birthday!” At least one person on my list is going to need major incentive to open the door for me.

And what would I even do with a mail truck after this? Sell it? Park it in my driveway and take it to school every morning? And will there even be a Postal Service anymore, now that Valor Savings owns the government? Will there even be school? I snort to myself, considering that my life now brings new meaning to the term “going postal.”

“I don't know,” I finally say. “They seriously went out of their way to keep me in the dark. I couldn't see past the first five days and keeping that gun off my mom.”

“She's lucky to have you as a daughter,” he whispers.

His voice sounds so sad and far away that I twist in his lap and kiss him gently on the lips.

“You do what you have to do to survive,” I say.

“But what about what you do before survival is even a problem? What if you make the wrong choices when there are dozens of choices? What if you can't fix it?”

“There's always another choice,” I say. “And you're a good person.”

“I'm . . . glad you think so.”

He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I cup his face. There are tears caught in his eyelashes, and they tickle my fingertips as his arms wrap around me, hotter than the fire. He smells like smoke and detergent and boy, and I can't get close enough.

Later, after we've kissed each other until our lips are nearly numb, Wyatt makes sandwiches with the food from the fridge and slices an apple with the Swiss Army Knife from his secret tree-house hidey-hole. The fire slowly dies as we sit there, talking and holding hands. He feeds me huge grapes too fast, stuffing them in my mouth until I nearly choke with laughter. I trace his broken tattoo by the firelight, and he lets me this time.

“You should get a new one,” I say. “Something beautiful.”

He chuckles softly. “How do you cover up something that screwy?”

“With something bigger.”

He stands and kicks dirt over the embers of the fire, helps me up and follows me to the mail truck. The quilt is wrapped around me, dragging on the ground, and he takes it from me and shakes it clean.

We fall asleep curled together on the narrow cot under my quilt. I wonder for just a second if our tender whispers will carry to the camera under the pillow, but before I can move it, I'm asleep, held snugly in his arms.

Sometime in the night, he sleepily, slurringly says, “I'm so sorry.”

But he doesn't say about what.

I'm about to ask when the first bullet rips through the wall.

8.

Alistair Meade

Wyatt rolls on top of me like some kind of idiot hero.

“Tell me that was your gun,” he grunts. “Tell me that was an accidental discharge.”

My hand slips under the pillow and past the button, and I've never felt so good about wrapping my fingers around the Glock's grip.

“Not mine. Someone's outside.”

Three more shots go off, punching random holes in the truck. Wyatt rolls us both onto the floor, as if that's going to help. He lands on top of me like a sack of dumb rocks and tries to shove me under the cot.

“Come out, or we're coming in!” someone yells from outside,
kinda like they're unsure. Another shot backs up the demand. The voice is familiar, and I go cold all over and slam my other fist into the floor. Goddammit.

“What the hell, Jeremy?” I scream with what little air I can find. “Stop shooting, you moron!”

The shots stop, and I hear whispering. Of course Roy's with him. Of course. But why are my redneck buddies here at all? And why are they shooting? And are they going to start again? My relief at the pause in gunfire spills uneasily over into doubt that I hear echoed in Jeremy's voice.

“Patsy?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that really you?”

I shove Wyatt off me and crawl to the front of the truck, pausing between the seats, just in case Roy's holding a gun too. His eyesight's notoriously bad, and his trigger finger is shaky. Sure enough, there they are, standing out in the middle of the field like dorks. They're both wearing camo and have their faces painted, badly, in streaks. It would be hilarious if they didn't have guns pointed right at me. What kind of game are they playing?

“Yeah, it's me.” I wave the gun. “Are you done with trying to kill me now? Cuz my aim's better and you know it. What the hell are y'all doing?”

They whisper together again. “Wanna parley?” Jeremy yells.

I snort. “Your obsession with
Pirates of the Caribbean
needs to stop now. But yes. Please. If you promise not to shoot.”

They whisper again, and Wyatt's hand lands on my leg. He shows me his gun and raises his eyebrows. “They're idiots, but they're my idiots,” I whisper.

“I don't trust them.”

“I do. But stay hidden and keep them in your sights. There's something weird going on. Valor said there would be nobody around to stop me.”

Wyatt nods, and his eyes shift sideways. “Is one of them your boyfriend?”

I eject the magazine and shove it back home to make my point. “Don't insult me like that when I'm holding a gun.” Then, loud enough for the guys outside to hear, “I'm coming out now. I'm armed. Put your guns on the ground.”

Roy tosses his without a second thought, but Jeremy stares at his for a second and yells, “Ain't gonna happen, Cowpatty. This shit's for real.”

I take a deep breath and stare at them. My two lovable, moronic, geeky redneck friends. Whatever's going on, I'm betting they wouldn't be here if they had a choice. And I don't want to hurt them. And even if Jeremy's still holding his gun and glaring at me through his badly done face paint, I know that underneath the bravado, he doesn't want to hurt me, either. My first thought is that maybe they
work for Valor, that I'm finally in trouble for everything I've done wrong. But I don't see a mail truck or mail shirts. And nobody's offering me a fruit basket and a signature machine. And there are still three names on my list.

It can't be Valor. Can it? And if not them, who?

Shit.

Jeremy's staring at me like he's running restaurant close-out numbers that insult him by not adding up. But the Patsy I am now is not the same Patsy I was last Friday night, playing Six Degrees of Separation as we mopped the kitchen floor and threw chunks of old pizza dough at one another. I'm not going to shoot them in cold blood. And I'm not going to let them shoot me, although I know that would be a surefire way to keep my mom safe. I'm not ready to give up. Not yet.

I'm not going to let them stop me. My heart hardens, goes cold and dark, and falls to some wet place in my stomach.

“Have it your way,” I holler. “But remember who's a faster draw.”

Wearing only my thin tank top and skinny jeans, I point my gun at Jeremy's heart and squeeze between the seats and into firing range. When I hop down from the mail truck, Roy takes a step back, and Jeremy's gun wavers.

I wish I had a pistol to cock, to let them know I mean business. Considering how quiet the night got after the shots stopped
echoing, that click would be awfully satisfying. Still, my matte black Glock looks sharp and evil in the moonlight, and I hope that's good enough. “Now, why are you guys shooting at me in the middle of nowhere?”

I can hear Jeremy swallow from twenty feet away, and I force myself to walk forward, my bare feet numb in the frosty grass. Goose bumps slam up my arms, and every hair on my body is at attention, and for just a second, my vision goes double, like there are four guys here instead of just two. My gun and Jeremy's gun are identical, pointed right at each other, blue light glinting off stamped gold letters.

Goddammit, Valor.

“We didn't know it was you,” Roy says, soft and lost.

“Oh, so you just thought,
Hey, let's go randomly shoot up a mail truck in the middle of a field. That would be fun.
Because I don't think so.”

“They never said who.” Jeremy's voice is stronger than Roy's. It always is. Up close now, but not close enough to touch, his bright blue eyes glare at me from their jacket of camo, resentful and sullen and sorry. I've never seen him like this before, hard and desperate. He's usually just a good-natured clown. But he's never tried to shoot me before either. I glance back at the mail truck, but I can't see a hint of Wyatt. Still, I know he's there, watching, finger on the trigger of my dad's old gun, the one I used when Jeremy taught me to shoot.

“They who?”

Roy sniffles and turns away, roughing up the high-and-tight under his army cap like he's not about to start crying. Jeremy sighs and lets the shaking gun fall to his side. I let mine fall too.

“This guy showed up at our trailer. Gave us some card about how my dad owes a bunch of money from his new truck. Said the debt would be forgiven if we . . .”

He halts. It's hard to condense what Valor has done to us into one sentence that makes any sense.

“If you became a bounty hunter.”

His head jerks up, and he looks at me hard. “Yeah.”

“Where's your mail truck?”

He stares at me like I'm an idiot. “Mail truck?”

“They gave me this truck. And a stupid Postal Service outfit. And a fake fruit basket so I could ring people's doorbells for a good reason.”

“That's totally gay,” he says, and I reflexively punch him in the arm with my left fist, surprising us both.

“Don't say that, asshole. It's so offensive.”

He stifles a laugh. “Born a redneck, die a redneck.” Same thing he always says when I get onto him for using ugly words. But it's different now. Something in me goes tense when he says the word “die.”

I clear my throat. All joking is gone. “So I'm on your list?”

He shakes his head, and Roy says, “Unidentified female, seven
teen, armed and dangerous in a stolen mail truck. The GPS sent us here.”

“So you were going to shoot me first, then read me my rights?”

Jeremy spits a wad of tobacco at my feet. “Read you your rights? Shit, Cowpatty. What do you think? You don't
have
any rights. We're just supposed to kill the ones that bolt before they can kill us.”

My brain digests it. I'm the alpha squad, and these guys are, what? Cleanup? They're just a bumbling team of redneck nerds who can barely hit the broad side of a barn.

“Is this because I messed up or something? Because I broke the rules?”

Jeremy makes a jack-off motion with his empty hand. “There ain't no rules. You're the first person who lived long enough to ask us anything. Which is good, cuz we don't have any answers.”

“How many have you done?” I ask.

“You're the third.”

“You know any of the others?”

He rolls his eyes, shrugs so that his gun goes sideways. “Why would we?”

So it's just me, then.

“What happens if y'all don't kill me?” I ask.

The night goes dead quiet. Even the wind stops shivering in the grass. A mourning dove calls, and we all startle.

Jeremy looks down, rubs a boot toe in the grass. “Then I die, I guess. My family, too. Ain't gonna happen, Cowpatty.”

“Even Dotty?”

The thought of his sweet little sister getting shot dead next to her hand-me-down Barbie Dreamhouse makes my blood run cold and backward.

He nods, slow and thoughtful, eyes burning into mine.

“I guess so.”

“What about Roy?”

Jeremy shrugs. “He's my stepbrother.”

“Will they kill him?”

“What?” Roy's voice quavers, and he steps to Jeremy's side, shaking. “What about me?”

I can't get past the lump in my throat, the burn of a meatball sub on the back of my tongue. “If you don't kill me, are they gonna kill Roy, too?”

With careful intensity, Jeremy says, “I reckon not. His name was never mentioned.”

I lock eyes with Jeremy. He's breathing through his nose, his dry, bitten lips pinned together.

“Run, Roy,” I whisper.

And thank heavens that for once the stubborn idiot does the right thing. He turns around and runs into the forest, tripping over shit and catching himself and crashing in the underbrush like he's
being chased by a bear, his forgotten gun dark on the ground beside my bare white foot.

“What now?” Jeremy says.

My gun is so heavy, my fingers so slick. It's like Ashley Cannon all over again. I stare at him, trying to merge the boy I know into the killer in front of me. We struck up a friendship in math class, sitting in back and making fun of the brownnosing preps in the front row. Turns out a smart redneck and a geeky poor girl who don't want to date make pretty good friends. Roy started hanging around with us as soon as his mom married Jeremy's dad, and since then, they've been a safe source of comfort for me and a reason that work didn't suck.

“What now?” I echo.

He turns his gun over, runs a finger over words stamped in gold. That same finger points to a familiar black button on his camo shirt pocket. “One of us has got to die, Cowpie. Who's got more to lose?”

My fingers clench. “Don't you do that, asshole. Don't you try to play on my soft spot just because I'm a girl. Don't you fucking dare.”

“Just talkin' sense.”

“Bullshit. You're trying to soften me up. And I'm not soft anymore. So cut it out.”

“I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request,” he says, eyes gone hard and his Southern accent rounding out the words. He tenses a second before I do, and I throw myself to the ground as his gun whips up.

My arms curl over my head as a shot rings out. Jeremy hits the ground beside me a heartbeat after his dropped gun. I can't move, can't pull my hands away from my face and the dirt and tears that appeared there the moment my instincts took over my kindness. My friend's breath rattles, and he groans and tries to roll over. A heavy form pants out of the darkness, and I wait to feel Roy's boot in my ribs.

But it's Wyatt. Of course it's Wyatt. Roy's a coward, always has been. And Wyatt just shot another person to keep me alive. He kicks Jeremy's gun away and gently pries my arms from my head, pulling me into his lap.

“Patsy, are you okay? Speak to me. Are you okay?”

“Means no,” I whisper. “Means no.”

There's a deep rattle and then Jeremy whispers, “Means . . . no . . .”

I spring away from Wyatt and look down into Jeremy's face. Tears streak the camo paint, but his eyes don't see me. His acne-­spattered cheeks flash green and black as his head rolls from side to side, and he coughs as his hands struggle to plug the hole in his stomach that won't stop oozing blood and worse.

“I'm so sorry, Jer,” I say. “I'm so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he mutters. “Least you and Dotty . . . both alive.”

“But you . . .”

My tears fall on his smeared paint. He flaps a blood-and shit-­
covered hand at me like he always does when I'm being ridiculous. “Broke-ass country boys are a dime a dozen. Just promise me one thing, Cowpatty.” He chokes, and red oozes between his teeth. “Kill at least one of them green-suit
Matrix
assholes. For me.”

“As you wish,” I whisper.

He chuckles blood. “
The Princess Bride
. Good one, Cowpatty.”

And then he's gone.

I don't know how I end up in bed in the mail truck, but I wake up amazed to see sunlight, wholly surprised that the world still exists. At my house, I never slept well. The next-door neighbors had a lot of cats, and there were attempted break-ins sometimes, and kids would let off fireworks and get the dogs barking. My mom was always so timid that I felt like I was our only line of defense against the world. Every little bump or creak, even the heater coming on with a swoosh, and I was awake, groping for the old baseball bat under my bed and then lying awake, thinking about how much that heat was going to cost.