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“Am, I am serious as a fucking heart attack,” I say, the words slow and careful. “Take this deal, or I have to shoot you dead. If I don't, Valor Savings is going to kill my mom and then me, and that's not going to happen.”

She tugs her good foot away from my hand, still trying to crawl away to some imaginary hiding place. Like I wouldn't find her, wherever she went. She's crying, her face turned away.

“Your mom ain't worth a sweet goddamn,” she says. “I hope she dies. And I hope you rot in hell.”

Her leg is shaking, the blood soaking through her yoga pants. The Minnie Mouse slipper lays forgotten on the parquet, and her toenails are painted a weird, warm gray. Her bare foot is turning a milky blue, even paler than usual. I sigh.

“All you have to do is take the deal. Just say it. Just say yes. I'll take you to the hospital. It doesn't have to end like this.”

“Fuck. You.”

Hearing her say that as she crawls, shot, dragging a trail of blood along her stupid, plushy carpet, breaks me.

“What the hell is it with you people?” I shout at her. I want to put my head in my hands and pull my hair until something snaps, but I can't let go of the gun. “Why can't you just accept what's going on and do whatever it takes to survive? What on earth would make a person ignore reality and be an asshole? It's a freaking gun, okay? This is real blood all over my shirt. I have been killing ­people all
week just because they won't suck it up and take care of ­business. You're all a bunch of pussies! I fucking hate you, Amber!”

I realize I'm crying too, and it's absurd, the two of us here. Former best friends, alike as peas in a pod, except that her slippers cost more than my entire outfit and I'm the one holding a gun. She curls on her side, clutching her leg and moaning.

“Why aren't the police coming?” she says in a tiny voice. “Why was it Valor on the message?”

“Because Valor Savings owns everything now. Didn't you read the card? Didn't you read the little words above the signature box before you signed it?”

“Nobody reads that shit!” she screams at me, so hard that I can hear the rasp in the back of her throat. A dark spot stains the crotch of her yoga pants. She swallows and coughs. “Why, Patsy? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because shit happens. Even to perfect, beautiful, popular, special little snowflakes like you, shit happens. I'm doing what they're forcing me to do. I'm sorry if you didn't actually rack up these debts yourself. Or if they're fake. But I will do whatever I have to do to live through this, and if you're smart, you will too. Now: Take. The. Deal.”

She curls in tighter, rocking her head back and forth, her hands over her eyes.

“I can't, Patsy,” she whispers in a baby voice. “I can't shoot people.”

“Don't make me do this,” I say. “Please don't.”

I look at the gun in my hand, at how easily my chewed-up red and green fingernails curl around it. Like the gun has always been there, like it's a part of me. I'm about to kill my ex–best friend, whether she deserves it or not, and that's bound to change a person. All this time, I've been following the list, following their ­directions—mostly. I've been looking to the future, putting one foot in front of the next to get through my time. To pay a debt that isn't even mine.

Up until now, I never considered if I really deserved to live through it more than anyone else.

For just a second, I put the gun up to my temple. The metal is oddly cold against the thin skin there. Cold and hard. I press in a little, like a kiss, and I can smell the steel and oil. Why should I get to live? Even I'll admit that my mom's not special—not more special than anyone else. Probably less special than most. Why do I care so much? Why does she deserve to live? Why do I?

And then I laugh, short and humorless and final.

I deserve to live because I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

And I want out of this goddamn house of cards.

“Last chance, Am. Say yes and take the deal, or I kill you and walk away. You know that I'll do it.”

She's curled up like a slug in a pool of salt. Her eyes find mine, brighter blue and hot with tears, and she stares at me as if I'm the
fairy godmother that never showed up, a strange and magical creature that can't be understood.

“What did they do to you, Patsy? Who are you now?”

I press the gun gently to her head, right in the middle of her forehead. She breathes through her teeth, sobbing, eyes closed.

“You used to know who I was, Am,” I say quietly. “Now neither of us knows. Take the deal. Please.”

Her body shakes, balled up in a puddle of piss and blood. She tucks her head to the carpet, hands over her ears. Her words are so low and thready, I can almost imagine I didn't hear them. “Would it change anything if I told you we're cousins? And that your dad used to work for Valor?”

“Tell me more,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Only if you promise to let me go.”

“Say you'll take the deal.”

She shakes her head again. “Fuck you, Pats.”

I step around her, put the gun in the middle of her back, and pull the trigger.

When I walk out a few minutes later, my tears have dried, and I'm carrying her body in the quilt that matches mine.

10.

Maxwell Beard

Wyatt sits in the open driver's seat, his body and attention focused toward Amber's house and a gun in his hand. As if he could keep me alive through sheer force of will. He's got one arm through the window, stroking Matty, who's trying to cram her cone into the front of the truck. That crazy dog must have heard shots and tried to rescue me again. Thank heavens Wyatt didn't let her out.

“You okay?” he shouts. “I heard two . . . uh, firecrackers. And what the hell is that?”

I rush to the back of the truck, struggling under the weird deadweight of my ex–best friend. She's thin but long, floppy but stiff, and I can barely hold on to the quilt with my bugged shirt wadded up in one hand so they won't know I took her. Wyatt opens the tailgate
and helps me slide Amber's body in. Matty sniffs the bundle through her cone and whines, nudging it with her big paw.

“Let it go, girl,” I say. “She's gone.”

I shove the blood-spattered Postal Service shirt into the glove box and slam the door shut so hard it bounces back.

“Is she dead?”

“Yeah.” I sniffle and rub tears onto my arm. Amber was right. I stink. “I even shot her in the leg first, gave her an extra chance. But she cussed at me right to the end. Like she didn't think I would do it.”

Damn it all, I'm crying again, and I slump against the truck. Wyatt gets out and comes around to hold me, but I shove him away and say, “Just drive. Please. Get me away from here.”

He doesn't ask me why I brought her body, and I'm not sure I know why myself. It just seemed wrong, leaving a girl I used to love lying in a pool of blood outside her parents' bedroom. Her mom and dad made plenty of mistakes and weren't the best folks ever, but they loved Amber in their way. I couldn't stand to think of her mom, Chrissy, coming home and finding that mess, her daughter just left there sprawled in the hallway in a puddle of piss like nobody cared. Even after this girl said the nastiest things she'd ever thought about me right to my face when I had a gun in my hand, I still feel the closeness we used to share. She was the best friend I ever had, until she wasn't my friend anymore.

And she said we were cousins. What the hell was that? Was she just trying to sink a knife in my back with the kind of lie that would cut me deepest? Was she trying to buy time with the topic that would make me drop the gun and beg for an explanation? Or was she trying to tell me a secret she'd known all along, the real reason she ended our friendship? What instinct deep in my heart jerked my trigger finger moments after she and Ashley Cannon each revealed that we were kin?

Now I can't ask either of them. But there has to be a way to find out. Somehow, I know it all goes back to my missing dad.

In the bed of the truck, Matty is on her belly next to the quilt, her cone lying gently along where I know Amber's head is. I put my cheek to the window and sob. I didn't just kill the Amber Lane that swanned around school in her fancy clothes with her rich friends. I also killed Am, the girl I used to watch scary movies with and play dolls with and trade My Little Ponies with. Maybe I killed my cousin.

“I'm so sorry,” I whisper, half to her and half to myself, and maybe to Wyatt, too.

I don't know what to do with Amber. I watched her quit breathing, and then I watched some more, just to make sure. And then I realized that I couldn't leave her alone like that. The best thing I can think of is to bury her out at the Preserve with Jeremy, maybe find a nice climbing tree that she would have liked when she was nine and let go of her memory. She never spoke a single
word to Jeremy in her life, but I loved them both, and they deserve proper rest.

Maybe her parents will think she just ran away. Or maybe they'll see the blood soaked into the carpet, get the message Valor left on 911, and always wonder, always hope. Maybe, one day, I'll send them an anonymous card or something. I'm not thinking straight right now, and I know it. But I can't escape the fact that I'm stuck with a quilt full of what used to be my friend, and it hurts so goddamn bad.

Matty belly-crawls over to the window, toenails scraping on the metal floor. I unbuckle my seat belt and unlatch her stupid cone hat so she can get her face into the cab. I know the vet said to keep it on, but she seems fine and happy and isn't messing with the shaved spot on her neck, and her square head feels good under my hand. I stroke the silky black fur, and her deep brown eyes roll over to look at me.

“This is one seriously messed-up world,” I say.

Her tail thumps against the camper wall a few times, and I can almost imagine her saying,
Honey, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I guess it's pretty lucky that Alistair had a top on this old Ford. It's not like there's a cot or anything, but at least it's covered from the elements, in case we need to sleep back there. And, yeah, I guess that's exactly why a conspiracy theorist ready to run would go to the trouble to have a truck waiting for the day Valor caught up with him.

I look up, and we're on a familiar street, but I don't know where
Wyatt is taking us. We pass his old neighborhood, that glorious flock of giant floating castles, which could only have been built with credit, with empty promises, with smoke and mirrors. I wish I knew how many rooms in each house sit empty. How many are guest rooms that are never used. How many hold exercise equipment that goes untouched, or sewing machines still in the box. So much waste, and for what? These people weren't happy. Wyatt's father wasn't happy. Fat, balding, anxious, petty, mean. It all meant nothing. They spent nonexistent money on things they didn't need that didn't even make their lives any better.

And for the first time ever, I long for our tiny, lived-in, no-frills house on Bluebird Drive. I wonder what my mom is doing, if she's even alive, if she's made her appointment with the doctor yet or is endlessly saying her rosaries, waiting for me to come home. I realize that we've kind of traded places, that I've become her parent. And maybe that's why I was able to look Amber in the eyes and kill her. I don't have much, but I have to keep what's mine safe.

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.