Hit (23 page)

And, of course, if I get rid of the camera, that means that whatever happens here isn't recorded and doesn't count toward my goal.

I sigh deeply and unbutton the postal shirt, letting the collar flop to the side and obscure the button. The hand appears again, angry and violent in a “cut it off” motion. Jesus, this guy's annoying. But I'm not taking off this shirt to show the white tank below it. I feel exposed enough as it is.

So I compromise. I shove the signature machine in the shirt pocket, wrap my hand around the button, pull my gun, and press the muzzle right up to the glass.

“That good enough for you, dick?”

Painful seconds pass. A new piece of paper appears, the words scrawled even more hastily.
TELL YOUR BOYFRIEND TO DROP THE GUN. YOU TOO. DO AS I SAY, OR YOU BOTH DIE.

A thump tells me Wyatt's hopped down from the truck. I check over my shoulder and shake my head at him. I'm cold and shaking like a Chihuahua, my jaw so tense that I can hear my teeth rubbing together. “Put down the gun,” I whisper. “Get back in the truck. Let me handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

There's a bang and a ping, and we both turn, and one of the truck tires goes flat.

“Goddammit. Yes. Yes, I'm sure.”

Wyatt's hands are up, and he places his gun on the seat with exaggerated care. I nod but don't drop my gun.

When the
shick-shick
of a shotgun echoes within the trailer—that's when I drop it.

A series of locks jangles and clicks inside before the flimsy door opens, just a little.

“Give me the camera. It's recording everything,” he whispers, so low I can barely hear.

All I see are glasses and a reaching hand, and I stumble back and trip on that damn hose again and fall, arms wheeling, letting go of the button in the process of not breaking my head open. I land hard on my back, my breath knocked flat out of me. The guy's out the door fast, standing over me, his boot raised like he's going to stomp in my face, and I watch the heavy sole come down toward the button, to crush it against the ground, and that's when a gun cracks and the guy screams and staggers against the trailer.

Wyatt runs closer, shoots again, and I want to yell “No!” and “Stop!” and “He
wasn't going to hurt me,” but I can't even take a breath, and it doesn't matter because blood spatters my cheeks and the guy's writhing on the ground.

I sit up, mouth wide open like a fish out of water as Wyatt rolls the guy over and pins him with a knee across the chest, but not before I see where the second bullet caught him in the lower back,
right where I figure his spine must be. I finally draw a breath, but all I taste is copper and the blood on my lips. The guy's not going anywhere, so I motion Wyatt away, farther back behind me, where the button can't see him. He's breathing hard and looks like he would gladly rip this guy's arms off and beat his dying body with them if he could, but he nods and steps back. I mouth, “Thank you,” and give him a big smile so he knows I'm okay and ­rebutton my shirt so that the camera is facing forward. I feel safer with Wyatt at my back, standing sentinel. This wasn't what I wanted to happen, but everything about number eight has felt wrong since we pulled up here.

Whoever this guy is, whatever he thinks he knows, I still need the same thing from him. And I don't have long to get it.

“Are you Alistair Meade?” I say.

The guy's on his back, panting, a poppy-red stain spreading through his white undershirt like the bullet's still trying to escape his belly. He's skinny, with reddish skin and hair the color of nothing, like those see-through noodles you get with Chinese food sometimes, and there's something uncomfortably familiar about him. Scowling up at me, he shakes his head no.

“Just tell me,” I say. “You're dead either way. 911 doesn't work anymore.”

He shakes his head again and groans, the sweat standing out on his forehead under the precise line of his haircut. He's in his
­thirties probably, and his eyes are such a light blue they're almost see-through, but he just looks like a sunburned weasel to me.

I reach around him, fumbling for his back pocket, and he groans and spits blood into the grass. The first pocket of his black dress pants is empty. His wallet's in the other one, and I whip it out. As I flip open the worn black leather, the guy on the ground lets out a wheezy laugh and shudders.

Inside the wallet, there are no credit cards. Not even a debit card. No insurance card. Just a fat wad of cash and three different licenses, each with this same guy's picture on it.

Alex Hancock.

Angus Harrison.

Andrew McHowell.

“Close enough,” I say. Tossing the wallet onto his chest, I hold out his Valor card. “Alistair Meade, you owe Valor Savings the sum of $36,936.22. Can you pay this debt in full?”

He barks one harsh laugh, and blood leaks out of the corner of his mouth.

“Don't . . . owe . . . anybody . . . anything . . . ,” he wheezes. “No debt.”

“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.”

“No.”

I stare up at the sky for a heartbeat, feeling totally lost and tiny. No? No's not a choice.

“Listen. It's not too late. You can either die here or take on bounty hunting to pay off your debt,” I say, feeling nervous at how every instinct I have says he's telling the truth about not having debt. “If you want to work it off, we'll take you in to the hospital. Or the veterinarian, if the hospital's closed or full or whatever. Take the deal. It's not so bad.”

“Just . . . make . . . more . . . debt,” he wheezes, his face going red as he tries to laugh and can't. “Fucking . . . medical . . . bills. Might as well . . . shoot.” His eyes flash up to Wyatt. “Again,” he adds, too wryly for a guy who's dying.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “But I'll make it quick.”

He holds up his hands like we're playing, like I'm the sheriff and he's the bad guy. And then, quicker than he has any right to be, he grabs the button off my shirt in a bloody fist and pulls me close, dry lips trembling against my ear.

“Not your fault,” he manages to whisper. “Conspiracy. Valor. Inside . . . trailer . . .” He coughs and turns his head away. “Don't take the button in there.”

“What's inside the trailer?”

“Adelaide. Just . . . Adelaide. Will tell you . . . everything.” His lips move, but no sound comes out. When he goes limp and drops the button, I cover it with my own hand and lean in. Barely even a breath, he whispers, “You have to burn it all. They're coming.”

His head falls to the side, the light in his eyes gone. Panic rips through me, and I grab my gun, stand up on my knees, aim the button at him, and shoot him right in the chest. Valor never said anything about what happened if someone died before I could kill them myself, not that they know about Wyatt and the other gun. I hope.

The earth soaks up through my jeans as I kneel before the trailer, my gun cooling off in my limp hand. The birds are silent again, even that one mocking jay. We're in the middle of nowhere, another pocket of beautiful nothing surrounded by ugly roads and uglier buildings. It'll be so much prettier when nature swallows up the trailer and just takes back over. I can imagine a flock of turkeys here in the early morning, maybe deer, too. Maybe coyotes at night. It's not bad, for a final resting place. At least, that's what I tell myself as I drop the gun, unbutton my shirt so the button is turned away, pick up the signature machine, wrap Alistair Meade's cold hand around the stylus, and sign a ragged
X
. God, I hope that's good enough. When I click the accept button, it logs normally, and I exhale. If they're keeping tabs, they have to know I faked signatures on Alistair Meade and Ashley Cannon, and I can only hope I'll still get a passing grade when they do the final tally.

For just one moment, it occurs to me that I could be jumping through completely bullshit hoops, that maybe there's never been a security guy with a sandwich. Maybe there's not even a bank of monitors. Maybe that camera goes nowhere. Maybe my mom's already dead.

Or maybe, considering how important covering that button up was to this dead man, they're watching even more closely than I thought.

Doesn't matter. I can't stop now. I'll play by the rules as much as I can, as long as they'll let me if it keeps me and my mom alive.

Gun in one hand and signature machine in the other, I look down on the body of the man who had better be Alistair Meade. With his face gone slack and expressionless, I realize why he's ­familiar.

This guy is the Black Suit who tried to hand me a card in the gas station.

It's the white-blond hair, cut so precisely, so Valor, that sticks it for me. I couldn't see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but I know it's him. Which tells me that I have to get in that trailer—now—and find out what “Adelaide” means.

He said, “They're coming.” Those were his last words. And goddammit, I believe him. Which means I have to hurry.

Wyatt is careful to stay out of view as I shuck off my shirt, wad it up, and stuff it in the cap. I don't want the camera to see anything of what I'm about to do.

“What the hell was that all about?” Wyatt says. “Who's Adelaide? How did he know about Valor? And what's inside the trailer?”

“Who knows?” I say, steeling myself with one hand against the trailer door. Something keeps me from telling Wyatt that I've seen this guy before, dressed in the standard Valor goon costume. “Out here by himself? Maybe he's cooking meth. Maybe he's a kidnapper and Adelaide is the girl he has locked up in there. Maybe he makes moonshine or has an ex-wife looking for him. Maybe he's just a crazy dude who thinks there's a conspiracy against him.” I look at what's left of the shirt balled up in my hat. “Maybe he saw the blood.”

“I guess,” Wyatt says. The trailer door squeaks as I push it open, and he grimaces. “Are you really going in there?”

“‘Inside trailer.' Those were his dying words. Whatever is in there, it was important to him. Maybe it's Adelaide.” But I don't think there's anyone else in the trailer. There's definitely something in there, and I get the idea that it's very, very dangerous. But I don't think it's a person.

“Maybe he's got it rigged. Maybe there's a bomb named ­Adelaide.”

I shrug. “Maybe. But probably not. Stay out here and keep watch, okay?”

“You sure you want to do this?” he says. “Want me to go in instead?”

“Just let me look real quick.” Before he can stop me, I push the door open and slip inside, gun drawn and senses on high alert. “Hello? Adelaide?”

It's quiet in the trailer except for some weird electrical buzzing noise. At least there's no drug paraphernalia lying around, no ­needles or big stacks of cough suppressants or a chemistry set like at Sharon Mulvaney's house.

There's crap everywhere, but not like a hoarder's crap, not trash. It's all paperwork, printouts, envelopes, photos, file boxes. Three laptops range across the counter, a forest of wires tangling behind them and an array of devices clicking and whirring and twinkling like Christmas lights.

“You okay in there?” Wyatt calls, and I yell back, “Yeah. Just a bunch of weird paperwork.”

Out of curiosity, I run my finger over the touchpads on the laptops, and they all buzz awake to a password-protected lock screen. But something catches my eye where it rests on top of a stack of papers by the laptops.

An expandable file folder is marked
POSSIBLE SLEEPER AGENTS
, and one of the file folders is labeled
CANDLEWOOD
. Inside is a typed list of names, hundreds of them, all in alphabetical order. Mine is on there, and so is Wyatt but not Max. Not ­Jeremy or Roy, either. I glance through quickly and see some other kids from my school, including a creeper who's big into Nazi history. Dozens of ­similar
­folders ­surround it, wearing the names of nearby towns. The stack of papers underneath are bad photocopies of bubbled-in test answers. They're very familiar, because I took one just a few weeks ago. It told me I was qualified to be an accountant or a secretary. I pick up the standardized-test sheets and flip through, but there are hundreds of them. A red notebook draws my attention, and it falls open to pages and pages of lists and cramped writing. Scribbled in the margins are things like,
They always send innocents to fight wars,
and
Anarchy. Fear and chaos. No answers. No one wants to shoot a child.

Moving more quickly now, I drop the notebook and hurry to the card table with its lone folding chair, looking for more clues to whatever the hell is going on. Most of it makes no sense—lots of printouts in code, or graphs, or maps with stars and circles at regular intervals. There are photo albums filled with newspaper clippings and the printouts of online articles, all of them dealing with China, the debt ceiling, banking, loan rates, business acquisitions, stocks, the recession, and politicians. One piece of paper pinned to the wall says
CONTENDERS: FIRST UNION, VALOR SAVINGS
BANK, STAGECOACH
.

Well, I know two of those banks are in the running—although Valor is now just Valor Savings and First Union is now apparently Second Union, which explains a lot about why Jeremy was sent to kill me. Assassinating the enemy's assassins is just another part of war. But does that mean that the two ex-banks are battling for
supremacy? Or does that mean that Second Union is part of the resistance? And what's Stagecoach going to become—Drone?