Free A Time for Dying by Jude Hardin Page A

former marriages had all the advantages they deserved, the things I’d never been able to give them while I was alive.
    And really, what was an hour? What difference could it possibly make?
    4:55.
    I picked up the phone and punched in William B. Rutherford’s number. A woman who identified herself as Sheila answered on the second ring.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “But Mr. Rutherford has already left the office for the day. May I take a message?”
    “My name’s Warren Lockhart. He’s expecting my call.”
    There was a brief pause.
    “I’m going to put you on hold,” Sheila said. “Maybe I can catch him in the parking lot.”
    “Sure.”
    I figured Rutherford was still there, and I was right. He picked up a few seconds later.
    “Mr. Lockhart,” he said. “You took it to the wire, didn’t you? I’d pretty much given up on hearing back from you. I’m assuming you’ve given the offer a lot of thought by now, so let’s get right down to—”
    “I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I said. “I just now opened the envelope. It was in a pile of junk mail on my desk.”
    “I see. But you’re obviously interested, or you wouldn’t have called.”
    “Who wouldn’t be interested in five million dollars? I’m just curious as to why your client wants that hour so bad.”
    “I’m afraid anything concerning my client is confidential. All I can tell you is that he wants it, and that he’s willing to pay for it.”
    “Let’s say I agree to the offer. What do I need to do?”
    “You’ll have to come to my office and sign some papers. The money will be transferred to your account immediately, and the time will be subtracted from your chip and added to his. That’s really all there is to it.”
    “Tell you the truth, I’ve never even heard of anything like this. I didn’t know time could be bought and sold.”
    “Only in rare cases, where two people were born within an hour of each other. It’s a federal statute, originally drawn up for twins and other multiple births.”
    “Twins?”
    “Yeah. Like when one of them doesn’t make it. For a fee, the parents are allowed to transfer the deceased child’s time to the living child’s chip. But the way the law’s written, anyone can take advantage of it, as long as you were born around the same time. Of course most people want to stay alive as long as possible, so it doesn’t happen very often. I could only find two other instances where multiple births weren’t involved, but the precedence is there. We’re good to go on the contract.”
    “One hour for five million dollars.”
    “That’s the deal. Like I said, I’ll need you to come in and sign some papers.”
    He seemed a little too eager. I didn’t know what to think about that, but I figured if his wealthy client was willing to pay five million, he might be willing to pay more. I decided to squeeze it for all it was worth.
    “I want twenty,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Twenty million dollars. That’s the price tag for one hour of my life.”
    “Mr. Lockhart, please. Be reasonable. That’s outrageous, and you know it.”
    “I don’t know anything. Since deals like this never happen, how can we possibly know how much an hour is worth? To me, it’s worth twenty million. Call me if—”
    “Wait,” Rutherford said. “I can offer you seven point five.”
    “That’s not even close. If you can’t do better than that, I’m afraid we don’t have anything more to discuss.”
    There was a long pause.
    I was about to hang up when he said, “Ten million dollars. That’s all I’m authorized to offer. That’s the limit.”
    And that was the number I wanted to hear.
    “Deal,” I said.
    Rutherford exhaled into the phone, obviously relieved that we’d finally come to an agreement.
    “Good,” he said. “So I’ll need you to come in and sign the papers.”
    “Will tomorrow morning be all right?”
    “No, it’ll have to be this evening. It’s five o’clock now,