Free Hit by Delilah S. Dawson Page A

me!”
    â€œI’m not an idiot, Wyatt. If I wanted to shoot you, you’d be dead.”
    â€œSo I’m really not on your list? Like, inheriting my dad’s debt or whatever like you did with your mom?”
    He stands slowly, his back dragging against the metal. We stare at each other across the truck. At each of our sides, a gun hangs limp. Mine is still warm.
    â€œNo,” I say, and I feel like I owe him more, so I tell him the truth. “But your brother is.”
    The gun waggles on the end of his arm, like it’s trying to shake loose of him. His face scrunches up, and he rubs his eyes with the back of his gun hand.
    â€œMax.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œSo when you saw me yesterday morning and you called me Max, you thought that . . .”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAnd still you didn’t . . .”
    â€œNo.”
    He lets his head hang forward. “Shit.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Wyatt sets the gun down gently on my pillow and shuffles halfway across the truck. But then he stops, right in the middle. Right between me and Dave’s corpse.
    â€œWhy are you—” he starts.
    â€œBecause I have to. Quit asking me that.”
    â€œI was asking something else.”
    He looks so open and wounded, standing there in his pajamas. If I wanted him dead right now, I wouldn’t have to shoot him. He’s as dumb as one of those cows people are always talking about tipping over. I could just walk over and nudge him, and he’d topple to the floor like a dead tree. I’m pretty sure I did that, too, when I went outside to catch the bus to school and saw the mail truck parked on the curb, no postman in sight. The keys were in an envelope on the worn welcome mat in front of our front door. Funny how my last mail delivery was an actual mail truck.
    But I was home alone then, when I stood woodenly, dumb as a cow. There was no one there to push me over. No one to watch me fall.
    I didn’t even get to tell my mom good-bye. Now that I think about it, there was no reason she should have been gone. She didn’t have to pretend to be at work anymore. So did she leave on her own, or did Valor make her? Did they take her? A tiny part of me wants to believe they set her up with a doctor’s appointment. The rest of meknows that her being gone wasn’t a coincidence or a mercy.
    I was alone. And in my heart, I know they planned it that way.
    And I’m pretty sure we’ve been standing here for a year, Wyatt and me, taking up all the sulfur-tinged air in the back of the truck. I want him to move first, to speak first. I don’t want to ask the next question. I really don’t want to answer it.
    â€œWhat now?” he finally says.
    â€œYou keep saying that.”
    â€œYou keep not answering.”
    I can’t help a small smile. Bantering with him is fun, if painful. It would almost be flirting, if it wasn’t about death and guns. If I didn’t feel so empty inside.
    â€œI have to get to the next house, Wyatt. You can do whatever you want.”
    There’s a little lilt at the end that escapes before I can stop it.
    â€œI’m going with you. I can’t let you out of my sight.”
    It takes a few breaths before I realize what he means, why he suddenly looks sharp and hard again.
    â€œSo you’re going to stop me from going after your brother. Is that it? That’s what you’re going to do?”
    â€œIf you want to look at it that way.”
    I stare at him, taking stock, wondering if he could actually do it. Right now, he’s got one of my guns— my dad’s old gun, the one that my mom kept in her underwear drawer, which I hope Valor doesn’tknow about. And he did shoot a guy. Is he still in shock, like I was after I shot his dad? Could I get the gun back from him if I needed to? Is he as strong as he looks?
    And that’s when it occurs to me.
    â€œYou can’t leave, anyway. You have to come with