Hit Read Free Page A

legally kill their debtors. Even if Max did read the card, he still wouldn’t know that he’ll be making his own choice in exactly four days, if not earlier.
    Kill or be killed, and God bless Valor.
    I could shoot him right now. Could just pull the trigger while he stands there, stunned. Easy pickings. I could have done it a moment ago, while he was holding me by my shirt and the adrenaline and defiance were shooting through my veins, making my trigger finger as itchy as my Valor-issued shirt. I should have done it then, before I looked into his eyes. It would have made my life a hell of a lot easier.
    But I couldn’t do it. And I still can’t. Not while he’s wearing that T-shirt. It would be like shooting my favorite band, like killing myold self. And Valor may force me to do things I don’t want to do, but they can’t take away the things I am. Or the things I love.
    That’s what I tell myself as I get in the purring mail truck and drive away, my Postal Service shirt crumpled up on the passenger seat by the dented foam gift basket. Max stands there, watching me, until I turn off his street, the big game hunter leaving the Preserve behind until I come to claim the next dumb but magnificent animal in four more days. I swerve to the side, quick, and barf up my salad into the bushes by the neighborhood’s elegant, brick-framed sign.
    As I climb back into the truck, the clock on the dashboard stops blinking and calmly begins counting down from 12:00:00.
    When the GPS tells me to turn right, I do.
    Goddammit, I do.

2.
    Eloise Framingham
    The next name on my list is an old woman’s name—Eloise. And I kind of hope she is an old woman, so old that she won’t even be able to see my face through milky-white eyes. Maybe I can just smile and hand her the glued-together basket of plastic fruit for a few minutes, make her feel like she won something, like maybe somebody cares. And then I’ll whisper the words on her card, right into the top button so she won’t actually hear them with her cheap-ass hearing aid. And then I’ll shoot her in the back when she goes to get me a glass of milk.
    That would make it so easy.
    But it’s just another dream.
    I pull into her neighborhood, just a few streets over from BobBeard’s. The Preserve is practically abandoned these days, but this cookie-cutter subdivision of much smaller homes is thriving and tidy. Bob’s house probably has ten rooms in it, not counting bathrooms. These houses might have three, if they’re lucky. I already know what they’re like inside: just like the house where I grew up, where I lived until yesterday morning, where my mom is waiting for me, exhaustively praying to Mother Mary while high on prescription narcotics.
    Point is, this could be my house. Probably has scuffed parquet by the front door, a coat closet full of junk, torn linoleum in the kitchen, sparkling-clean toilet bowls next to faded wallpaper. The people who live here are what my mom used to call “the proud poor” before the economy went sour and then downright bitter. Before she took a lesser-paying job and finally realized that she was one of them.
    Eloise’s house is sloped and unbalanced, basically a big lean-to striped with weathered gray wood boards. It reminds me of when Pa built log cabins in Little House on the Prairie , like one day soon they’ll build the other side of the house and make it symmetrical. Which, of course, they never will. The yard is trim, and there’s a birdbath and a reflecting ball relaxing amid strategically partying garden gnomes. There’s a For Sale sign, too, pretty faded. And wind chimes made of sea shells.
    Please, please, let Eloise be an old woman.
    I stop the mail truck in front of her house and unwad my Postal Service shirt. It’s been riding shotgun beside me as I follow the directions on my Valor-issued GPS unit. They want to make sure I know exactly where each