I snorted, snagging the orange juice and opening the carton, taking a long cold draft. I wiped my mouth and belched musically.

“Ladylike.” His bloodshot blue eyes didn’t rise from the clip, and I knew what that meant.

“Going out tonight?” That’s what I said. What I meant was, without me?

Click. Click. He set the full clip aside and started on the next. The bullets glinted, silver-coated. He must have been up all night with that, making them and loading them. “I won’t be in for dinner. Order a pizza or something.”

Which meant he was going somewhere more-dangerous, not just kinda-dangerous. And that he didn’t need me to zero the target. So he must’ve gotten some kind of intel. He’d been gone every night this week, always reappearing in time for dinner smelling of cigarette smoke and danger. In other towns he’d mostly take me with him; people either didn’t care about a teenage girl drinking a Coke in a bar, or we went places where Dad was reasonably sure he could stop any trouble with an ice-cold military stare or a drawled word.

But in this town he hadn’t taken me anywhere. So if he’d gotten intel, it was on his own.

How? Probably the old-fashioned way. He likes that better, I guess. “I could come along.”

“Dru.” Just the one word, a warning in his tone. Mom’s silver locket glittered at his throat, winking in the morning light.

“You might need me. I can carry the ammo.” And tell you when something invisible’s in the corner, looking at you. I heard the stubborn whine in my voice and belched again to cover it, a nice sonorous one that all but rattled the window looking out onto the scrubby backyard with its dilapidated swing set. There was a box of dishes sitting in front of the cabinets next to the stove; I suppressed the urge to kick at it. Mom’s cookie jar—the one shaped like a fat grinning black-and-white cow—was next to the sink, the first thing unpacked in every new house. I always put it in the bathroom box with the toilet paper and shampoo; that’s always the last in and first one out.