The woman dropped the bullet into the chamber and spun the cylinder shut. "There. Put your money on the table." Her voice sounded flat in the big, empty room, an information center at a closed rest stop, abandoned due to lack of funds. Her dead eye stared off at a papered-over window. Hannah slapped a stack of bills down between them. "A thousand."

"Thousand gets you five," said the dead-eyed woman, adding a bigger stack beside Hannah's. The revolver sounded heavy on the metal table when she set it down, and scraped metal-on-metal as the woman slid it across to Hannah. Hannah lifted it, cocked the hammer, and put the muzzle against her head.

She closed her eyes. She thought about her father, her mother, both gone after the explosion at the plant. She thought about her brother, in the hospital without insurance, soon to be denied treatment and discharged. She thought about what she was willing to do to help him.

"Don't keep my other customers waiting, now," said the dead-eyed woman.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. When the woman leaned forward to hear, Hannah turned the gun on her and pulled the trigger six times. She only needed five.