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You could. Of course, I could talk about how you made me get in your car and drove me here. ” Billy felt himself filling with an unexpected—and unfamiliar—rage. His face felt hot. “I don’t pay for it,” he snapped. ” “Then you should get it the same place you usually do,” the woman replied. ” She pulled on the door handle, opened the door, and left the car. ” Billy shouted. ” Instead, she broke into a run. Billy scrambled from the car, nearly slamming the cruiser door into the stucco carport wall as he did.

But before you get the wrong idea, I’m no politician and I’m not here to talk about the attacks. What I am is a businessman. Business, capitalism, the profit motive, that’s what made America great. That’s what the terrorists are fighting against, but capitalism is stronger than whatever they would replace it with. ” He paused to let that sink in. The crowd was quiet, now, waiting for an explanation. “I know you all love living out here, on the Slab. Free of rules, maybe free of taxation, able to do your own thing without making mortgage or rent payments.

Springs stabbed at her butt, which was still an improvement over the past few hours. She rolled her head from side to side, trying to work out the kinks in her neck and shoulders. Now she could see the last two guys. At first glance she’d thought they were all Anglos, though a couple were deeply tanned. But now she saw that one of them was black. He was extremely short, not much more than five-five, she guessed, but heavily muscled. His hair was cut short, in an almost military trim, and his small brown eyes bored into her like an oilman’s drill into the earth.