The men grabbed him, one under each armpit, and hauled him to his feet. He stumbled and nearly fell and neither guy seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn’t waste any energy worrying about it.
“We own your ass, understand?” The one that had pretended to kick him made that comment, and although it seemed utterly unnecessary given the circumstances, he nodded again, tiredly.
Now that he wasn’t looking up at them from ground level, Derek realized he knew the two gorillas, or at least recognized them. They worked for the man who supplied his heroin dealer with product, hired muscle whose sole job description—besides kicking his ass, apparently—was to maintain a high profile around the areas where drug transactions occurred. The theory was their presence would minimize the chance of some desperate junkie shooting his supplier between the eyes and making off with the goods.
Every once in a while the goons would bust a couple of heads just to maintain their street cred. But that scenario didn’t make sense here. What would be the point of administering Derek’s beating in a secluded parking lot with not a single goddamned soul around to see?
The men pushed and shoved him around the back of the ancient minivan toward an idling black Lexus parked maybe twenty feet away. They had obviously not wanted to awaken Derek by driving any closer. It wasn’t like he could have gotten away if he’d heard them coming—where the hell would he go?—so the whole point of sneaking up on him had been so they could kick him around a little bit and fuck with him before they got down to their real business, whatever that was.
And then the other shoe dropped.
He felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner, although in his own defense he had been awoken out of a more or less deep sleep, and after shooting up yesterday. Anyone would be a little slow on the uptake under those circumstances.
He owed his dealer money.
A lot of money.
Derek had been fired from more jobs than he could count, and had given up working months ago. He’d had moderate success stealing and pawning items from a series of local stores, but that sort of thing was hit or miss and lately there had been a lot more misses than hits.
The point was he was into his dealer for well over a thousand bucks. The kid had become more and more agitated about the amount of the debt recently and last week had threatened to drop a dime on Derek to the regional supplier, a man named Crowder who was not known for his patience.
It wasn’t like Derek had ignored the threat. Not exactly. But at the time it was issued he’d been dopesick, on the verge of puking, and the seriousness of the situation had gone right over his head in his anxiousness to stick the goddamned needle into the goddamned vein.
Obviously the threat had not been an idle one. Now Crowder’s goons were forcing him into a car, in which they would drive him somewhere he was certain he would not want to go, and do things to him he was certain he would not want done.
“Uhhh, guys, you don’t need to do th—”
The asshole who had pretended to kick him a moment ago buried his fist in Derek’s gut and the breath left him like air out of a balloon.
He crumpled to his knees, wheezing and gasping, but managed to spit out, “Please don’t kill me.”
“We’re not gonna kill you, dipshit.”
“You’re not?” He coughed weakly as the goons dragged him to his feet again and continued moving him inexorably toward the Lexus.
“No, we’re not. You might die from terminal stupidity, but if we wanted to kill you we would have put two slugs in your head while you were sleeping. Quick and easy, no witnesses, in and out. Bing-bang-boom.” The goon made a pistol out of his thumb and forefinger and pulled the fake trigger on the last word.
“If you’re not gonna…you know…then what do you want with me?”
“Just shut up and get in the car. You’ll find out soon enough.”
They had arrived at the Lexus and the goon looked at Derek appraisingly. He didn’t seem to like what he saw, because he said, “Remember what I told you about not killing you?”
Derek nodded.
“You better not puke all over my carpeting. You puke on my carpeting and all bets are off.”
2
Derek still wasn’t convinced his escorts weren’t taking him somewhere to off him.
Sure, they’d told him otherwise, but what the hell difference did that make? Guys like the two who had rousted him typically felt no particular need to treat guys like Derek with truthfulness. Even basic human dignity seemed a bridge too far.
But at this point—jammed into the back seat of a luxury sedan with blacked-out windows and a muscle-bound gym rat holding a gun on him—there wasn’t much he could do about it either way. So he tried to ignore the pain in his elbows and ribs while concentrating on keeping his rising panic under control.
He was successful at neither.
The car snaked through the city, moving relatively quickly thanks to the early hour. Only the most dedicated of corporate drones had hit the roads at 5:30 a.m., even in a city the size of Boston.
Despite the fact that Derek had spent most of the last five years on the streets of various local neighborhoods, he had no idea where they were by the time Goon #1 nosed the Lexus into a parking spot outside a crumbling brick building. The area appeared blighted, run-down, the sort of place he should have been most familiar with, but he was certain he’d never been here before.
The building looked as though it had been empty for a long time, and the fear began to rise again as
