Mistrust joined fear in the girl’s expression. It was written all over her face, but still she nodded slowly.
Derek reached down and scratched at one corner of the duct tape. After a moment he’d exposed enough of an edge that he could grab it between his thumb and forefinger, and he began tugging, pulling slowly in an attempt to avoid hurting the girl any more than he already had.
The tape wouldn’t come.
When he tried to remove it gently from her face, all he succeeded in doing was lifting the slack skin of her cheek. He gave it a couple of tries but then the stress and the guilt and the horror—knowing that in the space of a few awful seconds he’d transformed from heroin junkie and small-time fuckup to multiple murderer—became too much. The tape was just one more example of a world with nothing better to do than fuck with Derek Weaver, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He tightened his grip on the goddamned tape and yanked hard.
It ripped off the girl’s face and to his surprise she gasped but did not scream. She’d already demonstrated her toughness by nearly beating Derek senseless, but this was a whole new level of badass. The adhesive left a raw red strip running from one cheek to the other and directly across her lips. Her eyes watered but she seemed determined not to give the home invader the satisfaction of seeing her cry, or even complain.
“You killed my parents,” she said dully. She met his gaze fiercely, head-on, and said, “Why did you kill my parents?”
“You don’t understand,” Derek said. He’d felt the overwhelming need to explain himself to the girl, to get at least a little of the guilt off his chest, and this was the best he could come up with? You don’t understand?
“Of course I don’t understand!” she said. “How could I possibly understand? You come into our house and shoot my mom and dad and you think I’m going to understand?”
He shook his head and felt as though he might start crying again at any moment. “I didn’t mean to shoot anybody. I’ve never even held a gun in my life until today. I barely know how to use the damned thing.”
“Well, you didn’t have much trouble tonight.”
“I owe a lot of money to a guy,” he said, “and I was given the chance to get…what did he call it?” He squinted in concentration, still standing directly in front of the girl he’d strapped to a chair.
Then he remembered. “Debt relief,” he said. “He offered me debt relief if I would do this little job for him.”
“Little job? You consider killing my parents a little job?”
“No, it’s not like that,” he said.
“Then what is it like? Because when I look across the room all I can see is my mom and dad’s blood and them lying on the floor and…and…” Her lips quivered and one fat tear splashed over the bottom lid of each eye and rolled slowly down her face and her voice broke just before she stopped speaking.
“Nobody was supposed to get hurt,” Derek said bleakly. “And I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t do this, I would have been thrown into a lobster boat, and then taken out into the Atlantic and dumped.”
“So you killed two innocent people instead. Good trade-off.”
“They weren’t…” Derek’s voice trailed away as he realized he’d—once again—fucked up. As far as he knew, the wife was innocent. As far as he knew she had no idea the extent of her husband’s gambling problem. And even if she was aware he had a problem, Derek knew there was virtually no way she would have known how much money her husband owed a slug like Crowder.
And although you could argue Jeff McHugh was guilty—if he hadn’t gotten himself in so deep with Crowder this situation would never have happened—he certainly didn’t deserve to die for his transgressions.
More to the point, how could Derek make the argument to the girl he’d just orphaned that her now-dead father was the reason a man with a gun had stormed into their home? To the girl McHugh wasn’t an out-of-control gambling addict, he was her dad, and no matter how badly Derek felt the compulsion to wash some of the blood off his hands by way of explanation, he couldn’t bring himself to add to her misery by soiling her memory of her father.
“They weren’t what?” she said. She was watching him intently, and while he could still see fear in her eyes, a much greater percentage of her expression was given over to curiosity and more than a little defensiveness. She was prepared to fight for the honor of Mom and Dad.
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head in tight little motions.
“No, tell me. You started to say they weren’t something. What weren’t they?”
“Forget it. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened here. I didn’t come here to kill anyone and I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t mean much with two people lying dead on the floor. Tell me what you started to say.”
It was hopeless, and Derek realized he should have known it would be. He’d just killed a young girl’s parents virtually right in front of her. What was she supposed to do, accept his lame-ass explanation with a smile and a shrug? Say, “Oh well, accidents happen,” and stroll back to her room whistling a happy tune?
Trying to explain himself had been a stupid idea, and while deep down he’d known she wouldn’t want to hear anything he had to say, he had at least thought the act of speaking the words of apology would make him feel…something. He wasn’t sure what.
Better probably would have been too much to hope for.
But this was the polar opposite. Talking to the girl for just a few moments had made
