And it was his fault.
His stomach lurched and he slapped a hand over his mouth and swallowed the acid that tried to explode out of him. It burned his throat on the way back down.
He felt sore and sick. His elbows and ribs throbbed with every beat of his heart, as did his nose and the side of his face. He felt the relentless stare of the girl in the chair, who had stopped speaking but who seemed unwilling or unable to tear her accusatory gaze from him, not even for a second.
I have to get out of here.
He had no plan, other than a vague notion that if he made his way back to Crowder, the man in charge would figure out a way to make things okay. Derek was a lowlife fuckup, but Crowder was an accomplished lawbreaker, a man in charge of a vast criminal enterprise who had undoubtedly seen plenty of occurrences exactly like this one.
He had seen them and fixed them.
Crowder would know what to do.
Derek had to get out of here.
But what about the girl? It wasn’t like he could just slap the tape back over her mouth and leave her here, duct-taped to a chair. Who knew how long it would be before she was discovered?
Jeff McHugh had been some sort of business bigshot, so he probably would be expected at work tomorrow. Derek didn’t know much about the business world, but he assumed the biggest of bigshots had the ability to set their own hours. If McHugh was that kind of bigshot, it was possible no one would think anything of it if he didn’t show up for work tomorrow, or maybe even the next day.
The wife was a complete mystery, but Derek suspected she might be one of those stay-at-home moms who wouldn’t be missed for days, maybe not even for weeks.
And what about the girl? Presumably she would be expected at school tomorrow, but if she didn’t show, what would happen? Would the school call the house? Probably, but if there was no answer it didn’t seem likely they would call the cops or send someone to investigate, at least not until she’d been missing for more than one day.
He realized that if he handled this the wrong way, he could very well end up killing the girl as well as her parents.
He tried to slow his racing brain and think logically for a minute. Come up with a plan that would allow him time to make his escape but not sentence the girl to a horrible, painful death.
He wished he could call Crowder, but he’d lost his cell phone years ago and the boss certainly hadn’t offered him one.
Maybe the McHugh’s home phone? Derek had a vague suspicion that calling anyone from their landline would be a bad idea. And it didn’t much matter, anyway, because Crowder hadn’t given him a contact number.
So Derek was truly on his own, and that prospect did little to inspire anything in him other than dread.
He could only come up with one plan. It didn’t seem like a very good one, but it didn’t have any competition, either, and standing around here waiting to be caught held no appeal.
Derek approached the girl and tried to loom over her threateningly. Said, “I’m going to leave now.”
“About time,” the girl snarled.
“Shut up. I’m not going to put the tape back over your mouth, but if you scream or yell or even yawn before thirty minutes goes by, I’ll come back and kill you, do you understand me?”
She didn’t argue, but she didn’t answer in the affirmative, either. She didn’t say anything at all. She just glared at Derek until he dropped his eyes. Again.
He decided there was nothing to be gained by waiting any longer, so he turned on his heel and backtracked out the front door. He was proud that he remembered to make sure the door was locked before pulling it closed behind him.
7
Crowder had lent Derek a little Hyundai to use on the job, since Boxford was so goddamned far out in the country. He’d insisted Derek park it a good distance from McHugh’s home, though. “We don’t need some sharp-eyed passerby spotting the car and remembering the tags. Leave it in an inconspicuous area at least a half-mile from the house.”
At the time, Derek remembered having been insulted that Crowder would think he was so stupid, as if without the proper instruction he would have parked right in McHugh’s driveway before invading the man’s home and robbing him blind. Of course he would have taken care to protect his—and Crowder’s—anonymity. He wasn’t an idiot.
Now, though, hiking through a thicket of woods behind the now-dead Jeff McHugh’s home and then along the side of a narrow country road, slinking into the woods at the first sign of every passing car, Derek wished he hadn’t been quite so conscientious.
He was jonesing hard, craving the sweet agony of needle piercing skin, to be followed immediately by the soothing rush of the heroin as it entered his bloodstream. He was alternating between sweating his ass off and freezing his balls off.
He was filled with guilt and self-recrimination for what he’d done and what he had allowed himself to become, and his imagination tortured him relentlessly with the certainty that McHugh’s daughter had by now screamed loudly enough to alert a passerby to her predicament, Derek’s warning to her notwithstanding. He was certain that any second now a dozen police cruisers would come screeching to a halt, light bars flashing, and cops would leap out with guns drawn and they would begin shooting and not stop until Derek was bleeding on the side of the road out of a hundred separate
