God, he needed a fix.
The hike back to the Hyundai seemed to be taking twice as long as the trip the other direction had. Three times as long. Four. He was a mess and a failure, and the only thing keeping him going was that Crowder would know what to do. Crowder had been running his organization forever and had undoubtedly seen it all. He would tell Derek what to do and then he would—
A car’s headlights shone off in the distance and Derek was by now on a sidewalk, close enough to civilization—or at least what passed for civilization in McHugh’s little pissant hometown—that slipping into the woods and out of sight was not an option. He stood up a little straighter and tried to trade his shuffling loser’s gait for a normal pace, project the image of a regular guy out for a nighttime stroll, maybe his car had broken down or he was just another hipster who didn’t believe in polluting Mother Earth with carbon monoxide so he walked everywhere he went, and as he did so he prayed with all his heart that the oncoming vehicle was not a police cruiser.
He held his breath as the car approached, shaking so much from nerves and a craving for drugs that he imagined his misery must be obvious. The car passed by, moving slowly. But it wasn’t a cruiser and it didn’t stop, and by the time its taillights disappeared in the distance behind Derek the shopping center in which he’d parked had become visible, its sodium arc lamps glittering up ahead like a poor man’s Vegas.
Derek picked up his pace and forced himself to ignore the rest of the passing cars, focusing only on making it to the Hyundai. A group of teenagers crowded the sidewalk, moving in the opposite direction, and he ignored them. When one of the kids rammed a shoulder into him on the way by, accidentally on purpose, Derek pretended not to notice even though it rocked him back on his heels so badly he thought he might fall on his ass.
The kids snickered and Derek kept right on going. He refused to give them the satisfaction of an angry glance or a swear-laden comment. Nothing. They didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to that little fucking car, locking the doors and leaving this goddamned town and its horror-filled memories in the rear view mirror. Derek had fucked up so badly he didn’t have a clue what he was going to do beyond the next few minutes, but one thing he did know was that he was never coming back to Boxford if he lived to be a thousand years old.
For a long time the lights of the shopping center seemed to stay the same distance away, like a mirage in the desert. Derek felt like he walked and walked for miles and the goddamned thing refused to come any closer.
Then he was there. The parking lot loomed in front of him with the lights of the store off in the distance. It had been open for business when he parked here earlier in the evening and at that time his car was invisible, lost and anonymous in a sea of minivans, pickup trucks, SUVs and sedans.
Now, though, almost all the other cars had disappeared. Even though the store was still open, it was late enough on a Tuesday evening that most shoppers had long-since gone home to eat dinner and watch TV and get a good night’s sleep in preparation for school or work tomorrow. Crowder’s Hyundai sat off by itself. As anonymous as it had been in this location at 5:45 p.m., it was that conspicuous at 9:45.
Derek didn’t even care anymore. He tossed his empty backpack onto the passenger seat and slumped behind the wheel.
Slammed the door and hit the locks.
Closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest and turned the key.
Began to cry softly as he tried to imagine how the hell his life had spun so horribly, irrevocably out of control.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat in the car, blubbering like a little kid when he should have been putting as much distance between himself and the McHugh home as possible. It was probably only a couple of minutes but time seemed to have become elastic.
Between the extreme stress of knowing he’d ended two lives and the steadily increasing sensation of illness as his body reacted to the lack of heroin, he felt insubstantial and weak. He felt like a cartoon character who’d just stepped off a cliff and was now pumping his feet madly in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable. It was only a matter of time, and likely not very much of it, before Derek plunged straight down to his death. He’d seen it happen a million times to Wile E. Coyote while watching Saturday morning TV as a kid, and although the fall never stopped Wile E. for long, Derek knew it would leave him busted and broken and unbreathing.
Which was, of course, exactly the fate he deserved.
He wiped his eyes and jammed the car into Drive and rolled out of the parking lot. Getting back to Crowder’s office would be easy because of the time of night and the fact the man had made damned sure Derek knew the way. He expected to be twenty-five thousand bucks richer tonight, and he certainly didn’t want the deliveryman to get lost with the goods.
Thirty minutes later Derek eased the car to a stop outside Crowder’s building. A new kind of fear had started to crawl through him beginning about halfway between Boxford and Boston, a fear that had less to do with a pair of murders and much more to do with the fact he knew Crowder was going to be pissed.
Instead of getting the cash and/or liquid assets he was expecting, the man who’d forced Derek into doing him this “favor” was going
