Crowder pushed the chair back from his desk with his calves and began to rise, and that was when Derek reacted. He took one giant step forward and lifted Crowder’s desk lamp and swung it at his head. He’d never been an athlete but he had played Little League baseball and he gripped that fucking lamp like a Louisville Slugger and swung for the fences.
And he missed Crowder’s head. Of course he did.
Crowder leapt backward to avoid the lamp and stumbled over his chair. He fell backward and cracked his skull against the wall and swore loudly as Derek broke for the door, which was swinging open as Crowder’s second gorilla entered the office to investigate the sounds of chaos.
The man’s gun was in his hand, and his eyes were sweeping right to left, and they widened at the sight of his boss crumpled in a heap behind the desk. The door crashed into the rear wall and rebounded forward, and Derek grabbed it and whipped it toward the goon, clipping him in the shoulder and the left side of his skull, and his gun dropped to the floor and then so did he.
The man grabbed Derek’s ankle with one hand as he was reaching for his gun with the other. Derek ripped his foot out of the guy’s grip and then kicked at his face, a mostly ineffectual act that he realized was only costing him valuable time. Crowder was pushing himself to his feet behind his desk and the goon’s hand was wrapping itself around his gun and Derek knew if he didn’t get the hell out the front entrance he would only continue breathing for another few seconds.
He pulled the office door closed behind him and made a beeline for the door. The other bodybuilder-looking dude had been given the assignment of disposing of Derek’s gun and Derek had no idea how long it would take to accomplish that assignment. For all he knew, the guy might come strolling back into the building at any moment and Derek would run right into his fucking arms.
He reached the front and pulled open the door just as a bullet thudded into the heavy reinforced metal. Next to Derek’s head. It had missed him by inches.
He swore reflexively and darted outside and yanked the door closed in a panic and it shook the crumbling brick foundation, and Derek charged down the alley feeling like a rat exiting the long straight portion of a maze. There was nowhere to go until the end of the alley and if he didn’t reach it before the goon or Crowder came out the front door behind him he was fucked.
But although Derek was nobody’s idea of an Olympic sprinter, he was long and lean and pretty goddamned quick. He was discovering that was especially true when guys with guns were chasing him. The shakiness of rapidly building dopesickness was forgotten, for the moment at least, as was the fuzziness of thought he’d been suffering from since stepping through Jeff McHugh’s front door.
The world and its options had boiled down to their essence, and they were clear and simple and binary: escape and live, or be recaptured and die.
He reached the mouth of the alley as another bullet clanged into a metal street sign, and he feinted left before turning right. Behind him, the Lexus’s engine roared to life, and he could hear random angry threats coming from Crowder.
Derek sprinted along the sidewalk to the next corner. He wanted to melt into a crowd of people but there were no people, just one loser junkie who was running as fast as he could but rapidly losing steam.
He hit the next corner without being cut down in a hail of gunfire, and the realization that he’d made it this far came as a bit of a shock. This cross street seemed to be more of a main thoroughfare rather than an alley like the one he’d just exited, so he turned and pounded down the sidewalk, now panting and gasping for breath. Nothing about homelessness and drug use had prepared him for extreme physical activity.
A couple more corners and a couple more random turns and Derek felt comfortable enough—not to mention exhausted enough—to slow to a walk. He had no idea where in the city he was, but a few pedestrians offered at least a little cover, and he was too fucking tired to continue running, in any event.
He’d escaped Crowder with his life.
It was a minor miracle, maybe a major one.
But the help he’d been counting on receiving from the man who’d gotten him into this mess would obviously not be forthcoming, and the police would soon be mobilizing in an intense manhunt for the dirtbag who’d murdered two upstanding citizens up in Boxford.
And Derek was lost and alone and, oh yeah, craving a syringe full of poison.
And he had no idea what to do next.
Part Two
Brenna and Greg
1
Brenna Weaver grimaced as she watched her husband wolf down his eggs and toast. He had a tendency to chew with his mouth open, and the habit that had seemed quirky and endearing in the early years of their relationship now just seemed nasty and disgusting.
Funny how perspective changes perception.
The kitchen felt stifling, the silence broken only by the relentless sound of fork scraping plate as Greg shoveled in mouthful after mouthful. Normally he would have been out the door by now but he was running late, and Brenna couldn’t help but track the second hand in anticipation as it swept around the clock hanging on the kitchen wall.
She couldn’t wait for him to leave for work.
It wasn’t like she had pressing plans or anything; it just felt impossible to breathe with her husband in the house, and she badly wanted to exhale. To do the dishes, or have a cup or coffee, or check her email, or do any damned thing without feeling the looming awkwardness between
