Fulfilling the third requirement would seem the most unlikely, given the general disrepair of his target vehicle, but Derek had no better alternative so he got to work. He approached the Toyota as casually as possible, still feeling dopesick but now also conspicuous and out of place.
Still nobody in sight.
He moved to the driver’s side. Reached down and pulled on the handle. And to his utter, unadulterated shock, the door opened. It screeched like a hungry baby, but goddamned if it didn’t open.
Derek froze in shock, but only for a moment. Then he slipped into the driver’s seat and felt his eyes widen in surprise for the second time in a matter of seconds.
The key was sitting in the ignition.
A fuzzy off-white rabbit’s foot keychain hung from the damned car key, looking ridiculous, and Derek had the absurd vision of some asshole counting on the good luck of the rabbit’s foot to keep his ride safe in one of the worst sections of Mattapan.
It was lunacy.
It was also exactly what he needed, and he felt his eyes begin to fill with tears of undeserved gratitude to the asshole with the rabbit’s foot keychain. His head was pounding and he was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane and now, thanks to some stranger’s foolishness or carelessness or whatever the hell it was, he at least had a shot at putting his desperate plan into motion.
He blinked the tears out of his eyes and shook his head to clear it. Then he reached for the ignition, suddenly as nervous as he could ever remember being. Sure, if the car didn’t start he could step out of ancient piece of shit, walk away and continue searching the parking lot for another possibility, but really, what were the odds he’d find a second unlocked car with the keys inside?
Slim to none, that’s what they were, and Slim just left town, Derek thought. It was an old joke and he’d considered it the funniest thing he ever heard when he was a kid. Now, as the thought flashed through his head, it didn’t seem funny at all. It seemed like a damned good idea. Be like Slim and beat feet.
His breath rasped in his ears as he clutched the key, suddenly afraid to turn it. He closed his eyes and said something like a prayer, fully aware of the incongruity of a junkie asking a God he didn’t believe in for help boosting a car so he could then steal money in order to buy a syringe full of mind-altering poison and go on the run, but he did so nevertheless, whispering, “Please, God, please make this car start. I know I don’t deserve a damned thing from you, but please make it start.”
And then he turned the key.
And the car started.
Derek leaned forward, eyes closed, until his forehead rested against the steering wheel, thinking about something his father had said once when Derek was a little kid. He couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time, so young there was no real context to his father’s remark, but Derek remembered the old man seeing a car drive by and him saying, out of nowhere, “One thing those Japs know how to do is build a fucking engine. Those Toyotas, boy, you just can’t kill the damned things.”
The memory flashed through Derek’s head, bouncing crazily around his pounding skull. His head felt like some midget was inside his cranium going to town with a jackhammer. He knew he should be driving out of the lot immediately, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Toyota’s owner—for all Derek knew, Rabbit’s Foot Guy had only stepped out of his car for a second, to grab a coffee or something—but at this very moment, he just needed to relish the notion that for once in his miserable life, something had actually gone his way.
He thanked God for the help, thanked his father for the dead old bastard’s automotive wisdom, and then lifted his head and looked carefully in all directions, as any good driver should, before easing out of the parking lot and turning toward his brother’s home.
3
It took awhile for Brenna to realize she was no longer alone in the house.
Between picking up after breakfast, crying, and trying to figure out how the hell she was going to save a relationship that had once been the source of her greatest happiness but was now crumbling before her eyes—or whether it was even worth saving—she was simply too preoccupied to focus much on her surroundings.
So when she looked up from the dishwasher and saw Greg’s brother standing in the hallway just outside the kitchen, she gasped and dropped the water glass she’d been drying onto the floor. It smashed into a million pieces, the shards exploding outward in all directions.
And she barely noticed.
She barely recognized Derek.
He was pale and dirty, his clothes at least a week overdue for the laundry, and she doubted he’d shaved since he last washed his clothes. Even from across the room she could see his whole body shaking, which was strange since he was the one who’d broken into her house, not the other way around. She should be the one shaking, from fear and rage at the fact this man had entered without her knowledge or an invitation, but right now she was too shocked to be afraid.
It wasn’t like she and Greg were so close to Derek that it would be normal for him to stop by for a visit, much less stroll right inside. Brenna doubted she’d met Greg’s brother more than a handful of times,
