And that was another experience Derek was familiar with.
One thing junkies learned early on was that they occupied the bottom of the societal food chain, right alongside rapists and child abusers. Normal—meaning non-addicted—people misunderstood guys like him. They feared them and wanted nothing more than to ignore them entirely. To go about their business and pretend they didn’t exist.
It didn’t help that addicts had the unfortunate habit of alienating everyone who cared about them, stealing from family members, friends and loved ones, being consistently unreliable and occasionally dangerous. The path of addiction was nothing if not predictable, leading to hopelessness, lawlessness and self-hatred, and Derek had followed that path right down the line.
Which explained what he was doing here, lurking outside an upscale home in the middle of nowhere—Boxford was a long way from Southie—after dark, waiting to commit an act of which he would never have imagined himself capable in those long-ago days before he’d first stuck a syringe filled with poison into his arm and eased down on the plunger.
If there was anything to be grateful for in the hell his existence had become, it was that he could barely remember what it was like to be normal. Although, to be honest, he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt normal.
Derek realized he was stalling, strolling down a memory lane that in his case was weed-infested and strewn with snakes, because he really didn’t want to do what came next. He dreaded doing what came next. But as seemed to be his habit—pun definitely intended—he’d painted himself into a corner and the opportunity to change the outcome of this particular situation had long since passed.
In all probability it had never existed.
The homeowner’s name was Jeff McHugh, and supposedly he was some bigshot wheeler-dealer. A stockbroker, or a banker, or maybe a real-estate developer. Derek didn’t know which and didn’t much care. What mattered was that Jeff McHugh was an addicted stockbroker or banker or real-estate developer.
McHugh’s addiction was gambling, not drugs, and although Derek had never met the man, in many ways he envied him. McHugh undoubtedly suffered from his weaknesses, but he was at least capable of maintaining some semblance of normalcy. He could work, and have a family life, and still more or less juggle real-world responsibilities like an adult.
When heroin was your master, none of that was possible. Your entire existence revolved around scoring your next fix, scheming ways to get the cash to pay for your next fix, and worrying about becoming too dopesick to function before that fix materialized.
And sometimes, getting so deeply into debt with your dealer that you were forced to commit desperate—not to mention criminal and potentially violent—acts.
But just because Jeff McHugh’s particular demon didn’t involve jamming needles into soft tissue didn’t mean it was benign. All compulsions came with a steep price tag, with McHugh’s steeper than most.
Because Derek had been given an untraceable handgun and told not to leave the man’s house without enough cash or liquid assets to erase most if not all of a twenty-five thousand dollar gambling marker. Even as nervous as he was, he couldn’t help smiling as he recalled his reaction upon hearing the size of McHugh’s debt.
He’d stood with his mouth hanging open, thinking he must have misheard or misunderstood. When he learned he had actually heard what he thought he heard, it only hammered home the difference between a high roller like Jeff McHugh and a lowly scumbag like himself. Derek Weaver would never in a million years be permitted to run up a twenty-five grand tab. Not by anybody, for anything, at any time.
Twenty-five hundred would be out of his reach, and in fact his debt was far lower than that, and still he’d been hauled into Crowder’s office and given the unlikeliest of tasks with which to redeem himself.
Dammit, you’re stalling again. Get your shit together and do this, asshole.
McHugh had protected his property from prying eyes by constructing—or more likely paying someone to construct, since rich bastards like Jeff McHugh rarely performed their own manual labor—a natural screen composed of some sort of shrubbery. It formed a ring around the edges of his land every bit as effective as if he’d built a ten-foot-high fence, and now Derek forced his way through the shrubs. He earned a series of scratches on his arms and face for his efforts.
He paused to brush dead leaves and twigs from his clothing and then hurried across a spacious back yard, fully exposed should the mark happen to glance out a rear window. The journey felt like it took an hour, and with every step Derek imagined hearing the concussive boom of a shotgun blast a split-second before being knocked off his feet, death enveloping him in what would almost but not quite be a welcome event.
He flattened himself against the side of the house and stood breathing deeply through his mouth in an attempt to remain as stealthy as possible while simultaneously calming his nerves. The attempt failed on both counts, exactly as Derek had suspected it would. He finally gave up the attempt and inched along the side of the house until reaching the big farmer’s porch adorned with the wicker chairs and decorative swing.
He lifted himself over the railing as quietly as he could, certain once again he was making enough noise to alert the homeowner to his presence. Lights were on inside the house and McHugh’s BMW was parked in the driveway, so even if Crowder hadn’t assured Derek the man was home it would have been obvious.
He’d also promised Derek that McHugh’s wife and daughter would be away. “They go shopping together every Tuesday night like clockwork.”
“Today’s Tuesday,” Derek had said stupidly, confirming his status as a goddamned idiot to Crowder, as if the man didn’t already know.
Crowder wrinkled his nose as if he’d just gotten a whiff of a noxious odor. “Exactly,” he said drily, with the exaggerated patience of a man talking to a
