You killed two people and then because you weren’t quite enough of a dick, you knocked out a little girl.
The dining room chairs had scattered like bowling pins, and he pushed a couple aside and rose unsteadily to his feet. His face continued to swell and he only now realized he was bleeding from the nose and maybe the mouth. He took three wobbling steps toward the front door before he remembered the gun lying on the floor next to the girl.
Jesus, you’re an idiot. He retraced his steps and picked the gun up off the floor and not a moment too soon, because as he did so the girl’s eyelids began fluttering. She moaned and twitched as her brain rebooted, and Derek realized he’d been seconds away from potentially getting shot in the back.
It was no more than he deserved.
His mind was spinning, everything felt like it was moving too fast, slipping away from him, but one thing he knew for sure was that the girl was waking up and if he wanted to avoid a repeat of the fiasco from a couple of minutes ago, he was either going to have to leave the house or restrain her.
Since leaving the house was out of the question, at least until he could figure out some semblance of a plan, the only remaining option was the second one: tying her up.
Junk drawer, he thought. Everybody has a junk drawer. He touched his still-swelling face as he stumbled out of the killing room, gasping at the resulting sting and blinking the tears out of his eyes. He had no clue where the kitchen might be, and he knew he needed to hurry.
Down the hallway and to the right, and Derek caught his first break of the goddamned evening as the first room he entered turned out to be the one he needed. He began yanking drawers open, the clanking of silverware sounding about as loud as the sirens he expected to begin hearing at any moment.
McHugh’s house was located all by itself in the middle of the freaking boonies, but still Derek couldn’t quite fathom how it could be possible to kill two people without anyone hearing anything when the gun had sounded like a fucking cannon going off. And what if someone came to investigate? What would he do then? Say someone was walking by, strolling along the side of the county road with Fido and they heard the gunshots? They could be standing right outside the front door ready to knock, and then Derek’s problems would be even worse, he would have to—
He found some duct tape. There was maybe a third of a roll left, tucked inside a drawer along with pens and pencils, thumbtacks, envelopes and assorted other crap, just as Derek had envisioned. He grabbed it and hurriedly retraced his steps, feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride in being right for just a moment before remembering why the hell he needed the tape in the first place.
He turned the corner into the dining room, wrinkling his nose at the smell. The blood odor was heavy and strong, but it was tinged with something more. One or both of the people Derek killed had voided their bowels and the resulting stench caused his stomach to flip-flop. He had to swallow hard and clench his jaws together to avoid puking all over the floor and probably himself, too.
Across the room the girl had lifted herself into a sitting position. She was shaking her head carefully, wincing with pain, and supporting herself with her hands on the floor. She looked woozy and still only semi-conscious, and while Derek didn’t know how long it would take before she became fully alert, he had no intention of finding out the hard way.
He hurried across the room and slipped in some of the blood on the hardwood floor and damned near fell on his face. It was like walking on the ice at Boston Garden. He glanced back and saw an almost three-foot-long skid mark he’d made through the spilled blood and almost puked again but somehow choked it back.
When the girl saw him coming she tried to skitter backward and get away, but she crab-walked straight into an upended dining room chair. Before she could recover Derek was on her.
He started by slapping some tape on her mouth.
Then he righted one of the chairs.
He forced her into it and in seconds had secured her with more tape.
He stepped back, horrified by what he’d just done.
Great. You tied up a kid. Now what?
6
Derek realized he’d been pacing for at least twenty minutes, lost in confusion and terror and the certainty that a SWAT team was at any moment going to knock down Jeff McHugh’s front door and riddle him with bullets. He was breathing heavily and tracking blood all over the floor and he was just so fucking afraid.
He glanced at the girl and saw her following his every move with eyes that were large and fearful, and the shame he felt over killing two innocent people—and tying up a child—intensified.
He needed to apologize, to explain himself, as silly as that sounded. He needed to make some kind of attempt to shed a little of the awful weight that had descended onto his shoulders the moment he pulled the trigger, and the only person he could do that to was the girl.
He made a snap decision. Walked over to the girl and stopped in front of her.
She tried to shrink back, to get away, but of course she was strapped to a chair, helpless and unable to escape.
“If I take the tape off your mouth, do you promise not to scream?” Removing the girl’s gag would be stupid on so many levels. It was asking for trouble, but Derek had to do it. He couldn’t say why, exactly, all he knew was that once the notion of unburdening himself had popped into his head, it was
