Lead Me Not (35 page)

Marco shoved past me the moment I opened the door. “What
the hell, man? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days!” Marco scowled as he made his way into my apartment. He headed straight for my bedroom.

The fucker had serious issues with personal boundaries.

I was having a major problem seeing straight. I knew I should be worried by Marco’s aggressive entrance, but like every time I was doped up, I couldn’t summon the energy to care.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched Marco pull out my bedside drawer, rooting around until he found the baggie of pills I had put there. He held them up to the light and started counting.

“Make yourself at home,” I slurred, swinging my hand out in front of me in a sweeping gesture.

Marco tossed the bag onto the bed and advanced toward me. My mouth was frozen in a lazy smile, which I could tell pissed Marco off.

He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shook me. I tried to shove him off but with no success.

“What the fuck?” I mumbled, trying to get away from him.

“You’ve been taking them, haven’t you? You’re supposed to be selling them, not eating the shit for breakfast!” he yelled into my face.

Marco was a scary dude to most people. But I remembered him when he wore his pants around his knees, was covered in acne, and had no game whatsoever. He’d been a joke. Now he liked to think of himself as a badass. But a few years of weightlifting and covering his face in metal didn’t erase the fact that he used to be the biggest douche on the planet.

“Don’t start with your goddamned lectures. If I wanted advice, I wouldn’t be asking for it from the guy who let some cracked-out chick pierce his junk with a needle,” I said with a smirk, shoving Marco hard in the chest and sending him stumbling backward.

Even fucked-up out of my mind, I could still take him. I grabbed my dick crudely and flipped him off. I went to the bed and picked up the baggie, shoving it back in the drawer.

“Stay the fuck out of my stuff,” I warned, pointing at him with a wobbly finger.

Marco sneered, stretching his lips in an ugly grin.

“So what’s your great plan, Maxx? How the fuck are you going to make the money back so Gash won’t shove your nose up your own asshole? Come on, tell me your latest stroke of genius! I’m dying here.” Marco flopped down on the bed and put his muddy combat boots up on my sheets. Not that they were clean or anything, but I didn’t appreciate him messing up my shit.

“Get your boots off my bed, man,” I told him, though my voice sounded weak in my ears. Messed up and wanting a nap was not the way to have a confrontation. I could barely keep my eyes open. Marco was seriously screwing with my high. I’d have to kick his ass for that later.

Marco ignored my comment as he continued to regard me. “Look at you, Maxx. You are
fucked
-up.
If Gash saw you like this, you’d be wearing your rib cage as a hat. What the hell is up with you?” he asked, sounding a mixture of angry and concerned.

When it came down to it, for all his shank-you-in-the-gut skinhead act, he was just looking out for me. Marco and I had been friends for years. We went back a long way. And we’d always had each other’s backs. It was because of Marco that I landed the extremely well-paying job I had to begin with, a job that allowed me to take care of my brother, keep a roof over my head, and pay for school.

“I’ll charge double,” I offered with a shrug, as if that were the most obvious answer in the world.

Marco barked out a laugh. “Are you fucking with me?” he asked incredulously.

I frowned. I had thought it was a good idea.

“Why is that so funny?”

Marco snorted. “Dude, there are enough people slinging around this city, you charging double for midgrade pills won’t
make you a cent. It won’t make Gash the money he expects. You, my friend, are a fucking moron.”

“You don’t know shit, Marco. You just sit at the door and tell the chicks if they look pretty and leave the hard stuff to me,” I derided.

Marco’s face darkened. He dropped his feet down to the floor with a loud thud. “Don’t fuck around. You’re not just messing up stuff for you, but for me too. What do you think will happen if Gash figures out you’re taking more than you’re selling, that you don’t have the money to give him?” Marco got to his feet and started pacing, something he did when he was ready to lose it.

Why the hell was he freaking out so badly? I should be the one worrying. My head started to pound, and the pills across the room were screaming for my attention.

“He’ll start looking at all of us, man. I’ve been smart about the door money, but Gash could figure it out, you know! He’d have us both taken out!” Marco smashed his hand into the wall beside my desk.

“Stop being such a pussy about it. No one put a gun to your head and made you steal from the door. So don’t start bitching about it now,” I stated matter-of-factly. Marco’s jaw started to tick.

“Have you found a location yet?” Marco asked, changing the subject.

I shrugged. “Not yet,” I said unemotionally. I really should have more of a sense of self-preservation than this. I was walking on some pretty thin ice.

Marco gripped his skull, which was covered in a badly done tribal tattoo. Dude really had bad taste when it came to body art.

“Are you trying to kill me? Seriously. Well, get your shit, we’re finding something now. Gash expects the information tonight.” Marco marched past me and into the hallway.

“I can’t make it tonight. I’ve got plans,” I called after him, trying not to laugh as he became even more enraged.

“The hell you can’t. Get. Your. Shit. We’re leaving,” Marco an
nounced, slamming my front door behind him as he left.

I should have called Aubrey. I should have explained that I wouldn’t be home this evening.

But I didn’t.

The drugs made everything but the here and now a vague, hazy memory.

They made it easier to think I could just deal with it all later.

Marco pulled up outside an unassuming office building a few hours later. It was a little after eight, and Marco and I had just returned from finding a run-down middle school. We had gone through the building, and even though it looked one step away from being condemned, it would work for the club.

Marco had stopped at a diner on the way to Gash’s office and plied me with food and coffee in an attempt to sober me up. I was already coming down, which of course left me shaky and sick to my stomach.

The burger I had eaten earlier threatened to come back up. I grabbed Marco’s arm before we headed into the office. “Dude, do you have anything?” I asked, trying not to beg. “Seriously, I just need one.”

Marco grunted, giving me a look of disgust. “You’ve really got to get your shit together, man,” he muttered, fishing in his pocket for a small bag. He shook out one tiny white pill and held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

I went to snatch it from his hands, but he held it back. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to some support group or something? Because if this is how the whole twelve-step thing works, it sucks,” he commented.

I glared at him, not bothering to correct the twelve-step comment. I was too busy swallowing down the bile that filled my mouth. “Just give it to me and save the sermon for someone who
gives a damn,” I said as I tried not to throw up on my buddy’s shoes. My head had started hammering, and I knew there was no way I could face Gash without something to take the edge off.

Marco shoved the pill in my hand. I hurriedly put it in my mouth, crunching it between my teeth. “Just give me a second,” I said, leaning against the side of Marco’s beat-up Volvo.

Ten minutes later, the shakes had stopped, and the nausea was almost gone. I still felt spaced, but I was good enough to go inside.

Gash’s office was not what you’d expect from the guy who ran the most successful underground club on the East Coast. The first time I had come here, I had anticipated black lights and mood lighting, and at least a muscled henchman or two.

It was completely empty, which wasn’t surprising given that it was after eight in the evening. Gash kept . . .
unusual
hours.

The place was sterile and nondescript. The office was in the kind of building where you’d expect to run into a herd of accountants. Marco and I stuck out like sore thumbs in this environment of cream walls and bad art reproductions.

In Gash’s other life, he was known as Trevor McMillan, and he worked as an IT analyst for a small security firm.

So how did Trevor become Gash? That was the question of the decade. There were plenty of rumors as to how he’d started Compulsion, just as there were a million stories of how he had earned the nickname he was known by—and I seriously doubted any of them were true.

Who the fuck knew? Did it really matter? The answer didn’t change the fact that he was one scary motherfucker for a scrawny IT guy who played club manager goon on the side.

Marco knocked on the door and went inside without waiting for an answer. Gash sat behind a plain wooden desk, his head bowed over a keyboard. He could have passed for someone’s pedophile uncle or a used-car salesman. He wasn’t partic
ularly intimidating, just sort of smarmy . . . until he looked at you.

His cold, dead stare could make a lesser man squirm. I wasn’t too macho to admit I’d been close to pissing myself a time or two in his presence.

Marco closed the door and had a seat at one of the two upholstered chairs against the wall. I followed, hands shoved in my pockets, shoulders hunched defensively. You never knew what you were going to get when you had a meeting with Gash.

Some days he was fine, civil even, though he very rarely cracked a smile.

Then there were the days when you were waiting for him to pull a knife from his coat and slit your throat. He was unpredictable, which should have made Marco and me think twice before stealing from him. We should have been smarter than to mess with a guy like Gash. But as I said, money and drugs were a temptation neither of us could turn away from, sad, sick bastards that we were.

Marco handed Gash the slip of paper where he had written the address for the old school. Without looking at either of us, Gash turned back to his computer and started clicking away, looking at a map on the screen.

“Is this in a residential area?” he asked, finally looking at us. He turned his unemotional stare on me.

I shook my head. “It used to be, but the area is run-down now. Most of the houses have either been foreclosed or abandoned. Not many people still live there, and the few that do are old. No families. No kids,” I reported.

I curled my hands around the arms of the chair. I was sweating bullets. Damn, I needed another pill.

“Police?” Gash asked.

“The police station is on the other side of town. The force just laid off three officers, so they’re bare-bones right now. I don’t see
much of a problem,” Marco piped up, filling in what I should have already known.

This is the sort of research I normally would have done. Marco was picking up the slack, and I definitely owed him one.

“I’ll get one of the guys to poke around a bit, see if there’s someone we can talk to about making sure we don’t have any problems on Saturday,” Marco said, glancing at me out of his peripheral vision. Could it be any more obvious I hadn’t done a thing?

And it wasn’t lost on Gash. He regarded me as though I were shit on his shoe.

“And what the fuck have you been doing while Marco has been doing your job? What the hell am I paying you for? A little painting here and there doesn’t cut it. Sit up and stop fucking slouching!” Gash demanded. I felt like a kid in the principal’s office. Would my punishment be detention or an ass beating?

I sat up in my chair slowly. I couldn’t help but be oppositional about it. I was a tit like that.

“I’ve had a lot of shit going on,” I offered by way of an excuse, though I knew it was lame at best. My pathetic justification obviously made Gash really, really angry.

He leaned over his desk, his lips peeled back to bare his yellowed teeth, lines forming between his eyebrows. “I don’t care what is going on, you have a job to do, so do it! Marco shouldn’t be doing the shit I pay
you
for.” Gash jerked his thumb at Marco, who had all but disappeared into the upholstery of the chair. Not drawing attention to yourself when Gash was pissed was a matter of survival, plain and simple.

I nodded curtly. “I get it; it won’t happen again,” I said.

“Vin said he dropped off the week’s product to you a couple of days ago. I want the money on Sunday. Not Monday. Not Tuesday. But fucking Sunday! I’ve got my eye on you and I’m not happy with what I’m seeing,” Gash warned, running his finger along the
scar under his eye.

He had been stabbed in the face by a junked-out crackhead a few years ago. The crackhead was dead. Gash was still here. Point made.

I nodded again. “You’ll get it, not a problem.” Too bad it was actually a very big problem.

“You’re looking a little shaky. You all right?” Gash asked, eyeing me shrewdly. He was no dumb shit. I knew that
he knew
I was coming down . . . hard.