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 announced, 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 particularly 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.