Page 112 of I Will Ruin You

The drape was pulled open several more inches, then fell back into place. About ten seconds later, the door opened far enough for a woman to stick her head out. The lighting was dim and I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the woman who had left Billy Finster’s house the first time I’d been watching it. What was she doing with Stuart?

“Lucy!” Stuart shouted again. He waved her toward him.

Lucy came outside, closed the door behind her, walked to the stairway and descended it, then crossed the parking lot until she was at the open passenger-door window.

“Hey,” Stuart said to her.

Lucy looked small and afraid. “What’s going on?” she asked. She saw me behind the wheel and said, “Who’s this?”

“My new assistant,” Stuart said.

“Why are you pointing a gun at him?”

“He’s kind of a reluctant assistant. Look, everything’s ready to go down. Get the case.”

“I have to lug it down?” she asked. “You can’t go up and get it?”

“I’m kinda busy, unless you want to stay here and keep a gun on this guy while I get the bag. But you have to be prepared to shoot him.”

She looked at the gun and said, “I’m not touching that thing.” She turned and walked away. She went up the stairs like someone climbing the scaffolding to be hung.

“Billy’s wife,” I said.

“Yeah,” Stuart said. “She’s in kind of a rough patch right now. I’m helping her through it.”

“How, exactly?”

“By providing for her future,” Stuart snapped. “It’s all good. And you get to be part of it.”

I waited.

“I have something I have to deliver to these people, and in return they’re going to give me enough money so Lucy and I can start this new life together.” He smiled. “I’ve always really liked her. It’s going to take her some time to warm up to me, I understand that, because she’s just suffered a loss. So I’m going to give her a week or two. But by then we’ll be on the beach in Boca Raton, or maybe we’ll go out to L.A. or someplace like that.” He nodded confidently. “It’s all gonna be fine.”

“You’re giving the bag to those people who came to see Billy last night.”

“I’m not an idiot. I don’t trust them. I give them the bag, they’re supposed to give me the money. But I’m thinking, what if they don’t? What if they pull some kind of double cross? If it was just me with the bag, on my own, I couldn’t do a very good job of defending myself. So you’ll handle the bag, do the delivery, and I’ll be ready with this”—he waved the gun around—“in case they try something.”

There were a hundred ways this could go wrong. And I couldn’t think of a single way I was going to get out of this alive.

Run. Just run.

As if reading my mind, Stuart said, “I know where you live. You bail on me, I go to your house. You’ve got a wife, and a kid, too, right? You take off, and I’m heading straight there. You get me?”

“I get you,” I said.

Lucy had gone back into the motel room. Seconds later she emerged with a wheeled carry-on bag, dragging it behind her to the stairs.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“I guess you’d call it pain medication,” Stuart said. “From south of the border. Got themselves a little lab down there. Probably more like a fucking factory. They ship finished product up by plane. Billy would take it off, hold it for pickup.”

“You took the bag from Billy?”

“He didn’t have much say in the matter,” Stuart said. “I go out for food, come back, the fucker’s dead on the floor. Was pretty shook up, didn’t stay long, but I have a nose for an opportunity, you know? The bag was there and I knew what was in it and that it was worth a fortune, so, you know.”

“You took it.”

“I took it, yeah. Wasn’t like Billy was going to care, and I knew his associates would pay to get it back.”