Page 124 of I Will Ruin You

“Come and see for yourself,” Gerhard said.

Stuart slowly approached, the gun at his side. He scanned the items that had been tossed from the bag.

“Those are my shoes,” he said disbelievingly. “That’s my shampoo. That’s... that’s all my stuff. It’s all stuff from my place.” He looked at me, as if somehow I would have the answer, then at the woman. “I don’t understand.”

“I understand,” Andrea said. “You tried to fuck us over.”

“No, no, that’s not true,” Stuart said. “Someone’s playing a trick here.”

“Yup,” Gerhard said. “I’m looking right at the trickster.”

Stuart shook his head. “No, it’s— Shit. It’s Lucy. It’s got to be Lucy. Goddamn it. I don’t know how... she wouldn’t have a key. I don’t have a key. Maybe she switched bags.” He took a moment, trying to puzzle it out, licked his lips. “Billy said something... something about how she could open a bag and—”

“Where is she?” Gerhard asked.

“She’s... she’s at my place,” Stuart said, bewildered. “Look, I’ll go back. This is a minor hiccup. I’ll find her. I’ll find her and get your stuff. All of it.” He forced a laugh. “Just a bump in the road, is all. I can get this all sorted out fast.”

I had my own doubts. If Lucy had helped herself to the contents of that carry-on bag, what were the odds she was still hanging around, waiting for Stuart to return? I could tell from Andrea’s dubious expression she was thinking the same.

“But first,” Stuart said, “I want to make sure you guys are keeping your end of the bargain, so I want to see the money.”

The man laughed. “You bring us Reeboks and Head & Shoulders and you want to know whether we’re ripping you off?”

Stuart forced a chuckled. “Just being thorough.”

“Yeah, thorough,” Andrea said. “It might be better if we had a word with Lucy. Where would we find her, if she hasn’t already taken a flight to Bolivia?”

“I got a place at the Eastway. The Eastway Motel. Room two-nineteen. It’s on the second floor. There’s stairs up and—”

“I know the Eastway,” Gerhard said. He glanced at his partner. “How do you want to handle this?”

“Like this,” she said as she raised the gun that had been in her hand all this time and shot Stuart in the chest. The gun, even though it appeared to be equipped with one of those silencer attachments, still made a hell of a racket, and I jumped.

Stuart staggered backward a couple of feet and looked down at the blossoming red spot on his chest. “The fuck,” he said. This was followed by some coughing and gagging noises.

And then he started to wobble, knees buckling, and then he was on the pavement, moaning. “Shit shit shit,” he said, becoming quieter with each utterance. The gun he’d been holding slipped from his fingers and settled on the pavement next to his thigh with a dull metallic clatter.

Gerhard must have caught me noticing the gun, as he immediately bent over, picked it up, looked at me, and said, “I don’t think so.” He went over to the Audi and tossed it through an open window onto the passenger seat.

“And now you,” Andrea said, looking at me.

“I had nothing to do with this,” I said.

In my head, I was reciting a mantra. Hold it together. Hold it together. Hold it together. I’d seen two people shot to death this evening. I wasn’t sure a mantra was going to cut it.

“You know where we can find this Lucy?” Andrea asked.

Not at the motel, I was betting. And if not there, I had absolutely no fucking idea where she would have gone. I’d set eyes on her only twice. Once when she was leaving her house, and once more when she brought the suitcase down to Stuart.

But what I said was “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I know what she drives. She’s got a Kia. A little silver one. I’d know it if I saw it.”

“I guess now that you’ve told us that, we’d know it if we saw it, too.”

I wasn’t very good at this.