Page 125 of I Will Ruin You

“She might go back to her house,” I said.

“We know where that is, too. And dumbass Stuart here just told us where he lived.”

Gerhard said, “We don’t need him.”

I took a look at Stuart. No more moaning, no more breathing. The pavement was black with his blood.

“There’s nothing in that backpack, is there?” I said. They said nothing. “You were always going to kill him.”

“We don’t like people holding our stuff for ransom.”

“Sure, I get that. He was a piece of shit. He was blackmailing me for something I didn’t do. For something bad that didn’t even happen to him, but had happened to someone else, and—”

“Did I ask?” Andrea said. “Do I strike you as someone with an inquisitive nature?” She gave her partner a quick look. “Let’s try the Eastway in case she’s still there.”

Then she looked my way and raised her gun. “Sorry, pal,” she said.

So here I was again. Staring death in the face, just like eight days ago with Mark LeDrew. I’d been able to talk my way out of that one, but I didn’t see that happening this time.

I thought of Bonnie and Rachel. That I wished I’d told Bonnie it was time to change all the smoke detector batteries, a task I always took on. That the property tax bill was due this week, that I’d meant to do it but I’d been so stressed it had fallen through the cracks. Thought about Rachel’s upcoming birthday, how she’d been begging us to take her to the Mystic Aquarium so that she could see a beluga whale, and that I hoped Bonnie would still take her even if I couldn’t be part of it.

You can think of a lot of things in the split second before you’re going to die.

And then we heard the car.

A squeal of tires first, like someone taking a corner too fast, followed by the gunning of an engine. Not a throaty, sports car kind of sound, but a regular car being driven beyond its normal limits.

It was coming south on Viscount at probably fifty or sixty miles per hour in what had to be no more than a thirty zone. Headlights on, heading straight for the Sound.

Andrea lowered her gun and turned to look.

“Shit,” she said.

The car—it looked to be an SUV, actually, probably a Lexus—was soon going to run out of road, and the driver knew it, because suddenly the SUV braked hard, the tires screaming, no doubt leaving long rubber streaks on the road. It had slowed to make the turn into the Walnut Beach parking lot, but was still going too fast, looking like it might topple over as it made a sharp right in our direction.

I recognized the vehicle. It was Trent’s Lexus. And if it was him behind the wheel, I was betting Bonnie was with him. She’d have received the text, figured out it had to be me.

The driver did some quick correcting to keep the vehicle from going into a roll, and once the SUV was back on a straight path, it headed our way.

Far off in the distance, I heard a siren. Maybe more than one.

In the intermittent light that was cast across the windshield of the Lexus, I made out Bonnie in the passenger seat next to Trent. The car slowed to a stop, the headlights aimed straight at the three of us, the Audi and the pickup.

“Who the fuck is that?” Gerhard asked.

Andrea wasn’t going to wait for introductions. She’d turned the gun away from me and was aiming it at the Lexus.

Fifty-Nine

“Faster!” Bonnie said.

Trent was hunched over the wheel like an octogenarian driving through fog. “This isn’t a Ferrari.”

They were almost to Walnut Beach. But that text Bonnie believed to be from Richard didn’t exactly go into detail. Was he out on the pier? Was he on the beach itself? They could already be too late.

Don’t let your mind go there.

“Over there!” Trent shouted, pointing.