Fifty

Before he'd left the motel, Stuart had made it very clear to Lucy what he wanted her to do.

Stay put.

Don't open the door, don't turn on your phone, don't make any calls from the motel line, don't talk to anybody, don't go out to get food. Watch TV and chill out.

Lucy got where he was coming from, but she felt like a prisoner. And this motel room of Stuart's was a shithole. The house she shared with Billy was no villa on the French Riviera, but it was a damn sight better than this place. There was a mousetrap under the desk and some roach bait in the corner. Lucy was used to a spotlessly clean workplace. The hospital cafeteria was checked for vermin and bugs on a weekly basis. They needed to send someone over here.

Stuart had said he had one important errand to run before doing the trade. Said something about having someone help him, someone to make the exchange less risky. Once he had that done, and had been back in touch with the dealers, he'd return for the case.

And when he came back after that, they'd be all set. They'd have their money and they could hit the road. Well, that was all just fine, Lucy thought, except for one small detail:

Stuart made her sick to her stomach.

If Stuart had always had a thing for her, she hadn't been mindful of the signs. He'd always been this dumbass friend of Billy's who hung around in the basement drinking beer and eating Cheetos and wiping his dusty orange fingers on the furniture. Looking back, maybe he liked to stand a little too close to her at times. Once or twice he'd dropped by when Billy wasn't there and, rather than take off, had hung around a little too long. A lot of times he'd be real quiet, just looking at her, which was almost creepier than if he'd tried to cop a feel or kiss her. He knew if he tried something like that she'd tell Billy, and God knows what Billy would have done to him.

But with Billy out of the picture, Stuart was changing.

How stupid had she been, coming here in the first place? She hadn't been thinking straight in the hours after finding Billy dead in the garage. She'd been in shock, wandering around without a plan.

Then she thought of Stuart.

He'd been pretty welcoming when she showed up. That seemed like a good thing initially, but now? Not so much.

Even if Stuart didn't make her skin crawl, fifty grand wouldn't last forever. What happened when the money ran out? How were they supposed to get jobs and support themselves if they couldn't use their real IDs? Were they supposed to get new identities? And how did one go about that, anyway?

Stuart was not someone who took the long view. He could only see as far as getting the money.

Lucy, on the other hand, while admitting to herself she was no criminal mastermind, either, could see the bigger picture. Okay, she did something wrong. She did something illegal. But she hadn't been working with a pair of drug dealers or taking payoffs. She hadn't cooked the stuff up herself in her own lab. She hadn't killed anybody. And she'd never been in any trouble with the police beyond a few parking tickets and a grass bust when she was sixteen, but no one was going to hold that against her.

Maybe she should walk out that door, turn herself in to the cops, and tell them everything she knew.

As bad as that sounded, it beat going on the run with Stuart Betz. Even if they actually did get away, there were certain benefits Stuart was going to expect. Here he was, fashioning himself as her knight in shining armor. He'd rescued her from the bad guys. What was his idea of a thank-you going to be? A handshake? A hand something, that was for sure. And a whole lot more.

Lucy felt a little queasy.

Maybe she was looking at this wrong. This was not an either/or situation. It wasn't a choice between running off with Stuart or turning herself in. What if there was a third option?

One where she walked out that door and went back to her life? And where Stuart was removed as a problem?

She was already working out a story for the police as to why she'd disappeared, and it had the added benefit of being true. She knew her husband was bringing fentanyl into the country and holding it for pickup. When he got killed, she was terrified she might be next, that she might be murdered because she knew too much.

Yeah, that had a nice ring to it.

She went back into the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain, and looked at the carry-on bag. When Stuart returned, he'd grab the bag and head off to make his deal.

She grabbed the bag by the handle, wheeled it out of the bathroom, and hoisted it up onto the small dining table.

Looked at it.

And thought, I already figured out how to open this once before.