Fifty-Eight

"I do not know anything about this," I said, raising my hands to shoulder level, trying to appear nonthreatening with that gun being pointed at me by Andrea.

"What the fuck is this?" Gerhard asked.

"I'm telling you, I don't know." I pointed a thumb behind me. "Ask him. Ask Stuart. This is his deal. I'm just a bag boy."

"Hey, dipshit!" the woman shouted at Stuart. "The hell is this?"

"What are you talking about?" Stuart said.

"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.

"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.