Page 88 of I Will Ruin You

So he’d been going to the window of his motel room every few minutes to see whether there were any cop cars in the parking lot. It had been nearly twenty-four hours, and if they hadn’t figured out yet that he’d been there, maybe they were never going to.

Of course, it wasn’t just cops that had Stuart worried.

When there had been a knock at his door early that morning, before the sun was even up, he figured it was game over. Wasn’t that when police conducted raids? When you were still asleep in your PJs or wearing nothing at all?

He’d sat up in bed suddenly, his heart jackhammering in his chest.

“Who is it?” he’d shouted.

He was expecting to hear: Open up! It’s the police!

But instead, it was a woman’s voice. Whispering loudly, “It’s me!”

Who the fuck was me?

Stuart got out of bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and padded over on the threadbare wall-to-wall carpet in his bare feet. He peered through the peephole. The motel manager hadn’t been very attentive to the number of lights that had burned out, but there was enough illumination to make out who was out there.

Lucy.

“Shit,” Stuart said under his breath. He unlocked the door, undid the chain, and opened the door six inches. “Lucy?”

While he was not expecting her, he wasn’t surprised she knew where he lived. She’d come by more than once to scoop up Billy when he’d been too drunk to drive himself home.

She looked bad. Her eye makeup was smeared under her cheek like she’d been crying or hadn’t had any sleep and she was hunched over, like she was trying to make herself invisible.

“Let me in,” she whispered. Stuart widened the gap, pulled her inside, and quickly closed the door. “He’s dead,” she said. “Billy’s dead.”

Stuart’s jaw dropped. He figured that’s what you were supposed to do when you wanted people to think you were shocked by something they said.

“What?” he said. “What do you mean, Billy’s dead? The car finally fall on him?” He wanted to pat himself on the back for that one. Coming up with something he knew wasn’t true but was entirely plausible.

“No!” she said, dropping her butt onto the end of the unmade bed. “They killed him! There was blood everywhere!”

“God, no,” he said. He was about to sit beside her, but was starting to feel a little self-conscious about being in nothing but a pair of boxers. He was afraid that if he sat down next to her, put his arm around her shoulders to console her, he might, in spite of everything, get a woody, and that would definitely be wrong in these circumstances. So he grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on as Lucy kept talking.

“The dealers,” she said. “Those people he’s been dealing with. It had to be them.” She started to cry. “It’s all my fault. All of it. I got him killed.”

“How? What do you mean?”

She shot him a look. “You already know. Billy thought it was you at first. But it was me, skimming off the shipment.”

Jeans now on, it was safe to sit next to her and offer some comfort. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. She seemed to resist a bit, but it felt good to him.

“Oh, Lucy, I don’t know what to say.”

“It was such a dumb thing to do. If I’d ever thought they’d notice, I never would have done it. But... but they did some kind of count, knew they’d been ripped off. I’ve been driving around all night. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. And you’re the only other one who knew what Billy was involved in. So... I came to see you.”

“Sure, okay. You can always count on good ol’ Stuart, you know that.” He gave her a warm smile, then thought about his morning breath, how he should go brush his teeth. “You don’t know how happy I am you came here, that you trust me. Because I want you to know I’m here for you one hundred percent.”

“I can’t go to the police. I’d have to tell them what Billy was doing, that I stole some of the stuff and sold it. And those people, they’ve got to be looking for me. If they’d kill Billy over what happened, what do you think they’ll do to me?”

“Okay, I hear ya. We need to think about this. You got any money?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got like forty bucks, cash. I can’t use my cards. They trace ATM withdrawals, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, they can do that for sure. Where’s your car?”

Lucy told him she had parked her Kia around the back of the motel, hidden mostly by a Dumpster.