“How many hours do you sleep, usually? For the rest of the afternoon, into the evening, or…?”
“No. No way. An hour or two is all I need. I’m a really deep sleeper. Then a Red Bull, and I’m off.”
“I need to get back to my room and pack for the trip home, anyway. Thank you, so much, for your time. I’ll mail you copies of the magazine, here, to your attention, when it’s printed next month.”
Instead of heading to the elevators, she ducked into the ice room down the hall and waited. Twenty-five minutes later, she returned to his room. She had her story ready, in case he woke up: that they’d accidentally switched room keys, and she was just trying to return his to him without disturbing a genius who needed his rest.
She could hear him snoring in the bedroom. There were still bills and chips scattered carelessly on the bar. She took a few of them, but made sure it wasn’t too many. She didn’t want him to notice anything amiss. Then she moved into the bedroom and opened the closet. Another loud snore, and then his breathing became quiet and even again. The safe had a four-digit code, and she got it on her first try: 7777. Jeremy was a predictable guy.
There was at least twenty grand in the safe. She could take it all, but he’d call the police and describe her. She didn’t need that. So she only took a thousand. He might notice that, but she doubted it.
She was back out in the front room again. She switched the key cards and left. The door barely made a sound as she closed it.
October 1992
NORTH MAINE WOODS
Lucky ran as fast as she could, down the stairs and out the front door of the rooming house. She ran through the yard, hopped the fence, and crashed through the woods behind it. The rooming house smelled of onions and lard; the woods smelled like moss and pine. She inhaled it all in gasping breaths. Run, run. She didn’t stop, not even when her feet felt like they were being shredded on the forest floor and her chest felt like it was going to explode. She kept going until she couldn’t anymore.
Then she fell to her knees, stayed on all fours looking down at the carpet of moss, sticks, rocks, and pine needles, then up at the darkness through the tops of the stately trees that crowded around her. There was a stump a few feet ahead. She crawled to that and sat. As her heartbeat returned to normal, other sounds crept in: the chirp-chirp-chirp of a nearby cricket, the hooo-oo-ooh of an owl, the flutter of wings, a rustle in the greenery that made her turn, wary, but then a vole emerged and looked at her quizzically before darting back into the brush. She relaxed again, put her elbow on her knee and her chin on her palm. “What now, Lucky?” she said.
It was cold. Her feet, which had at first stung from the flight across the forest floor, now stung from the cold of the fall night, and she wasn’t wearing anything but a nightgown. What had she been thinking? The truth was, she hadn’t been thinking at all. She lifted a hand to touch her hair, the hair that had caused so much trouble with her father, and the beginnings of panic stirred in her stomach and chest. Should she just head back the way she had come? Which way, exactly, had she come, though? She remembered taking a few twists and turns, doing just about anything to lose him. And now she had. But in the process, had she lost herself, too?
She closed her eyes and then opened them a few seconds later. Something was in front of her. It had skulked out from the brush. Lucky gasped.
A cat, and a big one. It crouched and emitted a low hiss. She wanted to scream and run. Instead, she leveled her eyes at it and forced herself to stare it down. She searched her mind for a solution and remembered camping out with her father once near the Rocky Mountains. In the morning they’d taken their garbage to the dump and there had been bears, brown and hulking, down in the pit. Lucky had been terrified, but her father had assured her the bears weren’t going to hurt them as long as they held hands and made themselves look as big as possible as they walked backward away from the pit.
On shaky legs, Lucky stood atop the stump and drew herself up to her not-very-considerable full height. “Listen,” she said to the lynx—for that was what it was, although she didn’t know it. “I am bad news. If you eat me, you are going to drop dead immediately. Do you know who I am? I am Luciana Armstrong. You see this hair?” She lifted a red lock. “Redheads are deadly to all animals. Especially cats.”
The lynx didn’t move.
Lucky stepped off the stump and backed away, still admonishing the animal in her firmest, surest voice. “You just… you just watch out, okay?” The lynx watched her for another moment, then turned and disappeared into the brush. She kept backing up, afraid to turn. When she bumped up against a warm, moving thing, she screamed.
“It’s just me! It’s just your dad! Lucky, thank goodness! I ran as fast as I could, but I couldn’t find you.”
She’d never heard her father sound scared. She’d been livid with him before, but now she pressed her face into his chest and smelled his familiar scent: those vanilla cigarillos he liked to smoke, and a subtle spicy aftershave, and the onions from the rooming house, and just him, the familiar scent of the only parent she had ever known. She stayed that way, with her head bowed into his chest, for a long moment before looking up at him. How could she ever have believed she’d be fine on her own?
“There’s something out there,” she began, her voice wavering now. “A big, scary cat.”
“I know that, kiddo. I saw you, standing on that stump, giving that lynx what-for. And then—well, you saw it! That big cat just took right off. And do you know why?”
Lucky’s head was still swimming with panic, so she didn’t know how to answer.
“Because it’s like I always said. You’re more than lucky. You’re not like other kids at all, not like other people. You have special powers. You’re magic. You know that, right?” Her father crouched down and lifted her onto his shoulders. “Nothing can hurt us, Lucky! Not as long as we’re together. You understand that? But we have to stay together.”
She felt relief as the edge of the woods came into her line of vision, and the trees began to thin out. Soon they were back on the path she had taken into the woods in the first place, and the log-cabin-style rooming house was near.
Her father set her down just outside the back gate, which was swinging open, blowing gently in the night breeze. “We need to stick together. You understand? Just because you’re special doesn’t mean you’re ready to go off on your own. You still have a lot to learn.”
“I understand, Dad.”
“And besides, we’re all we’ve got. You and me. I’m the only person you can trust.” He walked ahead of her, through the gate and into the house. She ran to keep up so she wouldn’t be left alone outside.
“Wash the dirt from your feet and warm up. I’ll make us something to eat,” he said when they were back inside.
Later, she came out of the bath, her hair wet and combed down her back. She picked the scissors up from the table and cut the rest of her hair off herself.
CHAPTER FIVE
The tour bus rumbled down the Nevada desert highway and Lucky hummed to herself as she looked out the window. She had recently read an article about how singing and humming helped with anxiety, but it wasn’t helping hers.
She lifted her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, which were bleary from staying up all night haunting the northern strip. She had gone to an internet café and made a few attempts to access the offshore account she and Cary had opened. But it had disappeared. She had no access to the money. When her time had run out, she left the café and walked up and down the strip, waiting for dawn, when the bus tour she was planning to take to the Grand Canyon would be leaving. Going on a bus tour was the last thing Lucky wanted to do. But she was still pretending to be Bonnie Skinner. And Bonnie sure was excited to be heading off to see one of the wonders of the world.
She had checked the news: their car had been found in the underground lot of the Bellagio, so the police knew she and Cary—or, rather, David Ferguson and Alaina Cadence had come to Las Vegas. They were loo
king for a couple, though, not a woman alone. And they wouldn’t be checking tour buses. Wanted criminals didn’t generally go on sightseeing tours.
She stopped humming when a man sat down in the aisle seat beside her. She had seen him when they were getting on the bus. Middle-aged, forgettable face, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She had thought he seemed familiar, but then he had passed her seat and disappeared to the back of the bus. Now here he was. Why had he moved to sit beside her? Not everyone is a threat, she told herself. Maybe his seat mate wouldn’t stop talking to him. Maybe sitting at the back of the bus made him carsick. She kept taking small glances at him, small sips she hoped he wouldn’t notice. Brown hair, brown eyes, wedding ring. She had seen him somewhere, she knew it. But where? At the casino? In one of the shops she’d been to? Or did he just have one of those faces everyone thought they had seen before?
The man caught her staring and she smiled tightly. He didn’t smile back. She started humming again and folded her hands protectively over her belt pack.
“Isn’t it so exciting?” she said to him, thinking if she got too chatty maybe he’d move again. “Going to see the Grand Canyon? Definite bucket-list item.”
“Sure, real exciting,” the man said.
“Could you please excuse me? I just need to use the little girls’ room.” He didn’t stand for her, or even move his legs, so she had to squeeze past, feeling herself recoil as her leg rubbed against his. Run. Run. But there was nowhere to go.
In the tiny washroom, she checked her makeup. There was no need to reapply. Her skin was now sallow-looking all on its own, her eyes red and tired. She looked away from her reflection and unzipped the belt bag, slid the bills out and counted them, then began to distribute them among her bra, her pockets, a few extra bills in her shoes. Soon, all that was left in her wallet was her lottery ticket. She pulled it out, looked down at it for a moment and wondered when the draw was, then put it back. She clipped the bag around her waist again and left the bathroom.
The bus was starting to slow. It turned, and she could see the canyon off in the distance.
Soon, she walked off the bus along with everyone else; the strangely familiar man was up ahead, and soon she lost sight of him and felt relief. There was no crisis, nothing to worry about; he was just some guy. She moved slowly along behind everyone else, pretending to organize her things. Then, when no one was looking at her—and no one had really been looking at her anyway—she turned and headed in the opposite direction.
For about half a mile, she walked along the side of the road without seeing more than a few trucks. She followed the signs for Tusayan. It was steaming hot and she was rationing her water, but eventually she decided it was time for a break and a long drink: perhaps she’d walk faster if she stopped thinking about how thirsty she was. She slid the backpack off her shoulders, then bent over and searched for the large water bottle she had purchased before getting on the bus.
She was just lifting the bottle to her lips when someone hit her from behind. The bottle flew from her fingers and onto the dirt in front of her, lidless, hemorrhaging its contents. She felt a hand clamping down on her forearm like a vise.
Cold metal against her neck. A switchblade. She looked into the eyes of the man from the bus, and realized in an instant that she had seen him before—twice. He had been in the poker game with her two nights before, and in the poker game she had been watching yesterday, while scoping out the kid.
With the hand that was not holding the knife he ripped the belt bag from her waist. “Hello again.”
“Hello,” she said politely, trying to maintain her Bonnie Skinner the Tourist veneer. “Could you please let me go? You’re hurting me.”
He laughed an ugly laugh. “You can drop the act,” he said. “I know who you are.”
Lucky noticed a truck way off in the distance, hurtling toward them.
“It is you, isn’t it? I thought so, yeah. Those eyes aren’t forgettable. Neither are your tits, even under that big T-shirt.” She remembered him ogling her when she’d been playing poker two days before. He had seemed a harmless annoyance. She didn’t normally underestimate people like this. “Saw you hanging around at the poker table yesterday, and there was something about you. I realized you were the same broad who had bluffed us all out. Takes a scammer to know one, right? Then I realized I’d seen a face just like yours on television.” He was moving the blade slowly along her neck, stopping at each freckle, a slow and dangerous pause. “I never forget a face,” he said. “It’s my talent.” His knife snagged on the chain around her neck. He tugged. “What’s this?” he asked, touching the gold cross.
“Costume jewelry.” He tugged again, but the chain held. He dumped out the belt pack and the lottery ticket blew away. Instinctively, she snagged it with her foot and stood on it.
“Where is it? All that money you stole from that kid? All that money you stole from those folks they were talking about on the TV?” He dumped her backpack now. “Where ya hidin’ it? Come on.” He pulled her by the arm down an embankment and she was forced to stumble forward and lift her foot. The lottery ticket blew into some sagebrush. She lost sight of it as he dragged her behind a line of trees. The road disappeared from view, too.
She considered her options. She could raise her knee, hit him hard between the legs, then start to run and hopefully make it to the roadside by the time the truck passed by. But what if her timing was off, or what if the driver didn’t stop, or what if the driver also recognized her and called the police? Or what if she didn’t hit the man hard enough and he stabbed her? There were too many variables.
And she had waited too long. She heard the truck pass. The man pressed the knife into her neck so hard it stung. “We can do this the hard way,” he said, and he was so close she could smell his oily hair and his rank breath. “Or the easy way.” He pulled at her T-shirt, and it ripped at her collarbone. “I know you have more than what you’re telling me.”
Lucky held up a hand, palm out, in front of herself, feeble protection. “Okay, okay. Just hang on. Let me get it. The money, I’m getting it.” She reached into her bra while he watched too closely. She pulled out the first wad of cash from her bra, then the second one from her pockets. She handed both to him and he lowered the knife and counted the money.
“Bullshit,” he said when he was done counting. “That’s not all of it.”
“I only took what I needed from the kid. I spent some of it on a bus ticket and—”
“Bullshit. You know what? Take off your clothes. Everything. Take it all off, show me what you’re hiding.”
“Listen, I swear, that’s all the money I have. My partner ran off with the money from the Boise scam.”
“Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
Lucky had grown up knowing there were some things you just had to do, like swallowing medicine or jumping off a high diving board into deep water or stealing from people you wanted to love.
But this was not one of them.
She straightened to her full height, which was about an inch taller than the man. She swept her gaze over him. He was nothing; he was no one. “You have it all there,” Lucky said, her voice stern and commanding. “All my money. Everything. And what’s there, that’s not bad for a day’s work. But I can give you something else—”
“Oh, yeah, I bet you can—”
“You have to promise you’ll let me go. And then I’ll give it to you.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you about luck. About making money come to you. About changing your life so you don’t have to play small the way you do, holding women up with a cheap knife at the side of a highway.”
“What the hell would I—”
“You want to be more, don’t you? You want to be the guy they’re giving a suite at the Bellagio, you want to be the guy who’s getting all the respect. Right? Beautiful women falling all over you, wads of cash in your pockets, and in the bank…”
He didn’t say anything, but he let his ha
nd fall to his side as she spoke. With the knife no longer pointed in her direction she felt even more in command of the situation. “Promise you’re going to let me go,” she said. “And I’ll tell you more of what I know.”
He cleared his throat. He squinted at her.
“You’re not going to come across someone like me again,” Lucky said. “I am one of a kind.”
“All right, I promise,” he said, his voice husky now.
She breathed in deep, but the air was hot and dry and caught in her lungs. “If you want to be a successful con artist like me, you’ve got to listen to your hunches. Follow those hunches as far as they’ll take you. You need to figure out what your instincts are, and listen to them. The second thing is, you have to believe, really believe, that you will get where you want to go. You have to speak, dress, become the person you want to be. Pretend you already are that person.” She dropped her hand to her side, until it was parallel with the knife that still dangled in his. “And when you walk up to a poker table?” He was nodding now, nodding along with her words, waiting for some crumb that would change his life. She grabbed the knife, and it cut into her palm as she wrested it away from him and held it up, an inch from his eye. “Never, ever underestimate anyone. Especially not me.”
She stepped back, still pointing the knife at him, still shaking. “Walk that way,” she said, indicating the road. She thought about demanding he return the money he had just stolen from her—she needed it, desperately. But she also needed him gone. If she made him angry, he might try to get the knife back from her. She wasn’t sure she could overpower him. This had to end, and fast. “Walk that way, and I won’t kill you.”
“Fucking bitch,” he said, but he didn’t move closer.
“I’m not a bitch. You’re lucky you met me, asshole. Now, go. I don’t ever want to see you again, got it?” She commanded, “Start walking. That way.” She followed him up to the road and pointed back toward the canyon, still holding the blade aloft. He snarled at her once, animal-like, but then he turned and started to walk. She could feel blood dripping from the palm of her hand into the dust at the side of the highway. Sweat dripped down her back and legs, too. When the man was a dot on the horizon, she turned and went down the embankment to retrieve her backpack and water bottle from the dirt. She dripped what was left of the water onto her tongue, and started to shake.
Lucky Page 5