Devil’s Luck

by Kory M. Shrum

  Spray ricocheted off of Dani’s body, splattering Lou’s arm and face. She didn’t care.

  “I saw him ripped apart,” Lou said softly. “Petrov is dead.”

  Dani lifted her face from her knees, her face red with tears. “I know.”

  “Very dead. Entrails on the ground, head torn off. He isn’t coming back for you.”

  Dani nodded, pushing the wet hair back from her face. “I know. But in my head, I feel like I’m going to wake up and it’ll be someone else hurting me. Like there’s someone waiting in the wings. Him or someone like him, they’re going to come back.”

  Dani glanced at Lou’s arm and frowned.

  “You must think I’m pathetic. You’ve got a million scars. And look at you. You don’t fall apart every time you have a bad dream.”

  Not anymore.

  That hadn’t always been true. What could Lou tell her about her own nightmares? Of Angelo’s face emerging from darkness as he pulled his gun and blew out her father’s brains?

  Of her father screaming out her name?

  How many times had she had that dream, or a variation of it? A hundred? A million?

  Yes, Lou knew plenty about bad dreams and the way they hung in the atmosphere long after the dreamer managed to wake. How they burrowed under the skin and crawled along the bones, making it impossible to rest.

  Lou followed the girl’s gaze down her own scarred arms. Every nick, every cut, every raised scar or puckered bullet hole. She’d been hurt, sure. But she’d never been held down and tortured. She’d never had a finger severed from her hand.

  “You’re not weak,” Lou said, running a hand down her arm, clearing it of droplets.

  “Then maybe I’m stupid. Anyone smart would walk away from a job that’ll get them killed. Investigative journalists are murdered all the time. Or they’re imprisoned, and here I am acting like I can take it, but maybe I can’t.” Dani sighed. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. Tell the stories that everyone else is afraid to tell.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Even if it’s stupid? Even if it’s reckless and I’m not proving anything to anyone—not even myself?”

  “Yes,” Lou said, unflinching.

  Dani wiped the water from her face again.

  “I don’t think I could walk away even if I wanted to. Even if it is the smart thing to do.” Her lips trembled. “God, if it happens again—”

  “If it happens,” Lou interrupted, “I’ll be there.”

  6

  Robert King stepped out from beneath the green café umbrella. Without hesitation, the unforgiving sun beat down on his head and neck. He groaned. The black coffee in his grip immediately felt too hot for consumption.

  Iced coffee, the girl behind the counter had recommended, but to King, iced coffee was an abomination. Why would he want to water down his drink when he liked it strong enough to burn an ulcer through the side of his gut?

  But standing in the sun with the heat pressing against his mind like a wad of cotton, he was beginning to see the appeal.

  King began the slow march back to his office, cutting across Jackson Square, clotted with its pop-up artists and living statues. A girl with a violin played a sad melody beneath the awning of a yarn shop. It hadn’t always been a yarn shop, but King was struggling to remember what it was in its previous life.

  A souvenir shop? Did they sell t-shirts? It didn’t matter to him or the hundreds of bodies cluttered in the square. A young man sat on the curb with a trumpet thrown over his lap. He dabbed at his black brow with a navy handkerchief.

  It seemed everyone sought shade where they could find it.

  The smell of coffee wafting from his cup was met with something fried and spicy.

  He hadn’t even fully crossed the square before he felt the sweat pool at his hairline and trickle down the back of his neck. He loved winter in New Orleans, which was much milder than the fierce midwestern climate of St. Louis. But New Orleans in summer was almost too much to bear.

  King marched on, noting all of this distantly, counting the steps until he’d be back in his air-conditioned office.

  Stepping from the square onto Royal Street, his heart lurched. Even at this distance, he saw the woman waiting on the stoop of The Crescent City Detective Agency. Sweat rolled from his temples. He could feel the dampness under his arms and soaking through the collar of his shirt.

  He didn’t want to talk to a client right now. He wanted a cold shower.

  He wanted to sit in his chair and cool off, sip his coffee, and review the day’s objectives. Or maybe he wanted to go by his apartment and change his shirt.

  But she’d already spotted him, standing and brushing the dirt from her bottom.

  “Mr. King?” the woman called, stepping forward. “Robert King?”

  She was blond, blue-eyed, and very pretty. She would’ve been a welcome sight if not for one problem. King knew immediately who she was.

  He forced a smile and extended his hand, inwardly disgusted by its dampness.

  “That’s me,” he said. Best to play it dumb until I know what she wants. “Do I know you, ma’am?”

  “No, no.” A sweet, nervous laugh escaped her. “I’m Abby Smith. I was hoping you could help me find my sister.”

  Interesting angle, he thought, keeping his smile carefully in place. “Come on in and let’s have a chat.”

  King slid his key into the agency’s lock and used his hip to pop open the sticky door. It swelled on warm days like this one and a little extra leverage was necessary to separate it from its jamb.

  He entered the office first, looking it over the way one does when an unexpected guest arrives.

  Was everything put away? Anything incriminating or too revealing sitting out where it shouldn’t be?

  The red waiting chairs were empty and dusted. The magazines sat in a careful stack. Piper’s desk was clear on its surface, chair unoccupied. He was suddenly very glad that the girls were away for a couple of days. It was good timing. It would give him a chance to figure out what the hell was going on here.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” he asked mildly. “I’ve got water, tea, coffee, juice…”

  “No, no, thank you.”

  Her eyes were roaming the space as fiercely as his were.

  His own desk was not so tidy. Stacks of file folders, a half-eaten sandwich, and his laptop crowded its top. King wasn’t worried about the mess, but he was trying to remember which case he’d left open before stepping out.

  Sikes, he thought. The burglary case that the local PD had off-loaded to him because they had no leads and no money for another full-time detective.

  Was King worried about himself? Maybe he should be, with this viper in his den. But King had a few secrets, too.

  He glanced to the back of the office. There were three closed doors. One was a bathroom, one led to Piper’s apartment upstairs, and the third—Shit.

  His first real problem.

  King read the name plate mounted there. Ms. Thorne.

  The labeled storage closet was empty. Nothing in there but toilet paper, paper towels, boxes of unused manila folders, and cleaning supplies. King had also put a few cardboard boxes with tax records in there, on the metal shelves that covered both walls.

  He seriously doubted the woman behind him gave a damn about any of that.

  But the name plate. Oh, the name plate might be worth her time.

  Piper had put the damn thing up as a joke because Lou was always using the dark closet as her personal entrance. Lou didn’t need a real office. She was an unofficial partner in this agency, sure. Her extraordinary skills helped King more often than not. But Lou came and went as she pleased.

  Now would be a terrible time to pop in, he thought. Don’t.

  Lou’s possible appearance was only one problem. There was a second, more immediate one.

  Was it possible that Diana Dennard, the woman who’d introduced herself as Abby Smith, already knew Lou’s nam
e?

  If so, that name plate was a dead giveaway.

  And her name was Diana. Not Abby. King knew that much.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me,” the woman said, taking the chair opposite King’s desk. She’d chosen the cluttered one even before King rounded the corner and sat down in his chair. He was careful to keep his eyes on her face.

  Don’t look at the door, he thought. Don’t look at the name plate and she won’t.

  Because he couldn’t exactly go over and take it down now. That would be too obvious.

  “You’re welcome,” King said, fishing a paper napkin out of the drawer and using it to pat the back of his neck and his temples. Once soaked, he threw it into the trash bin under his desk. “So tell me about your sister.”

  “She went missing back in January. We’re from the East Coast.”

  “Oh yeah? Whereabouts?” he asked, knowing full well they were playing a game. Even in games, sometimes people gave surprisingly accurate information. King had learned this after thousands of interrogations as a DEA agent.

  “Philadelphia. She was only a semester from graduating from Temple and then she takes off with this guy, can you believe it?”

  “It happens,” King said companionably.

  “We looked everywhere for her.”

  “Did you file a missing persons report?”

  “Well, no,” Diana said, and here her smile faltered.

  Oh, she’s good, King thought. Her acting skills were superb. She’d been able to, on command, affect the blush of embarrassment.

  “We don’t want her to get into trouble with the police or anything. We just want to find her and bring her home. She’s always been a little rough, if you know what I mean.”

  “I see,” King said. “If you’re from Philadelphia, how did you end up all the way down here?”

  How did you find her? King wondered. What scrap of information led you to us?

  Because there were a lot of cities in the world and Lou could travel to most of them before lunch. What had set Diana on a trail to New Orleans? To King specifically? They’d been more than careful. And not just King and Lou. Konstantine kept a close eye, scanning all channels for so much as a mention of Lou.

  “My sister loves this city, so I thought I’d check it out,” Diana said. “I’ve been here for about a month, asking around. A guy I spoke to yesterday tells me that he saw a robbery at the Julia Street station in March. I didn’t think anything about it because you know how New Orleans can be. But then the guy described my sister perfectly. And he said she was shot. Shot! If that’s true, I have to find her. I have to. Even if it means she’s dead.”

  Her voice broke on dead, the lip quaking. And here were the tears. Right on time.

  King lifted his mug and took a drink. He slid the tissues across his desk automatically.

  Diana took one and dabbed at those big blue eyes. “I’ve been told you’re the best private investigator in the city. You have to help me find her. Money is no problem. My parents are well off and they want to find her as badly as I do. We’ll pay anything.”

  King knew she was lying. Maybe she had money, sure. But there were no parents back east. And there was the fact that she’d yet to say her sister’s name.

  He also knew the secret informant was a lie, because King had been there the night Lou was shot at Julia Street station. He was the one who’d compressed the fabric to Lou’s bleeding throat and begged her to go to the hospital. He was the one who’d hidden her guns and vest, and washed the blood off his sleeves in the park’s fountain before the paramedics rolled up to the scene.

  There had been no one there, not a soul except himself, Melandra, Lou, and Mel’s ex-husband, Terry, the deadbeat now in jail.

  It’s gotta be the blood, he thought. Someone must’ve collected it from the scene, run DNA analysis. But what had Diana had to compare it to? DNA had to be compared to something.

  He knew Konstantine ran ruthless checks on the internet for photos, data, and anything pertaining to Lou. He guarded her anonymity more fiercely than Lou herself did.

  But it was painfully clear to King that they’d missed something.

  Or Diana’s smarter than the average bear.

  “Do you have a photograph of your sister?” King asked.

  “No,” Diana said, sniffing. “Unfortunately, my parents suffered a bad house fire last year. A total loss.”

  “Sorry to hear it. That’s terrible. Facebook? Instagram?” he pressed.

  “No, we don’t have anything like that.”

  Convenient. Secretly, King was relieved. Diana might’ve tracked her to New Orleans, but she hadn’t done it through video footage or wayward photos. In that way, Lou was still a ghost.

  “But I had a sketch artist draw this.” Diana reached into her leather satchel and offered a piece of paper across the mess of his desk. “I described her to him and he rendered her perfectly.”

  King took the drawing and surveyed it.

  Yes, he did, King saw. It was a good match. The artist had captured Lou’s features well enough that King saw Jack in them. Jack, Lou’s father, and King’s former mentee—until his sudden and tragic death.

  What interested King about the drawing wasn’t only the shoulder-length dark hair or the leather jacket. It was the fact that Lou wasn’t wearing her sunglasses. Day or night, Lou often wore her mirrored shades.

  Diana must’ve looked her in the eyes, King thought. When?

  “What’s her name?” King asked.

  He saw the woman stiffen in his periphery.

  “Louise. She goes by Lou. But she might be using an alias.”

  So she did have a name. Sort of. Louie must’ve introduced herself as Lou, if she’d introduced herself at all. And she must not have mentioned Thorne. Otherwise, it would have been Abby Thorne, not Smith, wouldn’t it?

  Again he had to physically stop himself from glancing at the name plate on the closet door.

  “Will you help me?” Diana sniffed again. “You have to help me.”

  “I’m very sorry, Ms. Smith. I’m packed to the brim with cases at the moment.” He made a vague gesture to the stacks piled between them.

  Anger flashed across the woman’s face. It was such a contrast to the blubbering, concerned woman she’d been the moment before, King thought, Your mask is slipping, Diana.

  Then Diana’s face crumpled so quickly King couldn’t be sure he’d seen the anger at all. “But you have to help me. Please. I need to know where she is.”

  A personality disorder, he thought. The emotional shifts were too severe and swift. Of course, he was no psychologist.

  “Ms. Smith, the first thing I would do is file a missing persons report with the NOPD. I have a buddy there, Dick White. I can put you in contact with him. They can put out a bulletin, look around, and do a far better job than I can do with my present workload. Would you like that?”

  “No,” Diana said, standing up suddenly, forcing the chair back. “No, I wanted your help. The police are useless.”

  Or is it really you don’t want any police involved at all?

  “I’m very sorry. I simply can’t take on another case right now. I’d be more than happy to put you in touch with the right people who can help you.”

  “No,” Diana said, stiffening. She reached across the desk and snatched the drawing from King. “No, I don’t need your help. Thanks for nothing.”

  And with this, she made a big show of stomping from the agency into the ruthless August sun.

  As soon as the door slammed behind her, King’s first impulse was to call Lou. To tell her that she needed to be careful, that for whatever reason, Diana Dennard was looking for her. But as soon as this thought came, he shoved it aside, afraid that its very existence might call Lou to him.

  He didn’t want Lou to come. He wanted her to stay with Piper, heading west, far away from here. Putting her on a collision course with this psychopath—and there was no doubt in his mind that Diana Dennard was a psyc
hopath—couldn’t possibly end well.

  No, King thought. It won’t end well at all.

  7

  Diana pulled a chair up to her desk and opened her laptop. Lou Thorne, Lou Thorne, Lou Thorne.

  The name had repeated like a mantra in her mind ever since she saw the name plate on the door.

  Lou what? she’d asked that night in the diner.

  And Lou, with all her damned smugness, had grinned. Just Lou.

  It seemed a long shot that the PI and Lou had a connection. Yet, she’d seen the detective’s face when she’d said, “Her name is Lou.”

  Then came the refusal to help her. Maybe Lou was Lou Thorne, or maybe not. But the guy knew something about Julia Street station and the woman.

  My story was good, she thought. How did he see through it?

  She bounced her foot impatiently as the computer booted up. She typed the name into the search engine.

  She didn’t expect to find anything. If Lou was deep undercover, as Diana thought she was, then it seemed unlikely a simple internet search would return much. But she had to start somewhere.

  And at first she seemed right. There were no social media accounts. No online photos or work history. No “graduated from such-and-such school.”

  “Damn,” she grumbled at the screen. The room had grown dark around her as search after search turned up nothing.

  “Try agencies,” the woman leaning against the wall said. She was cleaning her fingernails with a six-inch blade. “These ghosts almost always have law enforcement work histories before they go deep. Otherwise, where do they get the skills from?”

  Diana didn’t question her sister’s logic. Instead, she searched for Thorne and every agency pairing she could think of. Thorne because she couldn’t be sure what form of Lou was the correct one. Louisa? Louise? Louann? Lora? There were a hundred variations and King’s smug reaction to Louise made her think she’d been on the wrong track.

  Smug bastard, she thought, her fingers striking the keys.

  Thorne and CIA

  Thorne and FBI

  Thorne and police department

  Thorne and Department of Defense