Devil’s Luck

by Kory M. Shrum

  “They asked for the check,” Spencer said in her ear. “Might want to get moving.”

  “Are you giving me orders now?” Diana said, low.

  “N-no, no,” Spencer said, too quickly.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  If this wasn’t Lou’s residence, it didn’t mean she didn’t have a connection to this girl. She simply didn’t have the whole story yet.

  Putting the bags back the way she found them, Diana crossed to the living room.

  She scrawled Piper Genereux on a scrap of paper, copying it from the internet bill on the counter, and slid it into her back pocket.

  She decided on the upper-right corner of the room as a place to put the minicamera. The microphone bug was taped under the lip of the window, beside the sofa.

  She decided to tape another under the counter in the kitchen. And a third in the bedroom, inside the lamp.

  “They’re getting up. They’re leaving,” Spencer said. His voice was rising, strident with his fear.

  Diana groaned inwardly. Spencer didn’t have the stomach for espionage. If he weren’t a master with technology and as obedient as a dog, she’d have done away with him ages ago.

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

  She could already see Spencer in her mind, in his full leathers, his mouth zippered shut to smother his soft mewling.

  Her body warmed.

  What a lovely way to spend an evening, she thought, content to have something to look forward to.

  Casting one last look at the apartment and making sure it was as she found it, she descended to the office. She stooped under King’s desk and pulled another bug from her pocket, fixing it to the underside, deeper than anyone would think to look or reach.

  She took the note from her pocket and affixed the top with a strip of tape from King’s dispenser.

  On the outside of the door, she reminded herself as she stuck the note to the door. No need for King to know I’ve been snooping.

  Then she stepped out into the crowded, hot night and pulled the door shut behind her.

  9

  Lou sat in the back of the car and stared out at the desert. It was beautiful, she had to admit. She loved the dry heat. The tall red rocks growing straight up into the sky. The vast, empty landscape was punctuated only with a passing cactus from time to time, and comically, a tumbleweed. She’d thought they were fake, a made-up comic effect for cartoons. In the distance, a coyote trotted toward the horizon. Its ears lay flat when it caught the sound of the approaching car.

  The only flaw was the light. There was too much of it. Lou was a creature of darkness in most ways, and here in the desert, shadows were few and far between.

  Piper’s phone rang. She dug between the console and seat to find it.

  “It’s King.” She answered it. “Yo. I’ve only been gone for a day, man.”

  Piper’s humor fell away. “What?”

  Lou sat up between the seats, regarding her face.

  “Yeah, hold on.” Piper handed the phone out to Lou.

  “Is everything okay?” Dani asked.

  “I don’t know,” Piper said, watching Lou’s face carefully.

  But Lou knew her expression was unreadable. Her mirrored sunglasses would only reflect Piper’s concerns and fear back at her.

  “What happened?” Lou asked by way of greeting.

  “Diana Dennard walked into my office this morning, pretending to be looking for a missing sister. Can you guess who the missing sister is?”

  “Did she see the name plate?” Lou asked.

  King hesitated.

  “King?”

  “I’ll tell you, but don’t come here now. Don’t pop up. She might be watching.”

  The back of Lou’s neck itched. “Okay.”

  “I think she saw it, yeah, and put it together that we know each other. She must have.”

  “Why?”

  “She left a note for you.” He sucked in a breath as if bracing for a blow.

  A chord vibrated through Lou’s body like a tuning fork.

  “How did she know your name was Lou?”

  “Because I told her.”

  “Last name?”

  “No last name,” Lou confirmed.

  “I was worried about that. There was a moment when she turned away, right before she stormed out—I think the name plate might’ve caught her eye then.”

  Lou said nothing, sensing that King was warming up to tell her the worst of it.

  “She’s got something else on you.”

  Of course she does, thought Lou. She hunts like I do. Dennard wouldn’t have picked New Orleans out of a hat.

  “What led her to New Orleans was the blood collected from Julia Street station, but I don’t know how she made a DNA match.”

  Lou threw her mind back. She thought of the last time she’d seen Diana. They were in an all-night diner in Ohio, not far from the scene of Fish’s arrest. Lou had drunk a cup of coffee, refusing to give more than her first name. She thought she’d left a tip, though she had a vague memory of pulling the bills from her jacket and throwing them on the table before leaving.

  “Can DNA be pulled from money?” Lou asked. Her back was growing hot against the dark seats. Lou realized Piper had cut the A/C so she could hear the conversation better. “Or a coffee cup?”

  “Both,” King said. “If the prints were clean, which only happens about thirty percent of the time. I tried to pull prints from the tape she used, but both the note and tape were clean. She must’ve worn gloves or wiped them.”

  Lou’s irritation spiked. She hadn’t expected the woman to pocket her coffee mug after she left. She hadn’t even considered the idea that the woman might have access to that sort of technology. And not only the ability to collect and profile DNA but the ability to sweep a police department’s private data centers to confirm a match.

  Dennard was no amateur.

  Don’t make the same mistake twice, her father’s voice sounded in her head. You underestimated her once and look how close she’s gotten.

  “What can she do with my name and DNA?” Lou asked.

  “What?” Piper said from the passenger seat. “Who has your name and DNA?”

  Lou shook her head, asking Piper to wait.

  “I don’t know. It depends on what she wants. At first, I thought she’d found out I was at Julia Street station with you. I gave a statement that night, so it was possible she came to me thinking I’d seen something. But she never mentioned that. It’s possible she might’ve come to me by coincidence, hoping to get a decent PI to track you down.”

  King was being humble. He was more than decent as a PI, but Lou wasn’t the type to fluff someone’s ego.

  He sighed into the phone. “The question is, why does she want you? Did she give any clues when you talked?”

  Lou tried to remember the night she sat down with Diana Dennard. The conversation had been interesting. Lou remembered feeling mostly intrigued, that after all her years of hunting and killing, she’d finally encountered someone like herself. Another woman who added counterbalance to the injustices of the world.

  “She asked a lot of questions about who I worked for, and what my resources were. What did the note say?”

  King hesitated. With a smile, Lou knew he was considering lying. She heard paper rustle and wondered if he was digging the note out of the trash.

  “King?”

  “She wants to meet. In two days at the po’boy shop on Basin. Across from the cemetery.”

  Lou said nothing.

  “Are you going to go?”

  She smiled. “Should I?”

  She’d already made up her mind.

  King seemed to consider this. “I can’t tell you what to do. But keep your eyes open, all right? Be careful about popping in and out of New Orleans.”

  “All right,” Louie said, and terminated the call. She handed the phone back to Piper.

  “What’s happened?” Dani asked from the driver’s seat
. She was applying her lip balm a bit too frantically.

  And seeing the way she clutched the wheel with her free hand, Lou began to understand why Dani kept insisting on driving even though she could’ve easily passed the task over to Piper.

  She feels more in control behind the wheel. Safer.

  “You better start talking,” Piper said, wagging her phone at Lou. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Diana Dennard is in New Orleans. She came to the agency looking for me and she knows I work with King.”

  “Dennard,” Piper repeated disbelievingly. “The crazy lady we caught stalking Fish? The killer who hunts killers but doesn’t give a shit about the women he kills? That Dennard?”

  “Yes,” Lou said plainly.

  “And this psychopath knows that you work with King? She figured it out from DNA because you had coffee with her?”

  “And because I was shot.”

  Piper tapped her phone against her chin. “Oh, this is bad.”

  “She wants to meet.” Lou tried to consider the situation clearly.

  Piper looked at her as if she’d just sprouted a second head. “What? No.”

  To be fair, this wasn’t a one-way street.

  When Lou learned there was another woman tracking Fish, she’d investigated her, too. She’d learned Diana’s name and history. And then what? Nothing. She’d simply wanted to know who Diana was and what she was after. That was where her curiosity had ended.

  Was it possible that Diana was only curious about Lou, too?

  Piper’s mouth hung open. “You can’t be serious about meeting her. She’s crazy!”

  Lou said nothing.

  “Unbelievable.” Piper pressed her fingertips into her forehead. “I should’ve never put up that name plate. It was stupid. Totally stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Dani countered, her brow scrunched. But she was grabbing her lip balm from the cupholder again and uncapping it. “Stop saying that.”

  “I don’t like it,” Piper said. “I don’t like her sniffing around. What the hell does she want?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out,” Dani said, wringing the wheel again. “I don’t think she came all the way to New Orleans for nothing.”

  10

  Piper glanced into the back seat and found Lou…dead. Not really. She was sure the woman still had a pulse, but Piper had never seen anyone so miserable-looking in her life.

  God, this road trip really was a bad idea, she thought, not for the first time since they’d left New Orleans and traveled west along I-10.

  “We’re almost there,” Piper said from the front seat. “You want some chips?”

  Lou, who remained reclined on her back, one arm over her eyes, shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you?” Piper asked. “Because you look like you’ve been murdered.”

  Lou lifted her arm and met Piper’s gaze. “Have you ever seen someone being murdered?”

  God, leave it to murder to perk this girl up, she thought. Aloud, “No. And I hope I never have to.”

  She didn’t need to ask Lou the same question.

  “Look! There it is!” cried Dani. She was pointing over the dashboard at the blue horizon peeking between buildings.

  Five minutes later, they parked the Lexus in an empty space opposite the beach.

  Dani popped the trunk and pulled out the three chairs and a stack of large towels, and nodded toward the umbrella. “P, will you get that?”

  Lou grabbed the cooler, which they’d stopped at a gas station to fill that morning with ice, water, soda, and beer.

  Salt hung thick in the air, seeming to settle on the skin like silt. Waves crashed, adding a blanket of white noise to the scene. Gulls cried out as they swooped low overhead.

  Then they were set up and watching the water, as if they’d been there all along.

  Piper took a deep breath of ocean air. “Oh yeah, baby. Smell that.”

  Lou didn’t appear to be inhaling. She caught Piper staring at her. “What?”

  “Breathe.”

  “I’m breathing.”

  Dani squeezed her left hand gently. Piper could either interpret this as Chill, babe or It’s okay.

  Piper rubbed her forehead. “Hand me a beer, please.”

  Lou obliged, opening the cooler and shifting the ice around.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to drink alcohol on the beach,” Dani said.

  Piper half-buried the can in the sand. “What beer?”

  They spent the morning like that. And when Lou stood up around noon and wandered away, to Piper’s credit, she didn’t call after her and insist that she sit down and enjoy this beautiful day. She didn’t even complain to Dani about it.

  She simply sat with the itchy feeling in her heart that this had all gone wrong. It wasn’t how she’d wanted it to be. And she felt not okay about it.

  She doesn’t like hanging out with me. This isn’t fun for her. I’m stupid and boring and…

  Lou returned, with three hot dogs and a pocketful of condiment packets. She tossed them onto a clean towel spread on the warm sand.

  “Oh, thanks,” Piper said, her narrative cut short.

  “They also have soft serve,” Lou said, pointing at the food stand halfway down the beach. “Twist.”

  “I love twist cones.”

  “I know you do,” Lou said with a quizzical brow. “That’s why I’m telling you.”

  This cracked what was left of Piper’s reserve. “Lou, I’m sorry.”

  Lou was stuffing half a hot dog in her mouth. “For what?”

  “For this whole stupid road trip idea. I thought you’d have fun, but I can tell you’re bored out of your mind. You’re in the sun all day, which I don’t think you love.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Right? You’re a vampire. And it took forever, when you can just pop to a beach with half a thought.”

  “I can.”

  “I know.” Piper tore open a mustard packet with her teeth and squeezed it onto the dog. “But I wanted you to have the experience. And I wanted us to spend time together. But it was stupid. I’m sorry I insisted we do this.”

  Lou looked out over the water, placing her elbow on her raised knee. “When I go places, I’m just there. I don’t see the in-between. In a car, you see everything. All the parts that connect one place to another. That was nice.”

  “You liked that?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  The tight coil in Piper’s chest relaxed. They stayed on the beach until the sun reached the horizon. The sky melted red, orange, pink. Piper ate a twist ice cream cone and finished her beer.

  “We can drive back without you,” Piper said, packing up the beach towels and putting the empty cans in a bag to be recycled. “You don’t have to do another two days of this.”

  “No,” Lou said flatly. “I’ll ride with you.”

  “Why? It’s a monumental waste of time.”

  “It’s a good habit,” Lou countered. “To finish what you start.”

  * * *

  Lou offered to carry the chairs and bags up from the car to the apartment. Without waiting for their permission, she put her hands on what she could and shifted from the dark of the car parked in the alley to the apartment above.

  Pain sparked in Lou’s shoulder as she made a second trip. It wasn’t the blinding pain that she felt two months ago whenever she would raise her arm or take too deep of a breath.

  Piper’s apartment formed around her and she deposited the first round of stuff onto the floor at her feet.

  It took Lou four trips to bring all the stuff from the white-gold Lexus into Piper’s apartment. Once she was done, her shoulder throbbed so badly she felt unsteady on her feet.

  On the last trip, the door opened at the same time and Dani and Piper stepped inside.

  “Whoa,” Piper said, wrenching her key from the lock. “Sit down. You okay?”

  “My shoulder.”

  “We shouldn’t have let you
carry all that stuff,” Dani said, reaching into the cabinet for a glass. She filled it with water and put it in front of Lou. “Where’s your aspirin?”

  “Bedside table,” Piper said, putting the water in Lou’s hand. The good hand, not connected to her overworked shoulder. “But she’s right. I wasn’t even thinking about your shoulder. I’m sorry, man. I was just thinking I didn’t want to carry the chairs up those steps.”

  “I’m fine,” Lou said. She hated being fussed over. It was like a spider crawling up the back of her neck.

  Dani appeared, shaking three ibuprofen into her hand. Lou rolled her eyes up and met Dani’s. “I’m going to need at least 800 mg.”

  Dani shook out another pill before handing it over.

  Lou took it with the water, finishing the glass in a single go.

  Her eyes kept sweeping the apartment. What was this feeling? Like a gnawing in her gut.

  “Did you do something different to your apartment?” she asked, assessing the sofa, the kitchen counters, and the gently humming fridge.

  Piper followed her gaze. “No. Why?”

  The pain in her shoulder made it difficult to think. It pressed against the inside of Lou’s skull, obliterating thought. Every breath made the left side of her body throb.

  I couldn’t fight someone now even if I wanted to, she thought miserably. Not without trashing half my body.

  She practically heard Konstantine tsking her in her mind. You should be resting, amore mio.

  Still she searched the dark, expecting to see someone. “No reason.”

  11

  Diana stepped into the hot stream of the hotel shower. It had been a long day. Both of the scouts she’d sent out to canvass for Winter had come back with nothing. She was too worried to send any more. If he suspected that she was close, he might move his entire operation, and it would take her months, maybe years, to track him down again.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of losing the bastard a third time.

  At her desk, comb in her hair, she turned on her computer. A furious swipe of the keys brought her to a black login screen. A back-door login to the dark net.