Devil’s Luck

by Kory M. Shrum

  “I do,” Piper said, sniffing and rubbing her nose. The fluffy Russian Blue was beautiful and mostly sweet, though Piper had seen her sassy side a few times in their months together.

  Oh god, her eyes were already starting to water. “But I still can’t pick her up and put her by my face if I want to keep breathing.”

  When Piper looked up, smiling, she saw Dani was nearly in tears.

  “What? What is it?” Alarm shivered through her. “Babe, I love Tavi.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said, her lip trembling. “I hate you seeing me like this. I can’t believe—”

  “Hey, no.” Piper rushed to the side of the bed and sat down in the small space between the edge and Dani’s covered legs. “Don’t do that. Don’t beat yourself up. What happened was bullshit. It shouldn’t have happened. But we’re fine. We got out of there. You’re okay. I’m okay. Everyone’s okay. Except Lou, who is out of her damn mind, but I’m hoping that will pass.”

  Dani’s gaze was a million miles away, but at least the tears were holding off. Piper hated it when girls cried. It never failed to leave her feeling helpless and inadequate.

  “I suppose I asked for this,” Dani whispered, sniffling.

  “What? No.”

  “I’m the one who keeps insisting that I be an investigative reporter. I’m the one who keeps asking King for cases even though things like this are going to keep happening. I knew it’d be dangerous and that I’m not as—not as together as I used to be, but I keep doing it. What’s wrong with me?”

  “We could always quit our jobs and open a cat café. Everyone loves cats and coffee. We’d be billionaires. Except, you know, I’d die of anaphylactic shock.”

  Dani didn’t laugh. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

  “Hey,” Piper said, taking her hands. “Listen to me.”

  When Dani looked up her eyes were rimmed red.

  “Something terrible happened to you. Some absolute bullshit, and instead of giving up on your dream, you’re still chasing it. That’s amazing. Seriously, do you have any idea how incredible that is? You’re not backing down, you’re not quitting. You’re going to have bad days, but you keep getting up and kicking ass and that’s what matters. Daniella Allendale, you’re incredible.”

  “There were a lot of compliments in there.”

  “Yeah, well, how many do you need before you believe me?”

  “A billion,” Dani replied, and then she smiled.

  Tavi jumped up onto the bed.

  “Hey, not mine!” Piper cried, taking the pillows on her side of the bed and pushing them under the blankets. “Seriously, your cat has it in for me.”

  “She just likes women who play hard to get.”

  “Am I playing hard to get?” Piper asked with a smile. She leaned in, putting her lips in range for a kiss.

  Dani grinned, an honest-to-goodness grin. “No. Not really.”

  Dani’s lips were warm and swollen, sticky to the touch, but Piper didn’t mind. She’d take any kiss from this girl, however it came. She reached her hand into Dani’s hair and pulled her closer.

  “You’re okay,” Piper said, pressing her forehead to Dani’s. “You can do this.”

  “What happened?” Dani asked, her breath warm on Piper’s mouth. “After I passed out.”

  Piper gave her the rundown of Lou’s rescue and the aftermath in King’s apartment. The only part Dani remembered was Lady comforting her. Piper didn’t mention that Diana had slapped her. She wasn’t sure that Lou even realized it had happened. She thought she might have appeared a second after the fact.

  If she told Lou that it happened, what would she do? Would she finally kill Diana on the spot or shrug it off? And if she shrugged it off…

  Piper’s heart clenched. “I don’t get why she doesn’t just finish her off. She’s a bad guy. She kills bad guys. Period. Full stop.”

  “Didn’t she tell us once she’d never killed a woman?”

  “Who gives a shit if she’s a woman? Women can be evil too.”

  Dani sipped her tea. “Maybe she’s just curious.”

  “What do you mean, curious? About what?”

  “About someone like her. There’s another woman out there, hunting and killing these guys, and I don’t think she’s ever encountered that before. She’s got to be curious. It’s like finally seeing her own kind or something.”

  “Diana is not her kind.”

  We can’t have another psychopath hanging around. One is enough.

  Piper flinched. “Though I might have implied that she was.”

  Dani lowered the mug, her face pinched in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  Piper replayed the conversation, embarrassment heating her cheeks.

  When she finished, Dani squeezed her hand. “You were upset. You didn’t mean it.”

  Piper ran both hands down her face. “I still shouldn’t have said it. I practically pushed her into the woman’s arms.”

  Way to prove you’re not disaster friends, she thought bitterly.

  “What do you want to do about it?” Dani asked.

  Piper pulled herself out of her thoughts. “What?”

  “We have a psychopath on our hands. What are we going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m used to Lou being the one who handles the psycho parts.”

  “That’s our problem,” Dani interjected. “We rely too much on Lou’s abilities. And in times like this, when she makes the wrong call or when she’s hurt, what are we supposed to do?”

  Piper saw the color returning to Dani’s face. Her eyes were clearer, brighter. She didn’t think it was the tea working that magic. It was action. Dani was always at her best when there was something that had to be done.

  “We’re a team,” Dani said. “Me, you, Lou, King, Mel. That Italian guy.”

  “Konstantine.”

  “We need to work together. If one of us is out of commission, or has a bad day, the rest of us need to step in and pull our weight. We have to stop thinking that Lou is invincible and is just going to solve all our problems. She’s human. An exceptionally talented, ruthless human, but she’s human.”

  “King said something like that,” Piper recalled. “He said we need to get serious about protecting ourselves.”

  “Not just protecting ourselves,” Dani said. “We need to be in control of the situation. If you’re not someone who makes the things happen, then the things will happen to you.”

  “I thought today was supposed to be one of your bad days,” Piper said. “You’re supposed to be the one resting and I’m the one pulling the weight, right?”

  Dani didn’t seem to hear. She chewed her lip, her eyes cast down in concentration.

  “It’ll take me a minute to find my Diana Dennard story. Do I want to expose her? Get her arrested or just force her underground? I’ll need to think about it. But that’s my plan.” Dani put the mug on the side table and lay back against the pillows. “That still leaves you.”

  Piper crawled under the covers, pressing herself into Dani’s side. “Me?”

  “Yeah, what are you going to do about her? Lou is curious, so she’s playing with fire. King is going to be too seduced by the idea of busting a child pornographer to bow out. Melandra has a shop to run and is dealing with her ex’s trial. And Konstantine is probably trying to get Lou to chill out and rest like you are with me right now, but he’ll offer her whatever she asks for. That leaves you, baby. What’s your move?”

  That leaves me, Piper thought. She saw Diana’s face, the twisted rage in it when she’d brought her hand across Piper’s face.

  My move, she thought. What’s my move?

  “She’s funding her operation with credit card scams,” Piper said thoughtfully. “What if we outed her for that? I can make some calls, talk to the local PD.”

  Dani cupped her cheek. “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  24

  Lou crossed and uncrossed her legs, staring out a
t the bustling square. It was getting hot under her leather jacket. The coffee on the table in front of her was growing cold. It was King’s idea to meet Diana at Café du Monde. He was insistent that Lou guarded the extent of her gift as closely as possible.

  Lou thought that was pointless. People either believed in the supernatural or they didn’t. If Diana was the sort of woman to rewrite the universe around her to suit her world view, she could have seen a ghost on one of the infamous New Orleans tours and talked herself out of it.

  The chair opposite her scraped against the concrete loudly, making Lou’s teeth vibrate.

  Diana settled into the metal chair with a hint of a smile.

  “You like coffee?” she asked, eyeing the Styrofoam cup. “You ordered it at the diner too.”

  “When you took my coffee cup,” Lou said. “I remember. Was it the money or the cup that you pulled DNA from?”

  Diana’s face smoothed out, removing itself of emotion. “I’ll tell you if you tell me what happened in Julia Street station.”

  “I was shot,” Lou said simply.

  Diana’s lips quirked. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  “More than average.”

  Diana snorted. “Is that what’s wrong with your shoulder?”

  Lou waited. She was used to playing the staring game. It was why she liked to wear her mirrored sunglasses. People found it harder to look at themselves. As expected, Diana looked away first.

  “I used both. The money and the mug. I like to be sure.” She ran her fingers through her ponytail. “Winter is in Springfield.”

  “Illinois?”

  “Missouri.” Diana shifted in her seat, her excitement showing. “He has a fourth-floor apartment in a commercial district. Red brick, flat roof. With a coordinated attack we can get him on all sides. There’s no way he’ll escape that building alive.”

  She must be expecting me to bring this manpower, Lou thought. She’d shot nearly everyone Diana had brought to the townhouse with her. “Do you want Winter alive?”

  “Yes,” Diana said with a smirk. “I don’t need to tell you why, do I?”

  No, Lou thought. Sometimes it was fun to vent a bit of steam.

  “Are the children in Springfield?” Lou asked, trying not to rotate her shoulder. It was throbbing again. The eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen she took that morning were wearing off. But having strapped her arm to the side of her body had helped.

  “No,” Diana said, twisting a paper napkin between her fingers. “He finds and recruits his rapists online, pays them online too. They’re located all over. But I expect that some are on-site.”

  She said this as if annoyed by the interruption. Something about it unsettled Lou, made the muscles along her spine itch.

  “How soon can you get to Springfield?” Diana asked. “He’s been there for two weeks already. He’s never in a place long, so I don’t want to wait.”

  Now, Lou thought. I could be there right now. I could close my eyes and just—

  “Three days,” she said.

  Diana frowned. “Three days?”

  Lou couldn’t tell if Diana thought three days was too short or too long of a wait.

  “It’s…far away,” Lou said, forgetting what King had told her to say. “We need to get everyone in place.”

  These words were strange on her tongue. She should’ve asked King for a script. How long did it normally take to mobilize large groups?

  “How many can you spare for this operation?” Diana asked.

  Lou looked out over the square. “Enough.”

  King’s voice sprang to mind. Ask misleading questions so she doesn’t get a sense of how you work or what you can do.

  “Do you know what he looks like? Do you have a photo?”

  “No photo,” Diana said. “He’s been careful to keep his face hidden. I only know where he is by his internet trails, and I can only establish those while he live streams.”

  Lou didn’t need a photo. Even now, her compass was searching the dark.

  Where are you…the one she wants.

  Something clicked inside her. On the other side of the darkness, a man took shape. And Lou could feel that it was a man now. He smelled like cologne, something cheap and alcoholic, and body odor. The hiss of a grill was nearby. For some reason, Lou had the impression he was in a restaurant. A small one where the patrons sat quite close together. She pushed further, she caught the smell of fried potatoes and meat.

  She supposed even monsters had to eat.

  “What?” Diana asked.

  Lou blinked.

  “Where’d you go just now? You looked like you were a million miles away.”

  “I was in Springfield with Winter.”

  Diana laughed, mistaking this for a joke.

  “I’ll bring manpower. What will you bring?”

  “I can offer technical support and a bit of muscle, but I’ll be relying on you to surround the buildings and take Winter down. After you extract him, he’s mine. Are we clear on that?”

  “I want the children,” Lou said honestly. “I don’t care what you do with Winter.”

  Diana smirked as if amused by the answer.

  Was that what it was like, Lou wondered. When one had to rely on large coordinated efforts to achieve an aim. Lou thought their small operation of six was cumbersome at times. She wasn’t sure she could work with more people than that, not when she preferred being alone.

  “You don’t have anything to say to me? No ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper and killed your entire team’?” Diana pressed. When Lou said nothing, she harrumphed. “Yeah, okay. I guess I deserve that. I kidnapped your pets. And you’re going to make it up to me anyway. Give me Winter and we’ll be more than square.”

  Lou wondered why talking had to be a part of this. Conversations were taxing on the best of days, but like this, when it felt more like a dance, an exchange of double-edged blows and parries, it was particularly exhausting.

  Diana rubbed her nose. “I have to say, when it came to your crew I expected a little more steel.”

  The hair on the back of Lou’s neck rose.

  “The cop and the black woman, they’re stone cold. I like them. I’d recruit them if I thought they’d ditch you. But the two girls…whew. Where did you find those crybabies?”

  Lou found her hand opening and closing under the table. It itched for a gun.

  “You must be more lenient than I am.” Diana wrinkled her nose as if she disapproved. “I don’t tolerate any weakness on my team. If I’d heard even one second of that sniveling, I would’ve dismissed her. Or put a bullet in her head.”

  She must’ve seen something in Lou’s face that frightened her. The sneer evaporated. In its place, there were only wide eyes.

  “Don’t give me that look. We’re partners now. I won’t touch your people,” Diana said, though her grin had too many teeth. “What’s good for you is good for me.”

  Is that right? Lou wondered. We’re about to find out.

  25

  Konstantine stood and took a turn around his living room again. He regarded the sofa pressed against one cream wall. The large red rug on the stone floor. The desk, the painting, the pristine kitchen that he’d spent an hour cleaning. The smell of espresso in the air. He glanced at the stairs but knew that was ridiculous. They wouldn’t come through his bedroom. The living room was largest. She’d bring them here, to the heart of his home.

  “Close the drapes,” Lou had told him. “Make the room as dark as you can.”

  He pulled the curtains together and stood in the dim light, trying to decide what to do with his own body. Did he want to be behind his desk or on the sofa when they arrived?

  He decided to sit at the desk, affecting a pose that didn’t convey the unease in his stomach.

  He caught himself drumming against the arm of the chair and forced himself to stop.

  The pressure rose between his ears suddenly and popped. Then his living room wasn’t so empty.

&nbs
p; In the center of the room stood four figures that hadn’t been there a second before.

  Lou was the first to meet his gaze. The others seemed to just be getting their bearings.

  He found his voice quickly. “Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee? Water?”

  “Whoa,” Piper said, breaking ranks first, stepping away from the huddle and toward Konstantine’s desk. “This is where you live? God, what smells so good?”

  He wasn’t sure what question to address first. “Espresso. Would you like one?”

  “Yes.” She looked around, appraising the apartment. “Nice place.”

  “Can I offer you a seat?” he said, motioning to the sofa. Only then did he realize that it would only seat three of them comfortably, and he had no other chairs in the room but his own.

  It was clear now that he never entertained here. Stefano had been to his apartment, and little Matteo, who often followed Konstantine around with a dog-like reverence.

  He motioned toward his seat as he stepped into the kitchen to make a fresh espresso. Lou waved him off, crossing instead to the window. She pulled apart the drapes, letting light fill the room again.

  As he made the coffee, he took her measure.

  Her left arm was still strapped to her chest, immobilizing that shoulder. He wasn’t sure if this was a good sign, that perhaps she was finally taking her self-care seriously, or if it warned of a greater vulnerability.

  “Where is the other one?” he asked, tamping down the grounds. “Mel?”

  He didn’t even attempt to say her full name. Just the nickname felt strange on his tongue.

  King answered, looking relaxed as he reclined on one end of the sofa. “She’s with Lady, the dog. They’re running the shop. Truth be told, she’s preoccupied with her husband’s trial. The court date is in a couple weeks, so she has enough to be getting on with.”

  “She won’t be involved in this operation?” Konstantine asked as the moka began to burble.

  “Operation,” Piper snickered. “You sound like King.”

  Piper’s spirits seemed high at first glance, but now Konstantine saw the puffiness under her eyes. She wore makeup to hide it, but the swelling was still noticeable.