Devil’s Luck

by Kory M. Shrum

  “He’s there,” Diana said, speaking up, her face lit with excitement. “The building on the right.”

  She was vibrating like a tuning fork.

  King motioned toward the glass. “All right. Into positions. Remember, we’re surrounding the building on all sides first. He might try to bolt the second he sees us setting up formation, so be prepared for that. Let’s go.”

  Everyone followed him out of the building into the cooling night.

  Lou considered slipping from the dusty office building straight into Winter’s room, but since this whole charade was to fool Diana into thinking Lou was a normal woman with abundant resources and nothing more, she restrained herself.

  It surprised her how quickly they had the building surrounded.

  Those who weren’t part of the raid, including Lou, King, Diana, Blair, and Spencer, stood under the row of manicured trees expertly arranged along the side of the road opposite the apartment complex.

  Diana didn’t like being in the proverbial backseat. Every time King issued an order she looked ready to speak over him and rewrite his command.

  Somehow she held herself back. Perhaps it was because these were not her men, and she had no guarantee that her order would be heeded anyway.

  Whatever it was, Lou watched her struggle with amusement, aware that while she watched Diana almost everyone else watched her.

  Konstantine’s men stole sly glances, as did Diana’s remaining team. The sister in particular seemed to be reconciling something in her mind.

  Meanwhile Lou’s attention kept returning to the apartments.

  No, she thought. She wasn’t drawn to both of the buildings. It was the façade on the left that drew her. The twin to the building now surrounded.

  Are you in there? she wondered, tracing the windows with her eyes. Have we chosen the wrong one?

  “Go!” King said.

  Men pushed through the doors on all sides. On Diana’s monitor, Lou could see them moving silently, snakelike through the bowels of the place. They filled all the stairs, corridors, and doorways.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Diana said, urging them on.

  “Any change in the signal?” King asked.

  “No,” Diana said. “It’s good that your people are going in quiet. He probably doesn’t realize we’re in.”

  Then Lou realized that King was looking at her, not Diana. The question, any change, was about her inability to get a lock.

  “I need to check something,” Lou said, retreating across the parking lot and into the office building as if she’d left something inside.

  When she turned back, looking through the glass front, she saw that Blair had followed her halfway across the parking lot, standing beneath the orange lamplight.

  Lou couldn’t worry about that now.

  She stepped into a hallway off the main lobby. It was more than dark enough in this space. Already she felt the thin gossamer curtain of the world shifting around her, threatening to pitch her through.

  Winter, she thought. Winter, where are you?

  Again, she got only a strange doubling in her mind that seemed unable to settle upon a single place.

  The one Diana wants, she thought. Come on. The one she wants.

  At last the dial shifted, her focus sharpened. The dusty office building around her fell away. In its place, a hallway with scuffed red carpet materialized.

  Near the end of the hallway, a child was crying. Lou walked toward the sound.

  “Shut up and put on your coat,” a gruff voice said.

  Then a door was opening, and the child was shoved out into the hallway, her feet tangling beneath her. But she didn’t get far.

  It was a little girl, seven or eight years old. She had on a pink coat that was dirty at the elbows with a smear of something at the throat. Her hair hadn’t been brushed in a few days at least. Both cheeks were tear-stained.

  A squat man with a bald head stepped out after her, yanking the door shut behind him.

  “Stop crying. We have to get out of here. In five minutes here won’t even exist.”

  As soon as the girl saw Lou, her eyes doubled in size. Lou pressed a finger to her lips, urging the girl to stay silent as she crept forward.

  But even the smallest invitation of salvation was too much. The girl took off at a run, bolting for Lou as if she were the gates of heaven.

  “Hey!” the man screamed, releasing the door handle and turning until he came face to face with Lou.

  His eyes roved her body, took in the leather and the body armor, the guns.

  That’s when he pulled something from his pocket.

  Without thinking, Lou grabbed the girl and stepped back into the shadows, the world falling away.

  This new apartment was like a movie set, with lights and a camera set up over a stage.

  “No,” the girl murmured. “No, not here.”

  And on the stage, a child-size bed.

  “Please, please,” the little girl begged, her hands tightening around Lou’s neck. An ice pick of pain ran down her left side. Lou sharply inhaled, but didn’t let go.

  “Please don’t leave me here,” the girl said.

  “I won’t,” Lou said.

  She wanted to kill that man. She wanted to tear him apart and handfeed what was left of him to Jabbers.

  But Lou couldn’t fight with a kid hanging from her neck.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  Lou listened to the feet on the stairs, noting their growing distance. Instead of giving chase, she stepped away from the shining movie set and back into the dark.

  When the dusty office building sprang up around them, Lou carried the girl out of the building into the night.

  “King!” she shouted, trying to cross the parking lot as quickly as she could. He turned, pulling the headphones off his head.

  “We’ve got the guy!” King said, his face lit up and bright. Then his eyes fell on the kid.

  “No, you don’t,” Lou said. “Get everyone out of the buildings and back up. They’re about to blow.”

  His face fell. “What?”

  “They wired them to explode. Get everyone out.”

  “There are kids in there,” King said, panic growing on his face.

  Lou tried to pry the little girl off her neck and the girl squealed. She didn’t want to be handed over to King.

  “I’ll take her,” a voice said. Lou looked up to see Blair, hands open.

  The girl finally released Lou.

  “Go,” Blair said, eyebrows arched, and Lou had the distinct impression Blair meant go. Slip.

  “Go on,” King echoed. Then, into his headset, “There’s a bomb in the building. Both buildings,” he amended. “Clear out now. Pronto, chop-chop! Back to the admin building!”

  Lou glanced toward Diana and saw that she was poring over her laptop footage, cursing to herself.

  “Where is he?” she hissed, scrolling furiously. “Where is he?”

  Lou ran toward the apartment building. Once she was around the side, in the shadows thrown by the trees, she slipped.

  Kids, she thought. I want the kids.

  Lou materialized in a dingy room and immediately realized the problem. A boy was shackled to the floor. A thick iron chain was latched to the floor, connecting to the collar around his throat.

  He was crying and naked, trying to cover himself.

  “We can’t get it open,” one of Konstantine’s men said, real panic in his voice. His eyes were round, his jaw working.

  The apartment door burst open. “I’ve got them!”

  The incoming man stuttered when he saw Lou, the bolt cutters coming in front of him like a shield.

  Lou snatched them and put the chain between the blades. She snapped the handles together. The fire in her shoulder intensified, but she pushed past it.

  The chain broke and the freed boy collapsed with relief.

  “How many kids are in the building?” Lou asked, scooping him up.r />
  “Six,” he said. “That we know of.”

  Lou threw her mind out, searching the dark.

  “There’s a bomb in the building. Get out of here,” she said, and with that scooped the boy into her arms and disappeared.

  It was the night that formed around them again. An alarmed bird startled in the tree above her.

  “You see those people?” Lou asked, putting the boy on his feet. She pointed at King. “Run to them. Go on. Get away from this building.”

  She pushed the boy forward and he ran on unsteady legs.

  Lou reached out for the next child and found her on the second floor. Another snap of the bolt cutters and Lou pulled her through the dark.

  Each child that she delivered to the patch of darkness took off over the uneven grass as if their life depended on it.

  “Over here!” King called, waving them forward. “Hurry!”

  Lou had just managed to get the seventh kid out of the building when King screamed, “Forty seconds!”

  They must’ve found the bomb, she thought. Either on video or while still canvassing the building. Lou dematerialized again. The room that reformed around her was a nightmare.

  Two men with their pants around their ankles lay face down in their own blood. A girl no more than twelve years old stood over them. Lou didn’t recognize the men as either Konstantine’s or Diana’s.

  The girl was naked from the waist down, with a dark crust of blood spread on her inner thigh. Her hair was matted to her face with sweat, her chest heaving.

  Lou didn’t know where she’d gotten the gun, if it was given to her by one of Konstantine’s men or if she’d taken it in the commotion.

  But she stood there heaving, crying, unable to move. Unable to lower the gun. Her whole body trembled.

  When she saw Lou, she raised the gun instinctively and fired. Lou shifted through the dark and felt the bullet graze her good arm, ripping a hole through her leather jacket, a second before she reappeared behind the girl and grabbed her.

  She thrashed in Lou’s arms, screaming, crying beneath the large evergreen above them.

  “It’s over,” Lou said into her ear. Her voice was strained with the pain of her shoulder. “It’s over.”

  The girl went soft in Lou’s arms, and Lou scooped her up.

  She was in the parking lot when the building blew behind them.

  30

  There were seven men and two women cuffed face down in the grass median between the admin building parking lot and the street in front of the apartment buildings—or what was left of the apartment buildings.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  “Go on,” King said, waving the men away. Konstantine’s men cast one look at Lou as if to make sure she wasn’t going to follow them into the night.

  “Go,” she said.

  They fled like kitchen-fed cockroaches when the light comes on. They dispersed in any and all directions, across parking lots, into the trees, down the streets.

  Diana rolled one man onto his back. “I don’t understand.”

  “Get out of my face, bitch,” the guy said. He was thin and mean, his face etched with deep scars.

  Diana yanked up the sleeve of his jean jacket and scowled. “Give me a light.”

  Blair produced her phone’s flashlight, which Diana used to inspect the man’s bare arm.

  “No,” she screamed, shoving him back down. “No!”

  “What’s going on?” King asked, leaning toward her.

  “There were two men,” Lou said.

  “No, I saw them on the feed before she shot them. They weren’t him.”

  “I’m not talking about the men in the building.” Lou could feel the heat wafting from the burning buildings from here. Sweat beaded at her temples. “There were two men using the handle Winter. The man you actually wanted and this one. They ran the operation together.”

  Lou toed the lean, mean bastard with her boot. “You’re Winter, aren’t you?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “No, he’s not,” Diana said, kicking the man in the gut.

  King’s eyes lit with recognition.

  “And you saw him, the other guy?” Diana asked, chest heaving. “He was here tonight?”

  “He left.”

  “Damn it!” She kicked the man a second time. “Where’s your buddy, asshole?”

  “Long gone,” the man cackled.

  Diana brought a foot down on his face, splitting the nose.

  “We’re going to have to explain any damage to the authorities,” King said.

  “The hell we are. Spencer, get him in the car.” Diana hauled the guy to his feet and thrust him toward the man with the hobbled walk.

  Spencer managed to get Winter across the parking lot and into one of Diana’s cars.

  Then she pulled her gun.

  “Hey!” King said.

  But Diana was already firing. One bullet into the back of every head lying in the grass median. Those toward the end of the line, realizing what was happening, began to scream, to rise up. The children also began to scream, huddled behind Lou as if she could protect them.

  Brains splattered across Lou’s boots.

  When Diana’s gun clicked empty, she met Lou’s gaze, her chest heaving.

  “A lot of help you were!” Diana shouted, shoving the emptied gun into her waistband. “You let the bastard get away!”

  “He can’t escape me,” Lou said, and now he couldn’t.

  Not now that she understood why the strange doubling had happened, when her compass had warred with itself to reconcile the difference between the man named Winter and the one Diana was really hunting.

  “He wasn’t for you! He was for me!” Diana said, throwing herself off the curb. “We’re leaving!”

  Her team broke and ran for the vehicles. In one movement, Blair dropped the girl she was holding and snatched up the computer.

  The girl let out a small, startled cry.

  Lou pulled her close, and the girl rested her head against Lou’s thigh.

  “Shit,” King said, watching them go. “That wasn’t how we were supposed to wrap this up.”

  Red and blue lights illuminated the trees at the end of the street. Any second, the police would turn onto the road and see the devastation.

  A bunch of dead bodies, two blown-out and burning buildings. And the children.

  “We have to go,” King said. “Now.”

  “What about them?” Lou asked, pointing at the children sitting huddled together on the grass.

  King bent down to talk to the kids. They shrank away from him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” King said tenderly. “I want you to stay right here until the police arrive. When they get here, I want you to give them your names, okay? And they’ll make sure you get home to your parents.”

  One boy visibly flinched at the word parents. He looked past Lou to the man lying face down in his own blood.

  “Was that your dad?” Lou asked, her insides boiling.

  The boy nodded.

  She reached out to him and he climbed into her arms. Even in the orange streetlights, she could see the bruises along the side of his face.

  Her anger rose so intense it obliterated all thoughts in her head.

  “You’re okay,” Lou said into his ear as he tucked his face into her shoulder. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to the boy or herself. “You’re okay.”

  “What about us?” the little girl squealed, the one Lou had rescued from the hallway, from the real Winter Diana sought.

  “What’re your names?” King asked.

  “Mitchel.”

  “Katie-Jo.”

  “Raelara.”

  “Jean,” said the one who had first run into Lou’s arms.

  “Zoe.”

  “Lea Reynolds. And this is my brother, Lane Reynolds.”

  “And what about you?” Lou asked, noticing that one hadn’t spoken.

  A silent girl reluctantly rolled her eyes u
p to Lou. “Danielle.”

  “Pretty name.” Lou smiled. “I want you guys to stay here and stay together.”

  “But!” The outcry was immediate.

  “Stay here,” Lou insisted, “and those officers will make sure you get home.”

  They could see the police now, the cars zooming into view. Before the headlights got too close, Lou reached out and grabbed King’s elbow, and the three of them disappeared through the dark.

  * * *

  “How can you do it?” the little boy asked when they stepped out of the storage closet in The Crescent City Detective Agency. “Are you magic? Are you an angel?”

  “No,” Lou said. When she tried to untangle his arms from her neck, he only tightened them. She relented. “Can I shift you to the other side, please?”

  Her shoulder was throbbing and each pulse made red flash behind her eyes.

  The boy loosened his grip enough to let Lou adjust his weight.

  “What’s your name, buddy?” King asked.

  The boy didn’t answer.

  “It’s okay,” Lou said into his ear. “He’s a good guy.”

  “Shai. With an i.”

  “How old are you, Shai?” King asked, coming around his desk and settling into the chair. He unlocked the drawer with a key from his wallet and fished out his laptop.

  “Six,” the boy said.

  King booted up the computer. “You got a last name?”

  “Wilson.”

  King began punching at the computer furiously. Lou crossed to Piper’s empty chair and sank into it.

  “Tampa, Florida,” King said. “He was reported missing by his mother eight months ago.”

  “Eight months is a long time,” Lou said, and she and King shared a knowing look.

  A door creaked open and Piper stepped into the office. “I thought I heard you guys. How’d it go?”

  Then her eyes fell on the kid.

  “Oh, hey.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh gosh. Um, I’m Piper.”

  “Shai Wilson.”

  She held out her hand, swallowing hard. “Nice to meet you, Shai.”

  “I’ll take him to his mom,” Lou said. To Shai, “Do you want to see your mom? Is she…”