Lou couldn’t figure out how to finish the sentence.
“Has she ever hurt you?” she managed.
“Mommy is nice. But she doesn’t like it when I leave my trucks on the floor.”
“Sounds reasonable,” King said. To Lou, “I don’t suppose you need the address.”
Shai’s stomach rumbled loudly. The boy looked embarrassed.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t be sorry,” King said.
“I have stuff to make a sandwich,” Piper said. To the boy, “Are you a ham and cheese guy or a peanut butter and jelly guy?”
“Peanut butter, no jelly,” he said. Then he looked afraid.
“Crust or no crust?”
“Mommy cuts off my crusts.”
Piper looked ready to cry. “No crust, no jelly it is. Be right back.”
She started up the stairs two at a time. Overhead, Lou heard a cabinet snap shut. A drawer slid open, then closed.
Lou reached out with her compass. She searched the darkness, looking for the mother first. She found her, sensing that she was in a very dark room. Maybe the only light was the television droning on somewhere in the background.
Safe? Lou wondered. Will he be safe with you?
Piper reappeared with a sandwich with no crusts tucked into a paper towel.
Shai took an enormous bite, like a dog lunging into a food bowl.
“How’d I do?” Piper asked. “Enough peanut butter? ’Cause I got more.”
Shai spared her another smile. “It’s good.”
“You’re good, you know that?” Piper said.
The kid was getting breadcrumbs on Lou’s jacket.
“We’re going,” Lou announced. To Shai, “Are you ready?”
“Where?” he asked, squeezing his sandwich so hard that the bread flattened out in his fist.
“To your mom. Is that okay?”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
Lou shook her head dolefully. “You can finish your sandwich first.”
What commenced was the slowest consumption of a sandwich that any of them had ever seen. And when there was nothing left but the barest sliver of bread, Piper took the paper towel and wiped the peanut butter and crumbs off his face.
“It was nice to meet you, Shai. Be safe.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Lou placed one hand on his back. “Ready?”
“No.”
Lou stepped back into a pocket of shadow in the corner office.
“Come back when you’re done,” King said. “I need to—”
That was all Lou heard before the darkness rolled over them, pulling them through.
The office was replaced by a small house with its porchlight on. The bungalow sat on a street with many identical houses, and an identical concrete walk linking them.
Lou stood outside the soft circle of the porchlight, regarding the house. “Is this your mom’s house?”
“Yeah,” he said, sliding out of her arms for the first time.
She wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that he would be safe here with his mother.
“Mom!” Shai called, running up the walkway. “Mommy!”
Lou walked up the sidewalk, casting glances up and down the quiet street. A black cat sat at the end of a driveway, watching them with interest, its tail flicking against the warm concrete.
A breeze rubbed the palm trees, the large fronds lifting.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
The door opened. “Shai?”
The woman looked dazed, as if half dreaming. Lou wondered if this was the first time she’d opened her door calling her child’s name.
“Shai?”
“Mommy, it’s me!”
Recognition dawned in her eyes the moment she put her hands on the boy’s shoulders.
“Shai! Oh my god, Shai!”
She cupped his face and cried out, “Oh my god, baby. My baby! What happened to you?”
She fingered the collar of his shirt, yanking it down to reveal his slender, bruised throat.
“Oh god, oh god, oh my god.”
She crushed Shai against her, collapsing into her sobs.
Then her eyes fell on Lou. On the body armor, on the guns. “You! Did you do this? Did you hurt him?”
She launched herself at Lou, fingers hooked into claws as she swiped at her face.
Lou sidestepped easily, catching her wrist and twisting it.
The woman screeched.
“It wasn’t me,” Lou said calmly, ignoring the pulsing pain in her shoulder.
“She’s an angel, Mommy! She saved me!”
The woman yanked her hand away.
Lou turned, intending to walk to the trees across the street and disappear in the shadows between the two palms.
“Don’t go!” Shai seized her leg. “Please don’t go. Please.”
Lou turned. “I can’t stay.” She cut her eyes up to the mother.
“What if I need you?” Shai said. “What if—”
Lou placed a hand on his chest. “I’ll be around. If you need me.”
“Can I pray to you?” he asked. “If I pray like this, will you hear me?”
Shai closed his eyes, pinching them tightly shut.
Lou felt her compass spin inside her, responding to it. It reminded her of Piper, who also used calls of help to get Lou’s attention.
“You can do that,” Lou said. “But only if you’re really in trouble. Don’t waste your prayers.”
In this life, we learn how to save ourselves.
The boy nodded solemnly.
“Who are you?” the mother asked, pulling Shai back as if Lou were the dangerous one. And between the three of them, Lou supposed it was true.
“No one.”
“She’s my angel,” Shai said. “She saved me.”
“An angel?” the woman asked, frowning down at her son. “Is that…”
Her question died on her lips. When she looked up, Lou was gone.
31
It wasn’t hard to find Diana. Lou simply had to think about her and the compass did the work. It spun around in the dark, orienting itself in time and space, before locking in on her.
Stalks swayed in the breeze. The smell of corn silk hung in the air. As the stalks parted, Lou saw a barn, with a single light in the darkness.
Lou moved through the corn, her boots crunching on fallen stalks.
“How the hell did you find us?” a woman cursed.
Lou turned and found Blair standing, legs apart, gun cupped in her hand. She aimed at Lou’s head.
“I knew you were a freak.” Blair laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I told her to believe what we saw, but no. My sister has to be the rational one.”
“Lower your gun,” Lou said. She thought she was being rather polite about it.
“No, thanks. I know what you can do.”
If you already know… Lou thought. She sidestepped through the shadows, reappearing behind Blair. She took in the woman’s long, slender neck before bringing her elbow down hard on the back of it.
Blair collapsed, falling face down onto the dirt. This was when Lou heard the others, moving through the corn, drawn to the sound of the commotion. The hobbled man would be here, of course, with the others who served Dennard.
Get me closer, she thought, and the swaying stalks and stench of packed mud and corn silk fell away.
Then she was at the back of a barn, a rough red door under her hand.
She pushed it open.
In the doorway, Lou hesitated. She smelled hay, but also something electric and burning.
Winter was tied to a wooden chair in the center of the room. Three utility lights were strung overhead, beating down on the man. Cinderblocks were latched to the bottom of each chair leg as if to hold it in place.
His chest was bloody from throat to bellybutton. The light hair covering most of his stomach was matted. Lou suspected the source was the three thick gashes along his collarbones and chest.
His white-gray hair was mostly untouched except for a crust of blood on the right side, the side facing Lou.
The scene reminded her of her early hunting days. How she would find one of the Martinellis and string him up, hurt him until something inside her, a long-festering sore, broke open and oozed. In this letting, she’d find a momentary relief from that unquenchable ache within her.
Had she looked like Diana did now? Her sleeves rolled up, a knife twisting in her fist, her face all business and fury.
“Has he told you where he is yet?” Lou called from the doorway.
Diana looked up, her eyes still glazed.
“He will,” she said. “If he knows what’s good for him.”
“You’re going to kill me either way,” the man said, turning his head and spitting blood on the ground. “Just fucking do it already.”
“No,” Diana said, pressing her boot onto the ground. The man convulsed, twitching wildly in his chair.
At this distance, it looked like Diana was stepping onto a block. Lou edged closer and saw it was a peddle connected to wiring wrapped around the chair.
Pushing the peddle down ignited an electrical charge which then coursed up the wires and into Winter’s body.
Diana was watching her face instead of the convulsing man. “It doesn’t bother you?”
What should bother her? The smell of burning hair? The pitiful mewling? She’d seen—caused—worse. “No.”
“You are cold.” Diana smiled. “But you still fucked up tonight.”
“Because the other one got away?”
“He’s not the other one,” Diana hissed, pulling her boot off the switch and wiping the bloody knife on her pants. It left a smear across the top of her right thigh. “He was the one.”
“Why?” Lou asked, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed.
She tried to piece together Diana’s story. She remembered most of it from the diner, the night they spoke for the first time.
Her father’s friend had picked her up from school and taken her home to his house, locking her in a soundproof shed. She hadn’t gone into detail about what had happened in the shed in the weeks he’d held her captive, but Lou could guess. When she’d escaped, she came back with a gun and shot the guy. If the one who’d hurt her was dead, who were these two men to her?
Where did they fit into her story? Lou was ready to believe that there was more than one villain.
For her, there hadn’t been just one either. Not really.
Her one had been Angelo Martinelli, because he’d pulled the trigger. But there’d also been Gus Johnson, her father’s partner, who’d given the Martinellis their address in exchange for sparing his own life. There’d been Chaz Brasso, King’s old partner, who’d sold out Jack and Gus as the ones who’d busted Benito Martinelli for drugs.
There’d been Senator Ryanson, who’d been lining Brasso’s pockets for years and who’d given the order to take her meddlesome father out of the picture once he’d gotten too close to the source of the corruption. Not to mention Angelo’s father and brothers, who’d executed the ambush of her childhood home and the murder of her parents.
No, not one man. It was rarely one man responsible for a woman’s accumulated pain. Lou understood that.
“Who is he to you? Really?” she asked, blinking past the irritation of her shoulder. She needed another Vicodin, but it could wait.
It didn’t look like Diana would answer. Then she surprised Lou.
“Do you know that these photos and videos that end up on the internet stay on there forever? Forever. Unless someone actually takes them all down, but even then, sometimes copies will resurface.”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“The internet was a new thing when I was taken,” Diana said. “It had only been around a few years, but it was sophisticated enough. My rapist didn’t just screw me. He filmed himself doing it. Never his own face, but my face? Sure. My face was everywhere. You see, these sick perverts get off on the crying as much as the raping.”
Lou waited. She knew the story was only getting started.
“What you don’t realize is that people can recognize you. Once you’re in the system, once a hundred or a thousand assholes have jerked off to your crying face, they remember you. Remember this, you piece of shit.”
Diana stepped on the switch again and the man resumed convulsing. It wasn’t until he slumped unconscious that she took her foot off the pedal.
“One night, when I was fifteen, a couple of years after that nightmare in the shed, I’m walking home from the library with one of my friends. I notice that a guy is following me. I can’t get a good look at him, but I’m ready for any bullshit. After what I did to Daniel, I stayed ready.”
Lou assumed Daniel was her original kidnapper. She wasn’t about to interrupt the story to ask.
“This guy waits until my friends and I split up, and of course he follows me. He follows me three blocks, and I know he’s looking for the right time to grab me. So I make it easy for him. I cut across the playground. It wasn’t a nice playground. It had a busted swing and the grass was overgrown, and it sat between two abandoned houses. I thought about going into the houses, but I wanted someone to hear me scream if my plan didn’t work out.”
Lou shifted against the door.
“He grabbed me by the back fence, before I could get to the gate. When he threw me on the ground, you know what he said to me?”
Lou didn’t answer.
“He said, ‘I knew it was you. Look at you, my good girl. My good little slut.’ That’s what Daniel was always saying, ‘my good little slut.’ He kept saying it while getting his hand under my skirt. He kept saying it until I cut half his fucking arm off.”
She slammed her foot down on the switch but nothing happened. The man’s muscles twitched but he remained unconscious. White foam bubbled at the side of his mouth.
“You were looking for a scar,” Lou said, remembering the way Diana had yanked Winter’s sleeve up. “Of where you stabbed him.”
“That’s what they do,” Diana said, more to herself than anyone else. “These sick bastards. They come back.”
She met Lou’s gaze at last, and Lou knew the look in her eyes. She’d seen it in her own.
“Don’t wear yourself out,” Lou said, taking a step back into the darkness. “You’ve got one more coming.”
32
Lou’s wrist buzzed.
Are you okay? the message read.
Lou sat up in bed, trying to shake the sleep off. She’d needed it, and the pill she’d taken after Diana’s raid had given her long, uninterrupted hours of it.
Even with two days of rest behind her, her body ached. She wasn’t sure which act had actually exacerbated her shoulder, but it was still speaking to her in low, threatening tones.
Two days and two nights in her apartment, alone, sleeping and eating and standing under the pounding stream of hot water. All of it had helped, but it hadn’t erased her discomfort entirely.
Amore mio?
Lou looked at the watch face and sent a simple return text. I’m fine.
All other explanations would have to wait. She had a date with a man with a scar.
She might need more rest, but two days was the most she could manage before her restlessness overcame her again.
She rose, kicked off her comforter, and stretched. She particularly stretched her shoulder, until it moved without hitching in its socket.
She ate the second half of a burger she’d procured the night before. She’d only eaten half of it before the Vicodin had kicked in and her desire to sleep outweighed her desire to keep eating. But now the hunger was in full swing. She chased the burger with two apples and a banana from the glass fruit bowl on her kitchen island.
She washed it all down with water, wishing instead for about half a gallon of coffee.
She settled for a pot of it, which she drank as she stood by her large picture window overlooking the Mississippi river.
&nbs
p; Her eyes were on the shimmering waters, the way they sparked with the fading embers of the lowering sun. Outwardly she was relaxed, ready. Inwardly, her compass churned. It whirled, searching the darkness that connected every point in the world for her target.
She didn’t use the word Winter now, since it hadn’t been accurate. She used the face, the one she’d seen in the hallway as he stepped out to lock the door behind himself.
That was what she locked in on. That was the face her compass searched the dark for.
And found.
Something inside her clicked, jerked into place, and she felt a slight tug forward, like river water pushing at the backs of her knees.
As she drained the last of the cup, the sun descended, tucking itself beneath the horizon for the night. And with each passing moment, Lou’s limbs grew stronger. Her hands steadier.
Good.
She’d need her strength.
* * *
Micki James stayed on the move. Since Springfield two nights ago, when Murf got himself caught, Micki had known better than to stop his car for more than a few hours. He gassed up, grabbed a cold sandwich from a case beside the soda fountain, and got back on the road.
This car smelled like cigarettes whenever he rolled up the window, so he kept it cracked while he drove. The breeze hit his eyes, encouraging them to stay peeled.
He took speed from those little packets found on gas station counters and named after insects—wasps, bees, whatever—that kept him awake long after his brain begged for sleep.
He understood why the drugs were named this way now. After four pills, it was definitely like bees were in his brain, buzzing, bouncing off the insides of his skull.
He thought of Murf again. They’d been partners a long time—Micki and Murf. They’d had a good thing going. But he’d known this day was coming. What did his mama use to say? All good things come to an end?
And where had she heard that? From her Sunday morning preachers over the radio or the old biddies with whom she crocheted sweaters for the war veterans?
It didn’t matter. His mother had been dead for twenty years.
And now Murf—Winter—was dead too.
You got caught ’cause you’re careless, his mother said from the backseat.
Devil’s Luck Page 20
