But she didn’t. Winter was dead and she felt—nothing. It was an anti-climactic end to a long and arduous search, and what did she have to show for it?
You’re just tired. You need to rest, and then you’ll feel it.
What she didn’t need was whatever lecture Blair was mentally rehearsing behind those sullen eyes.
Diana sighed. “Before you ask, yes, I buried him deep. No coyotes are going to drag him out like the—”
“We have another problem,” Blair said. Her tone was flat, nearly devoid of emotion. When Diana only continued to wash the dirt from her hands, Blair added, “A big problem.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” When she looked up, Blair was gone, her lithe form halfway down the narrow hallway connecting the bathroom and living room.
Wringing her hands with a towel, Diana followed her deeper into the converted farmhouse. It wasn’t luxurious. She’d spent little money on renovating it. Only enough to get water into the pipes and electricity into the wires and a furnace strong enough to beat back the long fingers of a Kansas winter. Even so, wind blew through the place as if there were holes in the walls.
In the living room, a small television sat on an overturned milkcrate. A battered futon rested in its view with a strip of silver duct tape keeping the stuffing inside.
Blair pointed at the screen, turning the knob to increase the volume.
The blown-out and smoldering buildings filled the screen as a team of firefighters combated the flames. They struggled with the large hoses, looking small and comical in their raincoats.
“They found the bodies.” Diana shrugged. “So what?”
“Keep watching,” Blair insisted. “They’ve played this story on a loop for an hour.”
“Diana Dennard”—her heart stuttered in her chest, plummeting into her stomach, and her arms and legs felt suddenly weak—“has run credit card scams for over two million dollars across the US.”
The world shifted on a tilt as her face appeared, blotting out the rest of the screen.
“What we know about Diana Dennard results from an alleged kidnapping over twenty years ago. She has only one living relative, a sister. The whereabouts of her sister remain unknown, but seven known aliases have been uncovered in an attempt to—”
“Do you think Lou did this?” Blair asked, her hands cupping her elbows.
“No,” Diana said. Lou couldn’t be bothered with such a menial task.
Her mind sprang back to the night in New Orleans, to the bait lying on the floor of her townhouse.
Diana had dug deep into all of Lou’s associates and had learned that Daniella Allendale, the simpering, pathetic girl who had fallen apart over a little zip tie, was a reporter.
Not just any reporter. An investigative reporter from a rich and well-connected family. No doubt an entitled and spoiled brat who thought she was above everyone and everything.
No, Diana didn’t need to wonder how her story had been thrown to the press.
Was this payback? Had the little bitch decided to grow teeth?
“Wanted in connection with at least thirty-five cases of fraud,” the television droned on. Diana’s own face continued to look back at her accusingly.
Her face. Her face everywhere. And now her financial backing was compromised along with her anonymity.
Her freedom. Everything. Gone.
And it was a terrible picture of her.
Anger unfurled in Diana, so rich and full-bodied she was nearly drunk on it.
Lou. How could you do it?
Lou might not have pulled the trigger on this betrayal, but she must’ve known it would happen. And did she stop it? Did she defend Diana?
No. She let her take the bullet.
“What are we going to do?” Blair asked.
Diana wrung the towel in her fist. “Kill her.”
35
Lou was perched on the edge of her sofa, lacing her boots, when her watch buzzed. She rotated the digital face, turning it in the light to better read it. It was King.
911
She’d told Konstantine she’d be there tonight. She could feel his restlessness like a tight wire in her gut. It set her own teeth on edge.
The watch buzzed again.
911
“Coming,” she grumbled. Konstantine will have to wait.
She stood and crossed to the island, grabbing her Browning pistol off the countertop. It was still light outside, so she stepped into the linen closet and shut the door behind her, the most complete darkness she could offer herself at this time of day.
The shadows rubbed against her body like a cat against a leg. Cool and needy. Her internal compass spun in the dark, seeking out King on the other side. When it clicked into place, she let go of her hold on this part of the world and slipped through the thin veil separating the two points of their respective space.
She’d expected the office, or maybe King’s loft apartment. Either way he was more than likely poring over papers. He was a chronic workaholic, not unlike her.
What she found was something else altogether.
She was in a concrete bunker. Overhead, honky-tonk music blared and the rhythmic thumping against the ceiling conjured the image of line dancing and leather fringe. She could smell grease, maybe fried pickles, and the sharp tang of alcohol.
Lou raised her gun.
“It’s just me,” King said, stepping into the spotlight of a low-hanging bulb.
Lou lowered the gun. A chill ran up the back of her spine. It was cold down here. Where were they? A basement? “What’s the emergency?”
“Did you see the Dennard story?”
“What Dennard story?”
He rubbed his forehead with his fist. “Christ. Don’t you have a television?”
“No. You can get me one for Christmas,” she said, her tone light. “If it bothers you so much.”
His lack of reaction made her stomach harden.
“Spit it out,” she said.
“Piper dug up some charges on Dennard. Her credit card scams, her disappearance, the sister, all of it. Then she sold it.”
“What do you mean, sold it?”
“To some of Dani’s connections, to some of mine. Names I had floating around the office. She broke Dennard’s story wide open. Diana’s face is all over the news. Her cover is blown.”
Lou was having a hard time understanding. “Why?”
What did she have to gain by going after Dennard?
“That’s what I asked,” King said with a bark of surprised laughter. “Now that Dennard had her man, I was hoping she’d slink off into the sunset.”
Lou had thought the same. She hadn’t expected to see Diana again, at least not for a long time.
“She said Dennard had it coming. That she didn’t want her thinking she could do whatever she wanted with us.”
Lou thought of Winter, the way he’d cried when she’d clamped the metal collar around his throat and welded the chain to the hook in the floor.
“Diana might not have seen the news yet.” Lou holstered her gun. “She might still be working on Winter.”
Or maybe not, a little voice said. How long did you play with Angelo? Twenty minutes?
Would Dennard be able to resist ripping the man apart, swiftly and brutally? And no matter how much the punisher may enjoy it, the human body can only withstand so much.
Her man would give out on her, sooner or later. Lou knew that better than most.
Then Diana will discover the worst of it. That her hunt had been a distraction, a lie. It had promised relief, complete satisfaction.
But nothing would satisfy again. Not really.
“You know she’s going to retaliate, right?” King ran a hand through his hair. “She’s going to think we did this, and she’s going to come after us.”
Lou wasn’t sure what to do with the mild panic thrumming through him. He seemed to need some sort of reassurance from her.
“It’ll be harder to get to New Orleans now,” she
offered. “If her face is all over the news, it’s not like she can walk around in the open.”
“Please,” King laughed, clearly exasperated. “She’s blond, blue-eyed, clean cut. There are hundreds of her in the French Quarter alone. If she’s careful, she’ll blend in. And she wasn’t working alone, remember? She has people she can trust. If she were a true loner, this would be easier. But she’s not. She’s a master manipulator. They’re far worse.”
King’s irritation, his borderline hysteria, nipped at the back of her neck, made her shoulders inch toward her ears.
“What do you want me to do?” Lou asked. Because it was clear he wanted something.
It wasn’t the secure location or the 911 page or even his tense body language. It was the look on his face, the desperate, pleading look that said, Please. Please, Lou.
But whatever the request was, she needed him to spit it out.
“I want you to take Piper, Dani, and Mel somewhere safe. Drop them on a deserted island for all I care, but don’t leave them here.”
Lou laughed.
“This isn’t a joke.”
“They aren’t going to let me take them anywhere.”
“Take Dani at least,” King said. “Diana probably thinks she’s the one who ratted her out. She must know she’s a journalist and has the contacts to launch a story like this. If Dani goes, maybe Piper will too, but they need to disappear, you understand that? Diana will kill them.”
The hair on Lou’s arms rose.
“She won’t stage another pretend kidnapping to get your attention. There’s only one statement she’ll want to make.”
You were supposed to understand, Lou.
“Her rapist took something and she killed him. Winter took something and she hunted him for years, and now we took her freedom, her anonymity. She’s going to feel especially betrayed by you. You move like she does, hunt like she does. You’re supposed to understand. The only difference is that if she comes for you, you can handle yourself. Piper and Dani can’t.”
King ran his hands through his hair.
“You could take her out, end it before it begins. Give Dennard a one-way trip to La Loon.”
Lou snorted.
“What’s funny?”
“You make me jump through hoops to nab someone like Fish, and now Diana comes along and you just want me to ‘take her out.’”
“She will retaliate,” King insisted.
“When?” Lou asked. “Tomorrow? In six years? Mel, Dani, and Piper have lives. You can’t ask them to go into hiding forever. And it’s impossible to know when she’ll make her move.”
And what about me, King? Will you try to eliminate me one day? Will I cross some unseen line and suddenly be too much of a liability to you? Will you be asking someone to “take me out”?
“I’m just saying it’ll be easier if you kill her.”
“No,” Lou said, jaw clenched. “You can’t sell me on this idea that the system matters, that the process matters, and then ditch it the first time someone scares you. Either I kill whoever I want, whenever I want”—And I will anyway, she thought darkly—“or we play by the rules. Which is it?”
King clasped the back of his neck.
Lou didn’t want to point out the obvious. Holding Diana accountable for her work seemed hypocritical. Why should Lou hunt as she pleased while Diana must be restrained?
“I don’t want any of you to get hurt.” King rubbed his fist across his forehead. “But you’re right. I can’t tell you to back off on Fish then ask you to go hard on Dennard. That’s…”
Wrong.
“Inconsistent,” he said with a grimace. “But she’s dangerous and she’s going to blame us for the exposure. Because it was us. It could only be us. I don’t think anyone else knows who she is.”
The music overhead renewed and the pounding feet changed their rhythm, increasing the tempo.
“What about moving the girls?” King asked, still hopeful. “Maybe Konstantine knows somewhere they’ll be safe.”
“I’ll ask,” Lou said. But she already knew Piper’s answer.
* * *
“What? No.” Piper scowled at her over a bag of tortilla chips. She took a handful, put them on a plate, and covered them with cheese. Then she put the plate in the microwave for thirty seconds. “I’m not scared of that psycho.”
Maybe you should be, Lou thought.
“King wants us to leave?” Piper asked incredulously. “Or are you just mad that you can’t hang out with your friend anymore?”
Lou noted her irritation distantly. What now?
“Listen to her,” Dani said, sitting on the stool at her kitchen island. She took a chip from the bag.
Lou liked the color in her cheeks and the steadiness in her eyes. She was doing better.
A cat meowed at Lou’s feet, rubbing its head against her boot. It reminded her of Jabbers.
Lou bent down and scooped up the feline, scratching her ears. The cat began to purr, cradled against Lou’s chest.
Piper moved around Dani’s kitchen as if it were her own. She knew where all the plates and utensils were. Where the ingredients were stored.
Piper opened the bag of shredded cheese wider. “Why should we run? Diana can’t do anything. The French Quarter is full of cops. It’s not like she can walk up to the shop or King’s without someone seeing her.”
Dani spread her hand on the countertop. “She could wear a disguise. Or she could send someone else after us.”
Lou noted her bouncing knee and the way she pulled her lip into her mouth and pinned it there with her teeth.
Piper rolled her eyes. “She was dumb enough to walk into King’s office and pretend to be Lou’s sister. We’re light years ahead of her, babe.”
“She kidnapped us and zip-tied us. Like hogs.”
Lou watched this exchange with a growing sense of unease.
The microwave beeped. Piper lifted a pan from the stove and scraped veggies onto the chips. On top of this, she spooned out generous dollops of sour cream, avocado, and salsa before pushing the plate toward Dani.
“Thanks,” she said, but didn’t touch the nachos.
Piper forked raw hamburger into the pan and continued. “That was before Lou killed like ninety percent of her men. She’s not stupid enough to come at us empty-handed. She’s a survivor. Survivors don’t make futile moves.”
I’ve made plenty of them, Lou thought. In the heat of a hunt, when led forward more by her hunger than a self-regard for her own life, she’d been more than careless.
Piper must’ve seen the disagreement on her face. “Do you want nachos or not?”
Lou sank onto a bar stool, still holding the cat. “Yes.”
“Beef like mine or vegetarian like hers?”
“Beef.”
Piper began arranging another plate. Once it was in the microwave, she said, “Even if she wants to come after us, and she scrounges up enough people to do it, and she’s dumb enough to risk being murdered or arrested, there’s still the question of when. We have no idea when this will happen. We can’t just drop our lives and go into hiding indefinitely.”
Here she turned to Dani, giving her a questioning look.
Dani took her first tentative bite of the nachos, and audibly swooned.
“You can’t take any more time off work,” Piper said. “And my semester starts in ten days. I need to be buying my books, not packing my bags.”
Dani traced shapes on the countertop and sighed. “My job performance hasn’t been a hundred percent lately.”
The microwave beeped and Piper pulled the steaming plate from the machine. “We can’t screw up our lives because of one crazy person. Not when we’ve worked so hard to rebuild it.”
“What about you?” Lou asked Dani. She placed the cat on the floor. “Do you want to leave?”
Dani didn’t speak. She eyed her nachos, fingering the edge of a cheese-covered chip.
Piper added sour cream and salsa to her own plate. “Bab
e, if you want to go, go. I’m not telling you to stay. I just don’t think Dennard will risk getting caught.”
Dani dragged a chip through a dollop of sour cream thoughtfully. “I really can’t miss any more work.”
Piper cut open and destoned a second avocado. After spooning the green mush onto the plate, she slid it across the island to Lou. “The beef will need ten minutes.”
Seeing Dani’s expression, Piper frowned. “Hey.”
Dani looked up, and Piper reached her hand across the island. Reluctantly, Dani took it.
“Don’t worry about this. Diana doesn’t deserve an ounce of your stress and worry.” Piper squeezed her hand. “We’ve got this.”
Lou thought of Angelo Martinelli bursting through the back gate of her parents’ home, a leather-clad nightmare of rage, and the white-flash pop of his gun going off. The sound of a wine glass shattering and her back hitting the surface of the family’s moonlit pool.
“This comes with the territory. But we’re tough. We can survive anything.”
It came with the territory, yes.
But Lou didn’t think Piper understood what that meant. Not yet.
36
She found Konstantine in his bedroom, his legs stretched out in front of him and a book open in his lap. His ankles were crossed as he sipped from a glass of red wine.
He looked up from his book, touching his ear as if it hurt.
“I felt you,” he said, placing the wine glass on the bedside table.
“Did you?” She crossed to the bed and sat on its edge.
“Sometimes I can,” he said, pulling his ear lobes. “It’s like a popping in my ears.”
“Dani says that too.” Lou wasn’t sure if she should take off her boots and leather jacket. Was she going to stay? He looked cozy and occupied. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head as if in question.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he said.
“King pulled an emergency call.”
Konstantine nodded. “He must’ve seen the news.”
“I’m guessing you did, too.”
Devil’s Luck Page 22
