Devil’s Luck Read online

  Devil’s Luck

  Kory M. Shrum

  Contents

  An Exclusive Offer For You

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  Get Your Three Free Stories Today

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kory M. Shrum

  Copyright

  An Exclusive Offer For You

  Connecting with my readers is the best part of my job as a writer. One way that I like to connect is by sending 2-3 newsletters a month with a subscribers-only giveaway, free stories from your favorite series, and personal updates (read: pictures of my dog).

  When you first sign up for the mailing list, I send you at least three free stories right away. If free stories and exclusive giveaways sound like something you’re interested in, please look for the special offer in the back of this book.

  Happy reading,

  Kory

  Author’s Note

  Trigger Warning

  This book includes descriptions of child pornography and rape. These moments are short and allusive and you can usually see them coming. As an author, I tried to keep the emotion and gravity of the situation realistic to the story without gratuitous embellishment. However, please skim or skip these passages, with my complete support, if they will hurt or bother you.

  * * *

  Kory M. Shrum

  For Uncle Craig,

  my biggest fan

  1

  Spencer Halliday hobbled down the checkered hallway. The two-inch difference in length between his left and right legs accounted for his gait, but he was determined not to be slowed down by it.

  “Where’s Diana?” he called out, without stopping. A sheet of paper trembled in his hand as he swung his arms to steady himself.

  The woman in leather pants leaning against the wall looked up from her phone.

  “Surveillance room.” She blew a bubble until it popped, a large pink film spreading across her lips. She licked it away with a swipe of her tongue. “Why? What do you want now, Quasi?”

  Only Blair was brave enough to call him this to his face.

  No matter. What was she to him anyway? The scent of grass and sweat wafted off of her. Dirt was smudged across her upper arm. Spencer supposed she’d just returned from a raid.

  Dirty, disgusting, he thought, his mouth pulling into a sneer. My Diana would never be so unkempt.

  And Diana was the only one who mattered.

  “Diana,” he called out. “Diana, I have something!”

  He shuffled past Blair without answering, the bald spot on his head reflecting the flickering fluorescents above.

  He burst through the closed door and found her in the dark, staring into the blue light of a computer terminal. Her face was scrunched in concentration. This glow made her look like a fresh corpse still tormented by its gruesome death. Her blonde hair, pulled into a severe ponytail on the top of her head, was toned silver.

  “What is it?” she asked blandly, a hint of annoyance in her tone.

  “Look at this.”

  “No,” Diana insisted. Her blue eyes were made bluer by the glow. “I can’t take my eyes off him.”

  Spencer sucked at his upper lip with his considerable underbite. “But I finally got a match on the DNA results you wanted.”

  “What DNA results?” she asked, again not looking away from the screen. “How can he smile so much? He smiles all the time. Why? What do you have to smile about, you bastard?”

  Spencer ignored this. Diana often mumbled to herself when concentrating. He continued undeterred. “There’s a match for the coffee cup and a five-dollar bill. In New Orleans.”

  At this Diana did look up. The lines in her face smoothed out. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really? New Orleans?”

  “There was a blood sample collected from”—he looked at the sheet again—“Julia Street station. It’s definitely her.”

  “How recent?”

  “March.”

  “If the blood was collected in March, why am I only now hearing about it?”

  Spencer shifted his weight. No, no. This wasn’t going how he wanted. He’d imagined Diana’s joy at the news. He imagined her slipping her arms around his neck and—what?

  Biting him maybe.

  Or perhaps shoving him against a wall before pressing her tight body into his. Delicious rewards for his efforts.

  He shivered at the thought.

  But there was no joy. She was scowling at him.

  His anxiety spiked electric along his skin. “I don’t know. A lag in processing? The NOPD has been understaffed since Hurricane Katrina. Their police force hasn’t recovered.”

  Her reaction made him doubt himself.

  Foolish, he thought. I shouldn’t have told her.

  Maybe letting her know about the match would put her on a collision course with the woman. Diana’s obsessive mind would make it impossible for her to let such a trail go. He could only hope that Lou was long gone and the trail in New Orleans cold.

  Because the Lou woman frightened him. She wasn’t to be trusted, especially not with someone so precious as Diana.

  But if Diana had learned that he kept things from her—She’ll kill you.

  Desire ripped through him at the idea.

  “New Orleans,” Diana murmured to herself. “I haven’t been there in years.”

  Spencer shifted uncomfortably against the pressure building between his legs. “Why do you care so much about her?”

  “You mean, why do I care about finding someone like me?”

  No one like you. Never anyone like you.

  Instead he said, “You must’ve known there’d be at least a few.”

  “Spencer,” Diana began, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. It was her voice, pitched low. He knew that voice. It promised violence.

  She pushed back her seat and stood. She had a hand on his throat before he’d seen her move.

  Her heat radiated like the sun across his face and neck.

  His mind babbled. I want I want I want—

  Her eyes were black now, the inner blue cannibalized by the room’s shadows. “I want to know who she is and what she has, Spencer. It’s obvious she has connections and assets that I don’t.”

  “No,” he said, too quickly. His tongue darted out from between his lips. If only he could taste the air like a snake, taste her. “No, I just—I just wondered if this is about Winter.”

  Spencer already knew the answer. For Diana, everything was about Winter.

  Diana affected a shrug. “S
o what if it is? Would that matter?”

  “No.” Spencer didn’t like how high and tight his voice sounded. “You’re free to—”

  Diana tightened her hold on his throat and drove him back. His head hit the cinder block wall, ears ringing.

  “I am free to do whatever I want. And what I want is for you to find me the best PI in New Orleans.”

  Her mouth was over his now. Hot. So hot. He wondered if those lips could scald him.

  “A PI?” he repeated, his dick hardening.

  She must’ve seen the ache in his eyes. With a wicked smile, she slid the fingers from her free hand into his hair and gripped it. Then she pulled so hard tears sprang to his eyes. A small whimper escaped him.

  She put her lips close enough to his ear that her words tickled when she spoke. “The best PI in town. Someone who can find her.”

  “Okay,” he mewled, squirming beneath her. His fists opened and closed at his sides. He wanted to touch her, wanted more than anything to put his hands on her body.

  But that was not allowed. He was never allowed to touch her unless she said the word.

  “Spencer,” she whispered into his mouth.

  Please, please, please, he thought. Please say it. Please say—

  She released him, stepping back out of his reach and taking all the heat with her. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  2

  Piper Lynn Genereux rested her weight against the door jamb, watching the six-foot-tall drag queen lean over the sink to peer into the mirror. With steady hands, fake eyelashes were glued and pressed to each eye. The lightbulb overhead hissed, but neither noticed. Piper was mesmerized.

  Their eyes met in the mirror.

  “You’re pretty,” Piper said reflexively.

  Henry laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she said defensively, uncrossing and recrossing her arms. She’d seen Henry in drag countless times. “I’m just saying you’ve gotten really good at this.”

  “I’ve come a long way from plastic pants and Aqua Net, yes,” he said. “Thanks again for letting me use your bathroom. My apartment is too small for three queens.”

  Piper could only imagine how difficult it was for Henry to share a bathroom with his boyfriends, especially now that she was reminded how much work getting ready was for him.

  “What time do you go on?” she asked, offering a tissue so he could dab the fallout from his mascara.

  “Eleven. I go on right after Mustang Mary,” he said. Their eyes met in the mirror again. “Are you coming?”

  In truth, Piper had hoped to go to bed early. She hadn’t slept well the night before. Too many strange dreams only half remembered. But with Henry’s hopeful face pouting at her, no wasn’t an option.

  She rubbed her nose. “Sure. I’ll come.”

  “Will you bring a girl?”

  “A girl?” Piper snorted. “You make it sound like I have more than one. Dani and I aren’t even official. Besides, she’s working late. She has a deadline.”

  “What about the dangerous one? You could bring her instead.”

  Piper frowned. “I don’t have a dangerous girlfriend.” Or any girlfriend.

  Henry removed a glob of mascara from the wand. “Leather jacket. Mirrored shades. Looks like she eats flesh for breakfast and drinks blood for dinner.”

  Piper laughed. “Lou? She’s not a cannibal.”

  “I’m just saying she’s got a man-eater vibe. I haven’t seen her in a while. I thought you were into her.”

  “I was,” she admitted. “But now I’m not.”

  “Because…”

  This was dangerous territory. It wasn’t that Henry was forbidden to know about Lou. It was that no one was supposed to know about Lou.

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “We’re friends.”

  “Just work friends?” he asked, adding stick-on jewels beneath his eyes.

  “More than that,” she said. He’d seen Lou pick her up from the bars. Work friends don’t do that. Nor did the word acquaintance work after all that had happened between them.

  Lou had saved her life. And she loved her. At first she’d been certain it was an intense romantic love. Now she knew it was deeper than that.

  Best friends? she wondered. Is she my best friend?

  “How much more?” he asked, rummaging in his makeup bag.

  “You’re such a perv. I said nothing was going on. We’re just close.”

  “I mean, without a doubt, Dani is gorgeous, but I’m trying to understand why you passed on Lou.”

  Lou passed on me. “She’s way out of my league. So is Dani, but at least that seems like a mountain I can climb.”

  Henry snorted at the innuendo. “I know what you mean. There was this hot barista at the Starbucks.”

  “Poydras or Canal?”

  “Poydras. He was thick as hell and had this amazing butt.”

  “You’re quoting Todrick Hall again,” Piper said.

  He didn’t seem to register this comment. “But then I started talking to him and found out he’s a double finance and plant biology major at Tulane. He wants to revolutionize the coffee industry and create a coffee with negative emissions that will save the planet while we drink it.” Henry scoffed. “Definitely not the barista I thought he was.”

  Piper saw the popped button on his sequined bodice. She tried to refasten it. “What kind of barista were you hoping for?”

  “The kind who only works for beer money, I guess.”

  Piper had no idea what any of this had in common with her and Lou. “Well, good thing you already have two boyfriends.”

  “I’m always shopping for my third.”

  The button finally snapped into place. “I’m aware.”

  “And now you have a hot girlfriend and you and Lou are disaster friends,” Henry said, dabbing on foundation where he’d over wiped.

  “What? No.”

  “You work together at the detective agency, right?”

  Piper couldn’t even imagine Lou managing the register at Madame Melandra’s Fortunes and Fixes. “Yeah, but—”

  “Your job is to hunt criminals, catch bad guys, clean up messes. It’s all drama, drama, drama. Didn’t Dani end up in the hospital?”

  “That was more of a journalism accident.” A complete lie, given that a Russian mob boss had cut off her finger and had beaten her half to death.

  Henry arched a brow. “Sounds disaster-y to me.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “It’s not a bad thing! It just means that your relationship is based on drama, rather than, I don’t know, a shared love of churro sundaes or boy-hunting.”

  Piper scoffed. “We’re real friends.”

  Though admittedly, there are a lot of bodies, she thought glumly.

  “It’s just that people like us, with shit parents, we tend to have certain types of relationships. We attract the drama. It’s hard to make real connections with people. Disaster friends come and go. That’s okay. It’s as it should be. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I don’t want Lou to come and go.

  “We aren’t disaster friends,” she said again, lip stiff. “We connect.”

  Henry arched a brow at her hard refusal. “Okay. Whatever you say, sis.”

  * * *

  Lou threw the dusty towel into the hamper and observed her gleaming apartment. She’d cleaned it top to bottom for the second time that week, and considering her minimalist style and near-nothing possessions, this was…

  Ridiculous, she thought. I’m losing my mind.

  She was no less restless than when she’d begun the project six hours ago. All that scrubbing and organizing hadn’t expelled any of the energy itching along her spine. What had she hoped to accomplish?

  Perhaps nothing, but she’d run out of options. Her guns certainly hadn’t helped.

  She’d begun with those, of course. She’d drawn the curtains and pulled her entire arsenal from the myriad of hiding places tuck
ed around the apartment. She’d disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled each gun carefully. She’d counted ammunition. She’d sharpened her blades and rewrapped fraying handles. She’d repacked her medical kit and made fresh rags.

  Still, she couldn’t settle. She needed to do something.

  I need to hunt.

  Her shoulder twinged. The stab of pain slid up the side of her neck like a knife.

  It was a reminder that even cleaning was a gamble.

  Her shoulder refused to heal, at least not as quickly as Lou wanted it to. When the bullet had grazed her collarbone, the doctor had warned her it would be at least six months before she could use it.

  Be grateful the bone didn’t shattered.

  “Grateful,” she murmured, and sank onto the edge of the mattress pressed beneath the windows.

  Behind her, the St. Louis night was vibrant. The illuminated arch stood like a starlet on the riverway carpet. Headlights from boats swept the moonlit waters. A half-moon hung tilted in the sky like a spotlight.

  Her hands smelled like bleach. For all the wrong reasons, she lamented.

  What had she done before, when the restlessness was this bad? When she was a moment away from pulling the skin off her body with her bare hands?

  She grabbed her leather jacket off the kitchen stool and stepped into the converted linen closet.