Page 66 of Lady Luck

The lull between lunch and dinner would probably be longer than usual, so I took a seat by the window. Cornucopia was on the highest floor of Fortuna and had an entire wall lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the Gulf.

Making it a perfect watchtower for incoming storms.

I laid my head against the glass and watched as the rain drops splattered the windows, which were already halfway obstructed by fog. I squinted in the general direction of Vinh’s harbor, wondering if it had been long enough for me to text him and see what he’d decided about his boat.

I slouched further into the oversized dining chair as my body’s accumulated kinetic energy attempted to transfer to my mind.

It failed, and I imagined sending it into the choppy waters of the Gulf, where it would dissolve.

The truth was that I had plenty I needed to think about—Cody’s radio silence and my living arrangements being at the forefront—but I was too tired to do it properly. I badly needed an actual full night’s sleep, preferably a few in a row, which meant I had to find somewhere safe and comfortable to live. Which required… thinking.

As if my void of energy had created a moat around me, no one approached while I remained motionless and watched the storm as it ramped up, flirted with destruction, and then fizzled out.

And I remained blissfully, utterly unaware that I was already in the eye of a different storm.

And had been for some time.

An older, much more volatile one.

One that I probably could’ve seen coming if I hadn’t been so damn tired.

The humidity inside the trailer was officially concerning enough that I was prepared to face Grandmother, assuming she was even home.

A night in the Big House would be preferable to sleeping on damp sheets, under a damp comforter, surrounded by damp blankets. Because even in a climate this warm, I had no chance of sleeping well unless I was covered under enough layers that any potential knife-wielding murderers wouldn’t know where to strike.

I’d tried to sleep without covers last night, but I just couldn’t do it. And at this point, another sleepless night would officially be one too many. I needed to feel human again.

It had been overcast almost all day yesterday, so the backyard’s solar lights hadn’t stored enough energy to click on. When I finally decided to put on my rain boots and make the trek from my trailer to the old sliding-glass door on the back of the Big House, I had to use my phone’s flashlight to guide the way.

The phone that I’d been attached to all day yesterday, from the first message I’d been pleasantly surprised by early that morning—a simple good morning text from Vinh followed by some back and forth conversation about our day’s plans—to a series of much less structured, stream-of-consciousness-style messages from Liem.

The happy tilt of my lips as I remembered those texts changed directions when I reached the sliding glass door and found it locked.

As in fortress-level locked.

Not only was the double lock on the handle engaged but the wooden security bar was also nestled firmly onto the tracks. Which meant that there was no way to open this door unless I wanted to throw one of the heavy stone decorations through the glass.

Not ready to resign myself to a creepy, dark walk around to the front door, I pressed my face against the glass, hands framed around my face for no reason whatsoever, looking for any signs of life inside. The only thing that greeted me from the mudroom I was peering into was a blinking light from a security camera mounted in the top corner of the room, angled straight at me. Unfortunately, it would be a couple of minutes before I comprehended that information because several things happened next.

Mistaking that light for… I really didn’t know what, I took an ill-fated step backward into a puddle and slipped. Aggressively. A frantic “Oh shit” escaped my lips as I threw out my arms—and subsequently my phone—as I tried to catch myself.

It was a bad move.

After my right hand threw my phone clear across the porch, my left came down and landed on Grandmother’s wrought-iron patio table. One that I’d previously thought was quite sturdy, so when it instantly and very unexpectedly toppled forward under my weight, another panicked exclamation flew from my lips, but of the “Oh fuck” variety this time.

And I went down. Hard.

The table had been so inexplicably close to the door that when I followed the table down, my leg flailed upward and slammed into the door’s handle. My entire being vibrated from double—triple?—impact.

I barely had time to blink back to reality before the house alarm started blaring, rattling my already scrambled brain. Groaning loudly, I rolled to my side, covered my ears with my hands, and closed my eyes against the noise as if it that would dampen the sound.

This could not be how I die.

“BreeFuckingFaust, this is not how you die!” A voice that couldn’t, shouldn’t, be here cursed at me.

I cracked one eye open to find a head hovering above me, seemingly illuminated from below.

A ghost, then.

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