Page 96 of Penny for Your Saints

“Cazzy, I’m not so sure?—”

“Seb,” he interrupts me. “I need to drive right now—otherwise, I’m going to go fucking crazy. I know that you did what you could, but right now the only way I’m gonna be able to forgive myself for losing Louise to those monsters—is to cut away the miles between us and Q, and meet up with Frank,” Caz explains with urgency, drumming both of his hands on the steering wheel for emphasis.

“Ok, ok—but the moment you start to have any problems.” I gesture to my own eyes and head. “You tag me in.”

He nods solemnly, extending his hands for the keys once more.

We meet Quentin at a cheap motel just outside of Enid, Oklahoma.

The town feels like a postcard out of time—the ‘small town America’ I learned from old television shows.

When the three of us finally get into the same room, we collapse against one another—our foreheads pressed together—our arms linked over one another’s shoulders in a ring of tears.

Once the three of us are all cried out, we sit—puffy eyed and resolute, a plan for recon and rescue at the front of all our minds.

“You haven’t heard from Frank yet, either?” Caz presses Quentin, amassing the small arsenal of tech he’s managed to scrape together since our surprise retreat from the yacht.

“No, I can’t get a hold of him at all. I don’t like it.” Quentin lays out his lock picks and examines them for what must be the fifth time in the last ten minutes.

I oil my knives and hold my tongue.

The two must feel me, smouldering, fuming with rage along the bond—because they both turn to me as I reach for my paper motel cup of mint tea, straining the loose leaves through my teeth as I sip the scalding liquid down.

“What is it, Seb?” Caz prods.

“I’m fucking pissed off that Frank hasn’t checked back in yet. What the fuck is taking him so long?”

Neither has an answer.

“I’m going to get some ice,” I grunt, breaking the silence—not quite storming out of the motel room with the shitty little plastic insulated ice bucket and down the hall to the ancient ice machine—the high whine of its motor the only sound in the dingy, amber lit hallway.

When I get back into the room, Caz and Q are making instant noodles and amassing a list of people who owe the Saints a favor.

“That’s good, that’s very good.” Caz nods, jotting down a few more names on the list.

I pull up a chair and give the list a once over. A few local politicians, a handful of drug dealers, a couple of D-List celebs, and at least two arms dealers…

Quentin and Caz are obviously distracting themselves by becoming immersed in the plan to rescue Louise.

Me? I am looking for a different kind of escape.

“What time are we hitting the road tomorrow?” I ask, shrugging out of my overcoat and tossing it over the back of my empty chair.

“Checkout is at 10. We should probably be on the road as soon as possible, though. Let’s say, 8:30?” Quentin doesn’t look up from his phone, where he busily types away—whetherreaching out to contacts or simply doing research—I don’t know. I don’t have enough bandwidth right now to care.

“Fine with me. I’m going to try to unwind and get some rest.” I kick off my shoes, flopping down on one of the queen beds in the modest motor lodge.

Caz eyes me as I pull a small plastic case sealed with a rubber gasket from my pocket.

“Hey…” he calls noncommittally from his seat at the table as I flick the plastic container open—carefully lifting a slimline pair of tweezers from the lid of the container—using their tiny pincer grip to extract a single centimeter by centimeter square of a perforated sheet of rice paper tabs embed with a super-concentrate of Caz’s own psychotropic secretions.

Delicately, I lift the tab to my outstretched tongue.

“Hey!” Caz interjects more forcefully this time—so I give him the courtesy of waiting to dose myself so that I might hear him out.

“Do you really think that’s the best idea right now? Getting fucking high as shit while we’re trying to figure out our next moves,” Caz bristles.

“Mon coeur, you and Quentin are already doing as much as can be done right now. Frank is out there somewhere—and inevitably, our plans will change once we’ve got him back in the mix.”

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