Page 23 of Penny for Your Saints

Per usual, Michael handily dismisses my lascivious details in favor of cutting directly to the heart of the matter. “And what happens if you can’t get her to spill the beans even after upping the ante in interrogation?” He fixes his gray eyes on me, his square jaw set with a grim determination.

With a heartsick pang, I remember placing kisses along that jaw—my teeth catching that full bottom lip of his, but no.

Those days are gone.

I squeeze my eyes shut—willing away the loud ringing in my ears, the way my stomach lifts into my throat as I push away thoughts and feelings I’m still not ready to touch…

“She’ll spill,” I finally manage to grit out, finishing the last of my rye—sliding my crinkled ten dollar bill across the pitted wooden bar. “Once Q lays shit out for her and I bring it all home—she’ll be like putty in our hands.”

Michael lets go a gallows laugh.

“Sure, it’ll be easy—just like the snatch and grab. Smooth as butter.” He shakes his head, adjusting his deep burgundy silk tie. “By the way, how is old Tin-tin’s knee doing? Better?” Michael raises his brows, pressing his lips to the rim of his tumbler coyly.

“He’s a machine, same as ever. Even with a field injury—he has been able to keep up with our guest.” I button my jacket—turning my collar up in preparation to go back out into the raw cold and damp. I don’t say anything about Louise’s near escape, I don’t need to hear Michael’s lip about it.

“Well, best of luck to you then, Frankie.” He knocks back some of his drink before raising his glass to me. “If anyone can loosen those lips.” He winks at me devilishly. “It would be you.”

By the time I’ve returned from my side quest to the bar, the rest of the boys have settled in for the front end of the interrogation. Caz and Sébastien sit at the shitty pressure board desk, adjusting camera and microphone levels as Louise sits in one of the metal folding chairs, picking at a corner of the folding TV dinner table with one of her chipped fingernails.

Polished, scrubbed, and slightly pink from his shower and subsequent beautification rituals, Quentin slips in sylphlike—his beauty somehow untouched by the shitty webcam quality.

I watch Quentin begin his good cop routine from the grainy 360p playback on Caz’s laptop monitor; his cherry brown hair still damp from the shower and swept back from his classically beautiful face, his bare chest as if chiseled from white marble beneath the loosely closed front panels of his celadon silk robe.

He looks preposterous, like some kind of water lily floating in the sewers as he drapes his long, elegant form over the rickety metal folding chair like a delicate designer chiffon frock suspended from a rusty wire hanger.

Still, the way her eyes greedily drink in the sight of him is undeniable. That intense focus, that palpable tension—as if she could focus on a stretch of flawless skin, of sculpted muscle, and feel without touching, taste without pressing her lips or tongue to the spot.

“So, you really have no idea why we’ve taken you?” Quentin asks softly, his beautiful vowels extending into the quiet space as he reaches into the pocket of his robe, producing a flat, round silver flask and a pack of Dunhill cigarettes onto the middle of the TV dinner table.

Louise shakes her head ‘no’ in silence before dramatically demonstrating her inability to reach even the far edge of the small wooden table, the clattering of the chains threaded through her handcuffs and looped around her chest and ankles jangling loudly as soon as she reaches the end of her tether.

I watch with admiration as Quentin makes a show of looking over her shoulder at the camera, the apprehensive slump of his shoulders as he gets up from his seat and pretends to tamper with the camera—placing what appears to be opaque over the lens.

“If you can promise to behave, I’ll take off some of the chains so that you can at least have a drink and a smoke like a civilized person. I would have brought you coffee, but I don’t want to end up likepauvre Sébastien,” he tuts like a doting mother.

Louise looks cautiously at the camera, which hasn’t actually been blocked, only mildly filtered by a mirrored lens cover. Evidently, the ruse is enough to merit her playing along at least—because she lifts her chin and offers her arms to Quentin before adding imperiously. “In this shithole, I’ll take what I can get.”

She watches him intently as Q rises from his seat, graceful as a dancer—and drifts over to her like a flower petal floats gently down a stream.

“If you were more cooperative in general, I could maybe see about Frank letting us take these cuffs off,” Quentin coos sweetly, his long willowy fingers lingering over the raw bands of flesh at her wrists with surprising tenderness.

“Probably not,” Louise sighs wearily as Quentin steps around the back of her seat—carefully undoing the chains that bind her to the chair while leaving her wrists bound. “And if you did—I’d probably have to kill each one of you with my bare hands if you stood between me and the exit.”

Quentin only laughs indulgently at this, which only seems to stoke the fires of Louise’s rage.

“I bet you would try,” he smirks as he begins to unscrew the flask, towering over Louise as he wafts the open vessel beneath his perfect little upturned celestial nose.

Louise shifts uncomfortably as Quentin lets loose a little moan of pleasure.

“It’s only a 12 year Aberlour, but in this shithole it might as well be liquid gold.” He extends the flask to her, but Louise only looks at him with apprehension.

“Worried I’m trying to drug or poison you?” He raises a brow before taking a swig to allay her fears before offering the flask to her again.

“If it’s iocane powder or some shit, I guess I’m fucked,” Louise sighs, taking the flat circle of stainless steel in her cuffed hands and knocking a good bit back in a single slug.

This reference pulls a laugh out of Quentin—a real one; something I haven’t heard in a long time. I am simultaneously impressed by how quickly the two seem to have established a baseline rapport—and jealous that Louise Penny has managed to do what I could not for the past several weeks.

“I’ve built up plenty of resistance to different toxins, but I’ve never actually been able to go full-Westley on someone with real poison.” He grins, taking the flask back from her—opening thepack of Dunhills so that she might pull one of the skinny white cylinders of expensive tobacco from its confines and place it between her full, chapped lips.

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