Page 83 of Penny for Your Saints

“Why? Is somebody here? Are we about to have company?”

Sébastien and Caz sit up in bed, watching Louise, bleary-eyed.

“Dennis was here,” Louise snaps, holding out a square of white fabric with carefully embroidered initials in one corner.

I blink the sleep out of my eyes and swipe my pinky around my right ear, making sure I haven't misheard.

“Dennis McBride!?” Frank snarls, suddenly on his feet and moving toward the door.

“He's gone now—on his way back to shore. Our Red Bishop came to us. To warn us. There’re cross departmental plans tobegin a full scale manhunt for the Saints with Dennis leading the team.”

This seems to take Frank aback.

“How the fuck did he get here? I thought you said nobody else knew about this place!” Frank growls, getting up into Louise's face.

“I never said he didn't know where it was.” She crosses her arms over her chest defiantly, but I can see that it costs her—the expansion of his alpha aura threatening to make her crumble in on herself.

“Well, that's that then, our location is compromised. We gotta get the fuck out of here,” Frank snarls, spinning away from Louise to begin packing his own things.

“Wait, wait. I thought we'd run out of places to go?” Caz flounders nervously. “I thought that's why we're here.”

“Yeah, well, turns out this place isn't as well protected as Louise led us to believe…” Frank sniffs.

“Stop playing so high and mighty, Frank. You're the one who kidnapped me to get revenge for our lost, fated mate. Sorry that I ended up being more that you bargained for—that all of us ended up being more than you bargained for,” Louise challenges.

Frank presses his eyes closed and clamps his hands hard over his ears like he does sometimes when he's about to totally lose control.

All of us wait for an explosion, but instead his posture softens and his eyes ease open. His features, once more, placid, calculating.

“Our next move was to rendezvous with the Red Bishop, anyway. Fine, he came to us. One less stop to make. After that, our next move was always going to be to pursue the cure for the virus. So, we make our way to the scientists.”

It's obvious that there's not much more room for conversation and all of us are too exhausted and too burnt out to argue.

Silently, we collect our things. Once we've got cell signal again, it'll be my job to line up our next safe house.

I’ve already arranged for passage by boat as far as the Caribbean, as part of our plan to meet up with Dennis and make a break for it.

Even though he won’t be joining us—we’ll continue as planned. From there, we'll have to make our way across the pond to the United Kingdom: the last known location of one of the Penny's collaborators.

Time starts to lose meaning around hour thirteen of our drive from the Penny’s seaside cottage down the east coast to portage in Miami, where I have called in a favor to get us onto a contact’s yacht.

On the small vessel we will travel from the coast of Florida to a cruise line and resort owned island in the Caribbean, where another of my contacts will help us board a large commercial cruise ship, almost the size of a floating city, posing as staff.

Provided that we can make our way through the last leg of the cruise without being detected, we will be able to make contact with one of my passport guys in Jamaica and make meaningful progress toward being able to rendezvous with the Penny’s contacts in the UK.

If all goes well, we'll be on a private flight from Kingston to London in a little under two weeks.

Not optimal, but considering the circumstances, it's the best I can do.

We're stopped at a 24-hour service station. Sébastien and Caz roam the mini mart, loading up with snacks, energy drinks and cigarettes for the road while Louise sleeps fitfully in the back seat of our newly stolen Hybrid SUV. Her head lolls to one side without Frank and Sébastien to keep her propped upright.

I stand, stretching my legs at the back of the car as Frank pumps gas—a twenty-something attendant watching Frank nervously through the storefront window—an unlit cigarette dangling from Frank's lips.

Out of nowhere, Frank speaks.

“Q, It's got to be you who convinces her.”

I search his face, entirely lost.

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