BooksBarbecue
Back The Heathens
Chapters (33)
  1. ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  33. What’s next onyour reading list?

“Jail?” he said. “Why would I go to jail?”

“Son of a bitch, kid,” Lillie said. “You sure do take the goddamn short bus on your way to Law and Order 101. You just gave shelter to a two-time murder suspect and the girl she’s accused of kidnapping. Not to mention the old-time opium den y’all got started here on the park.”

“I didn’t know that girl Chastity brought a murderer to my house,” Graham said. “How was I supposed to recognize her?”

“You follow TJ Byrd online,” Lillie said, scrolling through her phone and flashing the screen to the boy. “Or isn’t this your profile?”

“I’m so damn tired,” he said. “Can’t we do this later? God. I’m so fucking tired.”

Lillie looked about Graham’s room. The dirty bedsheets, empty beer bottles and bongs, pizza boxes, T-shirts, and jeans tossed haplessly across the floor. Lillie spotted a grouping of framed photos up on a chest of drawers and plucked one out the dead center. A little boy with black hair and big sad eyes stood with his parents on a tropical island Lillie couldn’t visit as a kid or afford as an adult.

“This you?”

“Sure.”

“Your life doesn’t look so hard,” she said. “Where is that, Hawaii?”

“Costa Rica,” he said. “Who said my life is hard?”

Lillie set the framed photo back down and walked back to the bed. Graham’s eyes fluttered closed and she kicked at his bare feet to keep him awake. “Where are those kids headed?”

“You can’t believe anything Chastity says,” he said. “Did you know she told me she was eighteen?”

“I’m sure you were a true upstanding gentleman with her, anyway,” Lillie said. “Right?”

“She lies,” Graham said. “Like all the fucking time. I could tell you what she said. But I don’t believe it. And then you’d come back here and blame it all on me.”

“Oh,” Lillie said. “You won’t be here. You’re headed to the Orleans Parish Prison. You know that great old song? Oh, how I do love Johnny Cash. They found him down by the Ponchartrain and cuffed his ass with a big iron chain.”

Graham lifted his dark eyes to Lillie and shut them for a long moment, exhaling from his nose and swallowing. “Will you let me go if I tell you what Chastity said?”

“Nope.”

“Will you let me go if you find them?”

“Nope.”

“Then why would I want to help?” Graham said.