“ ’Cause you’re fucked five ways from Sunday, Graham,” Lillie said. “If I put in a good word, old Daddy Warbucks in Atlanta might loot the stripper fund for some hot shit rehab in California. You’ll be up to your asshole and eyeballs in naked yoga, veggie frittatas, and circle jerks before you know it. But if you don’t help and something happens to those kids, I just might hold that against you. And that wouldn’t be good.”

“Shit.”

“That’s about the tall and short of it.”

“If I help, I need my shit back,” he said. “Just one last time. Before you take me in.”

“Your drugs?” Lillie asked. “Come on, Graham. That’s between you, the locals, and Lord Jesus. Comprende?”

Graham nodded. He stared down at his feet, and then back up at Lillie. He looked like a rat squirming in a steel trap.

“I need help.”

“Sure you do.”

“I didn’t touch her,” Graham said. “I swear she wanted me to. But I didn’t touch Chastity. She’s like a little sister to me.”

“Ain’t that so Louisiana,” Lillie said. “Where is she?”

“Her father has a fishing cabin,” Graham said. “Somewhere on the Gulf. I think that’s where they were going. I don’t know. Maybe. They were talking about it.”

Lillie nodded and left Graham to fall back into his bed while she walked out to the second-story patio to look out across Audubon Park. The early morning joggers, walkers, and bikers bundled up to exercise on the bright clear morning. Lillie had left her jacket inside and her breath clouded before her as she started to make a few calls.

A few minutes later, someone below whistled and called out her name. Lillie looked down at the pedestrian street facing the house. Damn if it wasn’t Quinn Colson. All the way from Tibbehah County.

And he’d brought four coffees in a cardboard tray. God bless him.

*   *   *

They made it out of New Orleans and down to Cut Off in Lafourche Parish before they needed gas. Chastity had three hundred and forty-two dollars in her purse, explaining how she’d sold most of her daddy’s guns and kept a little money hidden from Graham.

“Why’d you keep the semiauto?” TJ asked.

“Sentimental, I guess,” Chastity said. “It was Daddy’s favorite.”