You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can. (Jimmy Carter)

Penny froze. Her skin tingled all over and she was speechless. She may have said she was speechless before but she had never actually been incapable of making words.

“Tommy,” she choked. “We have a problem.”

“Is it the baby?”

Penny shook her head. Tommy didn’t believe her but she didn’t waste time trying to explain. She let him come to terms with it while she formulated a plan.

Penny ordered Tommy off the highway and into a middle-of-nowhere town where she found a payphone and called Rider. Vincent answered Rider’s phone and Penny made sweet small talk with him and assured him everything was fine. She asked if she could speak with Rider, she was sure she had left her book there and she wanted Rider to mail it to her in Philadelphia.

“I don’t see it around.”

“I’m not sure where I left it. It might be in Rider’s car even or on the balcony, I was reading it out there. Actually, I had it in the bathtub last night. It’s probably in there,” she rambled.

“I’ll tell him.”

“Well it’s a really good book I want to tell him he can read it before he sends it to me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Can I? I know he’s not going to want to read it because he thinks Yeats is pretentious and even if he starts it he’ll get hung up on the subplot and stop reading partway through so I just want to tell him to focus on the– ”

“Rider,” he called, “Penny wants you.”

“Hello,” he greeted her.

“Pretend I’m trying to convince you to read a book I left there that you don’t want to read.”

“I don’t know, Penny, you have a questionable taste in literature.”

“I got the note. Thank you. Have you moved the supply yet? Say subplot for yes, motif for no.”

“What motif? That was just a child’s scribbling. He didn’t intend for that to be any kind of omen – it was an accident at best. He’s so overrated and people just read way too far into everything he writes.”

“We’re turning the tables. Send him out to meet a buyer and report it to the cops.”

“I don’t know, Penny. People say things under duress that can really be detrimental to a writer’s reputation.”

“He won’t rat you out. He won’t know it was you. Think of something to set this up in his mind so when he’s busted he’ll immediately assume it was someone else who called on him. Suspicious neighbours, a disgruntled girlfriend, pretend that you were arrested too. That’s it. Bribe the police. Tell them you want to come clean and you’ll sell out your partner in exchange for immunity. They love that stuff. They can fake arrest you too and he’ll never know they let you go. Not until it’s too late. He’s dangerous. He’s trying to sell us out. We’ve got to break him before he breaks us. We all need to stay out of jail.”

“What about you? What will you read while I have your book?”

“We’re going to bury the stash in the desert, like the absolute middle of nowhere. Then we’re going to go home drug-free and come back for it when things cool down.”

“I’m sceptical, Penny, but I guess I’ll read it. I’ll try anyway. I won’t make any promises.”

“Be careful.”

“You too.”