The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,173

mine. The waitress turns from me, and her frown dissolves instantly.

Should’ve listened to Rube. He told me to let Cass go in first. Nothing loosens lips like Cass’s face.

“Hey, darlin’,” Cass says, slipping in front of me. “We’re outside, table twelve. Can’t pass up a chance to watch that glorious sunset, now can we?”

I don’t even know what accent he’s putting on. But it doesn’t matter, because it works. He’s barely done speaking before the waitress is fumbling in her apron. “We got these paper thingies now,” she’s saying, her eyes glued on Cass as she rummages around. “They’re changing it like every day.”

“I hear you,” Cass says. He sticks his arm around his back and pushes me away with his fingertips.

I guess he can’t work his magic when I’m glaring at his conquest from behind his shoulder and willing them to get on with it. I grit my teeth, but I back off and go back outside.

Rube looks up as I thump down on the wrought iron chair. We chose a spot a little away from the rest, although this time of day, the town is pretty quiet. Everyone looks a little tired, like the drove of students they must have had in this place earlier today exhausted them.

Redwater’s only diner is a nice enough place, but I’m itching to be on the road and headed toward wherever Trinity is. And that waitress back there has my hands tied.

Rube had to hot-wire Sister Miriam’s old Ford to get us here. No idea why she left it behind—maybe she went on the bus—but it saved us because Zach’s SUV wasn’t in the garage. We’ll have to switch cars before we leave here, of course. Rube’s been eyeing an old truck parked next to the liquor store that has dust on the windscreen. If we can get it to start, then hopefully it won’t be missed before we’re far enough along to where we need to go.

Soon as I figure out where the hell that is.

“Coffee?” Rube asks.

“Yeah. Can we get something to eat?”

He frowns, and then nods. “But no lobster.”

With Zachary gone, we only have a handful of cash between the three of us. We never figured a day would come when Zach wouldn’t be there, swiping a card for whatever we needed.

How naive.

I still can’t get over what he did, even though I kinda expected something like that to happen eventually. He’s never been on board with Trinity. He’s been treating her like the enemy from day one. And we went right along, because he laid it out so logically that it only seemed right.

I guess we’ve trusted him for too long.

Cass saunters back a minute later with a piece of paper dangling from his fingertips. I snatch it from him before he even has a chance to sit down.

I snort when I see what’s written on the back. “She gave you her number?”

Cass shrugs, lounging in his chair like he was born without a spine. “Told her I wouldn’t call.”

Reuben rolls his eyes and then watches me type in the password.

It’s one of those generated ones that are supposedly so secure. But the more random a password is, the easier a hacking program can crack it. It’s passwords made out of words or phrases that are the hardest to crack. That’s why Bitcoin wallets are usually protected with a seed phrase—a string of twelve random words that are easy enough to remember, but near impossible to crack without the use of a supercomputer.

That’s why I know for a fact that the password to Gabriel’s secret archive is some kind of phrase. My program’s still trying to crack it, but I doubt it’ll happen any time this century.

Soon as my laptop connects to the diner’s wi-fi, I start looking for Trinity.

The world dissolves as I hunt through every database I can access.

Baptism.

Reuben laughed when I told him. We all laughed. Because it was so damn basic, we should have thought of it hours ago.

Trinity was baptized. Had to have been. Catholic parents and a priest as a family friend? No way around it.

And parishes keep baptism records. They have all kinds of useful shit on them like parent information, addresses, stuff like that.

I have Trinity’s date of birth from the admin file. Her parent’s first and last names too. But the rest of the file was empty. There were a few notes sent to Social Services requesting more info, but I guess their turnaround time is longer than she’s