In his first-person account, Frank describes the great responsibility he feels toward finding Cee and saving her, since he could not save his two friends, Mike and Stuff: “No more people I didn’t save. No more watching people close to me die” (103). Frank especially wants Cee to live because “deep down inside her lived my secret picture of myself—a strong good me tied to the memory of those horses and the burial of a stranger” (104). Even in his “little-boy heart,” he knew that he would protect and defend Cee until the end (104).

Narrated in third person, this chapter opens with Frank’s arrival in Atlanta, where he is gathering information about Cee’s whereabouts. Frank gets jumped by a youth gang and lands in a fight, where they steal his wallet.

The next morning at the breakfast table of the Royal Hotel, Frank is nervous about finding Cee and facing the truth about her. He thinks about Lily and about how “she had seemed relieved about his departure” and realizes that his “attachment to her was medicinal, like swallowing aspirin” (107). 

When the gypsy cab Frank has been counting on fails to arrive, he boards a crowded bus and walks to Beauregard Scott’s house.