ROMA KING: Book 1 in the Roma Royals Duet

by Hart, Callie

  “Great. Well, thanks for that. I was hoping I’d at least get a little support from you, Sarah.”

  “Honey, I’ll support the shit out of you, no matter what. But I’m just saying. It doesn’t sound like much of a clue to me,” she stresses.

  “Then what does it sound like?”

  She finishes clipping a small square of paper out of a grocery store pamphlet, holding it at arm’s length and squinting at it. “Here, what does this say?” she asks, holding it out to me. I take the coupon from her.

  “Fifty cents off Tide washing powder.” I hand it back at her. “Come on, Sarah. Tell me, what does it sound like to you? I’m so turned around and worried right now, I don’t know what to make of any of this.”

  “All right, all right. Jesus. Where’s your patience this morning?” she grumbles. “If you ask me, I’d say those words weren’t a clue at all. Seems to me that they were an invitation. And whoever it was you spoke to out there on that payphone in the early hours of this morning wants you to go there.”

  “Rochester Park? The end of the line?” A thrill of panic shoots its way up my spine. I can’t go to Rochester Park. No way, no how. And Detective Holmes was right—the subway that once upon a time serviced the eastern side of the city was decommissioned years ago. I only know it used to exist because Andrew complains about it on a weekly basis, how inconvenient it is that he has to catch a train into town and then change twice in order to travel a mere five miles. Quicker to walk now, he always says, when it only used to take twenty minutes on the old line, back in the day.

  Sarah sniffs at the fifty cents off Tide washing powder coupon, flipping it over, as if she’s looking to see if there’s a better deal on the back. “I don’t use Tide,” she says. “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I guess. Sometimes.”

  “Here, then. You take this. I don’t need it.”

  I want to screw the damn thing up and toss it over my shoulder, but Sarah takes her couponing seriously. She won’t appreciate my show of frustration. I take the coupon again and stuff it into the pocket of my pajama pants, thanking her.

  “If I were you, I’d go down there to Rochester Park, and I’d have a quick snoop around. You have the next three days off, and it doesn’t sound like that cop’s gonna do much about it, hmm? What harm could it do?”

  There’s plenty of harm to be done if I go snooping around Rochester Park. The area’s huge for starters, and people are always getting attacked there, not to mention the fact that a potential child kidnapper told me to go there. Anything could happen if I casually skip down there on my own. I won’t know who I’m looking for. I won’t know who or what to be wary of.

  Rubbing my hands over my face, I suck a breath in through my fingers. “I’m not that stupid. Getting murdered and buried in a basement in Rochester isn’t my idea of a fun way to spend my downtime.”

  Sarah puts down her scissors and flicks the screw cap on her bottle of chardonnay, tipping more wine into her glass. “I’ll go with you,” she says. “Naturally. And we’ll ask Garrett to come, too.”

  Of our three other friends who live at the Bakers,’ Waylon should have been the obvious choice when selecting a bodyguard. He has military experience, and actually loves this kind of thing. He’d probably jump at the chance to escort Sarah and I to Rochester Park. Trouble is, Waylon would love the opportunity a little too much. There’s too much fire in his veins. He’s always itching for a fight, is constantly looking for trouble, and you can tell by the way he holds his shoulders, his back rigid and straight, muscles tensed, that he’s always primed and on high alert. If we do go to Rochester Park, which we most certainly are not going to do, then taking Waylon will almost guarantee we’ll run into problems.

  I let my head roll back, my neck loose—the ceiling in Sarah’s apartment is stained with cigarette smoke, though I’ve never seen the woman with a cigarette in her hand. “It’s a bad idea. We should leave this to the cops.”

  “Okay, sunshine. Whatever you want. But you seem mighty concerned about that little boy. And if this detective isn’t going to do his job, then…” She shrugs. “Lord only knows what will happen.”

  Urgh. Her tone’s airy, but the implication behind her words is weighty. If I don’t go, if Detective Holmes doesn’t go, then Corey is being abandoned. In all good conscience, can I do that to a five-year-old in need? I can’t, and Sarah knows it.

  “The Petrovs are probably tearing the city apart, looking for Corey.” It’s a weak attempt at trying to reason my way out of this. Yes, the Petrovs are definitely out there, looking for the boy, but does that mean I don’t have a responsibility to try, too? I’m smarter than this. The police department has experience, training, and the authority to conduct a search for a missing person. The Russian mafia has the guns, the muscle, and the righteous need for vengeance. What do I have, besides a seriously guilty fucking conscience?

  I have a nail technician from Poughkeepsie, and a bus driver who hasn’t spoken a single word to me since the day I met him. It’d be rude to say that I had nothing, but I’m seriously ill-equipped to start up a private investigation. Still, Sarah’s aware of my bleeding heart. The pay phone might have stopped ringing now, but she knows I won’t get a wink of sleep until I’ve done everything in my power to make sure Corey is safe. Heading down to Rochester Park is in my power.

  “Fine. Fair enough. We’ll go,” I groan. “But you have to ask Garrett. And we’re taking your car.”

  8

  ZARA

  ROCHESTER PARK

  Rochester Park during the day is a hub for old Persian tea houses, Irish bars, and cheap hotels. At night, it’s the place you go when you’re looking to score a fix, the place you go if you’re trying to hawk stolen goods. It’s the kind of place married men still dressed in their mid-priced office attire visit, half drunk, looking for someone to suck their dicks.

  Garrett parks Sarah’s Volvo in the parking lot of a brightly lit convenience store, making unhappy, guttural sounds at the back of his throat, while Sarah hums Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ under her breath. She stops humming when we get out of the car. The night air is brisk and carries on it a complex combination of grilled street food and urine as the wind tugs at our jackets. “We should ask around. See if anyone’s seen the boy,” she announces.

  Garrett’s dark eyes, quick and suspicious, flash as he takes in the three men leaning against the wall of the convenience store. He obviously doesn’t like being here; clicking the Volvo’s key fob, he makes the car alarm beep twice before he checks the driver’s door to ensure that it’s locked.

  Sarah tucks her arm through mine. “You have the picture?”

  It wasn’t difficult to find a photo of Corey Petrov. The internet makes everything too easy these days. All I had to do was find Jamie Petrov’s Facebook account—he’d been a daily poster. Obviously hadn’t posted anything over the past week, him being dead and all, but that didn’t matter. There were a number of family shots on his wall, some containing his well-dressed, strangely respectable looking parents. More than half of the photos featured his little brother. Shots of Jamie and Corey in the pool. Shots of Jamie and Corey sitting side by side on a leather sofa. Shots of the brothers wearing Yankees hats, Corey proudly holding up a signed baseball. The two boys were clearly close, despite the considerable age gap between then.

  Corey is dark-haired and dark-eyed, a gangly little boy with a missing front tooth. Cute and full of beaming smiles. My throat had started to ache the moment I’d laid eyes on him, and it hasn’t stopped since. Having the little boy’s voice rattling around inside my head was hard enough, but now, having put a face to that voice, the worry I feel in the yawning pit of my stomach has increased a million-fold.

  I take the print-out of his photo—a shot of Corey standing at the foot of a Christmas tree, holding a gift packaged in Star Wars wrapping paper—and flash it at Sarah. “Right here. I doubt we’re going to get anywhere, though. The Petrov’s must have done
this already.”

  Sarah takes the picture from me and sets off down the busy street, pulling me along with her. Garrett follows closer than a wary shadow on our heels. “If they have, then they have. Doesn’t matter. It’s worth a shot, right?”

  We spend an hour trawling the streets of Rochester Park, asking business owners and men standing outside bars, smoking cigarettes if they’ve seen Corey, but we’re met with blank stares. When we aren’t met with blank stares, we’re spat at and told in no uncertain terms to go fuck ourselves. Twice Garrett squares up to guys, looming over them, the threat silent but very, very obvious, and twice Sarah and I have to grab him by either arm and drag him away.

  At eleven, we enter Gilbert’s All-Night Diner, our bodies stiff from the cold, and order ourselves three coffees. The seats are sticky, the walls shining with a patina of grease, and the waitress is surly, but at least the place is warm, and the coffee isn’t terrible.

  I rap my fingernails against the salt shaker, groaning. “This is pointless. We’re wasting our time.”

  “At least we’re trying.” Sarah grabs hold of my hand, staring at my fingernails. “Christ, girl. Have you been chewing these? You really need to let me give you a manicure.” She’s been trying to do my nails for years.

  “No, I don’t bite my nails. If we could focus on the task at hand…”

  “How am I supposed to focus when you have the hands of a manual laborer?”

  “They’re not that bad.” I check anyway, just to be sure. Sarah’s probably just disgusted that I’m not sporting inch-long zebra print talons like she is. Garrett sips his coffee, watching us in that way of his, taking everything in as if we’re characters on a soap opera or something. I’ve wondered a thousand times before why Garrett never speaks. His silence is just an accepted part of everyday life at the Bakers’. No one ever mentions it. The one time I asked Sarah about it, she simply replied, “He’s just thinking about things. He’ll speak when he has something to say,” and that was that.

  I pick up the photo of Corey and hold it up, studying the boy. Wherever he is now, he probably isn’t smiling like he is in the picture. He’s probably alone, and scared, and frightened. I hope he’s still all of those things, because the alternative, if he isn’t alone, scared and frightened, is that he’s dead, and I can’t…I just can’t…

  The waitress comes over and refills our coffee. Her mood hasn’t improved much—she has the look of a woman who’s been working since dawn and started to need her bed five hours ago—but her frown eases when she sees the photo of Corey. “That your boy?” she asks, placing a hand on her hip and craning her head to one side in order to get a better look. “He ain’t a speck like you. Bet you’re glad he didn’t get all that red hair.”

  Well, fuck, lady. I open my mouth, pivoting in my seat. “No, he’s not mine. But for the record, I like having red hair.”

  The waitress pouts like she doesn’t give a shit what I like. “Kids are mean, s’all I’m saying. Weren’t you picked on in school because of it?”

  “Of course. But if I hadn’t had red hair, it would have been something else. I wore glasses. I had braces. I was terrible at sport. They would have just chosen something else to give me a hard time about.”

  “Fuck. You were one unlucky child.”

  I’m lining up a string of insults, ready to hurl them at her, when Sarah jumps in and defuses the building tension. “He’s not her son, but we’re looking for him. He’s missing. Have you seen him?” she asks.

  The waitress, Lea, according to her name tag, sniffs as she leans in closer, squinting at the photo. “Nope. I ain’t seen him. When did he go missing?”

  “Six days ago.” Sarah picks up the photo and slips it into her purse. “We have reason to think he might be around here somewhere in Rochester Park.”

  “Why?” She’s blunt as you like. No frills with this one.

  Sarah answers, “Anonymous tip.”

  Meanwhile, at the same time, I answer, “None of your business.”

  I shoot Sarah a dark look, which she patently ignores. “We were given the name Rochester Park. So here we are, knocking on doors.”

  “Hmm. I’d be careful if I were you. People don’t take too well to folks sticking their noses into others’ business. You’re better off hiring one of the local boys to ask your questions for you. They won’t trust a face they don’t recognize.”

  Hiring a local to ask around? That’s actually good advice, not that I’ll be thanking Lea any time soon. I drink deep from my coffee cup, waiting for the woman to leave, but she doesn’t. The intrigue of a missing little boy must have piqued her interest, because she rests a hand against the back of the cushioned booth and shifts her weight, making herself comfortable.

  “Why’d they take him, anyway?”

  “We don’t know. They just did,” I tell her.

  “Must have been a reason. Are the parents rich?”

  Sarah laughs. “Most definitely.”

  “There’s one motive, then. Ransom.”

  “They would have asked for money by now. And if the guy who took Corey did his research well enough to know his mom and dad were loaded, they would have known not to fuck with this particular family,” Sarah continues.

  “Sarah.” She’s approaching dangerous territory. No one’s supposed to know the Petrov’s youngest son has been kidnapped. There still hasn’t been anything in the news, which means the family and the cops are keeping their cards close to their chest on this one. If the news does get out before it’s meant to, Detective Holmes will no doubt blame me. Sarah huffs down her nose. “Do you know of any bars around here, maybe a restaurant or a halfway house that goes by the name of The End of the Line?” We’ve already googled to see if we could find any businesses going by that name in the area, but we found nothing.

  Lea tucks a pen behind her ear, shaking her head. “Nope. I don’t. Sorry.”

  “Thanks for your help anyway, then.” Sarah gives her a tight smile that clearly says, ‘You’re of no further use to us. Please go the fuck away now.’ Lea doesn’t seem to be getting the memo, though.

  “If you’re looking for something called The End of the Line, maybe you should check the disused subway tunnels. That’s how a lot of people refer to them around here—the end of the line.”

  I set my coffee cup down, turning my full attention to the woman. “I’m sorry? Disused tunnels? We checked on the old train line that used to run through here. It was an over-ground line. They built a parking lot where the station used to be back in ninety-nine.”

  Lea snorts, her eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. “Sweetheart, I’m talking about the original train line. The one they built in the forties. They started here in Rochester, were gonna run the thing all the way into the city and then onto Seattle, to connect with the subway there, but they ran out of money after a few months. The project was never completed. They just stuck a gate over the entrance, slapped a padlock on it, and that was that. It’s been abandoned ever since.”

  My heart has all but stopped. Excitement flickers in Sarah’s eyes, while concern wars with determination in Garrett’s. I swallow, trying to make sure my voice doesn’t shake when I say, “If it’s gated and padlocked, then how do we get down there?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I’ve never been dumb enough to go down there myself. Place must be infested with rats and god knows what else. And they call it the end of the line for a reason. That line never went anywhere, honey. And when people do go down there, a lot of ’em don’t come back up.”

  9

  ZARA

  TROUBLESHOOTING

  It doesn’t take long to find the old subway system. The corner of Cross and De Longpre is dark, seedy and smells like cat piss. There’s no sign over the grate that covers the dark, yawning hole in the ground. Nothing to inform people who might be looking for it that this was once the entry way into a subway station. The city council probably didn’t want to advertise the fact that there’s an abandone
d network of tunnels down there, just begging for a crowd of drug addicts and homeless people to set up camp. Garrett spies it from a block away, though, his dark eyes flashing as he points at the iron grate. To a passerby, busy, going about their daily lives, it looks like nothing more than that: a wide grate in the sidewalk. It’s unlikely anyone has ever considered what the grate might be covering, just so long as it prevents anyone from falling down the hole and hurting themselves.

  “There is a padlock on it,” Sarah sighs as we reach the barricaded entrance. “I figured there’d be some way in, after that waitress said people went down there all the time. And I didn’t bring my bolt cutters.”

  I spin on her. “You own bolt cutters?” Weird. Very weird. I can’t imagine Sarah wielding bolt cutters. There’s nearly a one hundred per cent chance of her breaking a nail if she picked up such a tool, let alone tried to use it, and Sarah freaks when she even knocks one of her precious nails.

  “Yes, Zara. I own all kinds of things you don’t know about. A moving dolly. A car jack. A tire iron. A band saw. I know how to use all of them.”

  Nope. Can’t picture it. I’m just going to have to take her word for it. Sighing, I scuff the toe of my shoe against the grate. “I’ll call Detective Holmes one more time when we get back. I can at least tell him what we’ve figured out. He can probably get authorization to come down here with a team of cops, so they can investigate properly.”

  “Nonsense. We just have to find another way in,” Sarah says. Garrett, who I’ve been expecting to drag us both back to the car at the first sign of trouble or failure, whichever comes first, actually straightens up and nods his head. The damned traitor. Sarah smiles up at him approvingly. “We could go and buy something to cut through that chain,” she says.

  I shake my head. “Rochester Park’s a ghetto. There aren’t even any gas stations, let alone home hardware places.”