Page 37 of Roma Queen
By the time we reach the parking lot forty minutes later, I've managed to convince myself that this is all just part of a fairy-tale, and I'm outside of myself, outside of my real life. The sight of the road cutting through the national park brings me back to reality with a thump.
Soon, Pasha’s killing the Ski-Doo's engine and tossing me the keys to the Mustang. I'm frozen down to my bones as Pasha unhooks a sliding ramp from the back of a flatbed truck and makes quick work of gunning the Ski-Doo up onto the back of the vehicle, fastening the sled down with straps and securing it tightly. When he jumps down from the back of the truck, Pasha gathers up a handful of snow, compressing it into a ball and tosses it at me. Lucky for him, he misses.
“Get in the car. Turn the heater on. You're going blue,” he says. I wait for him out of solidarity. Frankly, I don't have to wait long. Five minutes and he's done. He quickly rubs his hands up and down the tops of my arms as he pushes me toward the Mustang, and I allow myself a moment to enjoy the small show of affection. It's so normal, a guy trying to make sure that his girl is kept warm.
In this brief, short moment, we really could be anybody, some couple driven stir crazy from being cooped up inside by the weather, braving the cold to stretch their legs. I reach the car first and insist on opening my door myself. Then I toss the keys to Pasha on the other side of the vehicle.
An hour later, and we're halfway back to Spokane when Pasha realizes that the Mustang is running on fumes. We haven't eaten breakfast, didn't want to wake Shireen and the kids up to bother them for coffee either, and my stomach is snarling quite ferociously. Patting myself down, making sure I have my wallet on me when Pasha pulls into the first gas station we come across, I climb out of the car, too, and I head inside to pick up supplies.
Inside the gas station, a news report is playing over tinny speakers. Behind the counter, a tall, reedy looking man with a hooked nose watches me suspiciously as I walk down the aisles searching for something that looks vaguely half edible.
“Patients of Saint Peter’s of Mercy Hospital ran in fear from the armed assailants, as the fire fight took to the building’s stairwells. At least one police officer was killed at the scene, while a number of others were injured.”
In the end I settle for a bag of chips, two coffees, two croissants from a warmer by the coffee machine, and at the last minute, when I head to the counter, I grab a couple of apples from the bowl next to the lottery tickets.
“In a rare public statement from the DEA, Agent Lowell addressed the people of Seattle this afternoon, appealing them to come forward if they have any information that might assist in the apprehension of the two gunmen. ‘These people aren’t just criminals. They’re a threat to our way of life. If we can’t even work to ensure that our hospitals are safe, then it won’t be long before the streets of Washington descend into outright warfare. Right now, we believe the woman the two gunmen took from the hospital is a doctor, and could be in danger. If anyone sees Sloane Romera, please call—”
“Breakfast of champions, right?”
I look up from the stack of food I’ve just set down on the counter to find the hooked-nose guy leering at me.
Gross. He looks shifty as fuck.
I reach into my pocket for my wallet, looking down at the newspaper stand, half-interested in finding out more about the hospital shooting on the radio, and I almost gasp out loud when I see the front cover of the paper sitting on a rack to my right. Not just one newspaper, but four newspapers, different publications, all local to the Spokane area, and then a national paper on the end too, all of which bear the same photo of the same little boy. A little boy I know very well indeed.
‘Five-year-old Boy's Mutilated Body Found On The Banks of the Spokane River.
‘Russian Mob Boss's Second Child Found Murdered. Child Killer Still At Large.’
‘Little Boy’s Mutilated Body Found and Identified Late Last Night. Police Calling The Murder ‘ An Act of True Evil.’
My eyes skip over the big block letters on each of the newspapers, but I can't seem to really take the information in. Lazlo admitted he'd done it. He confessed that he'd killed Corey. But this…seeing it in black and white print, plastered all over the front of the news has just made it painfully real for me.
I've been pushing myself forward, only thinking about Sarah, only doing what’s necessary to make sure she’s returned to us safely. What I have not done is given myself permission to really think about what happened to Corey Petrov. He was found on the banks of the Spokane River. Does that mean he drowned? Did Lazlo hold the little boy under the water, struggling, fighting for his life until he just stopped moving? Or was Corey already dead before he even went into the water? The headline says his body was mutilated...
My hands are shaking like crazy as I try and pull a twenty dollar bill out of my purse. I can't seem to steady them long enough to pay the cashier. “Parents of these kids ought to be more careful,” the man says, nodding toward the papers. “Everyone keeps going on about how no one had to lock their doors back in the day. Kids used to be able to play out on the street until it went dark, and nothing bad never happened to nobody. Times have changed though, haven't they? People don't think twice before they steal or break something. Seems there are far more psychos out there now, killing kids and raping women, than there ever used to be. People should know better than to let their kids out of their sight for even a second. You ask me, it serves ’em right for being so careless.”
Would the guy be so brazen if he knew the man he was accusing of carelessness was Yuri Petrov? Who knows. Would he change his tune if he knew the little boy had been taken from inside a locked house? Corey hadn't been left on his own, abandoned by his parents, as I'd first suspected when I received his 911 call. He'd been left at home in the care of his brother. It wasn't as if he'd been out wandering the streets alone after dark.
My head starts to spin, and I suddenly realize that I haven't taken a breath in the last thirty seconds. I snatch the twenty dollar bill out of my purse, thrusting the money at the teller, and I gather the food and coffees, hurrying for the door. “Hey, don't you want your change?” the cashier calls after me. I don't answer him. I don't even look back.
Across the forecourt, Pasha sees the look on my face and heads me off, reaching me halfway between the store and the Mustang, his expression darkening by the second. “What is it? What's wrong?”
I shake my head, handing him a coffee. “Nothing. God, nothing. It's fine,” I say, shaking my head. “It's just…we have to find Sarah.”
Pasha doesn’t push. He gives me a minute to compose myself, sitting silently in the car as he drives, while I stare down at my hands, trying not to think about the fact that, right at this moment, Corey’s body is laying on a cold metal slab in a mortuary somewhere on the south side of the city. Eventually, I explain the newspaper headlines to Pasha, and he curses through his teeth, his face a mask of fury.
He doesn't take me home. Instead he skirts the city, taking a series of switchback roads up into the mountains that overlook the sprawling expanse of ciy streets below. We drive through forest, tall, snow-capped trees looming on either side of the road, until the tarmac ends abruptly around a sharp corner in front of a modest looking white single-story building with a two-car garage to the right-hand side.
There's nothing particularly remarkable about the building. It's the view beyond it that's astonishing. Perched on the edge of a cliff face, the house looks out over the entire city. Three hundred feet below us and a good ten miles away, two hundred thousand people are going about their daily lives, completely oblivious to the fact that they are being observed from this high, secluded vantage point. It all feels so unreachable from here. Untouchable. Really, it’s magnificent.
When he notices the look on my face, Pasha tries to hide the fact that he's pleased. He fails epically. “It’s even better inside,” he tells me. “The view from the balcony is insane.”
I'm honestly a little taken aback when Pasha slides a key into the Yale lock on the front door and opens it unceremoniously. There's no security keypad, no secret panel in the wall that pops out and scans his hand. I just assumed Pasha would be super security conscious, and the fact that he's relying on a simple Yale lock that evenIcould pick to keep his property safe is surprising to me.
Then again, this is Pasha. The guy is fucking massive, and he knows how to fight. I haven't forgotten about the cage matches. The bruises on his ribcage that were so stark and vivid and purple when he first removed his shirt back in my apartment have faded a little, but they're still very visible. Pasha probably hasn't gone crazy with home security because he isn't afraid of a fight. He'd probably welcome the prospect of someone breaking into his property just so he could teach them a lesson. I almost chuckle to myself as I picture it in my mind. Woe betide any man stupid enough to try and rob Pasha Rivin.
I sigh with relief as we step inside and a blast of warm air hits me in the face. Pasha's fingers graze the back of my neck as he relieves me of his coat, and I shiver at his touch. I've been waiting for my body to settle into this. I've assumed that the more time I spend with Pasha, the less I'll react. Seems as though I'm shit out of luck, though. Every minute I spend with him seems to lead me deeper down a rabbit hole. Every time his skin makes contact, every time his lips meet my lips, every time our eyes meet, for Christ's sake, I find myself becoming more and more paralyzed by him.
