Page 58 of Roma Queen
He's blue from the cold. His head is leaning against the pillar, his eyes closed. It takes me a second to realize that he's sleeping. Lord only knows how he’s managed to pass out with the earsplitting noise of all of the equipment surrounding him. His fingernails are filthy, and his small hands are covered in blood. Both his knees are grazed, and a large gash runs from his temple down to his right ear.
My heart stops dead in my chest. I forget about the gun in my hands. I forget about the traitorous man standing less than two feet away from me. I forget how to fucking breathe as the boy startles awake and turns to face us, and suddenly, I find myself staring into the face of the little boy who was plastered all over the newspapers.
Unbelievably…
Impossibly…
…it's Corey Petrov.
He looks up at me, and a gut-wrenching fear kindles in his eyes. I crouch down, opening my arms to him, still completely fucking stunned, but when the little boy gets to his feet, he darts intoGarrett’sarms, not mine.
“Who’s she?” he whimpers. “Is she taking me back? Don’t let her take me back!”
Garrett shakes his head, lifting the boy onto his hip. Corey buries his face into Garrett’s jacket, and I feel like a nuclear bomb just went off in my head. “No. No. Don’t let her take me back there,” Corey whimpers. He’s shaking, he’s so terrified. Garrett cradles the back of the boy’s head, making a garbled, soothing sound. He leans back so the boy can see him and shakes his head again. Hard this time.
Corey peeks over his shoulder at me, flinching when I take a step toward him. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Corey, I promise. We spoke on the phone, remember?” I say quietly. “When…when your brother was sick, and…the bad man came.”
Corey says nothing. Just stares at me, dark brown eyes full of worry and suspicion. “Do you want to come to me, Sweetheart?” I open my hands, indicating that I can hold him, if he wants me to. He clings onto Garrett, whimpering again. “No! No, he’s my friend. He hid me from the bad man. He told him I was gone.”
I look to Garrett and find the man’s eyes shining with sorrow and regret. “You did that? You hid him from Lazlo?”
Garrett nods, looking down at the boy, and I see so much pain on him. So many emotions, none of which are even close to sadistic or malicious. Everything…damn it, everything just got so much more complicated.Again.
Shitting hell.
I tuck the gun into the back of my pants, and I hold out the backpack of doom to Garrett. I had better be making the right call, here. If I’m not, I’m never going to forgive myself. “Here. Take this. There’s all kinds of shit in there. Use it if you need to defend yourself. I’ll keep the gun. Show me where Lazlo is and go. Take the boy away from here. For Christ’s sake, just take him somewhere safe.”
Twenty-Eight
PASHA
Lazlo’s been down herea long time. He knows this place like the back of his hand, but while he was ranting and raving, telling his story like the goddamn narcissist that he is, I was familiarizing myself with the place, too. Memorizing the layout. Taking measurements. Building a model of the room inside my own mind.
When the overhead lights go out, I land on my feet, already moving, flying across the room, lifting the wrench high over my head and bringing it crashing down on the computer tower that’s sitting on the desk in front of the television screens.
“NOOOO! Pasha, no!” Lazlo screams.
A gunshot rings out, deafeningly loud in the small room. The muzzle flash is too quick to see, but it burns itself into my retinas. In his anger and panic, Lazlo’s aim is wide. The bullet shatters the television screen to the right of my head, just as the whole bank of screens flickers and then goes dead.
Now, a true, absolute darkness cloaks the room.
I’m at home in the dark. I’m comfortable in it in a way that most people aren’t. My spatial awareness is second to none, too, which gives me an advantage as I run back across the room, hurrying, not to the location I last saw Lazlo, but to the spot where Sarah was sitting a few seconds ago.
“You really think that was a good plan?” Lazlo snarls.
Another gunshot goes off, the sound sending a jolt of adrenalin pulsing through my body. This time, the muzzle flash imprints a single snapshot of the room to the backs of my retinas. Lazlo’s aiming his gun at the ladder that leads back up to the tunnel, arm outstretched, as if he thinks I’d just blind him temporarily so I can make my escape. Clearly, he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does, the asshole. The flare of light is gone before he can turn and see where I am. I give myself away when I place my hands on the tops of Sarah’s arms, though. She screams through her mask, her terror getting the better of her, and I have to move quickly.
I need her out of the way. I need to make sure she doesn’t get hurt. The chair’s legs scream as I drag her to my right, using every ounce of my strength to shove my aunt, still zip-tied to the chair, up against the wall, wedging her between a filing cabinet and a large set of shelves. She whimpers as I quickly reach down and fumble, trying to see if the arms on the chair are loose at all. Loose enough for me to rip them off, one at a time, freeing her hands at least. They’re metal, though, one solid piece that runs all the way to the chair’s back and then down to the floor, forming one of the legs.
Fuck.
Something clatters to the floor ten feet away. There’s a table there, stacked high with dismantled computer parts. Lazlo must have just walked into the thing. I’m stealthy as a fox as I move back toward the television screens. There are no shadows down here. No vague outlines of shapes, or suggestions of objects. This far underground and without any light source whatsoever, there’s no ambient glow to give the surroundings any definition. My eyes are objecting to the blank void, which means Lazlo’s eyes are probably doing the same.
I use that to my advantage, creeping toward the table Lazlo just bumped into, and I reach out, feeling with my hands, patting the air…until I find something. A length of…wire? A cable of some sort. Wrapping it around my hand, I collect something else, too. A pen.
I bite down on my bottom lip as I hurl the pen away from both my own position and Sarah’s; it makes a loud clatter as it hits something, bounces off, and then lands on the floor. Lazlo takes the bait. The room lights up as the bark of the gun goes off, ringing in my ears, and I see him standing five feet away, back turned to me as he discharges the weapon into a wall like a fucking moron.
It’s easy from there.
