Queens Ransom (Sofie Metropolis)

by Carrington, Tori

  When it came to revenge against a particularly annoying customer, some servers spit in their food. I chose to spill it on them.

  ‘Whatever.’ I used her favorite response in response to her. ‘Did Pete come in or not?’

  ‘Yeah. Put him back on the Kent case. He’s not happy.’

  ‘Tough. What else is going on?’

  ‘That INS agent called.’

  ‘CIS,’ I corrected. ‘Thanks. I’ll call you back in a few.’

  I hung up on her irate response and immediately dialed the CIS agent, hoping he was still available.

  Boggled the mind to think it had been three weeks since Dino was deported back to Greece without explanation . . . and that I still hadn’t been able to discover why. I was a PI, for God’s sake. Surely I could at least accomplish that, if not clear a path for him to return.

  Putting aside my personal connection to him, he was an honest, hard-working citizen. He loved this country – sometimes I feared more than I did – and owned a bakery that was fast becoming Astoria’s most popular, which was saying a lot because the borough boasted some awesome bakeries.

  And he was hot.

  And brought me chocolate tortes.

  And ate them off of me.

  I bit on my straw, reminding myself I’d determined to put the personal connection aside.

  Problem was, that connection was oh so good. Despite his recent favorite topic of conversation: all things commitment.

  It wasn’t all that long ago that I’d nearly stood in front of an altar with somebody else. The future? Held no altars at all. Hell, the word altar was no longer a part of my vocabulary.

  No matter how hot the sex.

  The CIS agent picked up on the third ring. ‘Hunter.’

  I snapped upright and tried to focus. ‘Hi, Agent Hunter. Sofie Metropolis here.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Hello, Sofie. Please, call me David.’

  I sat for a moment squinting at the air in front of me.

  Not for the first time, I wondered if I knew him from somewhere. He was maybe five years older than me and I was sure we hadn’t, but the almost . . . too friendly way he spoke to me left me thinking some kind of groundwork must have been laid. Because I certainly hadn’t been friendly. If anything, I’d been rude, looking for answers that seemed to be very hard in coming.

  Don’t get me wrong. David Hunter was good looking. No, he was hot. At around six foot three, with dark red hair and the bluest of blue eyes, he looked more Wall Street than CIS material. And he had a grin that . . .

  I blinked. Was I really inviting romantic thoughts of another man when I already had my hands full of a mess caused by two others? Never mind that just a moment ago I was revisiting the chocolate torte experience.

  ‘Thanks for getting back to me so fast,’ he said. ‘I got some information on Dino Antonopolous’ case.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, proud I didn’t say what I wanted to, which was, ‘It’s about time.’

  ‘I was hoping we could meet for lunch to discuss it.’

  I squinted harder.

  Lunch?

  Since when did CIS agents invite anyone out to lunch to discuss a case?

  ‘Sure,’ I found myself saying, and then also found myself squinting at myself.

  OK, this was getting weird.

  ‘Great. How about Stamatis at noon?’

  ‘Twelve thirty. And which one?’

  ‘The original one. Date.’

  He hung up after saying he’d see me then. I wasn’t sure I responded. Probably because my eyes had closed altogether at his choice of words.

  Had I really just scheduled a date in the middle of everything going on?

  No. I was meeting with the CIS agent who would finally tell me why Dino had been deported.

  Nothing more.

  Nothing less.

  I ordered another frappé, took my notes out and then stared through the front windows at Broadway beyond.

  Weird. Just plain weird.

  I paid for the second frappé and slowly sipped, thinking about Sara Canton in that dingy apartment, her gun-happy brother casually pointing his shotgun in my direction. I checked my notes. A late-model BMW was spotted picking up little Jolie from school . . . a car so similar to the one driven by the nanny it hadn’t been given a second glance. Until the nanny arrived late at the school after encountering not one but two flat tires to find the girl had already been taken.

  I absent-mindedly scratched the back of my neck, thinking again of that apartment and of the rental house I visited the night before. Yes, while I’m certain you can rent such high-end vehicles, I could only imagine what the cost was. And the flat tires indicated there were at least two involved. Or one very fast worker.

  Sara and her brother were two. But did they have the resources to rent a BMW?

  And if they did, where had the girl been while they were at the apartment?

  I was pretty sure she hadn’t been in there with them. Sara would never have let me if she had. And her brother would never have let me out.

  I considered the street outside again, watching as a dark Crown Vic cruised slowly by outside the cafe.

  It caught me up short.

  Nah . . . It couldn’t possibly be . . .

  I shook my head and then looked down at my notes, figuring I had a good two hours before my, um, date.

  ‘So sad about little Miss Jolie,’ the Hispanic nanny said to me a while later at Abramopoulos’ apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the towering residential buildings had a hard time keeping up with the modern-day titans who’d built and lived in them.

  I’d already inspected the underground garage and possible access points to get an idea how two of Abramopoulos’ nanny’s tires had been tampered with. The place was more secure than Kennedy airport. OK, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but not much. You needed key-card access at two points, both with three security cameras pointed at the driver and any passengers’ direction following any and all movement, along with two two-man security details, one between gates, the other inside the garage itself.

  Yes, while one flat tire could have been a coincidence – a huge one considering what happened that day – two of them? Definite wrongdoing.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I hoped to find out about the nanny and what she might or might not know. What I was really after was a good look inside Abramopoulos’ private quarters. I was more than a little surprised when I was given instant access. I figured Abramopoulos’ guys had already questioned everyone immediately involved and would have blocked my and the others’ access to them.

  Of course, I hadn’t exactly contacted anyone and asked for permission. I’d called the house directly, asked for the nanny and gotten her.

  The sixtyish Latina looked nothing like how I imagined she might. Weren’t nannies typically college-aged English exchange students with cool accents, large breasts and double-zero-sized wardrobes? The Argentinean-born Mrs Garcia looked more like a housekeeper with questionable resident status than a nanny. Then again, she could be pulling double duty. If that was the case, I hoped she was getting paid double for it. Although I doubted it.

  The apartment itself was as amazing as I expected, the penthouse spanning at least two very large floors in a building named after the owner and built to order. While there wasn’t anything ostentatious like gold leaf covering the ceiling as The Donald had (Eugene Waters talked about it often . . . along with his latest plan to get inside so he could chisel it off and sell it), everything was very expensive and very uncomfortable looking. And there wasn’t a TV on display anywhere, although I knew there was probably a button somewhere that would open a full wall to reveal ten of them.

  Give me an overstuffed couch, the remote to one workable television, takeout from my favorite souvlaki stand and a Seinfeld DVD and I was a happy camper.

  Of course, outside professionally shot and framed photos on a large fireplace mantle decorated for the holidays, there was no evidence a seven
-year-old girl lived there.

  Probably she had her own private wing.

  The difference between this place and the apartment I found Sara in earlier contrasted so profoundly my brain was almost incapable of the comparison.

  Had she lived here? Had she been the woman of the house being waited on hand and foot? Morning brunches with the girls and afternoon spa appointments, with nights out at Lincoln Center and the opera?

  I couldn’t even imagine the woman I’d seen earlier gaining access to this apartment, much less living there.

  Then again, I’d gotten in.

  While I hated to admit it, just being there cast Sara in a darker light. How did you go from this . . . to that? And what would you do to recapture even a bit of it?

  Then again, Abramopoulos himself wasn’t looking too good either. What kind of man did something like that to the mother of his child? I’m thinking it would have been less cruel to throw her from the thirty-story window.

  The nanny surprised me by leaning in closer where we were sitting together on a red-velvet sofa in the main salon and whispered, ‘I read about you in the paper a couple weeks ago. That story about those women . . . all that blood.’ She gave a visible shiver. ‘So glad you caught the monster who did all that bad stuff.’

  Hmm. So it stood to reason that’s why I had been let inside.

  ‘Have you spoken to anyone else, Mrs Garcia?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Mr Abramopoulos, he tell me not to. I mean, I talk to his people . . .’

  ‘Then why did you let me in?’

  ‘Because I had to talk to somebody about it. Little Miss Jolie . . . I love her like she’s my own little m’ija. If anything bad happened to her . . .’

  Her big dark eyes boiled over with tears. Genuine? Yeah. I found myself digging in my purse for a Kleenex. She took it and mopped at her cheeks.

  ‘I need you to tell me what happened that day. Everything, no matter how insignificant you think it is. If there was a run in your stocking, I want to hear it.’ Mrs Garcia nodded, listening intensely. ‘And I want you to tell me everyone Jolie comes into contact with on a day-to-day basis. And who she might have seen over the past month. Doctors, teachers, the neighbor with the Great Dane, security personnel . . . doesn’t matter. I want to hear about them. And I want to hear what you think about them.’

  She continued nodding for a full minute. Then her face contorted, a mixture of hope and worry. ‘You find her, yes?’

  ‘I hope to find her, yes.’

  And I did. If only because this one woman seemed to love her more than anyone else I’d encountered so far.

  And everyone should be where they were loved.

  The thought inspired an inward squint of a whole different color . . .

  Eight

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  I breezed into The Original Stamatis ten minutes after the time I had rescheduled; Mrs Garcia had taken me at my word and told me about everybody, but everybody, with whom Jolie had ever crossed paths. I’d been afraid it might take the entire afternoon, but thankfully she hadn’t so much slowed down as she had come to a complete stop.

  Just like that. No, ‘Oh, one more.’ She had outlined each individual with perceptive detail during a consistent, fast-talking roll, then closed her mouth and smiled. That was it.

  I’d managed to hold up my hand and halt her for half a minute while I called David Hunter and asked to push back our lunch an hour. Then she continued on as if she’d never been interrupted.

  All I could say was I was glad I’d set up my cell voice recorder. I can’t imagine trying to take more than the occasional note while she was talking. Probably I’d have cramped up. Probably I’d need carpel tunnel surgery.

  Now I smiled at David Hunter.

  I’d half expected him to be upset. Most men would be. And he was a CIS agent, after all. Didn’t that require that he have a sour disposition to begin with in order to heartlessly deport innocent people?

  ‘That’s OK. I just got here myself,’ he said.

  I noticed the newspaper open in front of him and the half-drained glass of water and raised a brow.

  Although I did get the impression he hadn’t ordered yet, you know, just in case I didn’t show. Which had loomed a very real possibility. I still wasn’t sure I liked the idea of this being misinterpreted as a date. Especially by me.

  As it was, I had to stop myself from kissing his cheek when he got up to greet me and invited me to sit.

  It was a Greek thing.

  But he wasn’t Greek and I didn’t know him much less date him, so it wasn’t appropriate.

  Of course, I would have preferred he not seem to register the fact that I had almost kissed him and respond to it with a sexy smile.

  ‘Have you ordered?’ I asked, scooting my chair up to the table.

  ‘No. I thought I’d wait for you.’

  ‘Better than ordering for me.’

  ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘Good. I find it irritating as hell.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  I smiled at him. He smiled back.

  How come I’d never noticed how hot he was before? OK, maybe I had. But it struck me all over again as I sat across from him. It was hard not to notice he was handsome in an All-American kind of way. Bet he played varsity football in high school. Probably the team captain. Dated the head cheerleader. Had sex with her on a blanket at the fifty-yard line at midnight under a full moon. Maybe even dated her for years after . . .

  I cleared my throat and reached for a menu.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. It’s required to come here at least once a week when you’re Greek. You?’

  ‘First time. You recommend anything?’

  I put the menu back; I already knew everything on it anyway. ‘Depends on what you want. Herbivore or carnivore?’

  ‘Oh, very definitely a carnivore.’

  I nearly choked on the water the waitress had brought me and suddenly felt hot all over at the way he looked at me as if to demonstrate dead animal flesh wasn’t the only thing he wanted to tear into.

  ‘Lamb?’

  ‘Love it.’

  ‘They, um, do great chops.’

  ‘Sold.’

  I had the sneaking suspicion that I could have told him they served dog and he would have been all over it.

  Which flattered me more than any direct compliment would have.

  We ordered and I decided it would probably be a good idea if I got a takeout carton after the food arrived. It was one thing for me to entertain the idea that this was a date. Another for it to actually appear to evolve into one.

  I only wished I had instructed Rosie to call at a certain time so my departure would be easier and less obvious.

  Why? Well, number one because I wasn’t there to play ‘getting to know you’ with a CIS agent. Two? I was attracted to him – mightily so – and I didn’t want to be . . . also mightily so.

  ‘So you’re a PI,’ he said, turning his cup over so the waitress could pour him coffee. I ordered a frappé.

  ‘So I’m a PI.’ I smiled. ‘Did I tell you that? I can’t remember.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Weren’t looking into my residency status, were you?’

  ‘No. Just looking into you.’

  I was glad for his honesty. ‘Yes, well, considering the resources available to the agency where I work, I can only imagine what you can get at the stroke of key.’

  He chuckled. ‘A lot.’

  ‘I bet. And not sure I want to know what you dug up on me.’ I crossed my legs under the table and found myself rubbing them together.

  I immediately stopped.

  OK, so I liked his laugh. And his smile. And the way he leaned forward as if wanting to get closer to me, hear every word I said.

  Then I realized why this meeting seemed so odd, out of the ordinary. It had been a good, long time since I’d been out on a date. Well, a date da
te, anyway. With someone I didn’t previously know. Yes, in that way.

  With Jake . . . well, our paths just seemed to keep crossing (it wasn’t until later I discovered it was by design), and one thing led to another (read: I determined to back him into my bedroom as soon as humanly possible), and we’d skipped straight to the sexy stuff without all the other boring date stuff.

  Then there was Dino . . .

  I stopped for a moment, slowly sipping my frappé.

  When I’d first encountered the yummy Greek baker on my parents’ sofa, I’d been told he was there to meet my younger sister, Efi, a victim of one of my mother’s many doomed-to-fail matchmaking attempts. Turned out he’d been there for me. Something else I hadn’t figured out until much later.

  What he and I had went well beyond his loving to bake and my loving the things he baked . . . and never mind the way he ate them off of me.

  I quietly cleared my throat, wondering if my cheeks burned as red as they felt.

  Of course, there hadn’t been any baking or eating recently since Dino was now back in Greece; abrupt travel plans made possible by the agency the guy across from me worked for.

  I looked across at Agent David Hunter, hoping I had managed to turn down the flame of attraction at least a hair.

  ‘And you’re a CIS agent,’ I said.

  He was watching me curiously. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d seen on my face during my mental journey to lovers past.

  He said, ‘Yep. Didn’t have to do any digging for that.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Five months.’

  I smiled. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That this job wasn’t your first choice.’

  ‘Oh? If you thought that, then you must have tagged me for something else. What might that be?’

  I ran my fingertip along the rim of my frappé then dipped it inside, scooping out a bit of the froth, and sucking on it. It didn’t occur to me how sensual the move might be interpreted until I watched David’s eyes darken as they focused on my mouth.