Page 94 of The Saint

“Talk to me. What do you got?”

Shaw’s voice came through the tiny speaker in my ear. “The police have known about it since early morning, but they haven’t done much yet. A few patrols have been driving through the park, and they’ve questioned Penny and a couple people in their building. But at this point, they’re at a standstill.”

My eyes scanned the area in front of me, the crowd gathering around. “The park alone is eight hundred forty acres. A couple patrols aren’t going to do much.”

“I know.” Over the speaker, I could hear her fingers clacking on the keyboard. “That’s why I pulled in some friends of mine to help us out. We’ve got a helicopter ready to sweep the park with thermo imaging. They’ll be able to search faster from the air than we’ll be able to from the ground.”

The sky overhead was thick with heavy gray clouds, and every few minutes, tiny flakes of snow would fall to the ground.

“What do you want us to do right now?”

“Hold tight. The troops are still gathering. Once we get word from the team, we’ll have an idea of where they want us to start.”

The speaker went silent, and I let out a sigh. A few yards away, Lev was standing with Tyrone and the guys, talking with them like he was their best friend and not nearly a decade older. I walked that way and Tyrone looked over, his eyebrow raised as he tipped his chin up.

I dug my hands into my pockets, and I jerked my head to the side. We took a few steps away, out of earshot of the other guys.

“I wanted to ask,” I said, dragging my eyes from the ground to meet his. “These people… Mrs. T and Tyler and Penny… Who are they to Rolly?”

Tyrone looked me over, his right cheek lifting, pulling his lips into something between a smile and a smirk. “You don’t know?”

“Wouldn’t be asking if I did.”

He nodded, then toed at a clump of grass. “Rolly met Mrs. T years ago here at the park. And you know how he is. They were fast friends and started hanging out.”

“Penny?”

Tyrone shook his head. “Mostly Mrs. T at first, but yeah, eventually he was hanging around them enough that he and Penny became friends.”

“They ever more than that?”

He gave me a knowing look, and I tore my gaze away from his. “If he was, do you really expect him to tell anyone?” He shifted his weight foot to foot. “I mean, we didn’t know about you until you showed up at the park that day.”

“We weren’t even together then,” I muttered under my breath.

“Could have fooled me.” Tyrone chuckled. “We all thought he’d been hiding you away for years. When he up and disappeared on us, we understood. But then he started hanging out with us again…”

I gripped the back of my neck and I looked away. “I got a job.”

“Yeah?” He gestured to the gathering crowd. “These your coworkers?”

My face pinched. That was enough of a response.

“I thought that might be the case. It’s quite the turnout you got here. Especially for a woman you know nothing about.”

“I’m doing it for Rolly.”

“He’ll like that.”

I hope so.

I glanced out at the crowd. Jet and his crew were here, along with Zeno, Arik, Lorenzo, and Adalberto Vinci. They’d brought their own people too. Some faces I recognized, like Tito and Vince Fusco, but there were many others I didn’t. My brothers were here, as were some of the Medinas. Queenie and Mateo were huddled together, and I wondered if they were talking with Shaw like they so often did.

Dieter and Abe hung off to one side with Terzo Marchegiano, and it almost felt like we were back in Kansas, the five of us standing around in the cold, waiting for something to happen.

In the distance, the rev of motorcycle engines sounded, loud enough to carry from a ways away. I wasn’t the only one in the crowd to look up, though I glanced toward Jet, while everyone else looked toward Hector Alvarez and his crew.

It wasn’t long ago, Jet’s right-hand man, Angelo Santini, had been run off the road by Alvarez’s men. Santini wore his arm in a sling since the accident, and though it wasn’t as pronounced as it was a few weeks ago, he still had a noticeable limp.