Kentucky Confidential

by Paula Graves

  Where had she seen him?

  It might have been on Dalrymple’s office wall, she realized a few moments later. There had been several surveillance shots tacked up on a corkboard behind Dal’s desk in his Washington office. She’d asked about the photos once, but Dal had brushed her questions aside. “They’re wins,” he’d said with grim satisfaction. She’d assumed that Dal meant they were bad actors who’d been killed or captured by the agency.

  One of the photos on the wall had looked a little bit like one of the two men Darya had been serving earlier, hadn’t it?

  But those men on Dal’s wall of wins were dead or locked up somewhere they’d never escape.

  So how could one of them be sitting at table six in The Jewel of Tablis?

  And was it a coincidence that Connor had shown up at this restaurant at the same time as the mystery man? Maybe he hadn’t come to Cincinnati looking for her at all.

  Maybe he was here looking for the mystery man.

  She exited the warmth of the restaurant, the shock of frigid air sucking the breath from her lungs. Pulling her coat more tightly around her, she started walking down the street toward the bus stop on the corner. The restaurant was close enough to her apartment to walk there most days, but she was cold, tired and feeling hunted. She could splurge on the bus fare after the evening she’d just had.

  Light from the storefronts across the street illuminated her way between the circles of light sporadically shed by streetlamps. On a Wednesday night, the crowd of pedestrians was lighter than it would be on the weekends, but there were enough people to make her feel safer as she walked to the corner. A few of them gave her curious glances, their gazes directed either at her head scarf or her swollen belly. A couple of the women flashed her sympathetic smiles. One of the people sitting on the bus stop bench rose to let her take his place.

  She took the seat gratefully and sat to wait for the bus, letting her gaze take in the people walking past. Finally, the bus appeared amid the light traffic moving toward the corner, and she reached into her purse to make sure she had exact change. As she gathered the coins in her hand, she heard a deep voice speaking Kaziri.

  “The serving girl was beautiful, no?”

  Looking up, Yasmin spotted the two VIPs from the restaurant, walking together alone. She looked away as they neared her, covering her surprise so that no one around her would notice and remember. Then, as the men passed by, the bus arrived, and the people waiting with her at the bus stop moved at once to board.

  Yasmin remained where she was until everyone else had started toward the bus. She rose, too, but turned to follow the men instead.

  She was far enough away that they weren’t likely to hear her footsteps following them. They were certainly showing no signs of stealth themselves, the older of them walking with a confident swagger, his colorful payraan tumbaan rippling in the cold breeze with each step.

  The men walked two more blocks before turning onto a cross street. The lights here were fewer and spaced farther apart. While she’d been on the main drag, she had been accompanied by a scattering of fellow pedestrians, but once she took the turn to follow the Kaziri men, she was alone, and her sense of vulnerability increased.

  In her prime, the prospect of following a couple of men down a dark side street wouldn’t have given her much pause. But in her prime, she had never been over eight months pregnant and unarmed.

  She slowed her gait, let them move a little farther ahead of her but still close enough that she wasn’t likely to lose them unless they tried to shake her tail. Her clothing was dark, and her olive skin and dark hair wouldn’t be easily visible as long as she stayed in the shadows.

  Cincinnati was still a relatively new place to her, but she’d taken care to study the street maps and familiarize herself with the area for just such a situation as this. When she’d come to town seven months ago, shortly after her previous life had all but ended, she hadn’t known she was pregnant. She had intended to be much more useful to Dal than she’d turned out to be.

  But the job was still the job, and one of the two Kaziri men she’d spotted at The Jewel of Tablis had pinged her radar, big-time. Maybe she was wrong about seeing him before. Maybe his reason for being in Cincinnati was completely innocent.

  Or maybe they were planning to bring al Adar terror attacks to the United States, hiding themselves among the poor immigrants who’d fled Kaziristan to escape unrest and persecution back home.

  Near the next cross street, the two men slowed their pace as they reached the side door of a four-story brick building. It was hard to tell much about the place until the door opened, spilling light into the darkened street and revealing a quick glimpse of the dingy redbrick facade. Then the door closed, plunging the street into darkness again.

  Yasmin peered at the darkened streetlamp overhead. Was it dark from normal wear and tear, or had someone deliberately disabled the bulb? And if so, was it to hide what was inside the building the two men had entered?

  The longer she stayed here in the open, the more danger she put herself in, she realized. She’d wandered away from the safety of foot traffic on the main thoroughfare, leaving her vulnerable. And maybe if she had only herself to worry about, it would have been a risk worth taking.

  But the gentle kicks of the baby in her womb reminded her that she wasn’t the only person in danger if she lingered here much longer.

  She reversed course, walking as briskly as a heavily pregnant woman could, keeping her eye on the bright strip of lights just two blocks ahead. Not much farther to go now.

  “You!” a deep, accented voice called out from behind her.

  She couldn’t keep herself from taking a look.

  The door at the end of the block was open, and three men stood in the doorway, staring toward her.

  She turned around and started to run.

  * * *

  THE SOUND OF a man’s voice calling out, followed by the thud of running footfalls, drew Connor’s attention as he paused in the middle of the narrow alley he’d used as a shortcut in hopes of catching up to his quarry.

  The footsteps seemed to be coming closer, spurring him into a sprint, his rubber-soled boots quiet on the uneven concrete breezeway. As he neared the opening into the street, he heard the sound of hard breathing. A woman’s breathing, he thought. The sound was harsh with fear and desperation.

  It was her. He could feel it like a shiver in his bones.

  His body reacted on pure instinct, his arms reaching out to catch her as she ran past the narrow opening of the alley. He pulled her into the dark recess, closing his arms around her as she flailed to escape.

  “It’s me,” he whispered in her ear.

  She stopped struggling, but he could feel the pounding of her heart where her slender back pressed against his chest. Underneath one arm, something in her abdomen fluttered against his wrist, then thumped solidly against his grasp, making him swallow a gasp of surprise.

  He urged her toward the other end of the alley and out of the line of sight. Around the corner of the building was a large trash receptacle. The smells from inside were ripely unpleasant, but it offered a decent hiding place until he could be certain the men who’d apparently been chasing her down the sidewalk had given up.

  She huddled close to him, as if seeking his warmth, though she was furnace-hot against his chest. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving you,” he answered.

  Chapter Three

  Her name was not Yasmin Hamani, though every piece of identification she possessed proclaimed her to be so. She was not a widowed immigrant from Kaziristan, though over the past few months she had almost convinced herself she was.

  But burrowed into the solid strength of Connor McGinnis’s arms, breathing in his familiar scent, hearing the steadying be
at of his heart beneath her ear, she allowed herself the truth.

  She was Parisa DeVille McGinnis, Risa for short. Her mother was a Kaziri woman who’d married the strapping young US marine who’d saved her from death in a terrorist attack in her war-torn homeland. Risa herself had married a marine, a smart, brave and loyal man she’d met in the mountains of Kaziristan many years later. Like her parents, they’d been on track for their own happily-ever-after.

  Until Risa McGinnis had died in a bomb attack on a commercial flight from Kaziristan to the US almost seven months ago. The plane had disappeared from radar over the Pacific and only a few pieces of debris had been found floating in the ocean near the plane’s last coordinates on the radar.

  All souls lost.

  Well, all the souls who’d actually made it aboard the plane.

  “We need to get moving.” Connor’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Lose the roosari.”

  She tugged the scarf from her head and shoved it into the pocket of her coat. She allowed herself a quick look at him, though the sight of his face, so close, so achingly familiar, left her feeling breathless and light-headed.

  “How far away do you live?” he asked quietly.

  “You can’t go there. I live alone, unprotected.” The words came out so easily, as if she truly was the woman whose life she’d lived for months now.

  “I’m your husband, Risa.”

  Something inside her chest melted and began to warm her from the inside out. “But they think I’m a widow.”

  “I hope I died a heroic death.” His dry tone should have made her laugh, but her heart ached too much.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked. “We could go there.”

  “It’s not far from here.” He draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. “Remember, you’re not Yasmin now. You’re Parisa. Sexy and smart. You take no prisoners. And you’re with me.”

  She looked at him, her heart breaking. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll worry about apologies later.” He nodded toward the trash-strewn alley stretching out in front of them. “Ready?”

  Risa nodded, ignored the ache in her back and legs, and wrapped her arm around his waist.

  Huddled together against the cold, they hurried down the darkened alley until they reached the main drag, where streetlamps lent a twilight glow to the nightlife tableau. It was past ten now, but even on a weeknight, the traffic flow, both vehicular and pedestrian, would continue past midnight.

  By the time Connor led her to a shabby-looking walk-up just a couple of blocks east of Vine Street, Risa’s back was starting to cramp. To her relief, there was just one flight of stairs to climb before he stopped and led her down the hall to a door marked 201. He unlocked the door and let her inside.

  Compared to his place, hers looked almost homey. His living room consisted of a couple of mismatched wooden chairs around a table, and a third chair sat facing the window. A laptop computer lay closed on the table next to a take-out box.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked, tossing his keys on the table.

  She eyed him warily. His calm, businesslike demeanor wasn’t what she’d expected from her husband upon learning she hadn’t actually died.

  She’d spent the past seven months letting him believe she was dead. If the situation had been reversed, she’d have been furious.

  Except he didn’t seem furious, either. He seemed...distant.

  “Food?” he asked again. “I don’t have much here, but I can run across the road to the all-night diner.”

  “I’m not hungry.” She shrugged off her coat and looked around the bare apartment. “But I could use a bathroom.”

  His gaze dropped to her round belly. “Right.” He nodded toward the narrow hallway just off the main room. “It’s the door on the right.”

  The door on the left was open, revealing a darkened bedroom. In the low ambient light seeping into the hallway from the living room, she saw that his bed was little more than a bunk, wide enough to accommodate—barely—a man Connor’s size.

  This was a mission, she realized as she closed the bathroom door behind her. Not a man looking for his missing wife, but a soldier on assignment. That was why he was so distant.

  He was looking at her as his job, not his wife.

  Shaking from a combination of cold and delayed reaction, she stared into the wide hazel eyes of the pregnant woman in the cabinet mirror and realized she’d never felt so alone in her life.

  * * *

  NO EMOTIONS. EMOTIONS are messy and unreliable.

  Connor gazed out the window at the street below. The snow had started again, coming down in light flurries. He was glad they were out of the cold for the night.

  “Am I staying?”

  Risa’s soft alto sent a shiver rippling down his spine. He turned to find her standing in the doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame. The docile young Kaziri widow was gone, and the clear-eyed CIA agent he’d fallen for three years ago had taken her place.

  “I don’t think you should risk going back to your apartment.”

  “I don’t have a change of clothes.”

  “I have a shirt you can borrow.” He regretted the words even as they slipped between his lips, for they reminded him of long, sweet nights of lovemaking, followed by lazy mornings with Risa wandering around their apartment in his shirt and little else.

  She ran her hand over the large bulge of her stomach. “Make it a big shirt.”

  He wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t. If she had something to tell him about the baby, she would.

  Wouldn’t she?

  The Risa he’d known would have played it straight with him. Always.

  But the Risa he’d known wouldn’t have let him believe she was dead when she wasn’t.

  “You must have so many questions,” she murmured, walking slowly toward him. She was trying to play it cool and sophisticated, the sexy spy in control, but carrying around a baby inside her was apparently hell on the femme fatale act. She still looked sexy, but in an earth-mother sort of way, all fecund beauty and softness.

  He couldn’t hold back a smile. “You can drop the act, Risa. You just can’t sell it with that beach ball you’re carrying under that dress.”

  She stopped, looking uneasy. “Why aren’t you asking the obvious questions?”

  He played dumb. “What are the obvious questions?”

  “How did you survive the plane crash, Risa?”

  “How did you survive the plane crash, Risa?”

  “I never got on the plane.” She took another step.

  “Why didn’t you call me, Risa?”

  He stayed quiet that time, struggling to control a potent storm of anger and hurt churning in his chest.

  “Dalrymple pulled me off the flight. He told me there was a price on my head and I needed to lie low. Then we heard the plane crashed.”

  He looked at her through narrowed eyes, wondering if he could trust what she was saying. It was so pat. So obvious. Hell, maybe she even believed the story herself. Maybe Martin Dalrymple really had pulled her off the plane and told her about a price on her head. The plane crash immediately after his warning was a convincing touch.

  A little too convincing, maybe.

  “You think I haven’t wondered the same thing?” she asked softly, moving another step closer. If he reached out now, he could touch her. Pull her close to him the way he had out in the cold alley. Feel her heart beating against his chest once more, something he’d thought he would never experience again. “You think I didn’t wonder if Dal was pulling a scam on me?”

  But he kept his hands by his side. “Dalrymple isn’t known for his truthfulness.”

  “I know.” She put her hand on her belly. “But if he wasn’t lying—I couldn’t take the chance. The
re was too much at stake. Not just me.”

  His gaze fell to where her hand cupped her round belly, despite his determination to remain unaffected. “You mean the baby?”

  “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I agreed to play dead.” Her voice was soft, her tone sincere. “I found out almost a month later. But you’d already held the memorial service. You’d left the Marine Corps.”

  “So, what? You decided that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me?”

  “No, of course not—”

  “Because it did.” His grasp on his emotions broke, and a flood of anger and old grief poured into his throat, threatening to choke him. “It hurt like all hell. It still does. Every damn day.”

  Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry you let me believe you were dead?” He closed the distance between them in one furious step. “Or sorry that I found out you weren’t?”

  She put her hand on his chest. His brain told him to shake off the touch, but the feel of her palm warm against his sternum, so damn familiar and longed for, nearly unmoored him.

  He closed his hand over hers, holding it against his chest. “Do you have any idea what it was like, hearing you’d died on that plane?”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, unchecked. “I wanted to let you know, but Dal said you were in danger—”

  “Dal said.” He spat the man’s name with contempt, his anger finding an easier target. “I don’t give a damn what Dal said. You told me you were quitting, Risa. We agreed. We were done. It’s why you were on your way home from Kaziristan in the first place.”

  “I know, but—”

  “We had a life planned, Risa! You and me and a house of our own in a place we both loved instead of living out of suitcases and passing in the airport, remember?”

  She wiped her eyes with her knuckles. “I remember.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, trying not to let his emotions get the best of him. Focus, Marine. “Who were the men you were following?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. She sounded as if she was telling the truth, but he realized he just couldn’t be certain. Not anymore.