by Paula Graves
When he spoke, it was in Kaziri, his tone low and mean. “Are you a whore?”
Risa’s back stiffened, but she didn’t respond.
The man who sat with him turned to see who his friend was talking to. His brow furrowed, though more in concern than disdain. “Does your father allow you to travel at night alone?” he asked in English.
“I am here alone,” Risa answered in heavily accented English. “I have no father to protect me. Please, leave me be.”
“Your child has no father?” the first man asked.
“Leave her alone.” The studious girl had put down her book and now stood, glaring at the two men across the column of seats. “Those questions aren’t your business.”
The young man who’d spoken to Risa with concern looked embarrassed and turned quickly toward the front of the bus, but the other man glared at the student for a moment before he turned around and started speaking in low tones with his friend.
Risa turned to the young woman. “Thank you,” she said softly.
The student moved her backpack to the floor of the bus and patted the seat beside her. “You can come sit with me if you want.”
Risa glanced across at Connor for a brief second before she rose and joined the student across the aisle.
“I’m Kyla,” the girl said with a friendly smile.
“Yasmin.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Though Connor tried to look relaxed and uninterested, he kept one ear open to their small talk while he kept both eyes on the young men at the front of the bus. Fortunately, they exited at the next stop and he was able to drop his guard a little until he reached his own stop.
He wished now he hadn’t agreed to get off first. He should have let her exit the bus first, and then get off at the following stop. But the plan was already under way, so he got off the bus when it pulled to a halt and started down the block toward the address Risa had given him.
He’d entered the location on his phone before he left his place. Now he followed the directions, moving at a brisk jog along the mostly deserted sidewalks. As he neared the corner of her block and made the turn, he saw the bus pulling away from the curb.
Risa was walking toward him, her head lowered against the wind. She slowed when she reached the front stoop of a shabby three-story brownstone building in the middle of the block. As she opened the front door, she lifted her gaze to meet his. She didn’t show any sign of recognition, only moved a little more quickly into the building.
She’d told him there was an alley between her apartment building and the next. He found the darkened breezeway, which was little more than a footpath between the buildings. Overhead, alternating fire escapes created an open-air canopy that offered no shelter but some small measure of concealment in the darkness.
Her apartment was on the second floor, in the corner facing the alley. Leaning against the cold brick of the opposite building, he fixed his gaze on the dark window, waiting for light as he counted the seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
There. A light appeared in the window.
He let himself breathe again.
* * *
RISA HAD NO idea where she was supposed to sleep in Connor’s half-empty apartment, but she didn’t particularly care. She was tired enough to curl up in a corner on a spare towel and sleep for a week.
But first, she had to grab anything that a nosy landlord might find that would suggest she was anyone but the pregnant widow she’d portrayed for the past seven months. Her disappearance was going to raise enough eyebrows as it was.
Dal had supplied her with a backpack in which to hide the laptop and other communications equipment he’d provided for her. The exterior of the pack looked old and well-used, concealing all signs of the expensive equipment inside. She stuffed a few changes of clothing and all of her toiletries in a gym bag she’d picked up on her own at a discount store. Anything she didn’t think she’d need, she left behind, along with the cash she’d saved up to pay the next month’s rent.
Going from room to room, she checked behind doors and under furniture to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that might give someone any clues to her real identity. The apartment was small, but over the past seven months, she realized, she’d turned it into something of a home.
But her life here had never been anything more than a facade. Yasmin Hamani was a mask she’d worn to protect herself and her child.
And to protect Connor as well, though she didn’t think he could see her choice that way. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Finally satisfied she’d left nothing of importance behind, she shouldered the heavy backpack, gripped the duffel bag in one hand and unlocked her front door. After one last backward glance, she turned out the lights and shut the door behind her.
She had made it only a few steps into the stairwell when she heard a man speaking Kaziri. His words drifted up from the first floor. “You are sure this is the place?”
Daring a quick glance over the railing to the floor below, she saw a flash of bright embroidery as the wearer headed up the steps.
It was one of the Kaziri men she’d followed from the restaurant. What was he doing here, of all places?
A second voice, even more familiar, answered her question as well as the Kaziri man’s. “This is the address she gave when she took the job,” Farid Rahimi answered, his tone surprisingly reluctant. “Why do you want to see her? She is nobody. A poor widow.”
Damn it. They were talking about her.
There was another set of stairs at the far end of the hall, but she’d never reach them before the men arrived on her floor. Instead, she scurried back into her apartment and locked the door behind her.
She left the lights off, hoping they might think she was still out. But the person who knocked on the door wasn’t Farid or the Kaziri customer.
“Mrs. Hamani? Are you home?”
The voice on the other side of the door was Joe Trammel, her landlord.
And he had a key.
Tamping down a burst of adrenaline, she backed deeper into the small apartment, toward the bedroom. She could hide in the closet or under the bed. Surely they wouldn’t do a thorough search of the place with Mr. Trammel there watching.
She heard the rattle of keys in the front door and hunkered down by the bed, ready to slide under it. But the bulge of her belly, pressing hard against her chest, caught her by surprise.
Damn it. No way could she get her pregnant belly under that bed.
She stood and moved toward the closet, listening for a voice in the front room. Joe Trammel spoke first, his voice loud and a little impatient. “Maybe she didn’t realize she was supposed to work tonight, ever think of that?”
Farid must have lied to the landlord, told him she hadn’t shown up for work. Damn it.
“She is one of my best workers,” Farid answered. “She would not miss work. Something may be terribly wrong with her. Maybe her baby has come?”
Trammel sounded faintly horrified. “You think?”
“We will check now, yes?” That was the other man, the one who’d looked familiar to Risa. He spoke with a flawless British accent, as if he’d been schooled there. Which, she supposed, wasn’t at all unusual in the world of terrorism these days.
“It’s just—I was just about to run out and pick up my wife from work,” Trammel said. “I don’t want to leave her out there in the cold waiting—”
“You go pick up your wife.” Farid spoke in his most appeasing “the customer is always right” tone of voice. “I will stay here until you get back. Perhaps Yasmin will return and all will be well. But if she doesn’t, and I find anything troubling, we can decide if we should call the police when you get back. It’s a good plan, yes?”
“All right,” Trammel said, although Risa heard a
hint of unease in his tone. But apparently he overcame the doubt, his heavy footsteps moving away from the apartment.
Risa’s heart sank. Now she was alone with Farid and the mystery man. Not good odds. Not good at all.
She had to get out of here.
Hearing them moving around out in the front room, she made her move, easing the lower sash of the window silently upward. One of the first things she’d done upon moving into the apartment was make sure the window sash that opened onto the fire escape could be raised without effort—or sound. She’d just hoped she’d never have reason to make a quiet escape.
She should have known better.
Icy air poured into the room as she lifted her duffel and backpack over the sill and out onto the fire escape outside. As she started to follow, she heard Farid and the other man approaching the bedroom and froze. The men conversed in Kaziri, their voices almost too quiet to make out. She heard words more than sentences—“strange woman” and “surveillance” made it to where she waited by the window.
Their voices came nearer, moving down the hallway. This time, a full sentence came through, loud and clear, from the Kaziri man she’d tried to follow earlier in the evening. “Could she be a spy?”
“Yasmin? No. She is a meek little mouse,” Farid answered.
“Mice can do great damage,” the other man said grimly.
Risa heard footsteps just outside her bedroom door. She didn’t wait for them to enter, stepping out onto the fire escape, her heart in her throat.
Chapter Five
The light in the apartment had gone out a couple of minutes ago, and Connor had breathed a sigh of relief, expecting Risa to appear in the alley any minute. But the light in the window had appeared again moments later.
Had she forgotten something?
Or had she planned all along to ditch him?
As he pushed himself away from the wall, the faint creak of metal scraping against metal made him freeze in place. Moving only his eyes, he looked up at Risa’s window and saw a shadowy figure silhouetted briefly against the light in the window. Then, with a soft rattle of iron, the figure dropped the fire escape ladder and began to descend.
It was Risa.
Connor hurried over to the lowered ladder, holding his breath as she started climbing down, her descent encumbered by the small duffel bag and backpack dangling from her arms.
She looked down at him, fear glinting in her eyes. “Take the bags,” she hissed, letting them drop into his outstretched hands one at a time.
He caught the bags and put them on the ground, then reached up to help her the rest of the way down. Even carrying the extra weight of the baby, she felt fragile and light.
Breakable.
He’d never thought of her as breakable before.
“My boss and one of those two men from the diner tricked my landlord into letting them in my apartment.” Her voice was barely a breath in his ear. “Let’s get out of here. Fast, before they spot us.”
He pushed her ahead of him and grabbed the bags. The backpack was as heavy as it had felt when he caught it, making him wonder what it contained. Her laptop? Other equipment?
What kind of operation had she and Dal been running?
At the end of the alley, he dared a glance back. Spotting a man’s head lean forward to look out the window, he hurried around the corner of the building, hoping they’d made it out of sight in time.
“What excuse did they give the landlord to get inside?” he asked Risa as he caught up to her. She was walking ahead of him, moving at a surprisingly quick clip after the stressful, tiring day she’d just lived.
“Welfare check, from what I heard. My boss must have lied and said I didn’t show for work. I guess, since I’m pregnant, it was enough to make my landlord worry that I might be in trouble.” She darted a look behind them. “There’s a bus stop two blocks this way.”
She started across the empty street, leaving him to follow.
They reached the bus stop in five minutes. “There should be one more bus scheduled tonight,” she told him.
“Are you sure?”
She slanted a look up at him, a slight smile curving her lips. “I checked the bus schedule online before I packed up my computer. In case we needed to make a fast getaway.”
Resourceful, he thought. That was Risa.
He felt a familiar tug low in his gut, a pull of attraction and admiration and awe, all wrapped up in one small, brilliant woman. And then, like a slow rolling detonation, the delayed impact of the reality he’d been tamping down beneath his game face finally hit him with devastating force.
She’s alive.
Shock waves of pent-up emotion blew through him, and he ended up dropping to the cold bus-stop bench before his knees buckled.
He took several deep breaths, his heart hammering as if he’d run for miles. Risa sat, her compact body warm beside him, and she put her hand on his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
How could he tell her what he was feeling when he couldn’t trust the emotions? Yes, he was thrilled beyond words that she was alive. He had mourned her deeply, longed for her when she was no longer within his reach, but those feelings seemed to belong to another person.
A person who couldn’t have imagined that his wife would let him believe she was dead when she was very much alive.
And carrying his child.
He forced himself to leash those dangerous feelings again, pack them away in the rucksack of his self-control. “Nothing,” he answered, already feeling his body coming back under control, his heart rate subsiding and his breathing resuming a normal cadence.
Risa’s eyes narrowed as if she knew better, but she didn’t push. She just turned her face back toward the street. “There’s the bus.”
There was little point in sitting apart on the nearly empty bus. In retrieving her things from her apartment, Risa had closed the door on the pregnant Kaziri widow named Yasmin Hamani. She sat close to Connor one row back from the side door of the bus, where they could keep an eye on anyone entering or exiting the bus until they’d reached his apartment.
“I guess we need to discuss sleeping arrangements,” Risa murmured. Now that she’d stopped using the Kaziri accent she’d affected for her undercover work, her Georgia drawl was back, all sweet honeysuckle and sultry humidity.
Desire gnawed low in his belly, but he made himself ignore it. “I have a sleeping bag I can use until we can arrange something else.”
She slanted a narrow-eyed look at him but said nothing more, and they passed the next few minutes in silence.
They exited the Metro bus about two blocks from the walk-up he was renting. Risa released a soft sigh as she looked up the stairs, but she trudged upward without complaint, waiting for him to catch up.
Quinn was still there when they entered the apartment, waiting in the chair by the window. He sat facing the door, watching calmly as they entered. “I take it the op went well?” His tone was dry and slightly amused.
“Not exactly.” Risa sank onto one of the chairs by the table and stretched her legs out in front of her. She rolled her neck side to side and flexed her back, her eyes closing with concentration, as if she could somehow will away the tiredness.
Connor took two strides toward her before he caught himself, remembering that seven long, painful months had passed since he’d last given her a foot rub. They weren’t the same people anymore.
He didn’t know if they ever could be again.
He changed course, walking to the window. “Risa’s boss at the restaurant and one of the men she followed tonight talked their way into searching her apartment.”
Quinn rose in alarm. “While she was there? Did he see her?”
“She was in the apartment, but she went out the bedroom window. Took the fire
escape down to the alley and we left that way. I’m not sure if the guy saw us or not. It was dark. At most, he might have gotten a glimpse of me.”
Quinn’s gaze moved to where Risa sat slumped in her chair. “You need to get out of Cincinnati,” he said to Connor.
“But the assignment—”
“Can be covered by another operative,” Quinn finished firmly. “You need to get Risa out of here and to one of our safe houses in the hills.”
By hills, Connor knew, Quinn meant the mountains of eastern Kentucky, where the security company was located. There were hollows and coves in those hills where a man could get lost forever, by accident or by choice.
“I don’t think anyone here has figured out who I really am,” Risa said. Even her honeysuckle drawl sounded bone-tired. “And if you think I’m going to go anywhere else tonight after the day I’ve had—”
“It’s a four-hour drive in a comfortable Chevy Tahoe. Heated reclining seats, satellite radio—” Quinn pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “I’ll stay here tonight, in case anyone comes calling. Leave me your car keys, McGinnis.”
Risa looked at Connor, as if asking his opinion.
“I think we should go tonight,” he told her. “If those guys are suspicious of you, they’re going to keep looking into who you are. And if they find out you’re still alive—”
“Dal was trying to figure out who had put the hit on me.” A flicker of pain passed through her weary expression. “Now he’s dead. And I don’t know what he found out.”
“We have people looking into that homicide investigation,” Quinn said. “I can keep you apprised.”
“This safe house—are we going to have armed guards there?”
“No. We’ll just provide you with extra weapons.” Quinn’s eyes sparked with wry amusement. “You’re both capable of protecting yourselves, and the smaller the footprint, the better.”
“So we’ll be all alone. Just the two of us.” Risa’s gaze met Connor’s. Tension coiled low in his belly at the thought.
