A Fare To Remember: Just Whistle\Driven To Distraction\Taken For A Ride (14 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN HE
disappeared?” Rachel asked, incredulous.

She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Mario after he’d taken off the night before. By the time he’d come back to her apartment, Iris had forced a second Xanax down her throat and she’d been out for the count. She’d woken up alone but downstairs, had found both Mario and Iris running the coffee stand. Since it was nearly nine-thirty on a Sunday morning, there were few people around.

Mario pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to Rachel. There, in black and white, in Roman’s even handwriting, was a message that made her clutch at her throat.

The shooters have been apprehended. Rachel is safe. Tell her I’m sorry. Roman

“What about
his
safety? Are they hunting him?”

Mario didn’t reply.

Rachel stormed away from her friends and wondered how the hell she’d gotten to this point in her life. She’d been in New York a few years, but her circle of friends wasn’t very big. Jeannette was still on the West Coast. Her workout friends and poker buddies weren’t the type you trusted with such outlandish tales. She was grateful to both Iris and Mario, but they were older. She couldn’t keep putting them in the middle of a dangerous situation.

But she needed them. Mario had proved more than capable of holding his own. And Iris was probably the strongest woman Rachel had ever met. They’d want to help her, just as she’d want to help them if they were in trouble.

She swung back, trusting she could rely on them one more time. They already knew the story. Besides, her needs focused more on Roman the man than Roman the criminal or cop or whatever the hell he was.

“He can’t just be gone,” she insisted.

Mario looked at her with eyes that bespoke a lifetime of experience and just as much caring. “You’re better off, Rachel. You said it yourself. You don’t know what the man is mixed up in—and you don’t want to know.”

“I didn’t yesterday. But I was scared and angry and dizzy as hell from being tossed to the ground while bullets whizzed by. Now I’m thinking more clearly and I want to know. I want to know the truth about Roman. He would have told me the truth yesterday, I think. But I was too angry to listen.”

Mario and Iris exchanged glances that told her they didn’t want her to pursue this further. Rachel sighed and for the first time since she moved to the city, felt lost and unsure.

She’d walked down this street a million times. She was home, in the part of New York City she knew best of all—and yet, this afternoon, nothing looked familiar. Not the coffee stand, not the nearby falafel booth, not the facade of her building. In all her travels, Rachel rarely took more than a few hours to acclimate to her surroundings and feel as if she’d lived in Jakarta or Tokyo or Sydney all her life.

But losing Roman had left her more damaged than she expected. The hurt ran deep—too deep for her to simply let go.

“I’m going to find him,” Rachel decided.

“¿Qué?”
Iris asked, her eyes wide.

Mario stepped around to her. “Why do you want to put yourself through that?”

Rachel shoved her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. “I want the whole story.”

Mario’s mouth curved down hard. “He’s mixed up in something bigger than you want to get involved in.”

“I don’t want to get involved!” she insisted. “I just want to know why he picked me. If he couldn’t be with me, if he couldn’t stay, then why come into my life at all?”

Iris wiped her hands on her apron. “Why wouldn’t he pick you,
mijita?
You’re beautiful and smart and everything a man could want.”

Rachel grinned at Iris’s compliment, and honestly, she couldn’t argue. She was an attractive woman and she was, except for situations that required picking out the spies from the television consultants, pretty darned smart. She was sexy, interesting and kindhearted to boot. All those good qualities may have inspired Roman to stay with her longer than he’d planned, but she doubted they were the reasons he was drawn to her in the first place.

She’d seen his ex. Rachel couldn’t think of any woman she was less like. Rachel was adventurous and fun, but the woman who’d kissed Roman on the sidewalk exuded a combination of lethal danger and exotic sensuality. Rachel usually didn’t wonder why a man was attracted to her, but she’d had all morning to recap her interactions with Roman, and something about that first meeting suddenly seemed staged. Arranged. Planned.

She wanted—no, she deserved—all the details.

“I was part of something, I can feel it. Something dangerous. What if his leaving doesn’t take away the risk?”

“He said you’d be safe,” Mario said.

“He also said he was a television consultant. His word hasn’t been entirely reliable. You said he was some sort of agent. Maybe he plans to have me watched for the rest of my life. I can’t live that way.”

At this, Mario made excuses to Iris and shuttled Rachel up the stoop of her apartment, his gaze darting from side to side to make sure they weren’t overheard. “He wouldn’t verify anything, but yeah, I think maybe he’s FBI or CIA. Something covert. Either way, you’ve got to let this go.”

Certain Mario knew more than he was letting on, Rachel decided to push. “I can’t, Mario. I won’t. I need answers. I deserve them, especially if my life is in danger.”

Mario’s lips pressed tightly together, a thin but pronounced line, not too different from the kind kids drew in the sand in the schoolyard.

“You’ll never find him,” he concluded.

“I could go back to the network where we first met, start asking questions. A
lot
of questions.”

“That’s an invitation to unwanted attention.”

She bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. “If someone comes looking who can lead me to Roman, then I win.”

“What if the people who tried to kill him get to you first?”

She hadn’t really thought the plan through, but Mario definitely had a point. Still, he didn’t have to know that she shared his concern. Not yet.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she claimed.

Mario cursed, first in good, old Brooklyn English, then threw in a few Italian words for good measure. “You’re pigheaded.”

“I like to think of myself as single-minded.”

“You’re reckless,” he added.

“That point has already been proved.”

He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up to the entrance to her apartment complex. “Then you’ll need someone with a better plan.”

R
ACHEL NEVER IMAGINED
that tracking down an undercover secret agent on the lam would prove her particular talent. Luckily, Mario was an ex-cop and an excellent partner in crime. He knew how to work the system, and despite his long and decorated devotion to the law, he’d been willing to bend a few New York statutes in order to get her to where she was now—in a dark, dingy apartment where just forty-eight hours ago, Roman had made his last known appearance in the city.

The process hadn’t been easy. First, Rachel had had to return to the network where she’d first met Roman to do some snooping. She’d kissed up to the top executive’s secretary and, as a result, now had Roman’s pager number in her possession. She wasn’t sure the number was still valid or even if it was the pager that Roman had used to receive the messages that had sent him running out on her every morning after lovemaking, but it was her best shot. She’d dialed the number—with a prophetic 911 at the end—and in the coded message, she’d left the address of the last place Mario had seen Roman.

Well, Mario had remembered the building. She’d had to guess on the rest. Luckily for her, all the other apartments were occupied and this one, from the looks of it, had government stash house written all over it. She was also quite fortunate that a fifty-dollar bill slipped to the super had gotten her inside. Clearly, if the secret agency that Roman was working for used this place, they weren’t anymore.

Comfort hadn’t been a consideration in the decor, but Rachel made do on the faded, dusty couch sitting dead center in the room. She waited just over two hours, finally dozing off with her cheek pressed against the arm and her legs folded safely beneath her. She woke to a light knock, but she didn’t rise. She waited. Seconds later, the locks surrendered to keys.

She should have been shocked to see him, surprised that he’d followed her breadcrumbs, but instead, relief washed over her the minute her eyes connected with Roman’s steely-blue gaze. The possibility that she’d be greeted by an austere government agent ordering her to keep her nose out of serious spy business had definitely occurred to her—and to Mario, who insisted on waiting at the curb. If he hadn’t heard from Rachel by sundown, he was coming up to get her.

But now she concerned herself only with Roman as he slid inside and locked the door behind him. His face held no emotion, except, perhaps, a tiny glimmer of sadness.

“You came,” she said, her voice deep and raspy after her unplanned nap. She sat up, stretched, cleared her throat.

“I shouldn’t have,” Roman replied.

“Then why did you?”

“Because you asked.”

Volume wasn’t needed in the enclosed space of the apartment. His words echoed off the bare walls. Roman then turned and revealed a panel near the door, then cursed when he found the compartment empty.

“What’s missing?”

“Jamming device. In case anyone is listening. This safe house isn’t used anymore. They released it yesterday.”

Rachel nodded. “That’s why I had no trouble getting in.”

“We can’t talk here.”

He held his hand out to her and Rachel’s fingers itched to touch his. But what price would she pay for feeling his warmth against her skin, even for an instant? She’d come here only to hear his explanation, to understand why he’d chosen her and what pawn’s part she played in this intriguing chess game. Because perhaps she’d played no role at all. Maybe she’d just been a woman he couldn’t resist. Maybe she’d just been a decoy. Or worse, a distraction.

She stood on her own and ignored his proffered hand.

“Where can we go?”

Without warning, he snatched her hand, which she immediately tried to yank away.

“Let go of me.”

“We need to get out of here quickly.”

She tugged harder as he turned to undo the locks. “Mario is waiting for me. He’ll call the police if he thinks for one minute that I’m in danger.”

“Mario knows I’m here.”

For a long, intense moment, he stared into her eyes.

“He trusts you?”

“I had him move his car to the alley around back, just in case. I’m sure he’ll take us somewhere we can talk, unheard.”

She stopped struggling. No way would Mario succumb to Roman’s charm. She seemed to be the only one who had trouble resisting that particular weapon. If Mario trusted Roman, she could, too. For the moment, at least.

They exited through a back door, cutting through a stinking alley, and after Roman picked the padlock on an iron gate, he directed her onto a side street lined with old, sagging oaks. Mario had pulled up to the curb only a few steps away, so soon they were inside and speeding down the street. Roman leaned forward and murmured instructions into Mario’s ear. The older man nodded, then headed downtown.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Somewhere busy. Somewhere we can blend in and not draw attention to ourselves.”

She nearly growled in frustration. “Who are you?”

“I’ll explain everything once we arrive.”

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. She’d come looking for him to hear what he had to say for himself. Doubts about his veracity niggled at her, but when Roman turned to her, his gaze intense, his mouth moist, as if he’d just softened his lips with his tongue, as if he wanted nothing more than to kiss away the tension she knew emanated in fractious waves off her body, she knew he’d tell her the truth.

And that frightened her most of all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“N
ICE PLACE
,” M
ARIO SAID
, his tone tight and uncomfortable as he slowed his cab in front of the famed Sherry-Netherland hotel.

Roman nodded but didn’t speak. He handed Mario a few bills, making some sort of gesture of male-to-male understanding and exited the cab.

On her way out, Rachel placed her hand on the back of Mario’s seat. He stopped her.

“You’re all right with this?” he asked.

Rachel watched Roman just outside the taxi, scanning the street methodically as he waited.

“He won’t let anything happen to me,” she said, completely convinced of that truth, if nothing else.

Mario harrumphed. “Damn straight he won’t. Before I agreed to play a part in this, I told him there was no place on God’s green earth he could hide if you got even a scratch on your pinkie.”

Rachel wiggled her littlest finger at him. “Me and my pinkie will be fine. I have your cell phone number in my pocket. I’ll call you if I need anything, I promise.”

Mario didn’t seem happy about letting her go, but he didn’t interfere. Rachel knew she needed to do this and she couldn’t deny the way her heart lightened at knowing that Roman wanted to talk, too. Hadn’t he come when she called? Hadn’t he taken the care to move them to a location where they could speak freely? Clearly, he wanted to explain. Or at the very least, he believed she deserved his time.

She hadn’t forced him to come back for her, and from what she could tell by the hurried way they dashed through a side entrance to the hotel’s back stairwell, Roman was still concerned that he might be recognized. After they’d climbed several flights of stairs, he immediately slid a card key into the nearest guest-room door on the sixth floor, and in seconds they were inside.

Safe.

Alone.

He reached into the closet, pulled out a mechanical device she didn’t recognize, attached it to the door and flicked a switch that activated a blinking red light.

“What’s that?”

“Combination alarm and jamming device. No one will come in without us hearing and no one will be able to listen from the other side to what we say.”

Or do.

Rachel cursed at herself for allowing such a libidinous thought into her brain. This wasn’t going to be about sex. She’d arranged to meet Roman so that she could understand why and how they’d ended up together—and if anything beyond the lust had been real.

Or especially if lust had been all they shared.

Luxury hotel rooms weren’t exactly an everyday occurrence to Rachel, so she couldn’t help but be swept away by the plush carpets, antique furniture and glistening chandeliers. Except for a stack of barely touched magazines on the coffee table—
Vogue, Cosmo
and
Elle
among them—the room looked unoccupied. Even the bathroom seemed bereft of a toothbrush or a discarded towel.

“Whose suite is this?”

“A friend’s,” Roman replied. “We have until morning.”

Spying a flash of material under the bed, she leaned down and gingerly retrieved a tiny pair of black thong underwear.

“A female friend? Good God, not the woman who kissed you.”

“She only kissed me to piss you off,” Roman explained.

Rachel dropped the panties as if they were a dead bug and rushed into the bathroom to wash her hands, tossing a spiteful, “She succeeded” over her shoulder as she flew by him.

Roman was close on her heels. “She’d had me under surveillance and knew you’d followed me from your apartment. She was trying to discourage you.”

Rachel wiped her hands on a clean towel. “She could have just told me to back off if she wanted you so bad.”

The burst of laughter erupted from Roman’s gut before he could call it back. He certainly didn’t want to go into the dynamics of his interactions—couldn’t call it a relationship by any stretch of the imagination—with Domino, but the thought of the woman playing possessive with him was hilariously funny.

“She’s been through with me for a long time, Rachel. And vice versa.”

“But you were lovers once.”

“Yes, we were. So were we. And it wasn’t so long ago, either.”

“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped.

“I’m not. I’m actually getting to the subject. I came here to talk about you and me, not about my past.”

Rachel took a step closer to him, her gaze darting between the walls on either side of her, as if they might close in at any moment. He sidestepped and she squeezed past him with such haste, he felt a cold wave of wind.

“Do you have a past?” she asked rapidly.

“A varied one,” he replied, knowing he’d be breaking contracts, agreements and regulations up to his ears if he told her one single detail. And yet, he was willing to share some of what led him here—what led him to Rachel.

“Can you tell me about any of it?”

Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest and her lips were frozen in a lethal line.

“Does it matter?” He winced. His reply had been automatic, practiced, grilled and ingrained into him. Could he ever revert to the man he used to be? Honest? Forthright? Real?

“Stop it!” she said, stamping her foot in such a way that she didn’t look the least like a petulant child, but a woman on the edge of losing control. “Answer the question! Stop hiding behind the persona some phantom agency cooked up for you. They’re not here now. It’s just me. Me and, please, for the love of God, the truth. I want to know who you are, Roman. But if you can’t tell me that, I at least deserve to know who you were, once, before you turned your life over to people who probably don’t give a damn if you live or die. I made love to you, Roman. Not once, not twice, but more times than I can count. So many times that my body still reacts to the air you breathe.”

He could hear her voice shaking, could see the force of need in her eyes, and he wondered how he’d gotten in so deep, so fast. And yet, his own passions matched Rachel’s point for point. What had started as sex, somehow, despite all the lies and omissions, had turned into something more.

He gestured toward the love seat in the center of the room. She sat, her hands tense on her knees, her shoulders tight. He dug into his pockets and decided not to sit beside her. He couldn’t possibly be that close and not take her into his arms.

“I work for a division of Homeland Security.”

Her eyes widened. “The terrorist people?”

With a nod, he started to pace. “Smoking out terrorist threats is our main directive. I was recruited to a joint FBI and CIA task force specifically investigating reports that a certain, deadly terrorist network has been using televised images in order to send messages to sleeper cells here in the States.”

Rachel sat back in the love seat, her stare disengaged from his. He knew this was a lot for her to process, but he’d decided to go for broke. Since he’d been shot at, he knew his position on the task force had been severely compromised. His cover had been blown. He suspected that the next time he reported to headquarters, he’d be taken off the case he’d worked since the first report came to his desk. But right now, there was no real harm in him letting an average citizen know that the government was actively pursuing potential killers.

Too bad Rachel wasn’t the least bit average or he wouldn’t be in this mess.

“What kind of messages?”

He stepped forward. This part, she’d understand. “Messages imbedded in the graphics.”

The whites of her eyes suddenly contrasted starkly with the dark, hypnotic green. “Graphics…where?”

“In the opening credits of certain productions.”

“Like documentaries? Like the one I was working on when we met?”

He nodded.

She took a few moments to process what he’d said, then skewered him with a quizzical glare. “But there are hundreds if not thousands of graphic designers working in television in this city. Why’d you pick me?”

“I didn’t pick you, the Agency did.”

She drew a quivering hand to her stomach. “Why? How did I come to the attention of the government?”

He closed his eyes, then rattled off the name of the documentary that had aired on Animal Planet, the one the task force had intercepted.

“I designed the opening and closing credits.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Tell me there wasn’t a hidden message in there.”

He pressed his lips together tightly.

She jumped to her feet. “Oh, God! Roman, please, I swear, I didn’t put any message for anyone in my graphics. I would never—”

With no reason not to, Roman reached out and took her by the elbows of her outstretched arms. “We know, Rachel. Someone else imbedded the message after you turned in your work. We found your original files, untouched. But those that aired were a different story. We’re still checking into who had access to your work, but first we had to investigate you. It was the first logical step.”

Despite how soft her skin felt against his palms, when she tugged to be free, he let her go.

“So that’s why you were at the network. Ours wasn’t a chance meeting.”

“No.”

“Were you sent to seduce me? To find out the truth over pillow talk?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. The scenario sounded like something out of a spy flick or romantic suspense novel, but the truth wasn’t anything so dark and glamorous. He and all the other male operatives at the Agency only dreamed of such choice assignments.

“We don’t work that way, Rachel. I was only supposed to get to know you, check out your apartment, your friends, your computer. How I accomplished that task was entirely up to me.”

She jammed her fists on her hips. “You could have pretended to be anyone. A friend. A gay friend,” she offered, her voice lilting upward as if the idea sounded promising. “You didn’t have to sneak into my bed.”

Roman’s lips quirked into a grin. “Our first time wasn’t in a bed and, Rachel, I didn’t have to sneak.”

Yes, he’d been dishonest with her about who he was and why he’d sought her out—but he’d never uttered one mistruth about wanting her so much that his skin seared with need when she so much as glanced in his direction. The desire he’d felt for her had been instantaneous, incendiary and instinctive. The choices he’d made had been based on the primal part of him that had never been awakened—not to that degree—before Rachel.

He figured at first it was intense chemistry. Pheromones gone wild. But the more time he spent with her, the more times he heard her laughter pealing through her apartment or watched her chew her bottom lip as she furiously manipulated the graphic images on her computer screen, the deeper he fell. Every word out of his mouth had been a lie—except when he told her how much he wanted her—just as powerfully then as he wanted her right now.

And the sheepishly sexy grin on her face didn’t deter him one bit. “I guess I was pretty hot for you.”

He allowed a smile to lighten the mood even further, and he couldn’t help but tug at the insides of his pockets to lessen the tightening of material across his groin. “The feeling was mutual.”

“Is that why you stuck around, kept in touch with me, even after I left that job?”

He nodded. “I’ve been at two networks since then, investigating various design departments and independent contractors. My attention should have been one hundred percent on the case, but I couldn’t seem to get you out of my head.”

She stepped aside, clearly uncomfortable with the turn in their conversation.

“You checked out my friends?”

“Mario, Iris, your ever-absent roommate, your mother, your sisters and all the men they’ve dated, which is a rather impressive list.”

She smirked. “They’ll be thrilled to know you approve.”

“They can’t know anything, Rachel. Everything I’ve told you has to be in complete confidence. My job is already on the line because my cover has been blown. That shooting the other morning was the work of the terrorist group who wants to make sure the cell they’ve implanted in the U.S. gets the messages they’re sending.”

A chill of icy fear must have sliced through her bloodstream from the way she visibly shivered. Good. She needed to be afraid. Fear would keep her safe—and away from him.

“What will happen if you don’t stop this cell?”

He looked away, unwilling to impart on Rachel just how dire the circumstances were. The information he possessed could cause a national panic, or even worse, national paralysis. He wanted her safe, but he didn’t want her holing up in some desert bunker, afraid to walk outside. Afraid to breathe. Afraid to live.

“You don’t want to know. The bottom line is that the Agency has known for months that your work is legit. You’re free and clear of this whole mess. I can’t make the same mistake twice and keep you involved. After tonight, we can’t see each other again.”

She barely blinked. “Any idea yet who tampered with my graphics?”

The way her eyes narrowed, Roman knew she was ignoring the emotional fallout of what he’d said by focusing on the threat at hand. His respect for her rose a notch. Even if he had been at liberty to share a suspect’s name with her, which he didn’t even have, he would not have answered her question. He’d learned over the last seventy-two hours that Rachel Marlowe was not only beautiful, creative, interesting and sexy, but she was also determined, clever and stubborn as hell. He could imagine her taking serious umbrage to the fact that some terrorist sympathizer had used her work to spread a potentially lethal message—and judging by how she’d contacted him, he imagined she might do something reckless like pursuing the matter on her own.

“The investigation hasn’t turned up that information yet.”

Her chin dipped in a lost, little nod. She was processing what he was saying, but the brutal truth wasn’t going down easily.

“And the fact that you continued to be with me, intimately, all this time, that had nothing to do with your orders from this Agency of yours?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I caught all kinds of shit when they found out,” he confessed. “And you know what? It was worth it.
You
were worth it.”

Their gazes locked, and he hoped like hell she could read the truth in his eyes, because as unaccustomed as he was to spilling information to an unauthorized source, he wasn’t sure he could say out loud what he felt so strongly in his body—and possibly, even his heart.