Kate Hoffmann - A Fare To Remember

Mario shifted his hands into the pockets of his baggy khakis. “Maybe she doesn’t know the right questions to ask, her heart being broken and all.”

“We were never serious that way,” Roman insisted, knowing the statement was only true from her perspective, not his.

“Maybe not in words, but when you jump into a woman’s bed, you jump into her heart, too, whether she likes it or not.”

Roman blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s a fairly old-fashioned viewpoint.”

Mario shrugged. “I’m a fairly old-fashioned guy. But unlike Rachel, I do know what questions to ask. You a crook?”

Roman chuckled. He was a lot of dastardly and despicable things, but a thief wasn’t one of them. “No, sir.”

“Drug dealer?”

He shook his head.

“Assassin? Gunrunner? Bank robber?”

“None of the above.”

“So you’re legit?”

“Not exactly.”

“That can mean only one thing-you’re government issue.”

Roman arched a brow. He supposed he’d led the man to his conclusion by replying with honesty to his questions, but the cabbie had had the forethought to ask. “You in the biz?”

“Just a cop. Detective. Thirty-five years for the NYPD.”

“And now you drive a cab.”

“Beats withering away. I know the city. And I know people. And you’re one who can turn a conversation on a dime so he doesn’t have to talk about himself.”

Roman grinned, not wanting to take the compliment, but what choice did he have? His talent for lying and twisting conversations had brought him to this very place-on the brink of losing a woman he’d risked everything for, simply because he couldn’t tell the truth.

“Rachel is better off without me,” he said, accepting that if he said the mantra often enough, he might, eventually, start to believe it.

Mario clucked his tongue. “That’s obvious. But I’ve got to know that what happened this morning isn’t going to come back to haunt her. You haven’t marked her for a hit, have you?”

Roman opened his mouth to protest, but stopped and thought he’d better think long and hard about his answer first. Clearly, his mission had been compromised, which was probably why the Agency had sent Domino to intercept him this morning. Not to kill him-if that had been her mission, he’d be dead by now. To warn him. He’d yet to be debriefed, but instead he’d spent his day backtracking and thinking about Rachel, ensuring that he could pay her one last visit without endangering her life. But while he had strong suspicions about who the shooters were and that their attack had simply been a way to send the Agency a message, he couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t try to use Rachel against him if given the chance.

“Can you stay with her tonight?” he asked.

Mario nodded. “But I can’t stay every night.”

For an instant, Roman thought Mario might be implying that he should be the one to make sure Rachel was safe, but both men knew that his hanging around one minute longer wasn’t good for either Rachel or him. He’d screwed up large.

He never should have dallied with her in the first place, but the attraction had been so powerful, so tempting. Once he’d cleared her of suspicion of providing information through her graphic designs to the terrorist group he’d been tracking, he’d justified their affair by promising himself it would be brief. One night, maybe two. Enough to sate both of them. But the more he tasted, the more he craved. Everything about her entranced him. She was so fresh, so bright-eyed and in love with the city, with her job, with her friends, with the world. Rachel Marlowe was completely and totally unlike the women he dealt with at the Agency, who were all slightly jaded by what they’d been trained to recognize and prevent. Or like Domino, jaded to her core so deeply, she could kill without regret.

He’d been weak. He knew that now. And his inability to fight his desires had resulted in Rachel getting hurt. Under different circumstances, he might have fallen in love with her. He had to make things right-in the only way he knew how.

“I’m checking in with my superiors next. They don’t want any collateral damage, so I’m sure they’ll take care of Rachel until the heat is off. I’ll contact you, let you know when Rachel is safe. She’s probably not in any danger, but-”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Roman turned to the stairwell, but Mario stopped him with a halting hand. “Hold on, cowboy.”

The older man ambled back to Rachel’s apartment, knocked on the door, then whispered through the chain to Iris that he’d be back in less than an hour. He gave her strict instructions not to open the door for anyone but him.

Mario then gestured gallantly toward the exit.

Roman frowned. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Mario smiled, smug and confident that whatever he had planned, Roman would comply. Which he would, since the man had promised to take care of Rachel-a task Roman should have been able to do for himself, but couldn’t.

“I’m going to give you a lift.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Mario caught him by the elbow. “Sorry, but it is.”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU LET HIM drive you here.”

Domino Black, or so she was called by their superiors, emerged from the shadows of the stairwell in the Agency safe house, her keen almond-shaped eyes gleaming with disgust. Fortunately, Roman had seen her eyes gleam with other basic, elemental emotions before-lust, mostly-so the effect, while disconcerting, didn’t penetrate his already guilt-ridden body.

“We’ll be out of here in an hour,” he said, sliding his hand along the doorjamb to find the hidden-key compartment. “Once we’re gone, there will be no trace of either one of us. What’s he going to do? Call the cops? Clearly, the Agency has them under control.”

“I don’t buy it,” she snapped, perennially suspicious.

“The guy just wanted to read me the riot act about hurting Rachel. She’s like a daughter to him. You can’t blame him.”

“I could kill him.”

Roman clucked his disbelief. “Even you aren’t that cold.”

He checked the doorjamb on the opposite side, then cursed. He was just about to ask Domino if she knew where the key was when the metal piece materialized in her black-leather-gloved hands. When he moved to take the key, she snatched it away with a childlike grin.

Well, with what she wanted him to think was a childlike grin. So far as he knew, Domino Black had never been a child.

The second time she brandished the key, he took it quickly into his possession. “I’ve had enough games today.”

He opened the door and let them inside. The room in the boardinghouse was sparse, but relatively clean. The furniture, consisting of a couch, a twin bed, a coffee table, a small refrigerator and safe, would provide all he’d need for the next hour or so until he made contact with the Agency again. First, he’d need some time to gather his thoughts.

Roman locked the door securely behind him and pressed a button on the wall, activating a mechanism that rendered all listening devises useless. Anyone trying to eavesdrop on their conversation electronically would hear nothing but a buzz.

“Isn’t pulling contact duty a step down for you?” he asked.

She sneered. “I was in the city. They called me in. We caught the shooters. They’re in custody. Well, one of them is in the morgue.”

He caught the sly grin on her face. She had returned fire that morning. That the driver hadn’t been taken out, too, remained a miracle of sorts.

“How did you catch the driver so fast?”

Domino removed her gloves but was careful to touch nothing. “The cabbie provided a dead-on description of the car to his dispatcher before he rescued that girlfriend of yours. We intercepted the car just four blocks away.”

“You had agents in the area?”

“We had credible information that the sleeper cell had identified you as the one trying to stop them from intercepting the final message, which was probably why the Agency sent me since I knew you on sight. You may not be any closer to figuring out who the cell members are, but you’re clearly pissing them off.”

“So I suppose I have a price on my head now?”

Domino clucked her tongue. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Oh, and I’m supposed to give you this,” she said, handing him a small silver disk. “These are communication intercepts from the cell in Madrid. We think you’ll see a similarity in the rhetoric.”

“We have a solid connection to the larger network?”

“Looks like. If you can stay alive long enough, we might be able to save the world.”

Roman smirked, running his hand through his hair as Domino chuckled at her dark joke. The situation couldn’t get any worse. Not that he gave two shits about a death warrant from a bunch of terrorists-the Agency would ensure his safety. But during the ride over, he’d assured Mario that Rachel wouldn’t be in any danger. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Did the shooters make Rachel?”

Domino waved her hand dismissively. “Can’t be sure.”

“I want agents watching her.”

“Already done. The Agency wants to avoid any messy civilian interference.”

Roman couldn’t believe how a mission that had started out so relatively simple could have spun so wildly out of control. The technical side had been rather complex, but he’d never dreamed Rachel’s life would be endangered.

Intercepted cell phone conversations between a Middle Eastern terrorist organization and a sleeper cell in New York tipped off the U.S. government that the opening credits of various documentaries were being used to deliver messages between terrorists in Europe and their American counterparts. The Agency, an off-shoot organization comprised of operatives from the CIA, the FBI and a task force from Homeland Security, had identified two such messages-and one had been designed by Rachel.

Naturally, she’d been the first focus of the investigation. She’d traveled around the world extensively and could have easily had contact with terrorists outside of the United States. Roman had been brought in because of his ability to make everyone believe he was a television consultant, when in truth, he knew very little about the industry before he’d been briefed. But he had a natural, chameleon-like quality and a photographic memory. His mission had been to find out if Rachel had terrorist sympathies or if she might have been coerced into planting the images in the graphics she’d designed.

She hadn’t. They’d found no proof whatsoever. Neither he nor the Agency suspected her any longer. Intelligence sources suggested that a third party was inserting the images after the designers turned their work over for post-design production. The minute Rachel had been cleared, Roman should have dropped all contact with her. But he hadn’t.

Sleeping with her, knowing her, caring about her, had simply been too wonderful to stop.

He’d made mistakes in judgment before. All agents did. But none of his had ever put a civilian in danger. And he had nothing to blame but his own selfishness and insatiable libido.

If Rachel got hurt now-physically, permanently-because he hadn’t had the strength and self-discipline to stay out of her life, he’d never forgive himself.

“What are my orders?”

Domino gestured to the safe.

Roman crossed the room, knelt down, then keyed in a series of universal Agency codes. Once the door popped open, he extracted a digital recorder and pressed a second series of numbers. Only then did the device play and let him know what the Agency expected him to do next.

The orders, essentially, came down to one word.

Disappear.

“WHAT 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.