Kate Hoffmann - A Fare To Remember

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.”

RACHEL 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.

“NICE PLACE,” MARIO 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.