A Fare To Remember: Just Whistle\Driven To Distraction\Taken For A Ride (13 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE
no report of a shooting at Seventy-eighth and Madison? It happened this morning! I was there. I saw it. I heard sirens.”

“Ma’am, if you were a witness, why didn’t you call earlier?”

Rachel pressed her lips together tightly. This certainly was a question she’d rather not answer. “I was terrified, okay? Bullets were flying.”

“Was anyone shot?”

“Not that I know of. Look, I just want to find out what happened.”

“So far as my computer shows, ma’am, nothing. Not even a record of a call.”

Rachel half listened to the desk sergeant as he ran through a list of possibilities for the glitch, her body still numb from the medication Iris had given her, her mind still trapped in the violence she’d witnessed on the street just twelve hours ago—a shooting the NYPD now declared had never happened.

“You’re sure?” she asked again. “There is no official record? Maybe the investigating officers are still looking into the matter? Haven’t filed the right paperwork yet?”

Mario had schooled her on the process, but he’d also guessed that by six o’clock in the evening, the computers at the police department would have some reference to the shooting on the sidewalk. When he returned from helping Iris pack up and move the last of her wares back to her apartment, he was going to be shocked by what Rachel had learned.

Which was, essentially, nothing.

She thanked the officer and mindlessly hung up the phone.

The soft knock on the door drew her attention away from the mess with the cops. She’d expected Mario and Iris back any moment and hadn’t thought to give them a key.

“Just a minute,” she shouted automatically, but recoiled when she touched the dead bolt. What if it wasn’t Mario or Iris?

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Rachel, it’s me.”

Roman.

“Go away,” she ordered.

“Are you okay?”

“If I wasn’t, I’d be at the hospital. Or at the morgue.”

“I’m sorry, Rachel. Please, let me in so I can explain.”

She laughed. Okay, the situation really wasn’t funny, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the absurdity. Explain? Roman? The king of secrets and lies?

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. You’re a liar and maybe even a criminal. Forget you ever met me, Roman. Forget you know where I live. Forget that I’m alive. We’ll both be better off.”

Though her chest felt as if a heavyweight wrestler had wrapped his arms around her to begin a slow and eventually fatal squeeze, Rachel propelled herself away from the door and waited. She paced the living room, watching the trifecta of locks—a dead bolt, a chain and the key—for any motion. She listened for footsteps in the hallway to announce the arrival of Mario and Iris. She shouldn’t have let them go—but then, she’d encouraged them, hadn’t she? She was a big girl and didn’t need chaperones. What she needed was space—away from Roman, away from the city, away from the memories.

Infuriated with herself, Rachel slammed into her bedroom. He’d leave. He’d have no choice. God! Why couldn’t Roman’s secret have been just about the sexy woman in the skintight leather pants? Why couldn’t he have been just a liar and a cheat? Why did he have to be the kind of man people shot at?

This wasn’t the life she’d designed for herself. She didn’t have enemies. The most controversial thing she’d ever done was work on the opening credits for a documentary on birth control. Sure, she’d gotten a few nasty e-mails, but so had everyone else whose name had been listed in the credits. No one had targeted her for death.

But what of the other woman? Maybe Ms. Sleek-and-Sensual was an international drug dealer. Maybe she seduced big government officials and then sold their secrets to the highest bidder? Maybe she had been the target. Not Roman.

“Who was she?” she muttered.

“I can answer that.”

She spun around, her heart slamming up into her throat at the combined surprise and anger at seeing Roman standing in her bedroom doorway.

“How did you get in?”

“I had to see you.”

“You didn’t answer my question! But then, you never do, do you? You just turn the focus on to something else. Get out!”

She stepped forward, questioning whether or not the ire swimming through her veins was hot enough yet for her to throw him out. No matter what she’d witnessed this morning on the sidewalk, even considering the gun he’d pulled out of nowhere and fired into the street, she wasn’t afraid of him. Her judgment was clearly off, though, so she kept her distance.

He must have read the fear in her eyes. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Rachel. Ever. I swear.”

“I have no reason to believe anything you say, Roman.”

He released a pent-up breath. “I know.”

“Then why come? Why bother?”

“I had to see for myself that you weren’t hurt.”

She spun around in a circle, her arms spread wide. She even managed to cover up the tiny half stumble her dizziness caused when she came to a halt. “I’m perfect. Now, get out.”

“I wasn’t just worried about you physically, Rachel.”

She raised her eyebrows high, wanting to make sure he understood his audacity.

“You’re worried about my feelings? If maybe my heart was broken after seeing you snogging with some sexy chick with no color palette in her fashion decisions? I don’t give a rat’s ass who you screw around with, Roman.”

“You cared yesterday.”

“That’s because I was the one you were screwing. So not the case anymore.”

Emboldened by the fact that she’d sparred with him for a good ten minutes without either dissolving into tears or falling victim to his practiced charm, Rachel took a step closer. Yeah, it hurt like hell to have him here, right in front of her, forcing her to confront the stupidity of her choices over the past four months, but she could take it.

“Tell me something, Roman.”

“Anything.”

She laughed, even as her heart wept, knowing he couldn’t answer the question she was about to pose, even though she was still compelled to ask. “Is anything I know about you true?”

“What do you know?”

She cursed. He never could answer a straight question. She’d start simple.

“Your name?”

His mouth tightened.

“Are you a television consultant?”

Again, nothing.

“Is that woman your lover?”

“No.”

“Never? She’s never been your lover?”

He glanced aside.

“An ex. Nice.”

“I didn’t expect to ever see her again. She only kissed me because she knew you were watching.”

Rachel staggered a step backward, her knees folding until she sat on the bed. “You knew I followed you?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know. She knew.”

“How?”

“Apparently, she’s been following me for the past week.”

“Hopeful of a romantic reunion?”

“She and I slept together, Rachel. Nothing more.”

She leaned back on her hands. “That’s your modus operandi, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“She’s involved in my business.”

“Which isn’t television consultation.”

“No.”

She sat up straighter. “Holy shit. I think you just answered a question.”

“That’s all I can say, Rachel. I’m not really a television consultant. Everything I’ve told you about myself from the first moment we met has been a lie, first as a way to get to know you, then as a way to protect you.”

“From what?”

He stared at her and she could see the conflict in his eyes. Truth? Lie? So many choices for a clearly complicated man.

“From people like the shooter in the car. People who don’t care about collateral damage. That’s only one reason why I should have stopped seeing you months ago.”

“Why didn’t you?” she challenged.

He stepped forward and his voice, for the briefest moment, sounded strangled from the tightness in his throat. “How could I?”

She glanced aside. “It was just sex.”

“Now who’s the liar?”

For a moment, she sat there, chastised, knowing that if she could stop pretending for just a second, she’d realize she’d come to care about the man. But how could that caring mean anything when the man she’d thought she was getting to know was nothing more than an illusion? A cover?

“Look, Roman, or whatever your name is, the sex was great and the affair was fun, all full of spontaneity and mystery and all the things that are biting us in the ass right now. Fact is, you’re probably on your way out of town—you and that gun of yours—so why are we wasting our breaths talking about nothing?”

Silence reigned. God, she wanted him to reply with “It’s not nothing. We connected, Rachel. We were something to each other. You matter to me.” But his mouth remained closed. She supposed she should have celebrated when he turned and started to exit the room, but instead, a sob caught in her throat.

Luckily, Mario and Iris swept in before Roman could change direction.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Mario asked.

Iris muttered in Spanish, something Rachel was pretty damned sure was a curse. Not the cussword type, either. The “may your penis turn purple and fall off” type.

“He was just leaving,” she replied.

Roman cast a glance over his shoulder. The regret and self-recrimination in his steel-blue eyes nearly caused her insides to buckle, but she pressed her hand against her belly and silently ordered herself to remain still.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she narrowed her eyes and speared him with a glare that told him any excuse, beyond the honest-to-God truth, would be too little, too late.

With a polite “excuse me,” he moved out of the apartment and consequently, out of her life.

Forever. For good.

Iris rushed past Mario and caught Rachel by the arms before she could sink onto the bed and dissolve. Into tears. Into a puddle. Into a pathetic mess.

“
Mija,
you’re better off.”

Rachel forced strength into her legs, willed herself to remain standing. “I know that, Iris. I swear, I know that with every fiber of my being. But why, then, why do I feel like I’m about to fall apart?”

CHAPTER SIX

“J
UST HOLD ON THERE, SON
.”

Roman turned, not entirely surprised to see Mario Capelli stalking after him in the hallway outside Rachel’s apartment. The wizened cabdriver shut the door behind him firmly, then marched down the hall. Roman waited. He supposed he shouldn’t deny the man his opportunity to ream him out.

“Mario,” he said by way of greeting.

The old man arched an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“I can’t explain to you any more than I could explain to Rachel.”

“She has a lot of questions.”

“None that I can answer.”

He’d wanted to answer them. He’d fully intended to come here and offer complete disclosure. But on the way over, using all his skills as a covert agent to make sure that the enemies who had fired on him this morning didn’t get a second chance to fill him full of holes, he’d realized that the truth would be too selfish and dangerous. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Right?

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.