Читать книгу Kentucky Confidential - Пола Грейвс - Страница 12

Chapter Three

Her name was not Yasmin Hamani, though every piece of identification she possessed proclaimed her to be so. She was not a widowed immigrant from Kaziristan, though over the past few months she had almost convinced herself she was.

But burrowed into the solid strength of Connor McGinnis’s arms, breathing in his familiar scent, hearing the steadying beat of his heart beneath her ear, she allowed herself the truth.

She was Parisa DeVille McGinnis, Risa for short. Her mother was a Kaziri woman who’d married the strapping young US marine who’d saved her from death in a terrorist attack in her war-torn homeland. Risa herself had married a marine, a smart, brave and loyal man she’d met in the mountains of Kaziristan many years later. Like her parents, they’d been on track for their own happily-ever-after.

Until Risa McGinnis had died in a bomb attack on a commercial flight from Kaziristan to the US almost seven months ago. The plane had disappeared from radar over the Pacific and only a few pieces of debris had been found floating in the ocean near the plane’s last coordinates on the radar.

All souls lost.

Well, all the souls who’d actually made it aboard the plane.

“We need to get moving.” Connor’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Lose the roosari.”

She tugged the scarf from her head and shoved it into the pocket of her coat. She allowed herself a quick look at him, though the sight of his face, so close, so achingly familiar, left her feeling breathless and light-headed.

“How far away do you live?” he asked quietly.

“You can’t go there. I live alone, unprotected.” The words came out so easily, as if she truly was the woman whose life she’d lived for months now.

“I’m your husband, Risa.”

Something inside her chest melted and began to warm her from the inside out. “But they think I’m a widow.”

“I hope I died a heroic death.” His dry tone should have made her laugh, but her heart ached too much.

“Where are you staying?” she asked. “We could go there.”

“It’s not far from here.” He draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. “Remember, you’re not Yasmin now. You’re Parisa. Sexy and smart. You take no prisoners. And you’re with me.”

She looked at him, her heart breaking. “I’m sorry.”

“We’ll worry about apologies later.” He nodded toward the trash-strewn alley stretching out in front of them. “Ready?”

Risa nodded, ignored the ache in her back and legs, and wrapped her arm around his waist.

Huddled together against the cold, they hurried down the darkened alley until they reached the main drag, where streetlamps lent a twilight glow to the nightlife tableau. It was past ten now, but even on a weeknight, the traffic flow, both vehicular and pedestrian, would continue past midnight.

By the time Connor led her to a shabby-looking walk-up just a couple of blocks east of Vine Street, Risa’s back was starting to cramp. To her relief, there was just one flight of stairs to climb before he stopped and led her down the hall to a door marked 201. He unlocked the door and let her inside.

Compared to his place, hers looked almost homey. His living room consisted of a couple of mismatched wooden chairs around a table, and a third chair sat facing the window. A laptop computer lay closed on the table next to a take-out box.

“Have you eaten?” he asked, tossing his keys on the table.

She eyed him warily. His calm, businesslike demeanor wasn’t what she’d expected from her husband upon learning she hadn’t actually died.

She’d spent the past seven months letting him believe she was dead. If the situation had been reversed, she’d have been furious.

Except he didn’t seem furious, either. He seemed...distant.

“Food?” he asked again. “I don’t have much here, but I can run across the road to the all-night diner.”

“I’m not hungry.” She shrugged off her coat and looked around the bare apartment. “But I could use a bathroom.”

His gaze dropped to her round belly. “Right.” He nodded toward the narrow hallway just off the main room. “It’s the door on the right.”

The door on the left was open, revealing a darkened bedroom. In the low ambient light seeping into the hallway from the living room, she saw that his bed was little more than a bunk, wide enough to accommodate—barely—a man Connor’s size.

This was a mission, she realized as she closed the bathroom door behind her. Not a man looking for his missing wife, but a soldier on assignment. That was why he was so distant.

He was looking at her as his job, not his wife.

Shaking from a combination of cold and delayed reaction, she stared into the wide hazel eyes of the pregnant woman in the cabinet mirror and realized she’d never felt so alone in her life.

* * *

NO EMOTIONS. EMOTIONS are messy and unreliable.

Connor gazed out the window at the street below. The snow had started again, coming down in light flurries. He was glad they were out of the cold for the night.

“Am I staying?”

Risa’s soft alto sent a shiver rippling down his spine. He turned to find her standing in the doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame. The docile young Kaziri widow was gone, and the clear-eyed CIA agent he’d fallen for three years ago had taken her place.

“I don’t think you should risk going back to your apartment.”

“I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“I have a shirt you can borrow.” He regretted the words even as they slipped between his lips, for they reminded him of long, sweet nights of lovemaking, followed by lazy mornings with Risa wandering around their apartment in his shirt and little else.

She ran her hand over the large bulge of her stomach. “Make it a big shirt.”

He wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t. If she had something to tell him about the baby, she would.

Wouldn’t she?

The Risa he’d known would have played it straight with him. Always.

But the Risa he’d known wouldn’t have let him believe she was dead when she wasn’t.

“You must have so many questions,” she murmured, walking slowly toward him. She was trying to play it cool and sophisticated, the sexy spy in control, but carrying around a baby inside her was apparently hell on the femme fatale act. She still looked sexy, but in an earth-mother sort of way, all fecund beauty and softness.

He couldn’t hold back a smile. “You can drop the act, Risa. You just can’t sell it with that beach ball you’re carrying under that dress.”

She stopped, looking uneasy. “Why aren’t you asking the obvious questions?”

He played dumb. “What are the obvious questions?”

“How did you survive the plane crash, Risa?”

“How did you survive the plane crash, Risa?”

“I never got on the plane.” She took another step.

“Why didn’t you call me, Risa?”

He stayed quiet that time, struggling to control a potent storm of anger and hurt churning in his chest.

“Dalrymple pulled me off the flight. He told me there was a price on my head and I needed to lie low. Then we heard the plane crashed.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes, wondering if he could trust what she was saying. It was so pat. So obvious. Hell, maybe she even believed the story herself. Maybe Martin Dalrymple really had pulled her off the plane and told her about a price on her head. The plane crash immediately after his warning was a convincing touch.

A little too convincing, maybe.

“You think I haven’t wondered the same thing?” she asked softly, moving another step closer. If he reached out now, he could touch her. Pull her close to him the way he had out in the cold alley. Feel her heart beating against his chest once more, something he’d thought he would never experience again. “You think I didn’t wonder if Dal was pulling a scam on me?”

But he kept his hands by his side. “Dalrymple isn’t known for his truthfulness.”

“I know.” She put her hand on her belly. “But if he wasn’t lying—I couldn’t take the chance. There was too much at stake. Not just me.”

His gaze fell to where her hand cupped her round belly, despite his determination to remain unaffected. “You mean the baby?”

“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I agreed to play dead.” Her voice was soft, her tone sincere. “I found out almost a month later. But you’d already held the memorial service. You’d left the Marine Corps.”

“So, what? You decided that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me?”

“No, of course not—”

“Because it did.” His grasp on his emotions broke, and a flood of anger and old grief poured into his throat, threatening to choke him. “It hurt like all hell. It still does. Every damn day.”

Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you let me believe you were dead?” He closed the distance between them in one furious step. “Or sorry that I found out you weren’t?”

She put her hand on his chest. His brain told him to shake off the touch, but the feel of her palm warm against his sternum, so damn familiar and longed for, nearly unmoored him.

He closed his hand over hers, holding it against his chest. “Do you have any idea what it was like, hearing you’d died on that plane?”

“I’m sorry.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, unchecked. “I wanted to let you know, but Dal said you were in danger—”

“Dal said.” He spat the man’s name with contempt, his anger finding an easier target. “I don’t give a damn what Dal said. You told me you were quitting, Risa. We agreed. We were done. It’s why you were on your way home from Kaziristan in the first place.”

“I know, but—”

“We had a life planned, Risa! You and me and a house of our own in a place we both loved instead of living out of suitcases and passing in the airport, remember?”

She wiped her eyes with her knuckles. “I remember.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, trying not to let his emotions get the best of him. Focus, Marine. “Who were the men you were following?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. She sounded as if she was telling the truth, but he realized he just couldn’t be certain. Not anymore.

“So why were you following them?” he asked.

She moved toward the window, standing just a little short of it, as if she worried she might be seen from the street. “I shouldn’t have come here. People will notice if I don’t go home. In some ways, living in an immigrant community can be like living in a small town. Everybody keeps an eye out for everybody else.”

He noticed that she had formed a habit of rubbing her belly when she spoke, as if she was soothing the child inside. He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to.

“Am I the father, Risa?”

* * *

RISA HAD BEEN expecting the question. Dreading it, because of what it would mean. But she hadn’t realized how much his show of distrust would hurt, even as she understood why he harbored it.

“You’re the father,” she said simply, because anything else would only exacerbate his doubts.

“And you weren’t ever going to tell me I had a child?”

“Honestly, Connor, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” She turned back to the window. “I was supposed to be on the plane. But Dal had heard chatter that al Adar had put a target on my back. We knew they had people placed in the airports and other means of transportation.”

“So he took you off the plane and sent two hundred and twelve other people to their deaths to fake yours?”

“God, no!” She turned to look at him. “I would never have allowed that. You know that.”

“But it’s what happened, isn’t it?”

He looked so angry, she thought, her own chest tightening in response. Was anger the only feeling he had left for her now?

“He seemed genuinely shocked by the bomb on the plane. Connor, he sent another agent on that plane to take my place so al Adar would think I was going to be landing in San Diego as we planned.”

Pain flashed across his expression. “I was waiting there. For hours. They didn’t tell us right away that something had gone wrong. I got a call from Jason Ridgeway. He’d seen it on the news. A Russian airliner had disappeared somewhere over the Pacific.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, raking his hand through his already-tousled hair. “Okay. You didn’t expect the crash. But what about after that? You couldn’t let me know you were alive?”

“Dal said—”

“I don’t care what Dal said!” His voice came out in a pained roar. He turned his back to her, visibly trying to regain control. She waited silently, giving him time and space to do so.

Finally, he faced her. “I’m sorry. What did Dal say?”

“It doesn’t matter. I should have contacted you. I was just—it was one thing to think I was being targeted. But to know that they’d kill over two hundred people just to kill me—”

“Pretty shattering, huh?” For the first time, Connor sounded sympathetic.

“Very shattering.” She pressed her palm against the curve of her belly, taking comfort in the gentle wriggling of the baby inside her. He—or she—could probably sense her tension. Not for the first time, she wondered whether she was carrying a girl or a boy. Her ob-gyn had offered her the chance to find out the baby’s sex, but she’d wanted to wait until birth.

Until this moment, she hadn’t known why she’d wanted to wait. But watching Connor’s gaze follow the movement of her hand, she realized she had always hoped that somehow, against all odds, she’d be able to share the birth of this child with her husband.

He might never forgive her for letting him believe she was dead so long, but she had no doubt whatsoever that he’d love their child.

“Why are you here in Cincinnati, pretending to be a Kaziri widow?”

She sighed. “Sometimes, I wonder that myself.”

Connor looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You look tired.”

“I had to walk eight blocks for my doctor’s appointment this morning, and then I was on my feet for hours at work.”

“And then you followed a couple of men down a dark street.”

“Yeah. Not my finest moment.”

He pulled a chair away from the table. “Take a load off.”

She took a seat, swallowing a sigh of pure relief. She looked down at her feet and saw that her ankles were looking a little puffy. “Ugh, whoever said women glow when they’re pregnant was probably blind or demented. I’ve just inflated.”

Connor smiled, giving her the first glimpse of his dimples in forever. Her heart turned a couple of flips in her chest at the sight, just as it had the first time he’d smiled at her. “You look beautiful. You always do.”

The kindness in his voice, the sincerity of the sentiment, drew hot tears to her eyes. “I shouldn’t be glad you’re here, because you’ve probably put yourself in terrible danger. But I am. I’m so, so glad you’re here.”

He started to reach out his hand toward her, but he stopped midmovement and let his hand drop to his lap. “Are you?”

She swallowed her disappointment. “Yes, of course. But how did you find me?”

He reached down and pulled a battered-looking briefcase up to the table, unfastened the buckle and pulled a tablet computer from inside. He swiped his finger across the screen, then tapped a couple of times before he handed the tablet to her.

She looked down and saw a photo of a Free Kaziristan rally that several people in the community had held a couple of weeks earlier. She hadn’t attended the rally herself, not wanting to put herself in the spotlight of refugee politics in any way, but the rally had taken place on the street in front of the restaurant. She’d had to pass through the throngs to get to work.

She looked lifeless in the photo. Was that how she always looked?

“I kept telling myself it couldn’t be you.” Connor’s voice rumbled low and soft, like thunder in the distance. “You wouldn’t have let me think you were dead. But there you were.”

“Connor—”

A loud trio of raps on the door cut her short, the sound sending a hard jolt of alarm down her spine.

“Go to the bedroom,” Connor said softly, already on his feet. He pulled a large Ruger pistol from his bag and tucked it in his waistband behind his back, letting his jacket drop to cover it.

Risa hurried down the hallway into the bedroom, her heart fluttering with fear. If someone from the community had seen her come into this apartment with Connor, everything she’d spent the past few months trying to set up would be destroyed.

And she and Connor would be in the worst danger of their lives.

* * *

CONNOR LOOKED THROUGH the security lens and saw a familiar face staring back at him. He turned the dead bolt and disengaged the security chain, then opened the door to a bearded man wearing a high-collared shirt and plain khaki pants. His visitor’s hazel gaze swept the room quickly.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Nice seeing you, too, Quinn.”

Alexander Quinn didn’t wait for an invitation, entering and nodding for Connor to close the door behind him. As Connor reengaged the locks, Quinn crossed to both of the street-facing windows and shut the blinds.

“Heller says it’s her. So I tried her apartment. She wasn’t home. Then I tried her workplace, and she wasn’t there, either.”

“I told you I’d handle things my own way.” Connor heard the tight annoyance in his own voice but couldn’t seem to care. “So why are you here, anyway?”

“Because Martin Dalrymple has been murdered.”