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.”
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.