Kentucky Confidential (12 page)

Starting with her neck, he pressed his thumb against the taut muscles, rubbing firmly but gently, trying to work loose some of the tension. Moving relentlessly downward, he followed the curve of her arm, down to her hand, where he massaged each finger. Then he traced the curve of her hip, gently massaging the muscles of her outer thigh.

“Helping?” he murmured, struggling to hold his own body in check.

“Mmm,” she answered with a guttural groan of pleasure.

So not what he needed.

His fingers trembled as he sat up and worked his way down her calves, kneading the knotted muscles.

“Don’t,” she whispered as he reached her ankle. She turned onto her back and sat up, turning to look at him. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling beneath her thin T-shirt. “You forgot how these moments always ended.”

He curled his hand behind the back of her head, tangling his fingers in her hair. He tugged her closer, whispering against her lips. “I didn’t forget.”

Her lips parted, her breath hot on his mouth as he kissed her.

He’d kissed her hundreds, thousands of times before, but this felt strangely new somehow, as if it was the first time. She darted her tongue lightly across his lower lip, tasting. Testing.

He ran his hands down her sides, letting them settle lightly over the bulge of her belly. He kissed her again, more deeply. With more intensity. Reacquainting himself with the taste of her, with the sweet headiness of her scent. She responded with eagerness, curling her fingers in his hair as she rose to her knees and took control of the kiss with a fierce passion that made his head spin.

“I missed you. Every day.” She kissed her way across his jaw and down the side of his neck, nipping lightly at his skin. “Every night.”

He was losing all control. Had this been what he’d been hoping for when he offered to help her get to sleep?

She lowered herself until she was straddling his hips, the heat of her body enveloping his. Claiming him all over again.

Branding him with her need.

He had lost all restraint now, his body surging with desire as she pressed herself harder against his erection.

“It’s okay,” she whispered against his throat. “This doesn’t have to mean anything beyond this moment.”

Her words worked like an ice bath, cooling his runaway ardor. He found the strength to pull away from her grasp, to put distance between them on the bed until he was able to recapture his breath.

“I’m not ready for this,” he admitted. “I can’t just pretend it doesn’t mean anything. I can’t act as if everything between us is okay now.”

She sank back against the pillows, her breaths coming fast and harsh. “I know.” Her hands moved to her belly, stroking, soothing, as she struggled to get her breathing back under control.

“I’m not saying never,” he added, even though a part of him wished he could. The raw, vulnerable part that wanted to pretend that if he didn’t let her back in his heart, he’d never be hurt again. But he knew better now. There was no escaping what he felt for her.

He was just going to have to find some way to deal with it.

“I understand,” she murmured, her hands playing over her round belly.

He rolled over on his side, his back to her. Needing what little space, what little distance, he could put between them in this tiny motel room.

* * *

F
ARID
R
AHIMI
LEFT
his apartment building around seven the next morning, dressed in sweats and a thick fleece jacket. The North Face, Maddox noticed. High end, top quality. The restaurant business must be doing well for him. Or he had another source of income.

He couldn’t shake the sense that he’d seen the man before. But it hadn’t been in Kaziristan, when Maddox was working as a Marine Security Guard at the US Embassy in Tablis.

It was somewhere else, more recently.

“Still can’t remember where you know him from?” Iris sat beside him in the passenger seat of the truck, wrapped up against the cold and sipping a hot coffee.

“No. It’s not from my time in Kaziristan, I’m pretty sure.”

“Any word on the background check?”

Maddox gave himself a mental kick and checked his phone. There was a new email from Kyra Sanchez at the office. The subject line read
Background
.

He opened the email and scanned the contents. “Hmm.”

“Hmm?”

“Rahimi held a job in Mariposa at the American Consulate for a couple of years.”

“Maybe that’s where you know him from?”

“Maybe.” He started the truck and began following Rahimi, who was now jogging up the street toward Washington Park. He found a place to park the truck on the street and kept an eye on Rahimi as the man started running a brisk circuit of the park.

“Interesting that a Kaziri man ends up working in the US Consulate on a tiny Caribbean island,” Iris murmured. “And Quinn worked there, too, didn’t he?”

Maddox dragged his gaze away from Rahimi long enough to look at his wife. “What are you thinking?”

She took another sip of coffee, her dark eyes meeting his over the rim of the cup. “Wouldn’t be the first time Alexander Quinn was running an op without telling you about it.”

He looked back at Rahimi, taking in the trim physique and strong running form. Not the kind of fitness he’d normally associate with your average middle-aged restaurateur.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number. Quinn answered on the first ring. “Quinn.”

“Heller,” he snapped back. “When were you going to tell me that Farid Rahimi is on our payroll?”

“Need to know, Heller.” Quinn’s voice tightened. “We’ve got a bigger problem. The McGinnises have dumped the tracker on the Tahoe. They’ve gone rogue.”

Chapter Twelve

“I’ve been thinking about the Tahoe,” Risa said over their breakfast of cheese crackers and sodas from the vending machines next to the motel office.

“You think we need to ditch it somewhere.”

She nodded. “If there’s any possibility we’re being tracked by someone with access to government resources, we need to take measures to thwart them.”

“You’re right. We’re lucky they haven’t tracked us already.”

“If we’d stayed in a normal motel room, management might well have asked for our license plate number when we registered.” Risa finished the last of her crackers and downed the rest of the Sprite he’d bought.

“That’s why I went for a place where nobody would ask any questions.”

“Do you think Quinn has figured out we’re not at the safe house yet?”

“Probably,” Connor conceded. “Someone will have noticed that the GPS tracker was disabled. We didn’t put it in a plastic bag the way we did with the rogue tracker. The next step is to check the safe house.”

“So they must know we’ve gone.”

He nodded. “If we ditch the Tahoe, how are we going to get around? I don’t want to steal a car, and we don’t have enough money to buy one, even a piece-of-garbage car.”

She bit her lip, thinking. She wasn’t nearly as certain as Connor that Alexander Quinn was playing things straight with them, but Connor was right about one thing—if they wanted to have the mobility to stay on the run, they needed transportation. And she wasn’t any more inclined to grand theft auto than he was.

“Who do you trust the most at Campbell Cove Security?” she asked him.

“Heller,” he answered immediately.

“Any way to get in touch with him without anyone else at Spear knowing about it?”

He gave it a moment’s thought before he smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

* * *

T
EN
MINUTES
LATER
, they stood outside a small gas station on the main road, huddling together against the frigid cold and praying that the pay phone hanging on the front of the attached food mart was in service.

Connor breathed a sigh of relief at the dial tone. He punched in the number jotted in his address book and waited for a response. “Please answer,” he muttered.

Next to him, Risa edged closer, as if seeking his warmth. He put his arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer.

On the fourth ring, as he was starting to lose hope, a woman’s voice replied, “Hello?”

“Iris, it’s Connor McGinnis. I need to talk to Maddox. Is he with you?”

A moment later, Maddox’s gravelly drawl answered. “Where the hell are you, Connor?”

“We had to run. Someone put a tracker on the SUV—besides the Campbell Cove Security tracker. Whoever it was tried to get his hands on Risa last night at a place we stopped. We didn’t think it was smart to return to the safe house.”

“Good call,” Maddox said. “Why’d you call Iris’s number?”

“We don’t know who might be trying to find us or how they’re doing it. I didn’t think it would be wise to call a company-connected phone, but I hoped I might catch you with Iris.”

“You lucked out. What do you need?”

Connor glanced at Risa. They had discussed what they’d ask for on the way to find a pay phone, but now that it was time to make their demands, he was beginning to wonder if they weren’t being a little too paranoid.

“Connor?” Maddox asked.

“I’m here,” he said, looking at Risa. He covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Are you sure this is how you want to do it?”

She nodded.

“We need a car that can’t be connected to Campbell Cove Security. And I don’t want Quinn to know I contacted you. Can you do that?”

Maddox was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. I can do that. But I want to see you. I need to talk to you face-to-face. Do you trust me to do that?”

“He wants to meet with us,” Connor told Risa.

Her brow furrowed, but after a moment, she nodded. “Tell him not to use a vehicle that could be easily connected to him.”

Connor relayed the request.

“I’ll make it happen,” Maddox agreed. “Where and when?”

Connor thought fast. “You know that sandwich shop next to the dollar store in Cumberland? Think you can get there by lunchtime?”

“It’ll be cutting it close, but yeah. I should be able to.”

“See you at twelve thirty.” Connor hung up the phone and looked at Risa. “We’re set.”

She looked tense. “You think I’m paranoid.”

“Maybe a little. But we have to keep you and the munchkin safe, don’t we?”

She rubbed her stomach. “So what do we do while we’re waiting?”

“There’s a public library in Cumberland. Why don’t we see if we can find a free internet connection?”

* * *

T
HE
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
was doing a brisk business that Saturday morning, mostly parents with young children who were there for a special reading of Clement Moore’s famous poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” They passed the group of rapt children listening to the tale of the night before Christmas on their way to the computer terminals.

“We’ll be reading that poem to Junior next Christmas,” Connor murmured.

Risa slanted a glance at him, noting the faint look of amazement in his blue eyes and wondering if he realized he’d used the word
we
. Deciding not to push, she followed him to the computer area, where they found that three of the terminals were open. He went to the one that was the farthest away from other library patrons and pulled up a second chair for Risa.

“Okay, what should we look for first?” he asked.

“I can’t stop thinking about the project I was supposed to report on before the plane crash, ever since we discussed it last night.” She pulled up a search engine and typed in the name of the upstart company.

The first hit came as a shock. “Agri-Tech Entrepreneurs Killed in IED Attack.”

“Oh. That’s not good,” Connor murmured.

She clicked the link, which took her to an English-language paper from Qatar, which reported the death of the two Kaziri businessmen, the owners of the agricultural start-up called Akwat, which loosely translated to “sustenance” in Kaziri. The date of the article was the day after the plane crash.

“Why didn’t Dal tell me about this?” Risa wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t think there was a connection?”

“The day after the plane crash? Isn’t that a bit too much of a coincidence?”

Connor frowned. “Maybe not.”

She searched deeper in the article for more details. The attack had actually happened the same day as the plane crash, a few hours after the first report of the crash. “It’s almost like they waited to be sure I was dead before they struck the agri-tech business.”

“But why? Why try to kill all of you?”

“I don’t know!” Her voice rose higher than she intended, and a nearby patron gave her a disapproving look. She quickly lowered her voice. “I think we need to get out of here, in case somebody is tracking web searches about Akwat.”

“You really think that’s possible?”

“It’s absolutely possible, if someone has access to national-security internet resources.”

Connor lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re talking about someone inside our own government.”

“Or China’s or Russia’s or any number of countries in Europe.” She glanced around her, making sure nobody was watching them. “Or hackers, for that matter, if someone was paying them for the information.”

“But why? Why would anyone care about an agri-tech start-up business in Kaziristan?”

“Why did anyone want me dead? I don’t know. But I need to find out.” She rose from her chair and started to reach for the straps of her backpack. Connor beat her to it, swinging the heavy pack over his shoulder.

They made their way back through the library, trying to blend in with the rest of the patrons. They emerged into bright sunlight and a hint of warmth that took the edge off the cold breeze flapping the American flag hanging on a pole outside the library. It was already noon, close to the time they were supposed to meet Maddox Heller at the sandwich shop.

Inside the Tahoe, Connor turned to look at her, his gaze intense. “Whatever this is you’re up against, I’m in it with you. You know that, don’t you? What I said to you last night—it doesn’t change that fact. We’re going to figure this out together. We’re going to get your life back for you.”

She held his gaze, afraid to read too much into what he was saying, especially since he’d said
your life
instead of
our life
. But she found his words heartening anyway. “Okay.”

“And then we’ll have the time and space to figure out what happens next.” He softened his words by reaching out to touch her face, his callused fingers deliciously rough against her cheek.

She closed her fingers over his.
I know what I want already
, she thought, intensely aware of the quivering sensation of the child wriggling in her womb.
I want us to be a family.

* * *

B
Y
HABIT
, C
ONNOR
sat with his back to the wall, facing the door of the sandwich shop, acutely aware of the store’s glass-front facade. It wasn’t the most secure of meeting places to have chosen, but at least nobody else in the shop seemed to think there was anything amiss about the man and pregnant woman sitting alone at a table for four. They had gone through the buffet line to select their sandwiches—beef and Swiss with tomatoes and peppers for Connor, and chicken salad with spinach and tomatoes for Risa. They had barely unwrapped their sandwiches before Maddox Heller and his wife, Iris, entered the sandwich shop.

Maddox spotted them and gave a wave before he and Iris went through the line for their own sandwiches. Carrying their trays, they joined Connor and Risa at the table.

“Did you know there’s a tree in the back of the Tahoe?” Maddox sat across from Connor with a grin that carved deep dimples in his lean cheeks. He’d been a favorite with the female embassy employees during his time with the Marine Security Guards, and he’d not been afraid to take advantage of that popularity during his off hours.

But Maddox was clearly smitten with his pretty brunette wife, Iris, a slim woman with eyes the color of pecan hulls, an odd hue somewhere between brown and gray.

She smiled across the table at Connor before turning her attention to Risa. “Welcome back from the dead.”

“Thank you.” Risa managed a smile in return before turning her attention to Maddox and his opening statement. “Yes, we’re aware we have a tree in the SUV. It’s Christmas.”

Connor quickly caught them up on the details of what had happened to them the night before. “We don’t think we’re safe in the Tahoe. They have our tag number and the make and model of the vehicle.”

“Yeah, I can see how you’d be worried.” Maddox leaned closer across the table, lowering his voice. “We drove here in a Dodge Durango. Rented by my brother-in-law, and there shouldn’t be any easy way to connect it to you. He just asks that you don’t do anything crazy in it.”

“I’m not sure it’s safe for you two if you’re in the Tahoe, either.”

“No worries. We’ve already called to have the Tahoe towed back to the office. We’ve also booked a week at one of the lodges near Sunset Mountain, in the names of Daniel and Rose Hartman. You roughly match their descriptions. Well, except for...” Iris waved at Risa’s pregnant belly. “They’re waiting for us at the lodge. You’ll drop us off and they’ll drive us back home. Then you stay in the lodge in their names.”

“The lodge has free Wi-Fi, so you can get online if you need to do any research. And here.” Maddox reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone, which he slid across the table to Connor. “No trackers, no connection to Campbell Cove Security or anyone else. Daniel bought it earlier this morning. It’s got an app that lets you change your phone number as often as you like, so if you have to make calls, use the app and keep switching out the numbers. That will make you very hard to track.”

So far, they hadn’t told Maddox about their suspicions regarding the agri-tech firm Risa had been vetting shortly before the plane crash. Connor glanced at Risa and saw the wariness in her hazel eyes. He decided to let her make the decision about what else to tell Maddox.

Apparently she decided to keep those facts to herself for the time being, for she remained quiet through lunch and made only small talk as they exited the sandwich shop into the warming afternoon sunlight.

“Since y’all will be at the lodge through New Year’s Eve, if everything goes well, why don’t we put the tree on top of the Durango?” Iris suggested. “Most people who stay in the lodges at this time of year are there celebrating the holidays, so it’ll add a touch of authenticity.”

Connor looked at Risa. Looking genuinely pleased by the idea, she gave a quick nod. “Good idea,” he told Iris, and he and Maddox got to work transferring the tree to the Durango’s roof rack, while Iris helped Risa pack the rest of their supplies in the back.

“We packed some clothes for y’all,” Maddox told Connor when they had finished transferring everything to the Durango.

“I had some maternity clothes left over from my last pregnancy,” Iris told Risa. “I’m a little taller than you, but I think they’ll fit well enough.”

Risa looked up at Connor, her eyes shiny with emotion. She turned back to Maddox and Iris. “I don’t know how to thank y’all for everything.”

“You’ll probably get a chance to return the favor sooner or later, if I know my husband and his history of attracting trouble,” Iris said, flashing her husband a look of exasperated affection.

“Here’s the wrecker,” Maddox said, nodding toward the large tow truck that pulled into the sandwich shop parking lot. While Maddox and Iris took charge of getting the Tahoe loaded onto the tow truck’s flatbed, Connor helped Risa into the front passenger seat of the Durango, then took his place behind the steering wheel.

“Maybe this will buy us enough time to figure out what’s really going on,” he murmured.

“Maybe.” Risa leaned her head against the back of the seat. “I feel as if I’m standing in the middle of a highway with no way to escape. Vehicles flying toward me in both directions, and I don’t know which way to turn.”