Kentucky Confidential. Пола Грейвс
not in person.
Where had she seen him?
It might have been on Dalrymple’s office wall, she realized a few moments later. There had been several surveillance shots tacked up on a corkboard behind Dal’s desk in his Washington office. She’d asked about the photos once, but Dal had brushed her questions aside. “They’re wins,” he’d said with grim satisfaction. She’d assumed that Dal meant they were bad actors who’d been killed or captured by the agency.
One of the photos on the wall had looked a little bit like one of the two men Darya had been serving earlier, hadn’t it?
But those men on Dal’s wall of wins were dead or locked up somewhere they’d never escape.
So how could one of them be sitting at table six in The Jewel of Tablis?
And was it a coincidence that Connor had shown up at this restaurant at the same time as the mystery man? Maybe he hadn’t come to Cincinnati looking for her at all.
Maybe he was here looking for the mystery man.
She exited the warmth of the restaurant, the shock of frigid air sucking the breath from her lungs. Pulling her coat more tightly around her, she started walking down the street toward the bus stop on the corner. The restaurant was close enough to her apartment to walk there most days, but she was cold, tired and feeling hunted. She could splurge on the bus fare after the evening she’d just had.
Light from the storefronts across the street illuminated her way between the circles of light sporadically shed by streetlamps. On a Wednesday night, the crowd of pedestrians was lighter than it would be on the weekends, but there were enough people to make her feel safer as she walked to the corner. A few of them gave her curious glances, their gazes directed either at her head scarf or her swollen belly. A couple of the women flashed her sympathetic smiles. One of the people sitting on the bus stop bench rose to let her take his place.
She took the seat gratefully and sat to wait for the bus, letting her gaze take in the people walking past. Finally, the bus appeared amid the light traffic moving toward the corner, and she reached into her purse to make sure she had exact change. As she gathered the coins in her hand, she heard a deep voice speaking Kaziri.
“The serving girl was beautiful, no?”
Looking up, Yasmin spotted the two VIPs from the restaurant, walking together alone. She looked away as they neared her, covering her surprise so that no one around her would notice and remember. Then, as the men passed by, the bus arrived, and the people waiting with her at the bus stop moved at once to board.
Yasmin remained where she was until everyone else had started toward the bus. She rose, too, but turned to follow the men instead.
She was far enough away that they weren’t likely to hear her footsteps following them. They were certainly showing no signs of stealth themselves, the older of them walking with a confident swagger, his colorful payraan tumbaan rippling in the cold breeze with each step.
The men walked two more blocks before turning onto a cross street. The lights here were fewer and spaced farther apart. While she’d been on the main drag, she had been accompanied by a scattering of fellow pedestrians, but once she took the turn to follow the Kaziri men, she was alone, and her sense of vulnerability increased.
In her prime, the prospect of following a couple of men down a dark side street wouldn’t have given her much pause. But in her prime, she had never been over eight months pregnant and unarmed.
She slowed her gait, let them move a little farther ahead of her but still close enough that she wasn’t likely to lose them unless they tried to shake her tail. Her clothing was dark, and her olive skin and dark hair wouldn’t be easily visible as long as she stayed in the shadows.
Cincinnati was still a relatively new place to her, but she’d taken care to study the street maps and familiarize herself with the area for just such a situation as this. When she’d come to town seven months ago, shortly after her previous life had all but ended, she hadn’t known she was pregnant. She had intended to be much more useful to Dal than she’d turned out to be.
But the job was still the job, and one of the two Kaziri men she’d spotted at The Jewel of Tablis had pinged her radar, big-time. Maybe she was wrong about seeing him before. Maybe his reason for being in Cincinnati was completely innocent.
Or maybe they were planning to bring al Adar terror attacks to the United States, hiding themselves among the poor immigrants who’d fled Kaziristan to escape unrest and persecution back home.
Near the next cross street, the two men slowed their pace as they reached the side door of a four-story brick building. It was hard to tell much about the place until the door opened, spilling light into the darkened street and revealing a quick glimpse of the dingy redbrick facade. Then the door closed, plunging the street into darkness again.
Yasmin peered at the darkened streetlamp overhead. Was it dark from normal wear and tear, or had someone deliberately disabled the bulb? And if so, was it to hide what was inside the building the two men had entered?
The longer she stayed here in the open, the more danger she put herself in, she realized. She’d wandered away from the safety of foot traffic on the main thoroughfare, leaving her vulnerable. And maybe if she had only herself to worry about, it would have been a risk worth taking.
But the gentle kicks of the baby in her womb reminded her that she wasn’t the only person in danger if she lingered here much longer.
She reversed course, walking as briskly as a heavily pregnant woman could, keeping her eye on the bright strip of lights just two blocks ahead. Not much farther to go now.
“You!” a deep, accented voice called out from behind her.
She couldn’t keep herself from taking a look.
The door at the end of the block was open, and three men stood in the doorway, staring toward her.
She turned around and started to run.
* * *
THE SOUND OF a man’s voice calling out, followed by the thud of running footfalls, drew Connor’s attention as he paused in the middle of the narrow alley he’d used as a shortcut in hopes of catching up to his quarry.
The footsteps seemed to be coming closer, spurring him into a sprint, his rubber-soled boots quiet on the uneven concrete breezeway. As he neared the opening into the street, he heard the sound of hard breathing. A woman’s breathing, he thought. The sound was harsh with fear and desperation.
It was her. He could feel it like a shiver in his bones.
His body reacted on pure instinct, his arms reaching out to catch her as she ran past the narrow opening of the alley. He pulled her into the dark recess, closing his arms around her as she flailed to escape.
“It’s me,” he whispered in her ear.
She stopped struggling, but he could feel the pounding of her heart where her slender back pressed against his chest. Underneath one arm, something in her abdomen fluttered against his wrist, then thumped solidly against his grasp, making him swallow a gasp of surprise.
He urged her toward the other end of the alley and out of the line of sight. Around the corner of the building was a large trash receptacle. The smells from inside were ripely unpleasant, but it offered a decent hiding place until he could be certain the men who’d apparently been chasing her down the sidewalk had given up.
She huddled close to him, as if seeking his warmth, though she was furnace-hot against his chest. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you,” he answered.
Her name was not Yasmin Hamani, though every piece of identification she possessed proclaimed her to be so. She was not a widowed immigrant