A Fare To Remember_ Just Whistle_Driven - Vicki Lewis Thompson [59]
“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