The return of the wife he thought was lost and a baby he never knew existed will make this a Christmas to remember...

Captain Connor McGinnis has seen a ghost. Staring at a surveillance photo of a Kaziri immigrant, there can be no mistaking that the starkly beautiful—and visibly pregnant—woman in a head scarf is his wife, Risa. The woman he presumed was dead after her plane crashed into the ocean.

Risa McGinnis, relocated by the CIA when they learned of a price on her head, has settled into the guise of a widowed immigrant. Confronting Connor again resurrects sweet memories and a burning passion. But until this unknown enemy is captured, Risa must focus more on Connor’s protection than on their attraction. After all, the strength of her marriage—and the safety of her baby—depends on it...

Resourceful, he thought. That was Risa.

He felt a familiar tug low in his gut, a pull of attraction and admiration and awe, all wrapped up in one small, brilliant woman. And then, like a slow-rolling detonation, the delayed impact of the reality he’d been tamping down beneath his game face finally hit him with devastating force.

She’s alive.

Shock waves of pent-up emotion blew through him, and he ended up dropping to the cold bus stop bench before his knees buckled.

He took several deep breaths, his heart hammering as if he’d run for miles. Risa sat beside him, her compact body warm, and she put her hand on his arm.

“What’s wrong?”

How could he tell her what he was feeling when he couldn’t trust the emotions? Yes, he was thrilled beyond words that she was alive. He had mourned her deeply, longed for her when she was no longer within his reach, but those feelings seemed to belong to another person.

A person who couldn’t have imagined that his wife would let him believe she was dead when she was very much alive.

And carrying his child.

Kentucky Confidential

Paula Graves

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PAULA GRAVES, an Alabama native, wrote her first book at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Connor McGinnis—His wife, Risa, died in a terrorist attack almost eight months ago. Or did she? A surveillance photo of a pregnant Kaziri immigrant leads the former Marine on a search for the truth. But can he live with what he finds?

Risa McGinnis, aka Yasmin Hamani—She’s come to terms with living a lie to protect herself and the child she’s carrying. But when the past she left behind storms into her new life, everything she’s fought to preserve may be destroyed.

Martin Dalrymple—Risa’s only contact with her past has gone silent. Why has he stopped communication with her? Is his own life in danger?

Alexander Quinn, Maddox Heller and Rebecca Cameron—Connor’s bosses at Campbell Cove Security Services have promised their support in his search for the truth about his dead wife.

Farid Rahimi—Risa’s boss at the restaurant where she works undercover as a waitress named Yasmin pings her danger radar. But why?

Tahir Mahmood—The brutal terrorist was presumed dead after an explosion years ago. But is it possible he’s still alive? And could he be behind the ongoing threats to Risa’s life?

Jesse Cooper—Convinced someone high in the government may be trying to kill Risa, Connor reaches out to this security expert with experience dealing with government conspiracies.

Leland Garrett—Is the Homeland Security agent friend or foe?

For my editor, Allison, whose Raylan Givens

love led to this series.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“She’s dead,” Connor McGinnis whispered, though his eyes declared the words a lie.

On the street below his window, the woman he was surveilling tugged her faded coat more tightly around her swollen belly and waited for the chance to cross the street. A light wind swept snow flurries in small white eddies down the street and threatened to whip the gauzy roosari from her head. Grabbing the scarf as it slid down to reveal the dark luster of her wavy hair, she tugged it back into place, but not before he got a look at her face.

Her intimately familiar face.

She looked tired and careworn, but there were no signs that she’d been injured. Of course, the crash had happened months earlier. She might have had time to heal from even a serious injury.

Though how she’d survived the blast in the first place...

He tamped down a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. Not yet. Emotions on the battlefield could be deadly. And if Risa was still alive, he was already engaged in a war he hadn’t known about only a few days ago.

If Risa was still alive. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it yet, no matter what his eyes were telling him. He’d seen news footage of the wreckage found floating in the water off the coast of Japan. Even if someone had survived the bomb blast that sent the jet hurtling into the Pacific Ocean, no one would have come out of that crash unscathed. And Risa’s name was on the passenger manifest, which meant she’d gotten on the plane.

He didn’t know how this woman could be Risa, no matter how much she looked like her.

Except there were ways to fake passenger manifests, weren’t there? Ways to fool transportation security. It was one of the biggest nightmares facing national security agencies worldwide.

Traffic cleared momentarily, and the woman started across the street. Her gaze darted around, right and left, in front and behind, as she made the short transit from one corner to another.

Hypervigilant, he thought.

Reasonable, he supposed, for a refugee from war-torn Kaziristan.

Or for a woman hiding from her past.

Stop. It’s not Risa. It can’t be.

He was grasping at straws. Letting what he wanted get in the way of what actually was.

That was a good way to drive himself insane. He had to keep his emotions out of the equation. Think logically. Deal in facts.

If Risa had survived the crash, she’d have found a way to let him know.

Wouldn’t she?

He lost sight of the woman—the woman who couldn’t possibly be Risa—as she turned at the corner and walked under the narrow awnings of the storefronts below the shabby apartment he’d rented earlier that morning. He resisted the urge to run to the ground floor and follow her down the street. It wasn’t time to make that particular move.

Not yet.

If ten years of combat had taught Connor McGinnis nothing else, it had shown him the value of patience.

* * *

SHE WAS BEING WATCHED.

Inside her apartment, the woman known as Yasmin Hamani locked the door behind her and paused in the entryway to listen. The apartment building was old, prone to settling with creaks and groans of aged wood and plaster, but she didn’t sense the presence of another living being within the walls of the small one-bedroom apartment. Still, she unlocked the drawer of the table by the door and withdrew her compact Glock 23, feeling instantly safer.

These days, it was harder to carry a weapon than rely on her disguise to keep her safe. None of her shoulder-carry holsters fit comfortably anymore, thanks to the swell of her pregnant belly. And forget trying to work with any sort of waistband holster.

She made a circuit of the empty apartment with the Glock in hand before she finally relaxed and put the weapon on the side table where she could easily reach it. She removed the roosari covering her hair, relieved to be shed of it for a while. She wasn’t Muslim, but the majority of the Kaziri refugees who lived in this section of Over-the-Rhine were, and she donned the head scarf as both protection and concealment.

It was unlikely she’d run across anyone she’d dealt with during her years in Kaziristan, but a dead woman couldn’t be too careful. She couldn’t afford to stand out.

The baby was fussy this afternoon, turning flips in her womb. Impatient, perhaps, to greet the world outside. Yasmin rubbed her bulging belly, smiling a little at the thumps of the baby’s kicks against her palms, strong and reassuring.

The baby was her reason for everything she did these days.

She eased into her desk chair, now used to the dull pain in the small of her back from carrying the tiny burden inside her. She typed in the complex password to her laptop computer and checked her email for any message from her former handler.

Nothing.

She sighed, leaning against the back of the chair. If someone had seen through her cover, apparently Martin Dalrymple didn’t know about it.

Which meant what? That she was imagining things?

Working in covert operations had a way of making a person see shadows where none existed. Operatives got used to paranoia. Expecting the worst, seeing threats everywhere you looked, kept you vigilant. And vigilance kept you alive. But she’d thought she was done with that life. She had started a new life, one that wouldn’t include dead drops and secret identities. One that included stability and trust. Love.

She should have known better.

The baby kicked again, reminding her that she hadn’t lost everything. The pregnancy had come as a shock, a complication her analytical mind had deemed an unacceptable risk.

But her heart had wrapped itself around the tiny life growing inside her like a coat of armor, determined to keep the baby safe from danger.

She would give her baby the life he or she deserved, no matter what it took. Somehow, she’d figure out a way to do it.

But she didn’t think it could be here in Cincinnati.

She sent a coded email message to Dalrymple, trying to be as oblique as possible so that even if someone managed to break the cipher, he’d still have to figure out what the hell she was talking about. While Dalrymple knew her well enough to understand what she was trying to tell him, there wasn’t anyone else in the world who knew her that well.

Not anymore, anyway.

The baby gave another kick. She was only four weeks away from her due date, though her obstetrician seemed to think she might deliver late. First babies often took their own sweet time.

Rubbing her belly, she logged off and closed the laptop, hoping Dalrymple would respond soon. The last thing she needed in the final days of her pregnancy was this kind of stress.

Come on, Dal. Tell me I’m imagining things.

She settled in the rocking chair she’d picked up at a thrift store. Most of her furniture was secondhand. Her clothes as well.

She’d never been wealthy, and she could remember plenty of lean times in her life, both as a child and later as an adult. But life as a pregnant Kaziri refugee was proving to be a whole other level of needy. And there was no hope of ever going back to the life she’d once lived.

From down the hall, faint strains of an old Kaziri folk song added a discordant counterpoint to the Bing Crosby tune playing on the radio in the apartment next door. Refugees had taken over several of the empty apartments in the building, but there were a few native Cincinnatians who’d been living in Over-the-Rhine for decades, through bad times and good. Some of them eyed the newcomers with suspicion and even fear, at times signaling their defiance by shows of blatant patriotism in case the refugees forgot where they were living now.

Yasmin felt strangely caught in the middle, someone who knew all the words to both songs clamoring for attention. Her mother had sung “Nazanin” to her as a lullaby for as long as she could remember. And Bing’s “White Christmas” had always been one of her father’s favorite songs.

It would have been easier if Dal had placed her in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, where another group of Kaziri immigrants had started to form their own small cultural enclave. Those Kaziris came from the small Christian community, with its more westernized habits and customs. She could have fit in there quite easily, given her mother’s background.

But she wasn’t going to find what Dalrymple was seeking in North Carolina. So there would be no Christmas lights this year. No holly wreath on her door or stockings on the mantel. Not if she wanted to fit in with the rest of the Kaziri community here in Cincy.

Still, as she rocked slowly in the chair, making herself wait a little longer before she checked for Dal’s return email, she found herself humming along with Bing, feeling a little melancholy.

Christmas was only a couple of weeks away. And this year, she’d be spending it alone.

* * *

“IS IT HER?” Maddox Heller’s drawl rumbled through the phone receiver, bracingly familiar.

Connor stepped away from the window. “I’ll admit, it looks like her.”

“But you’re not certain.” Heller’s voice was tinged with sympathy. A former marine, like Connor, he’d gotten in touch after the plane crash and Risa’s death, first to offer his condolences, and later, the new job that had eventually brought Connor to Cincinnati.

“No, I’m not certain.” Connor had come to terms with the fact that he wanted to believe the woman he’d seen was Risa. But self-deception during a mission was a great way to end up dead or captured. “The woman is definitely pregnant.”

“How far along?”

“How the hell would I know?” He heard a tinge of bitterness in his voice and quelled it. Stick to the facts. “Big. Probably last trimester.”

“If it’s Risa,” Heller said quietly, “then...”

Then the baby could be his. “I know.”

“Quinn has feelers out to some of his old contacts at the agency, but if she’s part of an ongoing operation, they’re not going to tell him anything.”

“Do you think...” Connor swallowed and started again. “Do you think she could have planned it all along?”

“What? Faking her death?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. CIA folks can be a little squirrelly, but...”

But she loved me, he thought. She loved me, and we didn’t have secrets.

Self-deception, he reminded himself. Always dangerous.

“I think she must live in this area. The Kaziri refugee community seems to be centered here near the new mosque on Dublin Street,” he told Heller. The mosque had once been a Methodist church, according to some of the locals he’d talked to earlier that morning. With the exodus of locals and the advent of the refugees, a lot was changing in the neighborhood. Longtime diners had become halal markets and restaurants. A boutique down the street from the mosque now sold hijab coverings for women.

“That’s what our intel says,” Heller agreed.

By intel, he suspected Heller meant an undercover asset. Maybe more than one. Connor was new to Campbell Cove Security and the academy the company ran. He had a feeling there was a lot about the company he had yet to discover. And other things, he suspected, he might never discover unless there was a pressing need to know.

Heller broke the silence that had fallen between them. “What’s your gut on this?”

How the hell was Connor supposed to answer that question? He’d spent the past three days since spotting the pregnant woman in the surveillance photos trying not to feel anything at all, in his gut or anywhere else. If he let himself feel, then he’d lose any chance of dealing with the situation with reason and logic.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I can’t let my gut lead here.”

He wanted to believe way too much to trust his gut about anything where Risa was concerned.

“What are you going to do next?” Heller asked.

Connor checked his watch. Nearly two thirty. “The operative says she works the dinner shift at The Jewel of Tablis, right?”

“Not every night, but yeah.”

“So I guess I’ll wait a couple of hours and then go have myself a nice halal dinner.”

* * *

BY THE TIME Yasmin had to leave the apartment to get to her job at the restaurant, she still hadn’t heard from Dalrymple. Going on twelve hours since their last contact. Dal had always been the kind of man who lived on his own timetable, but he’d never taken this long to get back to her.

Unless something had gone wrong.

As she tied her apron above the swell of the baby, she glanced around the restaurant, trying to remember the feeling she’d had before while walking home from the doctor’s office. A tingle on the back of her neck that said, “Someone is watching.”

She supposed it was possible a lot of people were watching her. Pregnant women living alone weren’t the norm in a culture like Kaziristan’s. She had lived there with her mother for three years while her father was doing a tour of duty overseas. At least, that’s what her mother had told her, though she sometimes wondered if the Kaziristan years had come during a rough patch in her parents’ marriage.

They’d stayed with her mother’s brother and his family, and the experience had been eye-opening, not always in a good way. But during those years, she’d learned a lot about being a Kaziri woman. While a large swath of Kaziristan was cosmopolitan and culturally advanced, some of the rural areas were still deeply tribal, including the part where her mother’s brother lived. Those areas were patriarchal in a way people in the West couldn’t really comprehend.

But even in those parts of Kaziristan, women had ways of getting things done beneath the veil. It was a lesson she’d never forgotten, and she was banking on that lesson to get her through the next few months of her life.

“Yasmin?” The sharp voice of the restaurant manager, Farid Rahimi, jerked her back to attention. She turned to look at him, trying not to let her dislike show.

He was a short man, and lean, but she knew from observation that he was strong and fast. He was also mean, keeping his employees in line with threats and derision. He was a US citizen, which put him in a far more stable position than most of the people in the community, including all of his employees. Most were here on temporary visas or provisional refugee status, and he made sure they understood just how perilous their lives in the States really were.

“There are a couple of special guests coming tonight. They want the prettiest of the serving girls to wait on them exclusively.” He flashed her a bright smile before adding, “So Darya will be serving them. You’ll have to pick up her tables.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered in Kaziri, trying to ignore the flash of cruelty in his smile. One of the hardest things about pretending to be a Kaziri refugee was behaving as if she was resigned to being at the mercy of others.

In another life, she would have cut him in half with her words. And he’d be lucky if she’d stopped there.

“Speak English,” Farid added in a harsh tone. He waved one sinewy hand at her head. “And cover yourself.”

She reached up and straightened her roosari, tugging it up to cover her hair. It’s all part of the assignment, she reminded herself as she picked up her order pad and went to work, her teeth grinding with frustration.

The conversations she overheard as she worked were unremarkable. Despite its location in the heart of the Kaziri refugee community, The Jewel of Tablis was beginning to draw patrons from all over Cincinnati. In fact, most of the refugees Yasmin knew were too impoverished to eat out, though most of them shopped in the small halal food market attached to the restaurant. So far tonight, all of her diners were English-speaking Americans. Not one of them said anything that might have piqued Dalrymple’s interest.

She was beginning to wonder why he’d wanted her to move here to Cincinnati rather than simply relocating her somewhere out West, where she could live in solitude and see trouble coming for miles before it arrived.

“Darya!” Farid’s voice rose over the ambient noise of conversing diners, drawing Yasmin’s gaze toward the door where he stood. There were two dark-featured men, each wearing an expensive payraan tumbaan, the traditional long shirt and pants typical in Afghanistan, Pakistan and, these days, the Kaziri moneyed class. The intricately embroidered silk vests the two men wore over their shirts were definitely products of Kaziristan, adorned as they were with the brilliant-hued fire hawk of Kaziri folklore.

She didn’t recognize either man, though the taller man on the right looked oddly familiar, even though she was certain they’d never met. Maybe she’d run across one of his relatives during her time on assignment in Tablis, the Kaziri capital city.

She’d kept a low profile while she was there, playing a similar role blending in with the native Kaziris in order to keep an ear close to the ground during a volatile time in the country’s downward spiral toward another civil war. Strange—and alarming—that she’d been afforded more autonomy and respect as a woman in Kaziristan than she was as a woman in the insular Kaziri community in Cincinnati.

On the upside, being pregnant and makeup-free was working in her favor here. People saw the round belly first and never bothered letting their gazes rise to her face, especially with more nubile, exotic-looking beauties like Darya and her bevy of young, unmarried friends to draw the attention of Kaziri men. And the Americans as well, she noted with secret amusement, as the middle-aged male patrons she was currently serving kept slanting intrigued glances at Darya as she walked with sinuous femininity to the VIP table to take their orders.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed another customer enter the restaurant and take a seat at a table near the window. She delivered her most recent order to the kitchen and returned to the dining hall, grabbing a menu and pouring a glass of water before heading to the newcomer’s table.

A burst of laughter from the VIP table drew her attention in that direction. One of the men was flirting outrageously with Darya, who was eating up the attention with the confidence of a woman who knew her appeal.

Swallowing a sigh, Yasmin turned her attention back to her new customer. He lifted his head, pinning her with his blue-eyed gaze.

Her stomach gave a lurch.

The glass slipped from her hand, but the man whipped his hand out and caught it on the way down. Only a few drops of water splashed across the dark hair on the back of his hand.

He set the glass on the table, still looking at her.

“Hello, Risa,” Connor McGinnis said.

Chapter Two

Connor focused his gaze on Risa’s pale face, trying to read the snippets of emotion that flashed like lightning across her expression. Within a couple of seconds, her pretty features became a mask that hid everything from him.

“Yasmin,” she said quietly as she mopped up the spilled drops of water from the table using a rag she pulled from her apron pocket. Her voice, almost as familiar as his own, came out in a heavy, convincing Kaziri accent. “My name is Yasmin and I will be your server tonight. Would you like to try the mint tea?”

So it wasn’t amnesia. There had been a part of him that almost prayed it had been memory loss from the plane crash that had kept her away for so long, but those hopes had been dashed the second her eyes met his. They’d widened, the pupils dilating with shock, before she’d lowered her gaze and set about hiding everything she’d briefly revealed.

He knew what that Kaziri accent hid—a South Georgia drawl as warm and slow as a night in Savannah, where Risa had been born and her parents still lived.

They’d mourned her, too, he thought.

How could she have chosen to disappear the way she had, letting everyone who knew and loved her think she was dead?

He struggled to keep the anger burning in his gut in check, careful not to let it show in his expression. He, too, was good at wearing masks.

“When does your shift end?” he asked quietly.

She pretended not to hear the question. “The special tonight is lamb kebabs with rice.”

“We have to talk, Yasmin.” He put extra emphasis on her alias.

“No.” Her hazel eyes lifted to meet his gaze before she added, “Sir.”

“You don’t think I have a right to ask a few questions?”

For a second, her mask faltered, fierce emotion burning in her eyes. But she looked away quickly. “Take your time to study the menu. I will return in a few minutes. Would you like something to drink while you are waiting?”

“Mint tea,” he said finally.

She gave a nod and walked away. Her gait was subtly different, her back arched from the weight of her pregnant belly. He realized with some surprise that he’d never before imagined what she’d look like pregnant.

How could that be? Why had they never thought about children, about a family?

A few tables away, a slender young woman in a simple, shape-hugging dress and a matching peacock-blue roosari was taking orders from two middle-aged men. The one nearest was dressed in an elaborately embroidered payraan tumbaan. Connor couldn’t get a good look at his face. His companion, however, sat facing Connor, though his gaze was lifted upward to smile at the pretty server. Connor didn’t recognize him.

But there was something about the shape of the other man’s head, the slight wave of his silver-flecked black hair, that tugged at Connor’s memory.

How did he know the man? Was it from those years he’d spent in Kaziristan? Or was the acquaintance more recent?

He sensed more than saw Risa’s approach and turned his gaze toward her, watching her walk to his table. She carried a small tray with a glass of iced mint tea, even though he hadn’t indicated whether he wanted it hot or cold. She placed the glass of tea on the table in front of him and started to turn away.

“I didn’t ask for my tea to be iced,” he murmured. But of course, she’d given him ice because she knew that’s how he liked it.

She froze in place for a second before she turned and lowered her gaze. “I am sorry. I will bring you another cup.”

He closed his hand over hers as she reached for the glass. “Washington Park. Are you familiar with it?”

For a moment, her fingers flexed beneath his grip. But she gave a tiny nod.

He dropped his hand away before they drew unwanted attention. “I will be on a bench near the bandstand by the water park. Tomorrow morning at ten. If you want to talk.” He handed her the menu. “Tea will be all. Thank you.”

She lifted her gaze to meet his. “The table will be needed once the dinner crowd picks up.”

“Understood.” He took a couple of drinks of the cold mint tea and realized she’d added a packet of sweetener, the way he liked it. “Thank you for the tea. It’s perfect.”

She averted her gaze but didn’t move right away. He thought he saw a hint of moisture glimmering in her eyes before she finally walked back to the kitchen area.

He released his pent-up breath and glanced at the table nearby where the two Kaziri men continued flirting with the young waitress. It was at that exact moment that the second man turned his head, giving Connor a good look at his profile.

A ripple of unease darted through him. He didn’t recognize the man, but something was ringing alarm bells in his head. He felt as if he should recognize him somehow. But why?

He looked at the phone lying on the table in front of him. Unhurriedly, he picked it up and swiped the screen to unlock it. Glancing toward the other table, he pushed the camera application button, bringing up the viewing screen, and slowly angled it toward the men at the other table.

Pretending to send a text, he snapped a quick shot of the man facing him. He waited for the other man to turn again, but he was looking up at the flirtatious waitress, who seemed to be regaling them with a story in rapid-fire Kaziri.

The clatter of silverware nearby drew his attention away for a moment, until he spotted the toddler at a table near the door who had thrown his spoon on the floor. As the mother shot a look of apology toward the approaching server, Connor looked back at the table where the two Kaziri men sat. The second man had turned in his chair to watch the young mother and child, his expression harsh with disapproval.

He was perfectly framed in the phone’s viewer screen.

Connor snapped a couple of photos before the man turned his back again. While he was at it, he took a few other shots, one of the dark-haired man who seemed to be the restaurant manager, another of the pretty young waitress attending to the table where the Kaziri men sat, and finally, carefully, a shot of Risa as she served a nearby table, her roosari sliding backward to reveal her dusky hair and delicate profile.

After one more shot, he pocketed his phone and retrieved his wallet. He put a twenty on the table next to the half-empty tea glass before he walked out the door, careful to keep his face averted from the two Kaziri men.

Outside the restaurant, the night had turned bitterly cold, the last fluttering of snow drifting silently from the winter sky. Tugging up his collar to guard his neck from the icy wind, he hurried down the block to a coffee shop angled across the street from The Jewel of Tablis.

A blast of heat welcomed him as he entered. A freckled waitress with straw-blond hair and bright red lipstick greeted him from the counter. “Take a seat, sir. I’ll be with you in just a sec.”

Connor sat at one of the tables by the window, not entirely happy with the view through the plate glass. The bright interior of the diner reflected back at him, making it difficult to see much of the street outside, though the colorful lights of The Jewel of Tablis were just visible through the reflection.

He pulled out his phone and opened the photo gallery, studying the images he’d snapped at the other restaurant. He’d gotten a good shot of the younger man who had sat facing Connor’s table. He texted Maddox Heller a quick message and attached the photo. Then he picked out the best shot he had of the older man and sent the image to Heller as well. Does this man look familiar?

As the waitress arrived with a pot of coffee and a menu, his phone hummed. He took the menu and checked his messages. There was a text from Heller.

Not sure, Heller had written. The image isn’t clear. Can you track? Get a better shot?

Will try, he texted back and set his phone on the table in front of him, peering through his reflection at the door of the restaurant down the street.

* * *

PANIC BURNED IN her chest, stealing her breath. She forced herself to slow her breathing, to concentrate on staying calm. Thanks to the pregnancy, her blood pressure was a little higher than normal, so she had to deal with the stress for the baby’s sake as well as her own.

Don’t think about Connor. Don’t think about anything but the job.

“Are you okay?” Darya’s voice startled her, setting her nerves rattling. Darya had been born in Cincinnati and spoke Kaziri with an American accent.

“I’m feeling a little tired,” Yasmin answered, her own Kaziri as authentic as a native’s, thanks to her mother and those years spent in Kaziristan, first with her mother’s brother and his family, and then undercover with the agency.

Her gaze drifted toward the VIP table. Maybe that’s why she’d thought one of those men looked familiar? Had she seen him before in Kaziristan?

Darya followed her gaze and lowered her voice to a soft hiss. “Pigs,” she said with a viciousness that caught Yasmin by surprise.

The younger woman’s parents put great stock in tradition and they had raised their daughter to observe their customs, but perhaps Darya had a rebellious side. Despite her flirtations with the VIPs earlier, Yasmin now noticed a pinched look around the girl’s eyes and mouth that suggested she had found her role vexing.

Not worth the tips they would leave when they departed?

“I think that handsome customer you served earlier liked you,” Darya added, her voice back to its normal, teasing tone. “The one with the leather jacket? Very manly.”

“I am pregnant and hardly looking my best,” she countered, trying to forget the look of betrayal in Connor’s eyes. A pain began to throb behind her forehead. “You were right. I am not feeling well.”

She had to get out of here. Go somewhere to think. Figure out what to do next. Try to reach Dal again.

“Go. Your shift is nearly over. I will tell Farid you became ill and left.”

Yasmin glanced at her watch. It was eight forty-five. The restaurant closed at nine. “I’ll tell him,” she said, already heading toward the kitchen. Farid would probably dock her the final hour of her pay, but money was the least of her problems at the moment.

How had Connor located her? What kind of game was he playing?

She found Farid in his cluttered office behind the kitchen and told him she was feeling unwell.

“You’ll get an hour less in your paycheck this week,” he warned her. “Unless you can pick up an hour later this week.”

“I will do that,” she said, not at all certain she’d be back to the restaurant at all.

Instead of going out the back door into the darkened alley behind the restaurant, she chose the relative safety of the well-lit front exit. As she left, she spared another glance at the two men sitting at the VIP table. They leaned toward each other over the table, deep in conversation. The older man’s demeanor seemed angry, while the younger man looked tense and worried. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the older man’s face, but there was something vaguely familiar about the way he held himself erect, about the shape of his head and his slim but masculine build.

Flicking her gaze toward the front exit, she realized she could see the older man’s reflection quite clearly in the window. Clearly enough that she was now certain she’d seen him before. But 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.

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.”

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