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.
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
