Free Killing Time by Cindy Gerard Page A

Eva had retrieved her passport and extra cash from the locker where she’d stashed them at the international terminal. “Two tickets to Washington, D.C.,” she told the ticketing agent. “Earliest flight possible.”
    Mike’s eyebrows shot up. The implications of D.C. being her home base clearly weren’t lost on him, but he didn’t comment. And that was a huge relief because he had made a big deal over her passport.
    Make that passports . She’d stood, jaw tight, arms crossed under her breasts, after he’d snatched the two fake documents out of her hand, scanned them, then handed both back with a knowing smile.
    “My, my. Got yourself a good ink man, there. Creative. And smart. He even included an entrance stamp to keep eyebrows from raising when you go through customs. But I’m so confused. Which is it? Pamela Diaz or”—he glanced at the second forged document—“Emily Bradshaw? Or is Mata Hari still going to turn up somewhere on one of these little blue books?”
    What she had was access to the CIA’s resources, and a trustworthy friend in the documents department who hadn’t asked questions. She was glad now that she’d double-covered her bases. Pamela Diaz was on someone’s hit list, but Emily Bradshaw was just another American tourist returning home.
    And Brown had no room to talk: They’d booked his ticket under the name John Mason. He knew as much or more about forged documents as she did.
    She let him wonder about her true identity. She still wasn’t ready to tell him the truth about who she was or what she did. They’d taken a chance on standby tickets and gotten lucky with a 12:30 a.m. flight. Even though they barely made the boarding call, Brown insisted they board at the last possible second, which gave him an opportunity to study every passenger as they filed onto the plane. Only after he was satisfied no one on the flight had any interest inthem and that no one could board after they committed did they finally walk down the Jetway.
    Fatigue hit Eva like a hammer by the time they found their row and she sank wearily into the window seat. They had about fourteen hours of travel ahead of them, with a stop in Bogota, Colombia, before they finally landed at Dulles in D.C. Plenty of time to decide if Brown was a man she could trust with the whole truth, or if she would cut her losses and turn him loose after she’d mined as much information out of him as she could.
    She still had a lot of sorting out to do. Even before she’d tracked him down and flown to Peru to talk to him, even before she’d ended up getting shot at, she’d been a bit of an emotional mess, not knowing what to believe. Nearly thirty-six hours with little sleep and Brown’s moving proclamation of innocence had combined to skew her ability to critically assess all the information even more. Did she believe him or the OSD report? Did she believe her gut that something wasn’t right? She’d spun everything inside out, upside down, and backward until all she felt was frustrated.
    Turning her head, she glanced at Brown. He’d already closed his eyes. His lashes were long . . . the very tips rested above the swelling on his cheekbone where blue and purple would join the red skin. The imprint of her boot heel was going to leave a helluva bruise.
    The emotional side of her wanted to believe the worst of Brown . . . but there were still so many unansweredquestions that her rational side wouldn’t let her commit, especially since her profession had taught her that everyone lied. She just hadn’t been prepared for those lies to hit her on a personal level.
    Too weary to think about it anymore, she followed his lead and closed her eyes. The onboard safety drill droned on in the background. She was vaguely aware of the plane moving down the apron toward the runway, away from Lima and a gunman who had tried to kill her. By the time it registered that they were airborne, exhaustion had taken over and she’d drifted off to