Silent Masquerade Read online

  “And why would you be within earshot of me?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Because you’re one of them.” She gestured toward the Dumpster across the boardwalk. “You may not do the actual dirty work, but you sure as hell set me up for this.”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I’ve got nothing to do with that scum. I never meant you any harm.”

  “Then why did you send that killer after me?”

  “I didn’t! I swear to you, I had nothing to do with...” His sentence trailed away as footsteps came pounding down the lower walkway. They both turned in the direction of the sound.

  Like a fury, Bill Hamlin took the three steps up to the boardwalk in one leap and flung himself at the man hovering over Cara.

  The sounds of men swearing, panting and grunting superseded the sound of the rain.

  “Be careful, Bill, please!” Cara cried out, running around the two grappling figures, trying to see how she could help Bill. The two men were equally matched in height and weight. In the rain, she could tell them apart only by their garb—Bill’s plastic rain jacket and the other man’s stylish trench coat. They fell to the deck, still pummeling one another and grunting epithets.

  Cara looked around for a weapon.

  That was when she noticed that the small man, her would-be murderer, had disappeared from beside the Dumpster.

  “He’s gone,” she screamed, furious that he’d escaped the law, and then horrified by the realization that he was free to come after her again.

  Frustration filled her lungs with power, and she screeched again, shocking the two brawling men into a momentary truce.

  “Who’s gone?” Bill demanded, holding back the punch that had been aimed at his opponent’s face. His other hand had a stranglehold on the man’s collar.

  “The other guy. The one who was trying to kill me.” It had taken long enough, but all of a sudden she recognized the truth; the tall man wasn’t a killer, hadn’t meant her any real harm, had tried to help her.

  Bill seemed only to hear the word kill. With a roar of rage, he let go, and his fist landed with painful accuracy on the other man’s eye.

  “We’ve got this one!” Bill yelled, drawing back his arm again.

  The man’s shout of pain mingled with Cara’s scream at Bill. “Bill, stop! He was protecting me!” She lunged at Bill, grabbing his arm, ordering him again to leave the man alone.

  It took a moment for her words to sink in.

  By the time the two men untangled themselves and fell back on the slippery deck, it was clear, even with their faces obscured by rain, that they’d been evenly matched and that each had given as good as he got.

  “What’s going on here?” Bill demanded as he staggered to his feet. “Cara, who is this guy, and who was the other guy, and what did you mean about someone trying to kill you?”

  The physical circumstances of their plight struck Cara with unexpected force. She was cold, wet, tired, and aching all over. And those were only the physical symptoms. She was in no condition to deal with her emotions. She decided she wanted to be a whole lot more comfortable before she let go of those.

  “I’m not saying another word until I’ve had a hot shower and gotten into some dry clothes,” she said, forcing herself away from the wooden rail with a visible shiver. She started up the wooden walkway. “I’m going home. You guys can do whatever you want,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  She heard them stumbling around behind her, heard Bill say, “...coming with us until we straighten this out.” Then she heard the other man’s grunt of acquiescence, heard them fall into step a few feet behind her.

  Chapter Twelve

  The three of them sat around the kitchen table, nursing cups of hot coffee, trying to make sense of the night’s events.

  By the time Cara finished telling her version, Bill was up and pacing back and forth, and she had slumped back on her spine, drained from reliving the horrific experience.

  “Now you,” Bill growled at Gordon Lefebre. “And I want to hear everything.”

  Lefebre removed the towel filled with ice cubes from his left eye and nodded. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of Bill’s sweats and had a dry towel draped around his neck for added warmth. The other two were similarly attired. Little had been said until they gathered in the kitchen and he formally introduced himself. Even then, Cara had insisted they wait until the coffee was done and they were seated at the table before they talked.

  The couple had worked together to prepare and serve the coffee, and as he watched them work in silent tandem, Lefebre realized that they’d already established a considerable bond.

  It should have freed him from his obsession with Cara—but it hadn’t.

  Lefebre began his own tale, explaining his presence in their lives. When he finished, there was a heavy silence while the other two tried to make sense of what he’d told them.

  Finally Bill said, “Are you telling us you don’t know who hired you?”

  “I swear.” Lefebre lifted his right hand as if he were truly giving an oath.

  Bill nodded. That wasn’t really so hard to believe. Alvaretti wasn’t apt to tip his hand to a mere hireling, especially if this guy was only meant to find Bill and then set him up for the hired gun.

  “I still don’t understand why he’d come after me,” Cara said, shaking her head. “I’m not the one he’s after.”

  “He? He who?” Lefebre demanded, looking from one to the other. “You know the guy who hired me?”

  Bill nodded. “We know who he works for.”

  “And that would be—?”

  Bill studied Gordon Lefebre’s face, trying to decide how much he could trust the man. He shrugged. What the hell? If Lefebre was lying, nothing Bill would tell him would come as a surprise. And if he was telling the truth, maybe there was some way he could help.

  “Franco Alvaretti.”

  It appeared to take Lefebre a moment to recognize the name. When he did, he blanched, his face growing taut with shock.

  “You think I was hired by the mob?” he gasped.

  Bill nodded, ignoring Cara’s gasp and the stunned expression on her face. This was not the time to fill Cara in on the details. The look he exchanged with her said that she clearly understood that.

  “Jeez.” Lefebre looked from one to the other. Suddenly his talk with his client that afternoon struck him with painful force. “My God! They’re on their way here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He ordered me off the case today, said they had it under control from their end now. They’ve got this address. They know where you work.”

  Bill leaped to his feet, his hands clenched in fists. “You bastard!” he shouted.

  “Bill, please.” Cara grabbed his arm, in case he was about to start another fight. “Mr. Lefebre didn’t know who he was working for.”

  Bill looked around, his features taut with panic. “We’ve got to get out of here, Cara,” he muttered. Then he grabbed her arm. “Come on, love, there’s no time to waste. Let’s just get going.”

  “What about me?” Lefebre stood up, his hands held out in submission. “I could maybe help.”

  Bill hesitated. No sense leaving the guy behind to help the enemy. “Turn off the pot,” he called over his shoulder, “and come in here and pack for me while I scan the neighborhood, make sure we’re not already in the line of fire.”

  Bill hurried out the front door and cautiously approached his car. So far, so good. No sign of anyone who didn’t belong on the street.

  He got in and drove slowly, looking up and down side streets. On one street he saw a parked car with the silhouette of a person behind the wheel. He drove past, his heart thumping erratically. It was a woman with a short haircut, a baby in a car seat beside her. The baby began to squall as the woman bent to lift it out of the car seat. She looked over at Bill as his car slowly passed hers, then shrugged and smiled. He watched in the rearview mirror and saw that she got out and went up to the house i
n front of which she was parked.

  He did a fifteen-minute sweep, carefully covering a three-block radius, and then returned to the house, satisfied that they were unwatched for the moment.

  “Hurry up,” he ordered as he herded them out to the car. It was safe now, but he had no idea how long it would stay that way.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked Lefebre after they’d moved out onto the street.

  Lefebre told him, and suggested a shortcut to the motel.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Cara asked as they waited in the motel parking lot for Lefebre. She sounded cheerful, as if they were embarking on a holiday.

  Bill swallowed and put his face in his hands, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. “I don’t know.” He sighed heavily, exhaustion overwhelming him.

  He heard a door slam and looked up to see Lefebre starting down the outside steps from the second floor, a suitcase in one hand, a briefcase in the other.

  All at once, the bleakness of his situation caught up to him. Here he was, running for his life, and he was taking on more and more responsibility. Not just Cara now, but Lefebre, as well. If he had any sense, wouldn’t he dump them and just go as deep underground as he could? He had enough money to last him quite a while without working, if he lived frugally.

  Only he was pretty sure now that he couldn’t stand being underground. He’d learned that much about himself from the way he’d taken to playing the marriage game with Cara. It wasn’t all about loving her, though God knew that was substantial all by itself; no, it was also about doing a job every day, shopping for groceries, doing odd jobs around the house. In other words, living like everyone else. He was good at that. Strangely, it made him realize how wrong he’d been in his career choice. After all, being an agent wasn’t that much different from living underground. You still had to give up all the real things and live a make-believe life that really had no rewards beyond the job itself.

  He pushed the trunk button inside the glove compartment as Lefebre approached the car. The man shoved his cases inside, lowered the lid and got in the back seat behind Cara.

  “You’ve got a plan?” he asked Bill, leaning forward with his arms resting on the back of the front seat, between Bill and Cara.

  “Not really,” Bill said, shaking his head, his gaze going back and forth between the rearview mirror and the road ahead. “But I figured we’d go to San Francisco, via a circuitous route. Hopefully, by the time we get there, one of us will have come up with a workable idea.”

  They were silent for the next few miles. Cara could feel Bill’s tension as he kept checking the rearview mirror. She turned sideways in her seat and looked over her left shoulder as often as he looked up. Frequently he would take unexpected turns off the highway and drive aimlessly before returning to the major route. She had a million questions running through her mind regarding Bill’s connection with the mob. Instinctively she knew that this was not the time—especially with Lefebre in the car—to discuss it. Instead, she decided to lighten the mood.

  “Let’s play the movie game,” she suggested. She turned to include Lefebre. “You too, Gordon.”

  But it was soon clear that Lefebre was no movie buff, though he enjoyed their knowledge and their special banter back and forth. When Bill did imitations of famous male actors and Cara quoted passages from major films, he whistled and applauded, making a marvelous one-man audience.

  The game fizzled out after they’d been driving a couple of hours.

  “Don’t you think we got away safe?” Cara asked when they arrived at the outskirts of Daly City. She sounded tired.

  Bill glanced over and saw dark circles forming beneath her eyes, giving the tender skin there a mauve cast. Lefebre had been quiet for quite some time now. Bill guessed the man was dozing.

  He looked at the clock on the dash and checked it against his watch. A drive that should have taken less than an hour had taken three—a nerve-racking, tense three hours. He recognized his own exhaustion in the sore tension in the muscles of shoulder and neck.

  He forced a teasing grin. “I’ll trade you, a giant hamburger with all the French fries you can eat for a neck massage.” He kept his voice low so that the man in the back seat wouldn’t hear him.

  Despite her fatigue, her smile was flirtatious. “I can stop at just one French fry. Can you stop at a neck massage?”

  Bill chuckled. “Yeah, right. You eat just one French fry? I think not!”

  Her fingers on the back of his neck were a silken surprise. Bill shivered and scrunched his neck against the onslaught of erotic pleasure. “Not while I’m driving,” he warned, the hoarseness of his voice diminishing the authoritative quality of his words.

  Cara laughed, but she withdrew her hand and leaned forward to peer through the windshield. “There’s a café sign up ahead on my side.”

  “Okay,” Bill said, though he preferred the idea of stopping in the heart of the city, where there was more to distract attention from their car.

  He needed a bigger city, a larger population, anonymity. Something to close in around him. His back felt strangely exposed, vulnerable.

  Lefebre sat up just then and suggested they park in back, off the main street.

  “Right,” Bill agreed. “You two get out here, and I’ll park in back.”

  Cara went right to the door of the restaurant but Lefebre leaned back into the car and whispered, “Bill, do a couple of blocks before you park. I’m not sure, but I think there’s a blue Honda on your tail.”

  So the man hadn’t been sleeping. Maybe he was going to be more help than Bill had anticipated. Bill pulled away from the curb and turned the corner. He went around the block and parked facing the main drag, one block up from the café. Sure enough, a blue Honda came by, slowly, the driver leaning forward to peer through the windshield, as though looking for someone or something. The guy was wearing glasses that glinted in the illumination from the overhead street lamps. Bill watched as the Honda reached the end of the street and then picked up speed, merging with the highway traffic.

  They had to get off this main strip before the Honda realized he’d lost them and backtracked, looking for them.

  He pulled up in front of the café and honked the horn desperately.

  He was glad to see Cara and Lefebre come rushing out without wasting a minute. They jumped into the car, no questions asked, no fanfare.

  “We need to get off the main street,” Bill said.

  “You wouldn’t have liked the menu anyway, honey,” Cara said. “It was all fried food and cholesterol. I’d have been surprised if they had a lettuce leaf for a sandwich.”

  Bill’s hands were shaking on the wheel as he turned the corner. He pulled over to the curb and turned to address Lefebre. “Excuse us a minute, pal.”

  He took Cara into his arms and bent his head to her shoulder, holding on to her as if his life depended on it.

  “What’s wrong, Bill?” Cara whispered, fear beating wildly in her chest.

  “Nothing. I just needed to hold you for a minute.”

  He couldn’t tell her that it was the very first time she’d ever called him by an affectionate term, that the domestic sound of it, and her concern for his diet preferences, had suddenly struck a chord in him that brought the fragility of their situation home to him as nothing had before.

  What if it boiled down to having to live without her in order to go on living? And how had he let things get so out of hand that now he didn’t even want to go on living if he couldn’t have her with him?

  But tonight had proved he had no choice. They’d come after Cara. She was in mortal danger, all because of him.

  He gently moved her away from him.

  “Cara, are you sure that guy in the park wasn’t a mugger or a rapist, someone who just spotted a woman alone and decided to take advantage?” He knew he was clutching at straws, but desperate situations made desperate men.

  Cara thought about it, her eyes wide with dread at the prospect. She
made a gesture of denial. “No. He said...he said I was worth more than the contents of my purse, and he said if I...if I screamed, it would make an ordinary job more interesting.”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  Cara nodded. “I’m pretty sure. Yes. Almost word for word, I think.”

  Bill stared out the windshield, his fingers curling and uncurling around the steering wheel as he tried to stay focused.

  Something was setting off alarm bells in the farther reaches of his mind, something that should have been a major clue. He wrestled with the words Cara had quoted, trying to find the elusive truth behind the words.

  But he was too tired and, now that he thought about it, very hungry. He couldn’t recall having eaten at all in the past couple of days, and he definitely hadn’t had much sleep.

  He turned to face Lefebre. “How about we look for a place off the beaten track and then, after we eat, we find a motel and grab a few hours of shut-eye?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Lefebre agreed. “And anytime you want me to take over the wheel, let me know.”

  Bill shook his head and gave the man a tired grin. “I don’t know, you ride shotgun pretty well. I think I’ll just let you continue to play lookout.”

  They passed two motels with No Vacancy signs.

  “Strange,” Cara commented. “There aren’t many cars in the lot.”

  “Some lazy night clerk—or the owner himself—doesn’t want to be awakened by a drop-in customer,” Lefebre said.

  They were just passing the second place when Lefebre called out, “Hey, Bill, I think that’s the same blue Honda back there.”

  Bill made a U-turn and went back to check it out. It was parked in front of the last room in the row, its tail end facing the highway. He couldn’t be sure it was the same car, and the license plate indicated it was a rental. Still, it was enough to send Bill in another direction.

  They were only forty minutes from the heart of San Francisco. On impulse, Bill decided to go right on into the city and look for lodging there.

  When they pulled up under the porte cochere of the very posh Hotel Fairmount, Cara and Lefebre began to laugh in unison.