Silent Masquerade. Molly Rice
cheeks, the shine in her eyes. Great eyes, he thought. Not just dark brown, but more the color of burned caramel. They glinted with golden lights every time her face changed expression.
He glanced out at the parking lot. Apart from three Greyhound buses, there was an eighteen-wheeler, a pick-up truck with a load of vegetables in the back, and two compact cars. He looked around the café. Nobody who could remotely be connected with the mob.
He looked back at Cara, whose smile was beguiling. “Okay, you’re on,” he said, rising and throwing a couple of bills on the food check.
But as they were strolling the streets of the small town, Bill was already beginning to question the reckless manner in which he was getting involved with this girl. Something about her tugged at him, at some long-buried part of him that preceded his years in the Service, his brief but disastrous marriage, even the pseudocynical years of college. She took him back to his true beginnings, to halcyon days of family and growing up in middle America with nothing to threaten the peace but the seasonal attacks of weather.
It was that life, hidden away from the rest of the country, that had made him want to make a career out of defending and protecting the things he loved and believed in.
“Look at that,” Cara said breathlessly, pointing to the mountain rise that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, making a magnificent backdrop for the row of low buildings they’d come upon.
“Makes a person feel...insignificant,” Bill said, absorbing the feeling as he stared at the mountain.
“Because it’s been there forever and will be there forever,” Cara stated solemnly. She turned from the awe-inspiring sight and looked up at her companion. “Doesn’t it make you want to stay right here and let it stand guard over your life?”
Bill glanced at Cara and then back at the mountain, shaking his head. “There are some things it can’t protect you from. There are people out there who would never stop to look at that mountain, never notice its beauty or its magnificence. People who wouldn’t hesitate to blow up the mountain if it stood in the way of what they wanted to achieve.”
Cara stared at Bill, aghast. She’d never heard such cynical talk before, never heard that note of utter futility in another person’s voice.
She would have liked to probe, to find out what it was that had made this man so bitter; it was a sharp contrast to the gentle, generous man he’d shown her.
But there was also a dark aspect to his nature, one that warned her that she must not overstep certain boundaries in their brief, temporary relationship.
“Even if all that’s true, it doesn’t keep us from enjoying the beauty,” she said, and turned away from the view. “It must be nearly time to head back,” she added quietly.
He fell into step beside her, and they remained silent, both lost in their own thoughts, on the walk back.
The silence continued, almost by mutual consent, for the next leg of their journey. When they stopped for lunch, Cara pleaded a headache as an excuse for not joining Bill in the café.
“Just bring me back some coffee, please,” she said, handing him a dollar bill.
He gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t argue. He just took her money and nodded.
Cara laid her head against the window and let her eyes close against the noon sunshine. Something about Bill Hamlin’s carefully guarded pain had struck a chord in Cara and made the reality of her situation all the more frightening. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable of fending for herself or being alone. After all, she was an only child, whose parents had been loving and giving, but also very involved with one another.
Her father had become ill when she graduated from high school, and despite his protests, she’d put off going to college in order to spend as much time with him as his illness would allow. The shared nursing duties, plus the feeling of pending doom in the house, had brought Cara and her mother closer.
But after her father’s death, her mother had shut Cara out while she mourned the loss of her husband. And Cara had gone off to start her college years, feeling orphaned and lonely, so that even though she was a couple of years older than the other freshmen, she seemed younger, shier. It had taken her a full year to get past her own grief and begin to make friends and enjoy the campus ambience.
By the time Cara’s mother came out of mourning, Cara had already been in her last year of graduate school. A few months later, Doug had come into their lives.
No, the problem wasn’t encroaching loneliness—that was an emotion she’d lived with most of her life. It was more the reminder that she was leaving everything she’d considered safe and familiar and was about to enter a strange world without access to any of the comforts of her past, and where she couldn’t even use her given name. Could she carve out a niche for herself while living like an illegal alien? And was the sacrifice she was making worthwhile?
Because of her parents’ obvious closeness, she’d grown up believing that the biggest event in her life was going to be falling in love and becoming a wife and mother. Only in her case, she’d planned to love her husband and her children equally, so that none of them ever felt left out.
Was such a future possible for her now? Could she be legally married under an assumed name? And where would she meet the ideal man, if she was forced to take odd jobs that didn’t require references or close scrutiny of her qualifications?
Her reverie was interrupted by Bill’s return. He handed her a bag that obviously contained something more than the cup of coffee she’d asked for.
“You’ll feel hungry later,” he said, shrugging off her protest. “Did you take some aspirin for that headache?”
Cara nodded, avoiding his eyes so that he couldn’t see the lie. She was sure she could have told him the truth, that she had just wanted to be alone, but then he might have asked questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.
What would a man who was as obviously worldly as Bill Hamlin think of her sordid story? Would he believe she was an innocent victim, or would he think she’d come on to her mother’s boyfriend and invited his attentions?
“Better drink that coffee before it gets cold,” Bill said as he adjusted his seat to a reclining position.
Cara nodded and opened the bag to find it contained a sandwich and a banana, as well as a cup of coffee.
“You missed your calling, Bill.” She grinned over at him. “You should have been a nutritionist.”
He didn’t smile in response. His face was set in a hostile mask, and his voice held a quiet threat as he asked, “What makes you think I’m not? And what do you know about my calling?”
Cara might have snapped back at him, if just at that moment the bus hadn’t lurched to the side and then come to an abrupt halt with a terrible screeching of the brakes.
Chapter Three
The driver used his radiophone to call in the broken axle. Within thirty minutes, the motel in Mount View, the town they had just come from, sent out its minivan to start hauling passengers back. The local garage sent a tow truck. The driver announced that a replacement bus would arrive in the morning, and in the meantime the motel would put up the passengers at the bus company’s expense.
Cara was on the first trek the van made, and she waited in the motel lobby with the others until the entire busload had arrived and were assigned rooms.
She passed the time looking over the postcard rack in the lobby, looking for a card to send her mother, just to let her know that she was safe. After all, it wasn’t as if they were staying in Mount View. They’d be long gone before Beth Dunlap ever received the card.
She chose one with a picture of the mountains and wrote a brief message, saying not to worry, that she was fine and enjoying traveling around the country.
She then curled