Behind The Mask

As Lily pushed her son on the swing, Michael noticed there was an edginess to her movements. And that her eyes were continuously moving, searching, watching. When she stared over in the direction of the trees where he was parked, Michael held his breath a moment and wondered if he had been spotted. Then her gaze moved past him and seemed to search some spot beyond. Had that been fear in those green eyes? he wondered.

The notion that she was in trouble—and not just for robbing her husband and kidnapping her son—gnawed at him, stirring old feelings and protective instincts he thought he’d buried a long time ago. Yet even as he tried to shake these feelings, he struggled once again with the image of the calculating woman Webster had described. He wanted to believe Lily was a coldhearted female and not this seemingly delicate woman playing with her child.

“Metsy Hingle…will delight readers with her skill at storytelling in this charmer.”

—Romantic Times on The Wager

Dear Reader,

For those of you familiar with my work, you know that many of my books are set in my own hometown of New Orleans. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, Behind the Mask takes place in that magical city during the height of the Mardi Gras season. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

One of the best things about being a writer is hearing from readers, and I’d love to hear from you. In fact, as a special thank-you, I’ve had a commemorative bookmark created just for Behind the Mask and, while supplies last, I’ll send one to each reader who writes and requests one.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Metsy Hingle

P.O. Box 3224

Covington, LA

U.S.A. 70433

www.metsyhingle.com

For the very special friends who bless my life:

Sandra and Michael Brown, Brenda and Jim Gelpi, Mary and Fred Dummett, Mary Ann and Louis Lahners, Nancy Wagner aka Hailey North, Linda Kay West aka Dixie Kane and Karen Young.

And my very best friend—my husband, Jim.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While my name as the author is listed on this book, the finished product in your hands would not be possible were it not for the help of many people. My heartfelt thanks go to the following people for their help in bringing Behind the Mask to life:

Valerie Gray, my editor, whose guidance and patience were invaluable to me in the writing of this book.

Dianne Moggy, editorial director of MIRA Books, for her belief in me and this project.

Karen Solem, my agent, for her continued guidance and support.

Ricardo Coštales, Lancôme makeup artist and genius at finding the beauty in all women.

The incredible MIRA staff for their support.

Tara Gavin and Joan Marlow Golan at Silhouette Books for their continued support and enthusiasm.

My fans, who enable me to live my dream because they allow me to entertain them with my books.

And, as always, very special thanks go to my children and family, whose love and support enable me to spin my tales of love, hope and happily-ever-after.

Contents

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

One

“I’ll pay you one million dollars to find my wife.”

“All right, Webster,” Michael Sullivan replied from the other end of the phone line. “You’ve got my attention.”

Adam Webster smiled in satisfaction at the excop’s change in attitude. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said as he gazed at the view of the Miami skyline afforded him from his penthouse suite of offices. He was glad, but he wasn’t at all surprised. He’d learned a long time ago that money talks—even to a man like Sullivan. A man who, according to his sources, had been among Houston’s best and brightest police detectives until five years ago when he’d resigned abruptly following his partner’s death. Now he hired himself out as a detective, bodyguard or bounty hunter—whatever the situation called for. The man was said to be as mean as a rattlesnake and twice as dangerous. He also reportedly had the instincts of a bloodhound when it came to tracking down someone who didn’t want to be found. It was Sullivan’s latter skill that he needed now. “You’ve been a difficult man to get in touch with, Mr. Sullivan,” Adam said, making no attempt to hide his displeasure. “My assistant tells me she’s left you several messages.”

“I’ve been out of town handling something for a client. The truth is, the only reason you caught me now is because I had to swing by to the office to pick up some reports.”

“I see,” Adam said tightly. “I’m not accustomed to being ignored, Mr. Sullivan.”

“No one’s ignoring you, Webster. But since I’m pressed for time, why don’t we dispense with my lack of good manners and you tell me why you’re willing to pay me a million bucks to find your wife.”

“Because she’s missing,” Adam said sharply, angered by the man’s insolence. Biting back his temper, he reminded himself that he needed Sullivan to find Elisabeth and the disk she’d stolen. With his temper making him edgy, he turned away from the sweep of windows and stalked over to his desk. Sitting down, he picked up the framed photo of Elisabeth. “I understand your expertise is in finding people. And, as I said, I’d like to hire you to find my wife.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“Six months.” And after six months it still gnawed at him like a festering sore. He detested mistakes, refused to tolerate them. Yet he had made a mistake in underestimating Elisabeth.

Never in a million years would he have believed that sweet, docile Elisabeth—the girl he’d fed, clothed and molded into a woman worthy to be his wife—would have had the guts to defy him. To steal the disk from his safe. To actually drug him and run away. Even more infuriating was that she’d not only gotten away from the idiots he’d hired to guard her, but that he’d doled out a considerable sum of money for private detectives, and some not-so-reputable business associates, to find her. And though they’d come close to grabbing her twice, she had still managed to escape. But not for much longer, Adam promised himself. If Sullivan was half as good as the reports on him indicated, Elisabeth’s rebellion was about to come to an end.

“Webster? You still there?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m here,” Adam repeated, dragging his thoughts back to the present. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you’ve filed a missing persons report with the police?”

“No,” Adam advised him. “I don’t want the police involved.”

“Why not?”

“Aside from the fact that I can do without the publicity, I don’t want any charges filed against my wife.”

“Last I heard, it wasn’t a crime for a woman to leave her husband,” Sullivan informed him.

“No. But stealing cash and jewelry from my safe and kidnapping my son are crimes. If I had brought the police into it, they would have issued an arrest warrant for her. I prefer to handle things myself.”

Sullivan swore.

“My sentiments exactly,” Adam told him.

“Why didn’t you say up front that she stole the kid?” Sullivan demanded.

“I was about to,” Adam lied, surprised that a man who was reportedly a real hard-ass should care about the kid. He certainly didn’t give a damn about the brat. As far as he was concerned, his problems with Elisabeth all began with the kid. Not insisting that she terminate the pregnancy had been a major screwup on his part—one he would make sure didn’t happen again. But first…first he had to get Elisabeth back—and that damning disk. Did she even know what was on it? Or the damage it could cause him if it got into the wrong hands?

“How old’s your boy?”

Adam frowned at Sullivan’s question and quickly calculated how old the kid would be now. “Almost three.”

“Man, that’s got to be rough, him being so little and you missing all that time with him.”

“It is,” Adam said, because it was obvious that Sullivan expected it. “I want you to find my family for me, Mr. Sullivan. And I’d like you to start looking for them right away. If you’ll come by my office, I’ll provide you with any other information you need, and give you a retainer for your services. I’ll expect you within the hour.”

“I can’t make it today.”

Adam scowled. “Why not?” he demanded, unaccustomed to having his requests denied.

“Because I’m in the middle of another job.”

“And is this other client offering to pay you a million dollars for your services?” he countered.

“No.”

“Then I don’t see the problem. Tell your client to find someone else to handle whatever it is you’re doing.”

“That’s not the way I work,” Sullivan said, his voice cool and hard. “When I make a commitment, I honor it. I’ve got to go. I’ll give you a call when I get back and, if you’re still interested in hiring me, we’ll talk.”

When the dial tone buzzed in his ear, Adam slammed down the receiver. “Arrogant bastard,” he muttered, clenching his fists. Sullivan would pay for that, he promised. As soon as the man found Elisabeth, he would make Sullivan regret his insolence. Shoving back from the desk, he headed to the bar and poured himself a shot of bourbon. He tossed it back, felt the sting as the drink slid down his throat like liquid fire. After pouring himself another one, he grabbed the crystal tumbler and stalked across the ultramodern office on which he’d spent a small fortune. Ignoring the polished finish on the black marble desktop, he set down his glass and picked up the silver-framed picture of Elisabeth. He stared at her—the pale delicate skin, the silky blond hair, the long slender neck. Never taking his eyes from the photo, he reached for the bourbon and tossed back another swallow.

She belonged to him, he reasoned, and felt that violent punch of lust that always came with thoughts of Elisabeth. From the moment he’d first set eyes on her he’d wanted her. Even at fifteen and still an innocent, she’d left him breathless and aching. She’d been worth ten of her mother. It was the reason he’d saved her. Were it not for him, she’d have probably hooked up with some two-bit punk and been selling herself on the streets of Miami before she’d turned sixteen.

Instead he’d rescued her from her wretched life. He’d provided for her education, showered her with gifts, and when she’d been a legal adult, he had married her. Any number of women would have killed to be in her position, just for the chance to be in his bed. He knew he looked good. He took care of himself, kept his body in shape and could easily pass for a man twenty years younger. Hadn’t he heard a woman in one of his clubs call him a stud just last week? He could have had his pick of women, but he’d chosen Elisabeth.

Elisabeth.

So sweet. So soft. So young. His breath turned to a pant as he thought of taking her that first time, of thrusting himself into her warm tender flesh. And the memory made the throbbing in his groin even more painful.

He slapped down the glass and reached for the phone. “Kit, it’s Adam,” he said when the line was answered at his Miami nightclub. “How’s that new girl working out, the young blonde with the southern drawl you introduced me to last week?”

“You must mean Annabelle,” Kit said, her voice warm and sultry. “She’s working out fine. A little shy, but the customers seem to like her. She’s a fast learner and very eager to please. She should be here in a few minutes.”

“Send her up to the penthouse when she gets there,” he said, already anticipating the feel of the pretty, young girl beneath him. “And Kit, get someone else to take her shift tonight. She’s going to be busy.”

After hanging up the phone, he reached for his glass and started toward the bedroom adjoining his office to wait for Annabelle. But his gaze fell on Elisabeth’s photo again. He lifted his glass in a mock salute. “It won’t be long now, darling,” he whispered before downing the remainder of the whiskey. He would use Sullivan to find her, and once he had her and the disk back, he’d see to it that she never dared to defy him again.

As for Sullivan, the man was in need of a lesson in respect—which he personally intended to deliver.

“According to the APB on him, his name is Bill ‘The Bull’ Dozier and he’s wanted in three states for robbery, rape and murder,” the broad-shouldered state trooper told Michael.

Michael took in the scene before him—the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulance, the brightly lit front of the all-night store advertising drinks, food and gas, the dark, lonely stretch of road with cops and paramedics at a crime scene. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of déjà vu. When he saw three curiosity seekers make their way over to the storefront to look inside, he had to fight the itch to tell them to stay clear and to let the cops do their jobs. But he was no longer a cop, he reminded himself. He was a bystander and a witness.

“Man, he is one big mother,” the trooper said as two Florida state police exited the convenience store with the bald, tattooed piece of scum. Michael had interrupted him in the middle of raping the store’s female clerk.

“Yeah. But you know what they say. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.” But this one hadn’t gone down easy, Michael admitted. It had taken him more than a dozen vicious blows and two bullets to finally bring the man down. And even with two slugs in him, shackled and bleeding, the guy was still able to walk out of the store to the second ambulance that had been called to the scene. As Michael watched him being loaded into the ambulance, he thought of the terrified young woman whom he’d rescued a short time ago. Remembering her battered face and the way her clothes had been torn from her body, he clenched his bruised fingers into a fist and wished he could ram it down the monster’s throat. “How’s the girl?”

“Alive, thanks to you. She’s lucky you came along when you did. According to his rap sheet, he took a knife to the last woman when he was finished. A remote spot like this and this late at night, chances are no one would have found her for hours.”

“That’s probably what he was counting on,” Michael said. And if he hadn’t been so determined to make it back to Miami tonight, he never would have pulled off the interstate and come to the all-night store in the middle of nowhere in search of a jolt of caffeine to keep him awake. For the first time in the four days since his temper had caused him to mouth off to Webster and blow off what was a once-in-a-lifetime fee of a million bucks, Michael cut himself some slack. Had he taken Webster’s job instead of tracking down the deadbeat who’d wiped out a widow’s savings, he wouldn’t have been here to save the girl. If he were a man who believed in such things as fate, he might even think that something besides the need for coffee had made him choose this particular exit on this particular night.

But if he’d learned nothing else since seeing his partner die before his eyes five years ago, he’d learned that he, and he alone, was responsible for his choices.

“Like I said, she was lucky you decided to stop for coffee.”

But he doubted the woman was feeling particularly lucky at the moment. “What did the paramedics say? She going to be okay?”

“He did a number on her with his fists, but nothing that shouldn’t heal eventually.”

Maybe physically she would heal, Michael thought. Mentally, it would be another story. She’d probably carry the scars for the rest of her life. “She had a picture of a baby propped up by her cash register.”

“Yeah, the local police say she had a little girl about six months ago. Apparently her husband got laid off from his job, and she decided to go back to work to help out. She took the graveyard shift because it paid more money and allowed her to be home with her baby during the day. Poor kid only started working here about two weeks ago.”

“Too bad I didn’t put a bullet between his eyes and saved the state, and her, the trouble of going through a trial.”

“You won’t get an argument from anybody here on that one,” the trooper told him. “That cut by your eye looks pretty nasty. You might want to have the paramedics take a look at it until you can get to a hospital.”

Michael tested the tender spot with his fingertips and when they came away bloody, he pressed a handkerchief to the wound. “It’s just a scratch,” Michael informed him. As it was, he’d probably be tied up for hours while the cops took his statement and filled out the paperwork. The last thing he wanted to do was get bogged down with even more red tape by going to the hospital.

“Suit yourself. But I’m going to need you to come down to the station and make a statement about what went down here tonight.”

“I know the drill,” Michael told him.

“Yeah? I thought you private dicks did your best to avoid dealing with the law.”

“I was a cop for twelve years before I decided to go out on my own,” Michael informed him.

“Here in Florida?”

“Texas,” Michael told him, eager to end the conversation. Rehashing his career as a police detective wasn’t high on his list of priorities—especially at one in the morning. He also didn’t want to remember how his own stupidity had caused the bust he and Pete had worked on for months to fall apart. Stupidity that had cost his partner his life and his father his pride. Not to mention the black mark on the entire Houston Police Department.

“Good thing the perp didn’t know that or you’d have a lot more than that gash on your head.”

“Let me guess. He’s a cop-hater.”

The trooper nodded. “Word is he did a real number on the two prison guards he escaped from last month. According to the reports, one of them may lose an eye and the other one is still in a body cast.”

Michael had no trouble believing it. As a fourth-generation cop, he’d heard plenty of stories about cop-haters and had encountered his fair share of them during his years with the Houston P.D. One look at the monster-size guy with the gold teeth and the ugly scar down one side of his face would have been enough to set off alarms in most cops. But it had been the lack of emotion in the man’s dark eyes that should have told the fools at the prison just how dangerous the guy was. He’d seen that look before. And each time he had, he’d been faced with a cold-blooded killer without a conscience, without a soul.

A long black sedan pulled into the busy parking lot. A tall man in a dark suit with a cap of silver hair exited the vehicle and sought out the officer in charge.

“Wonder who that is?” the trooper remarked.

“His name’s Hennessey, he’s a federal agent,” Michael told him.

“You know him?”

“Our paths have crossed a time or two,” Michael replied. But even if he hadn’t known Hennessey, he’d have pegged him as a fed right off. The nondescript car, the somber suit, the steely look and calm demeanor. There had even been a time when he’d actually wanted to leave the Houston P.D. and join his brother Travis at the Bureau. So had Pete. Only Pete had flunked the tests. And when his friend had accused him of breaking their childhood pact to be partners, Michael had passed on the Bureau’s offer. Later that same year, after Pete had been killed, he’d abandoned any thoughts of becoming a federal agent. He’d walked away from his badge, too.

“The feds must want this guy pretty bad if they sent an agent out here this quickly.”

“It’s more a question of covering their asses before the press gets wind of what went down here,” Michael said. At the trooper’s puzzled look, he explained, “The Bureau takes a lot of heat in the media. Bringing in a killer like Dozier will play well in the headlines.”

“But the feds had nothing to do with this. You’re the one who caught him,” the trooper pointed out.

Michael shook his head. “That won’t play as well as saying that I assisted the FBI in taking him down. Look, here comes Hennessey now to try to sell me on the idea on what happened here tonight.”

And after dispatching the trooper, the federal agent did his best to convince Michael about the official story that the Bureau wanted to give the press. “Since you’ve worked with the Bureau before, we’d like to say you were working in conjunction with us to track down Dozier and that you followed him to the convenience store where you apprehended him during the assault on the woman. You okay with that, Sullivan?”

“Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?”

“No.”

“Then why bother asking for permission?”

“Don’t be such a hard-ass, Sullivan.

“You did a good thing saving that girl tonight. Taking that animal down couldn’t have been easy. You did a hell of a job.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s a shame that a man with your talents is wasting his time chasing cheating husbands when he could be doing something worthwhile.”

“I like what I’m doing.”

“Bullshit. I’ve told you before, you’d make a damn good federal agent, Sullivan.”

“No thanks. I know what you guys earn, and it’s not enough.”

Hennessey made a dismissive sound. “You expect me to believe that money is all that motivates you?”

“You should, because it’s the truth.”

“That’s a load of crap. You were a cop. A man doesn’t become a cop or an agent for the money. You do it for times like tonight—because you want to be able to help people. You can’t make me believe that saving that woman tonight wasn’t a lot more gratifying than tracking down some deadbeat,” Hennessey pointed out.

“I don’t give a damn what you believe. As for gratification, I got a hell of a lot of gratification when the last jerk I tracked down was thrown in jail for fraud after he bilked an old lady out of her life savings. And I got paid a fat fee for doing it.”

“You can cut the act, Sullivan. You and I both know that if you really liked hiring yourself out as a P.I. you wouldn’t have offered your services to the Bureau pro bono when they were hunting that serial killer a few months ago. And from what I heard, it wasn’t the first time you’ve done that.”

Michael shrugged. “Just trying to be civic-minded,” he said, not wanting to admit that while the money was good and some of his cases left him with a feeling of accomplishment, many of them didn’t. He did it for the money. Money for Janie and Pete’s boys.

As for the work he occasionally did for the feds, in a roundabout way, he did it for his brother Travis. After all, Travis was a federal agent. Besides, it was also a way for him to keep his skills sharp and his contacts strong. And if that sounded a bit too pat, he could live with it. What he didn’t want to do—refused to do despite his brother’s prodding—was examine his motivations too closely. He couldn’t afford to—not with Janie and Pete’s boys depending on him.

“That’s a line of bull, and you know it,” Hennessey told him.

“Listen, believe whatever you want,” Michael said. “But if we’re through here, I’d like to wrap this up so I get on my way.”

“Hot date?”

“No, a hot client. One who’s offering me a big fat fee to find his runaway wife.” Or at least Michael hoped Webster would still be offering him that fat fee—if he hadn’t already hired someone else.