Silent Masquerade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to the Schuck family who have been my own and only family for so many years: Charles, Velma, James, Patricia, Faye Simpson, Edward, Juanita and Stan Harris, Dorothy and Ted McDonald, and Elizabeth.

To Elizabeth Harri, who waits for my books with flattering impatience.

And most special thanks to Virginia Beasley Jackson, my friend and sister forever.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Bill Spencer/Hamlin—Was he destined to be on the run for the rest of his life?

Cara Dunlap/Davis—She’s running from demons of her own. Should she be running from Bill Hamlin?

Beth Dunlap—The loneliness of widowhood made her easy prey for a handsome young suitor.

Douglas Harvard—Marriage is his business, romance is his calling card and lonely widows are his clientele.

Gordon Lefebre—How effectively could he do his job if his feelings got in the way?

Harry Wilder—Was he tailing Bill and Cara for his own purposes, or was he a hired gun?

Franco Alvaretti—Mob boss recently imprisoned; revenge was a way of life for him.

Deacon Avery—Alvaretti’s attorney; desperate to reclaim his own life.

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 One

Bill Spencer had known for some time that he wasn’t going to trust his life to the protection of any government agency. He was too familiar with the mechanics of the bureaucratic system to put his faith—his life—in their hands. He knew there were moles in high places, leaks in the system’s plumbing.

But he needed to use the agency to front his escape.

He needed the Organization to think he’d gone into the Witness Protection Program, so they’d be off sniffing in that direction while he made his getaway to parts unknown, covering his tracks with the expertise he’d acquired while working both sides of the fence.

For that reason, there were two sets of papers in his pocket, one given to him by the WPP, the other a set he’d spent many nights crafting himself, not even trusting one of the specialists whose markers he held.

If he’d learned nothing else during the two years he worked with a foot in both camps, he’d learned that there was always the possibility of betrayal when you were dealing with other human beings.

He made another sweep of the room. The least little clue could be magnified by the right intelligence team and used to begin the tracking that would lead them to him.

He was just running his hand between the mattress and the box spring when the knock came at the door.

“We’re ready to go, Spencer,” a male voice said softly.

He looked around the room and nodded, satisfied that it was clean, then picked up his bag and his briefcase. He was ready.

They led him out of the hotel, a man on either side of him, two in the rear, one scouting a few feet in front.

He got into the rear of the limo, again flanked by two of the agents, and did his own survey of the street as the chauffeur looked right and left before pulling out of the drive. There was no sign of anyone from the Organization

No sighting didn’t mean that nobody was out there, it just meant they couldn’t be seen. Keeping his paranoia in place had saved his behind more than once, and he wasn’t about to give it up now. But the fact was, it worked in his favor if they had a man watching him now, someone who’d report back that he’d gone off with the WPP agents. The red herring.

At the airport, he picked up the ticket the agency had reserved in the name Stanley Springer, checked his bag through to Madison and moved purposefully toward the blue concourse. The five men circled him, keeping a watchful distance, but staying close enough to move in if he was targeted.

He nodded distantly at the agent near the water fountain and went into the men’s room. The cubicles were all empty. He chose the one farthest from the door, locked himself inside and opened the briefcase.

When he left the men’s room, he nodded again, but this time there was no recognition in the agent’s eyes. The agent was merely responding politely to a stranger’s passing nod.

He went to the Western Airline counter, picked up a ticket in the name of Sam Spalding, checked the briefcase through to San Francisco, and then left the terminal through the sliding glass doors.

The car, stashed in long-term parking, was covered with dust. He drove to a self-serve car wash and hosed it down. Then, making sure there was nobody lurking around to observe his actions, he got a tool kit out of the trunk and removed the plates, replacing them with another set he’d lifted from a junkyard and kept for just such a purpose.

There was a suitcase in the trunk, as well. He slipped out of the coveralls he’d donned in the men’s room at the airport, took off his suit coat and tie and put on a cardigan sweater from the bag. Last he threw the blond wig, fake mustache, baseball hat and horn-rimmed glasses he’d been wearing into the trunk and slammed it shut.

He was back on the highway seven minutes after he’d pulled into the car wash.

It took him five days to get to his destination, five days in which he barely slept, ate only fast food picked up at drive-through windows and made countless out-of-the-way detours to obscure his route. Outside a small town called Widow’s Peak, located at the top of a hill that looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, he put the car in drive and gave it a shove, watching as it rolled down the hill facing away from the town. The car careened into the gorge below and then, after only a moment, exploded. He waited until he was sure the fire had consumed all but the steel chassis, now charred almost beyond recognition, tossed a duffel bag over his shoulder and proceeded on foot into town, where he caught the Greyhound bus that was just boarding passengers on their way back to the Midwest.

* * *

CARA DUNLAP put the car in gear and rolled out of the driveway without starting the engine. When the car rolled onto the asphalt road, she started the engine and turned in the direction of the highway. Forty minutes to Boston, she figured, and then she’d leave the car and find other transportation. Boston might be a good city to get lost in, but it was too close to home. No, if she was going to do this, she was going to have to do it right. And that meant getting as far from Greensville as possible, and as quickly as possible. Once she got to Boston, she’d have to decide where to go from there.

By morning they’d have discovered she was gone, and found her note. She prayed her mother would let her go, wouldn’t try to find her. But her only hope for avoiding discovery, just in case, was a good head start—and not knowing where she was going herself.

In Boston she left the car on a side street, hailed a cab to the Greyhound station and bought a ticket for the next bus leaving the terminal.

She caught the bus just as the driver had loaded the last passenger and was locking the baggage compartment at the side of the bus.

“No luggage, miss?” he asked.

“Uh-uh,” she said, out of breath from running through the terminal. “Just this.” She held up a gym bag that contained a couple changes of clothing and a few personal items. The bag would fit under her seat or in an overhead compartment.

“Okay. We’re all set to roll, then.”

There were no single vacant seats. Cara sat down next to a man who wore a slouch hat pulled low over his eyes and appeared to be sleeping. She took a couple of deep, calming breaths before closing her own eyes in sheer exhaustion.

San Francisco, a big city, and one far enough away. About as far as you could get from Greensville, Massachusetts, without leaving the country. She’d have to find a job, a place to stay. Could she do that without identification?

She didn’t think she’d need to prove her identity to a landlord, but sooner or later an employer would ask for a social security number.

She wriggled in her seat, uneasily aware that she might have done better to plan ahead, lay some groundwork, before taking off. But then she would have been at greater risk of discovery. She’d watched enough TV, read enough books, to know that too much planning was usually what got people caught. Spur-of-the-moment was best. She had enough cash in her bag to buy a small working wardrobe, pay a couple of month’s rent and keep herself in bologna sandwiches and soft drinks until she had a job.

The man beside her snored softly and then made a little whimpering sound as he twisted slightly in his seat. She opened her eyes and gave him a sideways glance. His hat had fallen forward even more, and his head was now tilted in her direction. She wondered if she should take his hat before it fell off completely. But then she might risk waking him.

She eased over a little, hoping he’d slipped as far to her side as he was going to. She shut her eyes again, willing sleep to give her a few hours without the stress of her thoughts.

She was in a light doze when her neighbor’s head fell with a soft thud against her shoulder. Instantly awake, she craned her head to look down at him without moving her body.

Just as she’d thought, his hat had fallen off, rolling from his lap to the floor. Without it she could see, in the dim light cast from the low-wattage overhead bulb, that he had thick dark hair, a short beard, long black lashes that swept high cheekbones and a soft-looking full mouth that made him appear vulnerable in sleep.

In the small, enclosed space, she detected a hint of aftershave or hair cream, a popular masculine fragrance that had a clean, sharp tang to it. He gave another soft snore, and she noticed that his breath was warm and sweet.

There was comfort in his solid weight, in the feel of his curls just touching her neck; she could pretend that she was not alone, friendless, cast homeless into an unknown future. If he awakened while lying on her shoulder, she could always pretend she had been asleep and wasn’t aware he’d slumped against her.

She closed her eyes, and in moments she, too, was sleeping.

* * *

THEY AWAKENED simultaneously. Sunlight streamed in through the bus windows, making Cara blink in astonishment.

The man next to her sat up and frowned. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I have a tendency to do that on buses.” He felt around and then leaned forward to rescue his hat.

“S’okay,” Cara mumbled, looking away in embarrassment now that broad daylight exposed them so ruthlessly to one another.

He was terribly handsome, with dark blue eyes and a short growth of beard, and he was older, she realized, than he’d appeared while sleeping. But something about him seemed out of sync. It dawned on her that he didn’t seem the type to ride the bus. For some reason, he struck her as more of an executive type than a working stiff, despite his blue jeans and brown leather jacket.

She glanced down at his hands, which were busily trying to reshape the felt hat, and saw that they were long and well shaped, with blunt, clean fingernails. If he’s a blue-collar worker, he does his work with gloves on, she thought.

Cara peered past him to the scenery beyond the window. Farmland. But there were a lot of billboards whizzing by, an indication that they were nearing a town. She wondered what time it was, how far they were from their final destination.

Her neighbor started to rise. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

Cara stood up to let him into the aisle. She could see from his height that his legs must indeed have been cramped. She was tall for a woman, five foot eight, and he was about six inches taller.

He went back to the rest room, and she smiled to herself, thinking he’d used the euphemism to spare her embarrassment. She leaned across his seat to see out the window better, and his scent assailed her senses once again. She saw a sign that boasted a full-service rest stop and felt the bus slow down as it prepared to turn onto a wide blacktop drive.

Her seatmate returned just as she was rising to join the other passengers for the rest stop. “I guess we’re stopping for breakfast,” she said.

“Looks that way.” He stood back to let her get out and precede him off the bus.

In the restaurant, Cara went straight to the ladies’ room, thankful to find there wasn’t a long line in front of the cubicles. She washed up as best she could with the public amenities and ran a small purse-size brush through her red-gold hair. Her curls had begun to tangle from sleeping on the bus, and it took her a few minutes to get the brush through the mess. She retucked her white linen blouse into her khaki skirt and straightened her collar.

When she returned to the café area, she saw her busmate sitting alone in a booth near the windows with a plate of food already in front of him. On impulse, she decided to join him.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asked, standing beside the booth.

He gestured to the other bench. “I guess it’s the least I can do, after using your shoulder for a pillow all night.”

He barely glanced at Cara as she ordered coffee and toast from the waitress, but when they were alone, he said, “I don’t remember you being on the bus when I fell asleep.”

She shook her head, smiling. “You were asleep when I got on in Boston.”

He nodded and resumed eating.

“You must have been on the bus quite a while before I got on,” Cara said, making polite small talk.

“Why? What do you mean?” the man demanded.

Cara blinked in surprise. There hadn’t been anything offensive in her remark.

“Oh, look,” the man said, running his hand across his jaw. “I’m sorry I snapped liked that. Sleeping sitting up always makes me a little cranky.”

“That’s all right,” Cara said, “I was just making friendly conversation.” As if to confirm that, she added, “As long as we’re seatmates, we may as well introduce ourselves. I’m Cara D—Davis.”

“Bill Hamlin.” The new name came easily its first time on his lips, but he hadn’t missed the girl’s hesitation over her own last name. Now what could that be all about? She seemed too old to be a runaway, and yet he had a gut feeling that she was on the run. Maybe it takes one to know one, he thought, or maybe it’s a case of thinking everyone’s tarred with the same brush you are.

“Going to San Francisco?”

Bill nodded. “I guess.”

“You guess?” She put her cup back in its saucer and stared at him. “Don’t you know?”

He recovered quickly. “You thought I said `guess’? I said `yes.’”

She nodded, but there was a skeptical gleam in her eyes.

Bill mopped up the last of the yolk on his plate with a piece of biscuit and popped it in his mouth. A whole week of fast food had made him greedy for the taste of something real. It was almost worth the long, uncomfortable bus ride to have a chance to eat something a little closer to homemade at the various stops along the route.

Sated at last, he took a final swig of coffee and then concentrated on the girl, whose attention was now absorbed by her own meager breakfast.

Her hair was a blaze of colorful curls, and he remembered that when he awakened, his first sense had been that he smelled something wonderful. He realized now that it had been her hair. Every time she moved her head, the light, spicy scent wafted toward him. Her hair was her most arresting feature. Her eyes were brown, and she had a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks that precluded any chance of her ever being considered glamorous. But her smile revealed fine, even white teeth and a dimple in her right cheek. In a flash of insight, he realized that she was the kind of woman who would become really beautiful in the close-up lens of a camera, or in the eyes of someone who saw her day after day.

She ate slowly, breaking the toast in bite-size pieces with her fingers. He found himself mesmerized by the ritual. When she looked up and saw that he was watching her, a slight blush rose to her cheeks and her eyes lit with humor.

“Have I got butter on my chin?” she asked, smiling.

“I’ve never seen anyone eat toast like that,” he answered.

She laughed. “It lasts longer this way, and makes less of a mess.”

He wondered why she wanted to make it last, but didn’t ask.

When she looked at her check, he saw that she counted out the exact amount of her bill from a little change purse that she held close to her chest.

So, she had limited funds and she was on the run.

Ordinarily, he would have been intrigued by the mystery; it was, after all, his life’s work to solve the puzzles of human behavior. But he was through with all that now and didn’t dare risk any kind of involvement with strangers that might eventually lead his enemies to him.

No, not enemies. Enemy. Just one. One man in the whole world who had the power, even from behind the locked bars of a maximum-security prison, to snuff out his life. As long as Franco Alvaretti was alive, “Bill Hamlin” would be forced to live the half life of those who went underground.

It was war. And the whole world was mined with explosives. One wrong step, and it was all over.

Automatically he raised his hand to feel his beard, reassured when he felt its soft downiness. A couple more days and the beard would be as full and natural-looking as if he’d had one for years.

As they left the café to reboard the bus, Bill took sunglasses from his jacket pocket and put them on.

When he offered her the window seat, telling her he’d had enough of rolling scenery, Cara took the inside seat and thanked him.

Bill read for a while, forcing himself to concentrate on the pages of a book written by an agent he’d once worked with in the Middle East. The joke in the Service was that old agents didn’t die, they went to press. The book was good, unfolding an espionage tale that might well have been taken from the very records Bill himself had once helped compile.

He kept his place in the book with his finger and closed his eyes, his mind drifting back of its own accord.

“We need you back home, Spence. There’s an opening in Alvaretti’s organization, and if you move fast and with the right credentials, we can do what we’ve always wanted—get a man inside to overturn Alvaretti’s operation.”

He’d had the right credentials. Alvaretti had taken him on after only a couple of days of consideration, and he’d became privy to the legitimate books in Alvaretti’s accounting department—but not the books that the FBI, the CIA and the IRS were panting to uncover. That had taken time. He’d had to find a way to get into the man’s good graces before he was trusted with the other side of Alvaretti, Inc.

It had taken eighteen months. During that time he’d been tried by fire more than he cared to remember, once by being forced to stand by with his mouth shut while members of Alvaretti’s goon squad worked a man over until he was nearly dead.

When he was finally allowed into the inner sanctum of the organization’s workings, he’d thought it was merely a matter of photocopying the evidence and getting out. He had never anticipated the end result—that the agency would have to bury him, that from that moment on, Alvaretti wouldn’t rest until he got his revenge.

His superiors had talked about plastic surgery, a faked death, the Witness Protection Program. The WPP seemed the least drastic, in Spence’s mind, and he had determined then not to relinquish control of his life to anyone else. He knew now that the government had deliberately used him in its frenzy to get Alvaretti, and that once he’d done the job he was no longer of any use to them.

I should have realized up front that there was no other way out once I went in, he told himself for the umpteenth time. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists. The worst of it was that he really missed his job; it was work he’d known he wanted to do since he’d been a schoolboy. There was pain in recognizing how much he’d lost. He took a deep breath to push away the ache.

Cara felt movement beside her and drew her attention from the passing scenery to glance sideways at Bill. “Are you all right?” she whispered, seeing the devastation on his face, his rigid body language.

He blinked, forced himself to relax and nodded, a tiny line of sweat beading his forehead. “Yeah. Fine. Don’t worry.”

Cara wasn’t so sure. He looked sick, as if he were about to have a seizure or something, or as if he were experiencing incredible pain. “I’ve got some aspirin in my purse,” she said softly. “Would that help?”

He shook his head and then leaned back against the headrest. “No, thanks. I think I just need to sleep for a while.” He closed his eyes.

Cara turned back to the window but couldn’t get this last image of him out of her mind. It brought to mind news clips of the hostages just released from years of incarceration in the Middle East. But he was none of her business, after all. She’d offered her help, and she’d been refused. She had enough troubles of her own without adding his to her list.

Nevertheless, when they pulled into a bus station for their lunch stop, she suggested they eat their meal together.

He looked hesitant at first, but then shrugged, as if to say “What harm can it do?” For some reason, Cara found that gesture strangely disturbing. It made her feel insignificant; though they were only strangers passing a day and a night together by accident, she felt as if she would have liked to make a better impression on him.

Bill told himself that this interlude for the brief time they were travelers together couldn’t lead to anything dangerous. The girl was good company. She didn’t chatter away, as some travelers did, and yet she was friendly and open.

Well, not entirely open. There was that business about her name. And he’d noticed that whenever they came to a town, she put her hand up along the side of her face that was nearest the window, as if she were afraid someone in one of those towns would recognize her.

In the station coffee shop, Cara ordered a small dinner salad and iced tea, while Bill took the waitress’s recommendation of the blue plate special.

“How do you keep your figure, eating like that?” Bill asked, gesturing toward Cara’s tiny bowl of salad.

“This is how I keep my figure,” Cara said with a grin.

But when she ordered the same thing at the supper stop, Bill thought again that Cara must be short on funds and unable to afford a complete meal. It made him nervous to eat with her, and he couldn’t help but worry about her health. Wouldn’t she get sick if she didn’t get some real food into her?

He told himself that his only reason for being concerned about her was that her getting sick would draw attention to him, since they were seatmates and had taken all their meals together.

He ordered two roast beef sandwiches, an apple and a carton of milk to go. “I get hungry during the night, and we don’t stop again until morning,” he told Cara, who was looking askance at him, because he’d just stowed away a large steak, a double order of hash browns, salad and dessert.