Unmasked (New Adult Romance) (The Unmasked Series)

by Karin, Anya

  "That I'm yours."

  The next breath that Alyssa drew was full of Preston. Then her hands moved up his body under his shirt. Smooth, taught, warm skin covered his thin, muscular body and burned under her fingers.

  He kissed her deep, his lips pushing hers apart and his tongue hooking around them, sliding in a circle as he tasted her.

  "I can't stay," he said. "Gadsen will be looking for me."

  "Don't leave me. Please, Preston, don't leave."

  "I have to this time. But I couldn't let another night go by without touching you. Without knowing what it was like to kiss someone you..." he trailed off and ran a hand through Alyssa's hair.

  "Someone you what?"

  "Nothing. You're special, Alyssa. I can't say exactly what it is about you, but you are."

  Her cheeks burned. Gripping his shirt in one hand, holding him as tight as she could with the other, Lys tried with all her might to keep him from getting up and leaving her alone to wonder what would happen the next day.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "But next time we see each other like this, hopefully it doesn't have to end."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Outside Alyssa's window, the world was a glazed grey when she awoke. The morning had a chill to it, but the big, thick goose-down blankets she pulled around her shoulders when she got out of bed kept her warm.

  "Well, I'm up, just like I said I would be. I'm awake and ready for...something."

  She gazed out the window with a little twitch in her left eye. Rubbing her temples to calm the tic, Lys leaned as far over the ledge as she could, stretching to see if she could figure out which window belonged to Preston. She followed the path those ashes had taken with her eyes.

  "Where are you?" She asked the sky. "Why can't you just come take me and walk out the front door? I'm tired of life being complicated. I just want something to go easy for once." A heavy sigh came out of her as a bird landed on the tree opposite her window and stared.

  She grabbed one of the rose petals from Preston's letter. Holding it up to the lightening blue outside, Lys studied the strange pattern of color radiating out from the middle, where it joined the rest of the flower.

  "That's weird." With the petal close to her face, the lines on it were all different colors, but from far away they looked perfectly normal.

  Turning over again, then a third time, the pattern continued all the way around. "Never seen one like this. Wonder if they grow them special here. It'd make sense for someone this obsessed with roses to make a hobby of them."

  A breeze kicked up, both startling the little bird and blowing the rose petal from her fingers. She reached out and tried to snatch it, but it escaped her, flitted up and away. She watched it for a second longer before her thoughts returned to the strange business that Preston expected her, somehow, to execute.

  Marking out the perimeter of her little room with her feet moving heel-to-toe, Alyssa made about six laps before a thought popped into her head.

  "If I'm supposed to find some secret office full of video monitors, wouldn't the easiest way to figure out where it is be to look at this house's power outlets? I mean, it would make sense to have a whole bunch of them in a room with – what – hundreds of screens? Or if I could find whatever they call those things where the power company keeps track of power use all over a building when you're trying to cut down on your bill, that'd be good too." She kicked the wall gently with her toe. "Yes, that's a great idea, Alyssa. Just get the building's blueprints! Then it'll be a snap to find a secret room that no one's supposed to be able to find. Perfect."

  After another few minutes of mindless pacing, she checked her very slim equipment – nothing more than a pocketknife that was so rusted its main weapon was tetanus, and a tiny flashlight that gave off just enough light to get yourself oriented in a parking garage. Lys caught a glimpse of a bunch of paper that she somehow missed before, in the drawer where Preston hid the matches with which she burned his letters. There was a pen still in her shorts pocket, so she grabbed both and sat down.

  She scribbled a few words on the top of the subdued yellow stationery, wrote "Dear Dad" and then crossed that out. It was too much like an "in the case of my death" note for her comfort. Alyssa wadded that sheet up and gave herself a little cheer when it went straight into the trash. On top of the next sheet, she wrote "Dear Preston" looked at it for a minute, nodded, and then smoothed out the paper and tapped her pen on the paper.

  Downstairs, past the foyer, the doorbell chimed. There's step one, that's gotta be the network guy. Hurry up with this thing, Lys.

  "Dear Preston," she wrote, "I'm waiting here for Peter to make whatever signal it is that will send me on absolutely the craziest adventure of my life. I can't even tell you how terrified I am right now, but I know it'll be fine. How? I don't know. I have no idea how in the world I can say that without laughing at myself. Two months ago, I never thought anything like this would happen to me. Never did anything more interesting than getting a couple of co-authored articles published in a second-rate newspaper."

  Downstairs, there was a flurry of conversation. She picked out Gadsen's voice, and another one that she didn't recognize. Alyssa read back what she wrote, squinted, and kept scribbling.

  "But now, sitting here, after everything that's happened in the last couple of days, or three days, or four days, however long it's been since we met, I don't even feel like the same person anymore. I'm scared as all Hell, but I'm doing it. I'm gonna do this. I'm not gonna fail and I'm not gonna let anything stop me. That's something I never would have said before I met you. Fear used to be what drove me. Fear of failing, or of letting someone down. That isn't me anymore. I'm not doing this for you out of fear. I'm not doing this for you at all, I guess."

  She sucked her lip between her teeth. Three times she wrote a few letters and scratched them out before deciding on the right ones.

  "This is hard for me to say, or write, or whatever. Like I said, I'm not doing this for you. I'm not doing it for my dad, or for my little brother or little sister. I'm about to play secret agent – run around in places I shouldn't be, hunting down some crooked butler's security room. Me – Alyssa Barton – a secret agent. But here we are. And I'm gonna do it. No questions, no regrets. I'm scared, but I'm not going to let that get in my way. I want to know that I can be brave. I'm not going to fail. I promise."

  Without any real idea why she was doing what she was doing, Alyssa grabbed the two remaining rose petals from the floor. She kissed one of them, then another, and dropped both into the used envelope and folded it over. On the front, she scribbled his name, and stuck it in her pocket. Somehow, she was going to make sure it got to him, though the details were a little more than fuzzy.

  Looking out the window one last time, she counted rooms – one up, three over – to where she'd seen the ashes, and the rose petal cross and committed it to memory. Even though it was out of the way, she thought it wouldn't take more than a few seconds to get up the stairs and throw the letter under his door. If something happened, if she stumbled, or got caught, at least that letter would get to him.

  Her stomach turned itself into a pretzel.

  She looked over at the door, heavy and oak.

  And locked. It's locked. What am I supposed to do?

  Standing, she pushed on it, and to no surprise at all, it didn't budge.

  Alyssa shoved it again, wrenched the knob back and forth. Not even a squeak.

  She turned around, her back on the door and slid into a squatting position. Every thought she wrote down on the letter for Preston came rushing back to her in a panicked torrent.

  "What am I supposed to do?" She said, letting her head thump backwards on the door. "What am I –?"

  Outside her window, quails warbled.

  "No, no, no, not now, not now," she pleaded into the empty room. "Not now."

  Alyssa stood and crossed the room to her huge, thrown open window. Behind the little gang of brown birds came a large, red-faced man with a sho
tgun.

  "Door?" She shouted to him, risking discovery but not sure what else to do.

  He fired.

  "Can't get it. Gadsen knows." He turned and left, calling all clear through his walkie-talkie.

  Alyssa looked back to the door, and considered running headlong at the thing.

  She stuck her head out the window. One up, three over. That's where I need to get. That crack I fell through, it's...

  Her eyes followed the ledge to where it broke off. One...two...Oh God. I'm gonna have to jump, aren't I? Rubbing her fingertips together, Lys felt the velvety smooth rose petal between them, which she'd forgotten she kept out. It's just a little jump. Eyes up. Don't look down.

  The wind outside was harder than it had been. As soon as her toes touched the concrete rail, she imagined losing her grip and careening back to the ground, only this time, hitting cement or a fence post or something else.

  She looked down just long enough to make sure her toes were going on the rail and not just slipping into the grooves between bricks. Flattening herself against the wall, Alyssa took one halting, short step, then another.

  And another.

  "One foot, then the next," she whispered through gritted teeth. "One then the next. That's all there is to it. Keep going, Lys. Just keep going."

  Putting one foot in front of the other, Alyssa moved as quickly as she could without making any stupid mistakes.

  "Not long," she told herself through gritted teeth. "Don't have long. Gotta make it. Gotta get to the edge."

  She looked forward, shimmied further along her tiny path. "Alright. Three more steps, then you jump. Then you grab and you pull up, and that's it. That's all there is to it. Three more steps."

  One...Two...Three. Made it.

  She allowed herself a second to look at the path, then down and then up. Without thinking about it too much, she knew where she had to go. Preston's room was directly above her head, or the window sill at least was. She looked again, figured the distance, and took a deep breath.

  "Okay. Scoot back. Just a little. Just enough so you can bend your knees, then stop thinking and just do it."

  Her toes scuffed across the concrete until she was clinging with the ends of them to the ledge. Beneath her were about thirty feet of air, and then a rosebush. Above her and just slightly to the right as she was facing, was Preston's window. Like all the window sills on the house's facade, it was decorated with big, garish geometrical sculptures that she would easily be able to grab onto and pull herself up.

  "But you have to get to it first and it has to, you know, not break. Okay, no more thinking. Time's ticking honey."

  She bent her knees as much as possible, just enough to store some energy in her legs.

  Alyssa's hands left the wall for the first time since she left her room.

  She swung them up, straight up, stretched her fingers as far as she could.

  Wind blew through her hair. Arching her back, she held her breath, gritted her teeth.

  Stone.

  Hard, cold, safe, only-thing-in-the-world-she-wanted stone met her fingertips.

  Alyssa curled her fingers around the jut of statue, and screamed when her left hand slipped off as a cascade of mortar fell beside her. Her right held fast.

  Adjusting her grip, she swung and counted.

  One.

  Just a little further.

  Two. Almost, almost.

  Her fingers brushed the little statue again and slipped.

  She took another breath, tightened her grip and went one last time.

  Three!

  One last thrust, one last desperate grasp.

  "Ha!" Lys's fingers gripped the thin end of the pyramid-shaped decoration so hard her knuckles turned white. Just in time too, because her other hand momentarily slipped from where it was anchored, but she managed to sling it up to the window sill and begin to heave herself up to the level.

  "Knees on gritty stone have never felt this good." She grunted and heaved herself to her feet, then bent and shaded her eyes to look inside Preston's quarters.

  She hoped he was going to be inside, but no such luck. The door into the hallway was open. Alyssa tapped the glass with her elbow.

  "This is crazy. This is completely, absolutely crazy." She grabbed one of her sleeves, stuck it in her mouth and chewed part of the seam apart until a finger fit, and she ripped it free.

  Knocking first, because it was only polite, she hoped maybe Preston would magically appear and save her from probably getting cut to ribbons, but no such luck. Her elbow, wrapped in cotton, thudded thick against the pane.

  "Alright. Now!"

  Her elbow thumped against the window, and did absolutely nothing.

  "No! No, no, no, not now. This can't stop me, not this. Not a piece of glass."

  Alyssa stooped again and looked into the room. Nothing of help.

  Suddenly, her thoughts turned back to home, and to the tiny crack in her bedroom window.

  "Corner out!" She said, thumping her elbow against the glass again, right in the corner of the pane. It still didn't break, but the sound was different.

  Once more, she tightened her hand-made elbow pad and swung her arm as hard as she could. A tiny crackle appeared in the corner of the glass. She battered it, over and over, until she thought either her arm, or the window must be about to break.

  "Hnng!"

  The window exploded inward with a shower of glass that covered the floor. It wasn't any normal sort of broken glass, the way it shattered seemed almost like crystal, or that lead glass that stained-glass was made from. Millions of tiny shards sparkled on the hardwood.

  "And I've seen enough TV to know how to do this," she said, wrapping her fist in the cloth and clearing the remaining glass from the pane before sticking her hand through.

  As her foot crackled over the shattered glass, Alyssa stepped into the drafty room, stuck the letter between two rose vases, and plucked a bud that had just started to flower.

  "For good luck," she said, sticking it in her pocket. "I get the feeling I'm gonna need it."

  Chapter Twenty

  Back and forth, Preston paced the increasingly bare rug in his office. He looked out the window for the sign he told Alyssa to give him, but saw nothing, heard nothing.

  "I'll never forgive myself if something happened to you," he said under his breath, rubbing the scar along his lip. "Never, ever, ever."

  His feet dragged heavy on the carpet, bare as they were. Preston Webb wasn't used to not wearing shoes, but he thought it best for the attempt he was about to make at a stealthy run to a few different parts of the house. Big, clomping loafers probably weren't the best idea for subtlety. But, until he got the sign from Alyssa, he had to sit and wait, helpless, and useless.

  Opening his desk drawer and pulling out a bi-fold picture frame, he stood in front of the vast picture window out of which he had spent so much time watching for a girl he never met, not until four days past, when this office had been a bedroom. He pressed the pictures against the glass.

  "Look out there, mom. Look at that field, at that forest. That's where I met her. Or, well, I mean that's where I saw her first."

  The two pictures were old. They were the only photos he had of his mother, Marissa, and both of them he stole from Gadsen when he was a little boy. He hadn't even really thought about what he was doing at the time, he just saw the pictures in an open file, and grabbed them. Later, when the old man asked him if he'd seen the photographs, something inside his seven-year old mind made him lie, made him say he'd never seen them.

  "She's like you, I think. Or, I imagine she is. Strong, smart, and maybe the funniest person I've ever known. Of course," he smirked, "the list of people I know is pretty rarified, I guess."

  His eyes scanned the horizon for any sign of Alyssa, but still, there was nothing but green, and above the green, gathering clouds.

  Having successfully balanced the letter between two vases, Lys darted out of Preston's room and into the hall. She gl
anced left, then right to make sure she was clear and then down the hall she went.

  "Alright. Third floor, one up and three over from where I was. Think, Alyssa, think."

  She neared the stair landing and crouched down, out of sight, but gave herself enough space to glance.

  "One...three...four," she counted the heads that appeared. "Cook and three maids. Where is that bastard? Wait a minute. The only person who has any reason to be suspicious of me is that bastard. So as long as he's not around what does it matter who sees me?"

  Aside from her torn clothes, and the vaguely wild look in her face, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Alyssa's appearance. Just a little dirty, a little tired and ragged.

  She swallowed her fear, stood up and walked to the second floor.

  No one looked at her.

  One of the maids greeted her with a curt nod, which she returned, but that was it. No great catastrophes. She let out the breath that she forgot she was holding.

  Somewhere distant, there was a thumping sound.

  "What was that?"

  The sleepy-eyed maid looked back at Alyssa, and stared at her for a second, but didn't respond. Then the thumping sound struck three times more. It was followed by a winding down, and suddenly, Lys realized what she was hearing.

  Just about then, the lights all over the estate flickered to brown and one by one, the house went black.

  "Well would you believe that?" She said under her breath as the maid nearest her swore.

  Down the stairs she went, one after another. There was just enough ambient light from outside to keep her from tumbling and breaking her neck, but not enough to see much of anything else. When she stopped to look around at the base of the stairwell, making sure Gadsen was nowhere in sight, she saw that the first floor was less windowed, and so darker, than the second.

  "Good and bad," she whispered, "there's always good and bad."

  Her thoughts turned back to Preston's instructions. Signal taken, room escaped. Now I have to find a security center. No problem, right?