Behind the Mask (MIRA)

by Metsy Hingle

  “We want them to know where we’re going?”

  “We want them to think they know.”

  Lily tapped her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently. “I think the light’s stuck.”

  “It’s a long light. Two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

  She shot him an incredulous look.

  “I timed it,” he confessed. “Okay, get ready. When the light turns green, you’re going to have one second, maybe two, before the cars across the street start racing across the intersection in this direction. Before they do, I want you to cut a hard left and hit the gas.”

  “But it’s a no left turn.”

  “Exactly,” Michael told her. “And by the time Curly and Moe can get through the line of cars whizzing past them to make that same illegal left, we’ll be gone. Think you can do it?”

  “Yes,” she told him. She had to. To keep Timmy safe she could do anything. And she would.

  “All right. Six seconds. Five. Four,” Michael began to count down. “Two. One. Hit it!”

  Lily floored the gas pedal and jerked the wheel to the left. Her tires squealed. Brakes screeched as she barely missed the front end of a Mercedes coming at her. Horns blared all around her. Her car swerved drunkenly for a moment, generating another flurry of blaring horns and slamming brakes. And then she was tearing down the street.

  “Up ahead there’s a ramp to the interstate. Take it, and drive toward the lakefront.”

  Lily took the ramp at full speed, felt her teeth rattle as the car hit the slope and sent them bouncing in their seats. Fueled by adrenaline and fear, Lily kept her foot firmly on the gas. She wove in and out of lanes of traffic, aware of passing the much slower-moving cars.

  “Take the next exit,” Michael told her, and Lily swerved to her right and exited the interstate. All the while, he kept his eyes trained on the traffic behind them. “You can slow it down. I think we lost them.”

  Lily nearly wept with relief as she eased her foot off the gas. But inside, she was still racing at that breakneck speed. “Do you think it’s safe for me to go get Timmy now?”

  “Where is he?”

  “With a friend. She usually sits him when I’m working. I expected to be back to pick him up by now. She’s probably wondering where I am.”

  “Pull in over there,” he said, pointing to the parking lot near the seawall.

  Lily parked the car, and not until she pried her fingers from the steering wheel and shut off the engine did she realize how truly frightened she’d been. She rested her head against the steering wheel.

  “You all right?”

  She lifted her head. “Yes.”

  Michael handed her his cell phone. “Call Timmy’s sitter and see if she has a safe place she can go to with Timmy until we can get there.”

  Lily made the call and Gertie agreed to take Timmy and go to a friend’s house. She gave them the woman’s name, address and phone number and agreed to wait to hear from them.

  When Lily handed him the phone, he said, “I think they’ll be okay for now. Since you don’t want me to call the police, I’d like to call my father and ask him to come get Timmy.”

  “But if Adam—”

  “Adam doesn’t know where he is at the moment,” Michael said. “Mardi Gras is tomorrow, so getting a flight in here will be impossible. But Houston’s only about six, seven hours away by car. My dad can come here to keep Timmy safe until we’re ready to leave. All right?”

  Lily nodded.

  She sat in silence as Michael made the call to his father, explained the situation and gave him Gertie’s name, her friend’s name and address and a phone number. After his father agreed to his plan, Michael ended the call and turned his attention back to Lily.

  “All right. Now it’s time for you and I to talk. I want to know what’s going on. And why you think someone wants to kill you and Timmy.”

  “Not me. Just Timmy,” she told him, and knew how incredible it sounded. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I swear it.”

  “Who wants Timmy dead—and why?”

  “You’re not going to believe me.”

  “Try me,” Michael said.

  Lily let out a breath, looked up into his deep-blue eyes. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me who you really are.”

  Thirteen

  “My real name is Elisabeth Webster. Lily is what my grandmother used to call me,” she began, as they walked along the seawall.

  And Michael listened as Lily gave him her version of the events that had transpired seven months ago, telling him about Adam’s repeated attempts to kill Timmy, about how she had plotted and planned her escape. Sickened by what he heard, Michael remained silent as she told him how she’d drugged her husband, stolen money from his safe, then tricked her guards by claiming to have a pediatrician’s appointment and slipped out a back door. She paid cash for the car she had now and had hocked her wedding rings and watch for extra money. She had used some of the money, twice now, to obtain new ID’s for herself. He wanted to believe her, but the idea that Webster would actually want to kill his own son just didn’t make sense. “So you drugged your husband, stole some money from him and ran away because you were protecting Timmy?”

  Lily nodded.

  “Why didn’t you just divorce the man?”

  “For the same reason I don’t want you to call the police. Adam is a powerful man with friends in high places. Even if I had been able to divorce him, he would have made sure that he got custody of Timmy. I couldn’t take that risk.”

  Michael didn’t miss her shiver, and he suspected it had a great deal more to do with her thoughts of Webster than it did with the breeze that had created the chop on the lake waters.

  “I knew that night in his study that if I didn’t leave and get Timmy away, it was only a matter of time before Adam found a way to kill Timmy and make it look like an accident.”

  “But Timmy’s the man’s son,” Michael pointed out.

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  When she started to walk away from him, Michael caught her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Make me understand,” he said, wanting to believe her but finding his feelings for her clouding his judgment.

  “I was fifteen when my grandmother died and I was sent to live with my mother. My mother was very beautiful. People used to say that she looked like Marilyn Monroe.”

  And he could believe it, Michael thought as he looked at Lily. Only, Lily’s beauty was more ethereal than blatantly sexy.

  “A local modeling agency had spotted her in a beauty pageant and got her some small jobs. My mother was just waiting to finish high school and then she was going to head to New York. She figured she would make it big as a model there and parlay that into a singing career.”

  “What happened?”

  “She got pregnant with me in her senior year and it derailed her big plans.”

  “What about your father?” Michael asked.

  “My mother would never say who he was. I’m not sure she knew. From what I gather, my mother wasn’t necessarily promiscuous, but she definitely had no qualms about sleeping her way to success. Personally I think he was married, and she’d hoped to use the pregnancy to further her career. Only it didn’t happen, and once the agency discovered she was pregnant, the modeling assignments dried up.”

  While Michael didn’t know Lily’s mother, he did know that he didn’t like the woman, and she hadn’t deserved a daughter like Lily.

  “I’m not sure if it was because her pregnancy was too far along, or if my grandmother instilled enough of the Catholic religion in her to make her afraid to have an abortion. Whatever the reason, she didn’t. She did want to give me up for adoption, but my grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. My grandmother could be really stubborn when she set her mind to it,” Lily explained, a wistful expression on her face.

  “Like her granddaughter, I suspect.”

  “M
aybe. Anyway, my mother kept me. And when I was three months old, she left me with my grandmother, said she was going to see about getting a job, and she never came back.”

  While Lily went on to explain that her mother never did become the star she’d dreamed of being, Michael couldn’t help thinking about his own family. Growing up, he had had his share of differences with his father, but even through their estrangement, he’d always known that he was loved and wanted.

  “Anyway, after my grandmother died, the courts located my mother and sent me to live with her.”

  “I’m sure she loved that.”

  “The truth is, I’m not sure why she agreed to let me come. But she did. And that’s when I met Adam for the first time. My mother was working as a singer in one of his supper clubs. He was very kind to me.”

  “You were just a kid,” Michael pointed out, disliking the idea of the man coming on to a young girl.

  “A kid who felt a great deal older and probably looked it, too. I was already my full height and had begun to develop a figure.” She looked down at herself as though thinking the remark sounded boastful. “Actually, I think I had a bit more of a figure then. I’ve lost a bit of weight this past year.”

  “You look fine to me,” Michael pointed out. Tired, a little thinner than the woman in Webster’s pictures, but every bit as beautiful. Even more beautiful, he amended, because there was a softness and a fragility to Lily now that hadn’t been in the photographs.

  “Anyway, Adam took a special interest in me. He bought me gifts, took my mother and I to concerts, out to dinner. For a while it was almost like having a father. And when my mother died eighteen months later, he became my guardian.”

  “How did he get by with that since he wasn’t a relative?”

  “Apparently, my mother had drawn up a will after I came to live with her, and she made provisions in it for Adam to be my guardian if something happened to her.”

  “Sounds convenient,” Michael replied.

  “In retrospect, I can see that. But at the time, I was just grateful that Adam took on the task. Since he didn’t think it would look proper for us to be living together, even if he was my legal guardian, he sent me to a Catholic boarding school. He’d come to visit me on weekends, sign me out to spend the holidays with him. It was lonely, but nice. I certainly didn’t have to worry about money or how I was going to support myself. But just before I turned eighteen, things began to change. Adam began to change. His interest in me…it wasn’t fatherly,” she said.

  She began to pace along the seawall, staring out at the lake where a sailboat was zipping across the waves. “Or maybe I just took off the blinders. I’m not sure. I just know that those last few months before I graduated, Adam told me that he loved me, that he’d been in love with me from the moment he’d set eyes on me and that he’d just been waiting for me to grow up. He said I was all grown up now, a woman and not a girl anymore. He said he wanted to go on taking care of me, but not as my guardian—but as a man. Then he gave me a huge diamond ring and asked me to marry him.”

  “Did you even love him?” Michael asked, unable to keep some of the bitterness out of his voice.

  If Lily noticed his agitation, she gave no indication because she said, “Actually, I did. Oh, not in a sexual way. Not the way Adam felt about me. But I did love him, I guess the way a girl loves her father.”

  “He wasn’t your father,” Michael pointed out.

  “I know that. But he was the first and only man who’d ever been in my life. I was a shy teenager living with a mother who was a stranger and he paid attention to me. He made me feel special, like I mattered.”

  “It’s a hell of a reason to marry someone,” Michael countered. “Why didn’t you just tell him no, that you didn’t love him in that way? Or was the lure of the money and fancy lifestyle too much?”

  She looked up at him, and from the hurt in her eyes, he knew she’d heard similar accusations before.

  “Listen, I was out of line. I—”

  “It’s all right. Why should you be any different than anyone else? I bet if you look up the definition of gold digger in the dictionary, there might even be a picture of me next to it.”

  “I deserved that,” Michael said. “I have no right to judge you. I’m just trying to understand.”

  “And I’m trying to explain. I married Adam because he was good to me. And because I was lonely. I thought…I hoped that with time, I’d learn to love him the way he loved me.”

  “Did you?” he asked, and hated himself because the answer mattered so much.

  “No. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to have a baby. I thought it might make things better somehow.”

  “I take it, it didn’t.”

  “No. Adam didn’t want children. He was very firm about that. He’d already ruled out my going to college or getting a job. I knew he was possessive of me, jealous of anything that took me away from him. So I…I deliberately got pregnant,” she confessed. “Only I never thought…I never dreamed he would resent Timmy because I loved him.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t want you to have an abortion.”

  “He would have if he’d known.”

  “Come again?” Michael replied, surprised by her comment.

  “I didn’t tell him I was pregnant until it was too late for me to have an abortion without there being some risk to my life.”

  “You expect me to believe a man as jealous and obsessed with you as he was didn’t notice you were pregnant?” he asked, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

  “I was lucky in that I didn’t gain a lot of weight and was able to hide the pregnancy at first. When I started to show, I claimed I’d come down with a bug. So for a week or so he and I…we didn’t…”

  “I get the picture,” Michael said.

  “When I couldn’t fake being ill any longer without him insisting I go to the hospital, things went back to normal. He noticed I’d gained weight, but I let him think I’d just been eating too many sweets. Then by the time he realized that I’d laid off the desserts, and the workouts in the gym weren’t taking off the weight, I was far enough along that he couldn’t force me to get rid of the baby.”

  “Jesus! What century are you living in? The man doesn’t own you,” Michael told her, outraged by her explanation.

  “But he does. Or at least he thinks he does. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Adam took care of me. He educated me. He made me who I am.”

  “You’ve made yourself who you are.”

  She shook her head. “Not in Adam’s eyes. I belong to him, and he doesn’t share what’s his with anyone.”

  “Not even with his own son?”

  “Not even Timmy.”

  Edgy, Michael walked away from her. He rammed his fingers through his hair as he looked out at the lake, wishing to hell he were on that sailboat out there. Not here listening to some story about a modern-day Svengali. Angry with Webster and with Lily, because of the feelings she set off in him, Michael whipped back around and marched over to her. “Do you have any idea how sick this all sounds?”

  “I know,” she whispered, lowering her eyes as though ashamed. “It took me a long time to admit that Adam’s feelings for me…that they’re not normal. That this obsession he has with me…well, it’s just what you said. It’s sick. I finally had to accept that. That’s when I decided I had to get away from him.”

  And now, thanks to him, the bastard knew where she was, Michael admitted. His instincts had been right. Somehow he had managed to tip Webster off—the guy had become suspicious of him. He’d either figured out he was lying about leaving New Orleans or he’d had his goons tracking his movements. It wouldn’t be that hard to do, Michael reasoned. Not if someone had the right connections—which, according to Lily, the man had. This also meant that there was no way he could tell Lily now about the hand he’d played in the whole mess—not without her trying to bolt again. And if she did leave, he didn’t doubt for a second that Webster would fi
nd her. Thoughts of Webster touching Lily or doing anything to hurt Timmy sent a murderous rage through him. He had to figure out a way to keep them safe until he could get them on that plane to Oklahoma tomorrow night. Then he would deal with Webster.

  “Listen, now that you know what’s involved, I’ll understand if you’ve changed your mind about helping me,” she said. “If you want to call your father and tell him not to come, go ahead. I can’t take you back to get your truck, because I’m worried those men might have returned to my place to wait for me. But I can drop you off at your hotel or call you a cab.”

  Barely listening to what she said, Michael was weighing his options. He couldn’t tell her he’d already purchased the plane tickets—not without revealing his connection with Webster.

  “So do you want me to drop you off at your hotel?”

  “What?” Michael asked, unsure of what he’d missed.

  “I asked if you wanted me to drop you off at your hotel?”

  “No. We can’t go back there. Chances are they’ve run a check of the plates on my truck and know who I am. It wouldn’t be too hard to find out where I’m staying. I think our best bet is to hide in plain sight until I can get you and Timmy out of town.”

  “You still want to help me?”

  “Did you think I’d change my mind?”

  She nodded. “Adam Webster can be a powerful enemy. If you help me, he’ll be your enemy. You don’t have to do this, Michael.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve already told you. I care about you,” he said, brushing a strand of honey-colored hair behind her ear. “And I like that little boy of yours a lot, too. I’m not going to let him hurt you.”

  “I…I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Say that you trust me,” Michael prompted.

  “All right,” she said, and averted her gaze.

  Michael tipped up her chin. “Is that everything, Lily? Is there anything else I should know?”

  She hesitated for a long moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. “That’s everything.”

  “All right then,” he said, and kissed her. When he lifted his head and looked into those big green eyes, he wondered how he could ever—even for a moment—confuse her with Giselle. “I think I’ve come up with a plan. But first, I need to know how much cash you have on you.”