Unmasked (New Adult Romance) (The Unmasked Series) (14 page)

"Are you awake?" The soft, smooth voice she was
used to hearing drifted under the door. "Alyssa?"

"I'm awake, is that you, Preston?" She knew the
answer, but for some reason wanted to hear him say it.

"Yes, it's me. Were you expecting someone else?"
He laughed a dry laugh. "Are the curtains closed?"

"Yes, well mostly. The moon is just barely coming
through. Is that okay?"

She gripped the sheet and squeezed.

"Is the lamp off? No lights?"

Her heart skipped a beat.

"It's off. No lights."

"Are you lying?"

"I wouldn't do that. Not to you. I understand what
it's like."

"Do you? How?"

"We've all got our secrets. There aren't any
lights on. You have to trust me."

That familiar sliding, metal-on-wood sound
whispered through the room, caressing Alyssa's ears, calming her nerves.

A warm light silhouetted the tall man who stepped
inside. The features of his face were shrouded, but seeing his shape, his body
even in outline, brought a smile to Lys's lips.

Preston pushed the door closed, but Lys stopped
him.

"Not yet."

"What?"

"Don't close it. I can't see your face. I can't
see whatever it is you're hiding. But please just let me look at you for a
moment. Open the door a little more. Please?"

Without saying anything, the figure extended a
foot and did as she asked.

"Say your name," she whispered.

"Why?"

"Just...please?"

"Preston," he said with a nervous giggle at the
end.

"Preston what?"

"Webb."

"Say the whole thing. I can't believe this is
happening. I can't believe I'm here, I can't believe you're real. Everything
has just happened so fast and you doing this makes me feel like I'm not going
to wake up any second now and have you disappear. Say your whole name."

"Preston Webb."

Before the door swung shut, before the lights had
faded completely, Alyssa drew a breath through her nose filled with the vague,
bare hint of roses.

"Who
are
you, Preston Webb?"

In the instant before his lips touched hers,
Preston's hand slid along Alyssa's arm. His fingers were warm, and goose bumps
followed them down to her hand.

"I'm not sure. I don't think I am who I always
thought I was. But I do know one thing."

"What's that?" She craned her neck and kissed his
throat, the rasp of his late-evening beard scratching her barely opened lips.

"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."

––––––––

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 shotgun.

"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."