Masquerade Read Online Free

before at Hendry’s beach.
    They looked happy.
    As she stared at the photo, she heard the door open. She turned. Gordon stood there, his face pale, his shoulder heavily bandaged, his arm in a sling.
    She ran to hold him.
    They were sitting side by side on the bed in the small room. She said, “I worked for the CIA. You knew that?”
    â€œYes, Liz.”
    â€œThen you must be with the CIA, too.”
    â€œThat’s how we met, you and I. We call it the Company, or the Agency, or simply Langley.”
    â€œAnd the men who rescued us, this house?”
    Gordon smiled. “They’re CIA, too. This is one of our safe houses.”
    â€œBut how could you and I have been living together in Santa Barbara? What about your work? Your assignments?”
    â€œEven agents have private lives, darling. I was in and out, but Santa Barbara became ‘home.’
You
were home. See this?” He held up his left hand. On the ring finger was a wide gold band.
    She remembered seeing it, but hadn’t really thought about it. “We’re married?”
    â€œNot officially. Not our style.”
    He took a smaller band from his shirt pocket, studied it solemnly, then smiled into her eyes. “This one is yours.”
    â€œYou gave it to me . . . before?” She glanced at her left hand, the ring finger, so smooth and empty.
    â€œYes. We gave the rings to each other when I moved in. But the nurse took yours off in the hospital. They worry about theft, especially when the patient is unconscious. Then, whenwe found out you had amnesia, I figured I didn’t have the right to put it back on. Take it, darling.”
    The gold band was heavy on her palm.
    â€œWhen you fell and got the concussion,” he told her softly, “I couldn’t leave you. You became my assignment. Making you well.”
    She sensed he wanted her to put on the ring, but she couldn’t. It was too full of meaning she didn’t yet understand.
    She slipped it into her pocket and changed the subject. “ ‘The Carnivore’ is an ugly name, vicious sounding. Who is he, Gordon?”
    He acknowledged her decision with a disappointed flicker of his eyes. “An international assassin, with a code name to match his reputation. No one knows who he really is, and there are no photos of him. He supposedly kills anyone who sees him. That’s what happened to you in Lisbon. He believed you had seen him, so he had to kill you.”
    She looked into his ashen face and said, “Tell me everything about him. The Carnivore.”
    Gordon stood, paced across the room to the barred windows. He gazed out at the night as if he could see not only the past, but the future.
    â€œFor thirty years, give or take, Langley’s tried everything to neutralize him.” He turned, his face grim: “And we’re not the only ones. Every other intelligence agency on both sides of the old Iron Curtain would like to take him out, now more than ever. He’s a loose cannon in an increasingly volatile world. Ruthless. Efficient. Totally independent. His only allegiance is to money. We’ve heard his real name is Alex Bosa, but we haven’t been able to confirm it. When and where he was born, his parents’ nationalities, his schooling, if he even had any, his age, are also big unknowns. We don’t know what he looks like, because, as I explained, he kills anyone who spots him.”
    â€œIf I saw him, why didn’t I give you a description?”
    â€œApparently, all you saw was a silhouette, but he thought you saw a lot more. He fired. His bullet knocked you unconscious and left one hell of a lot of fatal-looking blood.”
    Fear clenched her heart. “I was lucky.”
    â€œVery. If a police patrol hadn’t turned in to the alley just as he was heading toward you—his back was to them—probably to make sure he’d finished you off, he’d have realized you were alive.