Unmasked (New Adult Romance) (The Unmasked Series) (15 page)

––––––––

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 glanced 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?

Heart pounding in her chest, Alyssa made for the
back of the stairs, and the office she was to find there. In the darkness it
was hard to make much out, but with the help of her tiny light, she was able to
work her way to and around the room, but found absolutely nothing but a pile of
papers on an old oak desk.

"Maybe a button somewhere?" Alyssa slid her hand
under the desk's surface, feeling for anything at all that seemed out of place.

Nothing.

The walls were spotless, white plaster. No lines
to indicate a hidden panel, or much of anything else. Giving it one last
glance, she turned back into the foyer.

From the left, a bright beam shot from one end of
the greeting area to the other. Alyssa ducked back, rolling herself into a ball
against the stairwell. Peeking between wooden beams, she saw someone who looked
to be just going about his day. As soon as the man was out of the picture, off
to the left of the kitchen, messing around with something in the dining area,
she slipped past and stayed low until she got to the back.

"Okay, Preston said there was some kind of room
here. But, all I'm seeing is...huh. What's this?" Lys stuck the flashlight
between her teeth and fingered the outline of a panel obviously large enough
for a person to fit through.

"No handle," she mumbled around the light. "No
buttons and no pull chains."

She pressed, and then tried to slide it like it
was a van door. Taking the light out of her mouth, she tapped.

The hollow metal clanging told her there was
something, at least a little space, behind the panel, but without any idea how
to access it, she was still stuck.

Hand through the hair and fingers pushed into her
temples, Alyssa leaned forward and let her head come to rest on the curious
wall.

"Whoa!"

It moved in, then out, swinging wide open to
reveal another room almost exactly like the under-stairs office, but quite a
bit cooler. The darkness back here, away from any windows, away from any light,
was pitch. Her tiny flashlight did very little to break through it, but she had
no choice.

Not now anyway. Not here, and not with time
ticking away.

Carefully, from left to right, she swept the room.

"God," she mumbled. "Where is this place? What am
I looking for? Think Alyssa, think. Where would you hide a room full of
clandestine surveillance equipment?"

Alyssa's teeth chattered. She heard someone
knocking around in the kitchen, and silverware clanged, like it was either
being tossed into, or taken out of, a sink.

The noise sent her running to a corner, even in
the dark. She huddled down behind the desk against the wall opposite the closed
panel, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Think, think, think," he said. "Where is that
room?"

As soon as the sound in the kitchen faded and
Alyssa heard footsteps go the other way, she crept to the panel and popped it
open, then slid back into the shadows fringing the foyer. Wracking her brain,
Alyssa had a million ideas, none of which made much sense at all.

"Where do you keep a secret room? Second floor
maybe? Roof?"

Chancing a glance at her watch, Alyssa saw fifteen
minutes had passed since she crept out on that ledge and started her fool's
adventure. How long she had until everything was back on line was anyone's
guess.

Her bare feet made light thumping sounds as she
ascended the stairs.

"And that's why you have to hurry!"

She looked around, trying to place the voice, or
the one that responded that he was doing things as fast as possible.

Where are they coming from? That's gotta be it.
It has to be.

Around the perimeter of the stairs, she crept
soundlessly, listening everywhere – to the walls, to the floor, but without the
men talking to guide her, Alyssa just couldn't find a track. Walls, floors, she
even climbed the stairs and put her ear to the overhanging ceiling.

Heavily, she took in a breath and sighed.

"Quickly!" One of them said. "Hurry! If this thing
stays out for much longer, things will take too long to come back up."

Gadsen.
Alyssa's stomach roiled.
Why
does it have to be him? But where...?

"Now!" He shouted, so loud the stairs seemed to
shake.

She hunched down on the wall opposite the
stairwell and stared at it, wondering just how to manage getting inside a set
of stairs.

"Where are the routers?" The second voice said.
"I've got to go reset them. That should only take a couple of minutes, but it
has to be done before I can reboot the system."

"Routers?" Gadsen said with a voice just dripping
irritation. "I don't..."

"Usually in the middle of a place to give the best
signal, it'll be a box, maybe a few of them, with a bunch of blinking lights."

"I know what a router is, you moron, I'm trying to
think where they are. Damn it!" A fist thumped against the wall – against the
stairs, very near where Alyssa sat and watched. "You work for the company,
don't you? Why don't you know this?"

"Actually sir, I just work for the cable compa-"

"Second floor! They're on the second floor. Middle
room." He then proceeded to grumble a series of incomprehensible swears.
"Follow me, this way."

As suddenly as she'd heard the voices in the first
place, the center of the stairs simply opened up and out with a whooshing,
pneumatic sound and a heavy click. Alyssa took as deep a breath as she possibly
could and held it in, refusing to make the smallest sound, to shift her weight
at all, or do anything that might alert the butler to her presence. Hugging her
knees tightly against her body, she waited and watched as he tapped a few times
on a particular section of the handrail and the whole improbable thing slid
back into place.

As soon as they were gone, Alyssa darted to where
he'd touched and shined her flashlight. Whereas light bounced off of most of
the handrail, that particular place took it in and shone with a matte finish.

"Must be a touchpad of some sort." She tried
prodding it, but to no avail. "There's obviously some sort of password, but
I've got no idea..."

A few things came to mind immediately – Gadsen's
name, a dollar sign, which she laughed at a little as she tried it, Preston's
name, the oil company's name – but there was no response to any of the passwords.

Suddenly, a thought crossed her mind, but she
wasn't sure why.

"Marissa," she rubbed into the touch pad using big
block letters.

It clicked.

The stairwell rose.

"You old goat," she said, walking in to a room
absolutely full of television monitors, and a pile of wires that seemed like
some snake mating ritual. "How in the world did you get this thing built?"

It didn't matter much, not right then anyway.

In a flurry of action, she found the three
monitors that Preston told her to switch, the outside building, the entry way,
and the camera observing the kitchen-back office, and disconnected them. Just
like he said, the image froze. Unless she was staring directly at the monitor
and watching, she'd never be able to tell that it wasn't just an empty room
with nothing happening. Slightly impressed with herself, Alyssa turned to make
her way out and back to her room.

She did it.

She'd done exactly what Preston needed. The
cameras were switched, it was done while the network was down, and best of all
the whole crazy plan went off without a hitch. Not a single problem.

Until the stairs opened right before she pushed
the button.

And Gadsen walked straight in, without looking,
and right into Alyssa.

––––––––

"Miss Barton? What are you doing?"

Alyssa bounced off his chest and backwards, so
surprised that she stumbled into a crate and then her foot caught in the mess
of wires spread around the floor.

A crack of pain shot up her back, her legs splayed
out in front of her, and when she hit the concrete, a panicked yelp shot out of
Lys's lips with a sputter at the end. "I, uh, I just was looking around."

Gadsen's eyes were different than she'd ever seen.
They weren't watery and soft and half-awake like they'd been before. Instead,
they were sharp, half-closed and sharp.

"And I'm supposed to believe that? At any rate,
weren't you told not to leave the second floor? And not to go east into the old
family quarters? You've broken both of my rules, haven't you?" He shook his
head, slowly, back and forth as he crept forward. "Don't look for any help. I'm
alone. That rube from the cable company isn't going to come up behind me and
dramatically hit me with anything. Preston isn't going to swoop out of the
rafters and throw me to the ground. You've wandered straight into my nest, and
I'm not sure how you think you're going to get out of it. Luck has saved you so
far, but that's all you've got going for you. Luck."

He narrowed his gaze, continuing his slow forward
progress.

"Luck runs out, Miss Barton. Luck always runs
out."

"W-why?" She squeaked. "What did I do?"

"Wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
"Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done about it now, because if you
and Preston end up together, not only would you be foolish children acting out
of emotion instead of reason, you'd ruin plans that I've had cooking for a
decade. More, actually. Since Preston was born. But that doesn't matter now,
not to you anyway."

"But I don't see how this has anything to do with
me. Just throw me out of the house and keep right on holding Preston in his
giant prison. Wouldn't that keep us from being together? Then the trust
defaults to the board and... You what? Have some trap in place for them, too?"

The longer he was talking, Alyssa thought, the
more time there was that someone would happen upon them.

"Ah, it goes much deeper than some half-cocked
plan to take over a company. I don't care about the oil or the money or the
power."

"Then what?" She scooted backwards until her back
touched the monitor display on the back wall. Alyssa reached back to try and
pull herself up, but Gadsen kicked her hand and sent her back to the floor.

"Clever, but not enough. It's really unfortunate
that you're caught up in all this."

"Caught up in what?" She said, her voice rising,
almost tinged with panic. "I don't understand anything that's happening!"

"It's better that way. I don't want to hurt you.
Really, I don't, but this is the only way I'm afraid. This is how it has to
be." He reached down, white cotton rasping along Alyssa's wrist as he grabbed
her, tight, in his fist. "This is a battle that started before you were born,
before Preston Webb was born, but it involves both of you."

"Wait a minute," Alyssa said. She twisted back and
forth, trying Gadsen's grip, but it was iron. "Why was the password to your
little hive here, why was it Marissa?"

A grin crawled across Gadsen's face.

"Why, Miss Barton, you seem to have solved the
mystery all on your own, don't you think?"

"But I don't know why it has anything at all to do
with me! I'm just some girl from the country that wandered into all this
thinking she was meeting an interesting guy, and then picking some mushrooms!"
Tears streaked Alyssa's face. Her strength melted, and as the butler's grip
tightened even more on her wrist, that started to hurt too. Uselessly, she
flailed her arm at Gadsen's face, but he just swatted her away.

"Why do you keep doing that? Do you think one of
these times you're going to knock me out? You're going to run off to Preston
and into the sunset?"

"I – I don't know, I don't know, I'm sorry!"

"Too late for that," he growled. "Much too late."

Tears streaming down her face, Alyssa gave one
last try to twisting away. Then she kicked, but her foot just bounced off
Gadsen's knee. He didn't react at all.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you never to have been here. I want for
Preston to never have seen you years ago, and for him to never have decided he
fell in love with you like a foolish puppy. I want all of those things to
happen, but they can't. You understand? Time doesn't go backwards, Miss Barton.
Only forward. Change can't be stopped."

Swallowing hard, to keep herself from screaming,
Alyssa clenched her jaw until her teeth hurt.

Gadsen's eyes seemed to soften a bit as he dragged
her to her feet. "I think I've solved my problem."

Metal clinked around Alyssa's hand, and the scream
she'd been burying for so long escaped. When the other handcuff closed around
an exposed bit of metal jutting out of the wall, she sank to her knees,
weeping.

"Mhm," Gadsen said. "That's an appropriate
response. But, since I can't have you carrying on down here and alerting
someone, I'll have to quiet you down."

The butler wrapped soft, slick, black silk around
Alyssa's head, inside her mouth. She tried to scream, but all that came out was
a muffled grunt.

"You probably shouldn't bother," he said. "It
won't do much more than make your throat hurt."

He turned out of the room, and as the stairs
closed, the power – or at least the lights – in the rest of the house
flickered. Inside the room was nothing but the black and white glow of
countless monitors.

Alyssa let out a sob, and then sucked a deep
breath through her nose, trying to calm herself.

Oh God, Preston. I don't know what you're
looking for but I hope you find it. Please, please, please find it.