Truth Behind the Mask Read online

  “I’m okay,” Pagan repeated.

  “You don’t strike me as the sickly type, you being so big and all.”

  “I very rarely get ill,” Pagan said. “Yesterday was a fluke. But I’m here today, large as life and twice as ugly.” Pagan hoped to get a smile out of Erith.

  “No one in their right mind would ever call you ugly,” she said, favoring Pagan with a look that all but stopped Pagan’s breathing. “So, what was wrong with you? Twenty-four-hour flu? Hangover? Too much sun?”

  “I had a touch of vertigo,” Pagan replied, using an excuse Melina had concocted to cut through Erith’s wild guesses.

  “Vertigo? You’re that tall and you get vertigo? Isn’t that a fear of heights?”

  “It’s an imbalance in the inner ear that causes the sufferer to experience dizziness and be unable to stand,” Pagan said. “In short, it’s an ear infection that plays mean.”

  Erith snorted at her. “If I were you, I’d just tell everyone you had a hangover. Your cool status will rise through the roof.”

  “I wasn’t aware I even had a cool status,” Pagan said, picking up her box again and slamming the van door shut with her hip.

  “You don’t, but you keep hanging around with me long enough and we’ll soon change that,” Erith teased.

  Pagan nodded. “I might be able to manage that. Hanging around with you, I mean. Just to look cool, you understand.” She chuckled when Erith slapped her lightly in the stomach. “Hey! Still recovering here.” Pagan pretended to be hurt by the blow.

  “You’re a big girl. You can take it.”

  “I could take you,” Pagan said and then felt her face flame as she registered the innuendo as it slammed belatedly into her brain.

  Erith stopped in her tracks and stared up at Pagan with a raised eyebrow. Pagan cursed the fact her own face had to be turning fifty shades of embarrassment.

  Erith opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again. She crooked her finger to summon Pagan to lean down so she could whisper something to her.

  “One day, I’ll remind you of that statement, Ms. Osborne, when we’re not in the middle of the car lot with expectant buyers looking for four wheels that scream ‘babe magnet.’” She patted Pagan’s cheek and then swaggered away, leaving Pagan dumbfounded in the middle of the lot.

  Pagan blinked and swallowed hard at the rise of arousal that caused her stomach muscles to tighten. I don’t think she meant take in the fighting sense of the word. Pagan shivered as her active imagination filled her mind with other interpretations of the word. She felt dizzy and shook her head to clear her suddenly fuzzy brain. “Damn vertigo,” she muttered, and forced her feet to move so she could catch up with Erith.

  *

  Later that night, Pagan sat on the edge of an apartment building high above the city. There was a handy little niche where she could perch and watch the city go about its nightly routine. It had been a curiously quiet night. Rogue surmised that was because of the absolute chaos the fires had caused the previous night. The fires had been contained, and the loss to business calculated. The loss of life was also being counted. Miraculously, survivors had been found in the blast-damaged casino. Its owner, Louis Miller, however, had been a trophy kill, put on display, awaiting an audience to find him. The Jewelry Quarter bombing had yielded a body count of just one: Richard Quaid. He was the second owner of Chastilian’s more wealthy enterprises ceremoniously killed at his seat of power.

  Pagan curled into the wall pressed solidly against her spine. She looked at the windows opposite her in a more run-down apartment building. She sat motionless, her eyes darting back and forth, her ears tuned in to her surroundings. The aids offered her hearing but never the real, true sounds. Pagan had forgotten what rain really sounded like, but she could hear it as it fell. She blinked as the first droplets hit her face. Rain that had only been warned of earlier that evening now began to fall in earnest. She turned her head to stop the water from getting in her eyes and saw someone scurrying along the sidewalk below. Pagan got out her binoculars and trained the night vision lenses on the figure.

  “Pagan, don’t stay out in the rain too long.” Melina’s voice sounded in her ear.

  “Yeah, you’re big enough. You don’t need the extra watering.” Rogue’s voice also came through her comlink. Pagan could see her atop a building across from her. They were keeping a separate vigil tonight.

  “Ha ha, very funny,” Pagan grumbled halfheartedly. Her attention was drawn away from Rogue’s chuckling, drawn to the man she was watching hasten into the building and disappear from her sight. She frowned as she tried to place what was so familiar about him.

  “Mel, did your police contact ever get a fix on the guy who was at the casino manning the remote control?” She trained her binoculars at the windows to see if she could see a light come on to show which apartment he entered.

  “No, they never did get any leads on him. Why?”

  Pagan lowered the binoculars and stared at the apartment. “Because I think I just saw him enter the building across from me.” She turned her head fractionally, listening beyond the city, and caught the sounds that teased at her senses. She heard raised voices, angry and threatening. Carefully, Pagan slipped from her position and slid down the wall to land on another ledge to better hear which direction the row was coming from. She waited and listened, then took her wire gun and shot a wire across from her building to the other. She felt the bite pull on the gun as it hit its target.

  “Where are you going, Pagan?” Rogue’s soft voice rumbled in her ear.

  “There’s a disturbance across the way. I hear a loud voice and much anger. I want to see if it’s more than just harsh words.” Pagan jumped the gap between the two buildings and rode the wire to land just under the window where an argument could be heard. She flinched at the angry sounds. The instigator was a man with a guttural voice. He was bellowing at a woman, her voice barely registering in Pagan’s ears as the man yelled over her, stopping her from answering.

  “Dad, calm down!”

  Pagan’s heart jumped in recognition of a third voice. Erith? Pagan flipped a switch on her gun to disengage the wire from both secured ends while she quickly scrambled onto the fire escape beside her. She managed to maneuver close to a window, but there was no one to see. Instead she saw what seemed to be Erith’s bedroom. Pagan was amused that for someone who favored such dark clothing, Erith’s bedroom décor leaned a great deal more to the feminine. She grinned as the belligerent face of a female pop singer stared at her from one wall. A door slammed suddenly and Pagan felt the vibrations through her fingertips. She drew back slightly as she watched Erith enter the room and shut the door behind her. Erith then dragged a heavy chest of drawers across the floor. Pagan watched the door bow as Erith pushed all her weight against the chest of drawers, as if her added strength could hold back the force behind the door.

  “You’d better stay in there, girl, if you know what’s good for you!” the man warned angrily, and Pagan saw Erith flinch at the tone. Erith stayed braced at the door for a good ten minutes before she finally relaxed. Pagan listened for his return, but from what she could hear from another room, he had found far easier prey.

  “Pagan,” Rogue rumbled, “you can’t investigate every domestic. That’s not what Sentinels are here for.”

  “Rogue, I know the woman inside,” Pagan whispered, her eyes never leaving Erith’s face as she too listened to the sounds coming from the room next door.

  “All the wiser for you to retreat, then,” Rogue said simply.

  “I will,” Pagan replied, but she stayed where she was a little longer, staring at Erith, who had shifted to sit on the floor, wrapping her arms about her knees for obvious comfort.

  “We can’t save the world, Pagan,” Melina said softly over the comlink. Pagan knew Melina could see all that Pagan was viewing back on a monitor in the lighthouse. “Domestics are the police’s domain. They are better equipped to deal with them.”

&n
bsp; “I know,” Pagan said, understanding but still unable to leave Erith. She started as Erith stood up suddenly and walked toward the window. “Shit!”

  Erith opened the window and stepped out to stand on the small fire escape. She lifted her head to let the rain hit her face, oblivious to the fact that Pagan was underneath her, dangling precariously from the fire escape rail. Pagan held her breath and tried not to alert Erith to her presence, her fingers clutching mere inches from where Erith stood.

  Erith, her eyes closed, hung her head over the railing and let the rain pour onto her hair, bleeding into the vibrant color, darkening it, soaking her skin. She looked up again into the night, the bright stars hidden by the clouds crowding into the sky.

  “If I have a guardian angel, I sure hope you’re watching over me right now.”

  Erith’s voice floated down to Pagan’s ears, making her heart clench at the sorrowful tone. With a heartfelt sigh loud enough for Pagan to hear, Erith retreated back inside her room and closed the window, leaving Pagan alone in the rain.

  *

  Early the next morning, brushing her tiredness aside, Pagan drove through the traffic with a little less care and more speed than usual. Once at the dealership, she parked the van at a haphazard angle and swiftly vaulted up the steps toward the offices. The sound of arguing, very obviously one-sided, radiated from behind the closed office door. Pagan checked over her shoulder. No one else had heard the raised voice inside the office. She reminded herself to have a word with Ammassari about safety for the employees that went beyond cameras and alarms. As she neared Erith’s office, Pagan could make out Erith trying to placate an angry man. Pagan hastened her steps, opened the door to the office, and then stepped inside. Erith jumped at the sudden intrusion, and Pagan was pleased to see the man also jumped guiltily at her entrance.

  “Erith, is there a problem here?” Pagan would not let a disgruntled customer take out his fury on Erith. She moved to position herself between the stockily built man and a visibly cowering Erith.

  “No problem. He was just leaving,” she said as she slipped around Pagan and took the man’s arm to direct him out. He pulled his arm back sharply and caught Erith’s arm roughly in his hand.

  Pagan applied pressure to the man’s wrist to force him to let Erith go. He hissed in pain, letting her go, and cradled his hand.

  “You bitch!” he fumed.

  “Who is this man, Erith?” Pagan asked as she pulled Erith behind her to shield her. She got a closer look at the man, and something about him gave her pause.

  “He’s my father.” Erith sighed and leaned back to rest against the desk.

  Pagan stared down from her superior height at the man before her. “In my family, men treat their women with more respect.” She leaned forward menacingly. “Don’t let me find you here again threatening your daughter. Otherwise, I might be forced to send my family after you, and you might not like how real men treat bullies.”

  He glared at Pagan, his eyes narrowing as he looked her up and down. “Poor excuse for a woman,” he spat contemptuously at her.

  “More man than you’ll ever dream of being,” Pagan replied calmly, her whole body poised in case he decided to express any further anger with his fists.

  “Leave, Dad. Just go.” Erith’s voice was strained and oddly toneless.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” he said and turned to leave, only to be brought up sharply by Pagan’s hand on his collar. She lifted him off his feet a little and, for a moment, real fear ignited in his eyes.

  “And I’ll deal with you later if I find you have harmed her in any way.” Pagan watched him swallow as he tried to budge from her grasp but couldn’t. She let him go with a flick of her wrist, causing him to stumble when his feet touched the ground again. He scrambled to get out of the office. She then turned to Erith, who wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  Erith sighed and tried to make light of the situation. “Not exactly how I envisioned you meeting my family. I had imagined a little less of the violence and more handshakes and hellos.”

  Pagan looked down the now empty corridor that Baylor had run down. “He doesn’t strike me as a ‘hello’ kind of guy.” She noticed how Erith sought protection from her familiar position behind the desk. Pagan searched to find any marks on Erith’s pale skin. She let out a small sigh when none were visible.

  “No, I guess not.” Erith began to sort through her paperwork. “So, what brings you here? I thought everything was installed and up and running?”

  Pagan raised an eyebrow at her brusque manner and, before answering her, sat down uninvited. “I’m just tying up loose ends.” Pagan had no legitimate reason for being there. She was in Erith’s office solely because she had not managed to rid herself of the disquiet that had settled in her chest from what she had witnessed just a few hours previous. How long have you lived this kind of life, endlessly terrorized by the one person who is supposed to protect you?

  “You’re staring at me.”

  Erith’s quiet words broke through Pagan’s thoughts.

  “I’m just watching you. I’m in awe of your obvious smarts and business brain to clear through all that work on your desk.”

  “I’m not that smart, Pagan. I do the paperwork for a car lot. It isn’t exactly rocket science.”

  “You’re smarter than you like people to think, Ms. Baylor,” Pagan answered back. “There’s no shame in that. Beauty and smarts, they are a heady combination.”

  Erith shifted in her chair, her face warming under Pagan’s scrutiny. She was quiet for a long time then looked up at Pagan. “Beauty?”

  Pagan nodded. “That’s a given,” she said simply. “Why hide how clever you really are, Erith?”

  Erith looked around the office furtively. She leaned forward to whisper, “Because sometimes it’s best to keep secrets hidden so they can’t be destroyed by careless hands.”

  Pagan looked at her with a silent understanding.

  Erith smiled finally. “I’m going to get back to my work now. Time and car sales wait for no woman.”

  “Okay,” Pagan said easily and was silent for barely a second. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Whoa! There’s a question right out of left field!” she said, visibly surprised. “No, no siblings at all. Just little ol’ me in the Baylor clan. And I have been reliably informed that one of me is one too many.”

  “Who told you something as cruel as that?”

  “My dad. He and I don’t exactly see eye to eye, as you got to witness firsthand.”

  “What about your mom? Do you get along with her?”

  Erith shrugged. “She has a martyr complex she finds kind of hard to shake off.” She stared at the table and began picking at a piece ingrained in the wood. “I need this job. I need to be able to prove my smarts to the great wide world, earn some money, and get the hell out from under their feet.”

  “I’m still in the family home too. I work for my sister and her partner, as you well know. I’ve grown up in the family business, so it was only natural I would become a part of it. Though sometimes I can’t help but wonder what I could do if I didn’t have their backing and I was left to fend for myself in the world.”

  Erith rubbed at her forehead as if gathering a headache under her fingertips. “Not everyone gets the lucky breaks with family, Pagan.” Erith swiftly gathered up her paperwork and headed to the filing cabinet. “I envy you, Pagan. You have a charmed existence. You’re loved by your sister, defended by her partner. You’re living in a lesbian utopia. I hope you appreciate it.”

  “I do,” Pagan said. “Erith, what—?” She stopped as her cell phone rang. She checked the screen and saw Rogue’s number. “Damn it!”

  Erith shrugged. “Go do your duty, Pagan. It pays never to ignore the call of family.” She shut the cabinet drawer with a resounding clang.

  Pagan hesitated and only moved when Erith made shooing motions for her to get out of the office. Once out, Pagan rubbed at her forehead, frowning.
“What the hell’s a lesbian utopia when it’s at home? I’ll ask Rogue. She’s sure to know.” She left to have a swift word with Tito Ammassari about keeping an eye on who entered the offices without his knowledge. Once in the van, she returned Rogue’s call.

  “Before you ask where I am, can you please run a check on the name Baylor? I think I’ve just met our remote-control-car guy face to angry face.”

  *

  Joe Baylor’s crime sheets were curiously devoid of anything but petty thieving when he was a young adult. Then he had just disappeared from sight. Pagan crowded close to Melina, reading over her shoulder on the computer screen.

  “It looks like he got in trouble early on and then just vanished from the radar. I’m guessing he got smarter and never got caught again,” Melina said. She pointed to something on the screen. “But he does seem to travel around a lot. Look at all the places he’s lived in.”

  “Erith said she never got the chance to settle in school long before she was whisked off to another.”

  “Erith’s father is obviously part of this new Phoenix’s gang.” Melina shot Pagan a considering look. “Tread warily, Pagan.”

  Pagan bit back a sigh and instead stared at the monitor. “Just because her father is involved doesn’t necessarily mean she has to be.” She felt her sister’s hand on her sleeve and lifted her head to meet caring eyes. “I’ll be watchful, I promise. I followed in my parents’ footsteps to keep watch over Chastilian. Erith’s just a part of that.”

  “It seems to me that your feelings for her are more than just concern for who her father is.”

  Pagan didn’t reply. All she knew was she was inexplicably drawn to Erith. As a Sentinel, it was her duty to protect her. As a woman, Pagan found she had the same overwhelming need to keep Erith safe.

  *

  Later that night while the Sentinels were on watch, the light from Erith’s window drew Pagan toward it stronger than a siren’s call.