Page 6 of Masquerade

CHAPTER TWO

Kate bounded up thelibrary’s sandstone steps, her heart pounding in time with her boots, before skidding to a halt. She checked the time. Enough to call Anna before Kate’s afternoon-evening shift started. She peeked over her shoulder—a new habit. The top step provided an uninterrupted view of her billboard. Attached to the building opposite, it screamed,Look at me!Today she examined it pixel by pixel in her search for clues before entering the building.

If Liam had linked her to her twin, he’d be the first person to crack her disguise. An observant man with the power to throw her back into the nightmare she’d been living eighteen months ago. It had been Anna’s idea to prove that Kate’s disguise worked, that she could stop looking over her shoulder every time she left the apartment. Kate pressed a hand to her belly, which was giving a fair imitation of the agitator action in an industrial washing machine.

“We have a problem.” Kate sat on an ancient wooden bench in the staffroom, her phone pressed to her ear.

“Honey, you have to do something about your overwhelming optimism. It’s going to get you into trouble.” Her sister’s laugh gurgled through the phone.

“I met Liam Quinn.” Saying his name aloud brought her nemesis into clear focus.

Anna released a long whistle. “What’s he look like?”

Her question startled a laugh out of Kate. “You idiot!”

“I’m serious. Every time I press Niall for info he just says, ‘he looks like me, dresses like something out ofSuitsand has a mind like a steel trap.’”

“Close enough.” Kate welcomed the spurt of temper, recalling how he’d pushed her out of the room during this morning’s meeting. “A gaunter look. Shadows in his eyes.”

“Give me more.”

“I hate suits.” Kate crossed to check the door was shut. She wanted no witnesses to this conversation. “They all blend into one amorphous mass of arrogant know-it-alls.”

“Pessimism and prejudice in the same breath. A suit’s a uniform in most offices.” Anna dated suits.

“I bet he sleeps in a suit.”

“Why, Maybelline, I’m surely fascinated where you met our hero.” Anna gave her best imitation of a Southern belle.

“On the job. He works for Clelland and Associates.”

“And your research for them is?” Anna’s innocent inquiry didn’t fool her.

“Commercial in confidence,” she snapped, throwing a hand in the air while she began to pace. “And ongoing unless he puts the kibosh on it.” What had they talked about while she’d been out of the room? Not the billboard, but she’d bet her name had come up. The mood had been subtly different when she’d been invited back in. “The arrogant bastard locked me out of part of the meeting.”

“Niall did say he was a heavyweight.”

“He’s a narrow-minded, head-in-the-sand mule who wouldn’t have the imagination to deal with anything except dry-as-dust intellectual property law. His boss must have rocks in his head to be considering him for this project.” Unloading on her sister was liberating.

“Tell me what you really think.” Anna sounded amused.

“It doesn’t matter what I think. The point is he connected me to the billboard.” Kate leaned her forehead against the door. She had no authority over Liam Quinn, whereas his potential power over her future scared her witless.

I don’t want to have to hide again.

“Are you sure you weren’t just spooked by finding him somewhere you didn’t expect him to be?”

“Trust me, no.” Kate had paced in the corridor for the brief period she’d been out of the meeting, returning to discover her secret was still intact. Plausible evidence he was a knife-in-the-chest not a knife-in-the-back kind of guy.

“But he didn’t call you on it?”

“There were other people present.”

“What were you wearing?” Anna asked.

“Iam notgoing to catalogue my wardrobe.” Kate wore the dark skirt, beige sweater and thick stockings uniform she and Anna had devised to make her invisible to most observers. Invisible, in particular, to Andrew Levin, her one-time boyfriend who’d objected to her calling time on their relationship. His insidious online harassment had fogged her brain and sapped her capacity to write. Worse still, he’d shadowed her. The authorities had ruled that his behaviour didn’t yet meet the threshold for police intervention.

Yet! What kind of reassurance was that?

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