Page 6 of Girl, Unmasked
‘Yes.’
Whatever answers she needed, they weren't going to come from Austin Creed.Ella moved to the door and pushed the buzzer.As it began its slow journey open, Creed asked, ‘Ella, one question for you.Did you ever visit my farm?’
The question tripped her up.No.She’d never been to Austin Creed’s farm, even during the initial investigation.‘No I haven’t.’
Guards swooped in and surrounded Creed like he might fly away.Two of them grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet.As they carried him past her, Creed twisted his head back to look at Ella one more time.
‘We’re everywhere, and there’ll be more of us tomorrow.’
CHAPTER ONE
Sophie Draper scratched her key against the lock and muscled the stubborn door open.Home sweet home.Another twelve-hour day peddling pulp to the masses and what did she have to show for it?Bloodshot eyes, a nicotine headache and a stack of rejects tucked under one arm.Why people still mailed their manuscripts, Sophie had no idea.
She staggered inside and slammed the manuscripts on the table as she slouched into the kitchen.The place looked like a hand grenade had gone off.There were dishes piled high in the sink and trash bags bursting at the seams.The cleaning lady – also named Sophie Draper – had called in sick for about three weeks, so she really should probably show up and make some token effort at being a functional human.
Who was she kidding?Wallowing in filth was by far the most attractive option tonight, ideally with alcohol as a companion.
Sophie lurched for the nearest bottle but her fingers closed on air.Even the liquor was holding out on her.As was her cat, it seemed, because the orange ball of fluff she called a pet was also noticeably absent.
‘Dammit, Marmite.You holding out on me?’
No response.Marmite was probably tomcatting around the neighborhood, the Casanova that he was.Sophie tried not to laugh.At least one of them was getting some action.In two months, Sophie would have been thirty for ten years.Her own dance card had more cobwebs than an attic, so she could safely consign to the reality that mating season was over.Maybe Marmite could prosper where she couldn’t.
She collapsed on the battered couch with a groan and groped for the TV remote.The stack of manuscripts on the kitchen table called to her, but Sophie wasn’t sure she could spend another night drowning in other people’s fever dreams.High fantasy seemed to be the flavor of the month, usually so derivative of the greats that Tolkien was probably rolling in his grave.Textbook thrillers and romances made up the rest of the pile, and somewhere in there was the autobiography of a popstar who was barely old enough to dress himself.The guy was still in his twenties and already shilling his life story to anyone who’d listen, from his mother’s garage to the Billboard charts to the desk of the commissioning editor at Eagle Eye Publishers.
Meanwhile, Sophie had been peddling her own Great American Romance Novel for a decade now, and the rejected slips had piled up.The irony of being a commissioning editor and still struggling to get her own work out there wasn’t lost on her.She thought about being sneaky, like submitting to herself though a pseudonym, but if she ever got busted, it’d be curtains on her literary career, if it could be termed as such.
No.Better to keep grinding and failing.That’s what they said.Surely someone would take pity on her one day, once the romantasy phase died down.
Sophie had always had an ear for stories, even before she followed that impulse to the trash trenches of Eagle Eye.Before the slush pile swallowed her whole and spit back out the hard-bitten, whiskey-pickled shell of the woman she was today.
It started with her mama's fairy tales; those fanciful yarns spun to lull her to sleep when the walls of their tiny house shook with the fury of her old man's fists.Tales of princesses and knights, of quests and magic, of happy endings hard-won by pluck and wits and grit.
But those illusions never lasted past daybreak.Reality always came crashing back in – the bruises on her mama's arms and the gnawing emptiness in her own belly that no amount of imagining could fill.
So Sophie learned early to spin her own stories, to wrap herself in fantasy armor against the casual cruelties of the world.And when she was old enough, she lit out like a shot and left Ohio and all its dead ends in the rearview as she chased that dream to New York but landed one state shy in Connecticut.
At first, it seemed like she'd found her own fairy tale ending.An internship at the most prestigious publishing house in town, a foot in the door and a chance to make her mark.But like most things in Sophie's life, it was too good to be true.
The hours were long, the pay low and the mentorship promised turned out to be little more than glorified coffee fetching and for the self-important stuffed suits who ran the show.Still, she stuck it out, nose to the grindstone as she clawed her way up from lowly intern to assistant to full-fledged editor in her own right.All the while, nurturing that dream of seeing her own name on a dust jacket one day.
But somewhere along the way, the dream soured, like rot in the walls invisible to the naked eye.And now here she was, stretching out one foot and kicking aside the crumpled remains of last night's pizza box as she contemplated eating frozen oven chips.
She figured that a few glasses of her emergency vodka in the freezer could help her get through the night, but before she could fully commit to the glamorous life of a semi-functional alcoholic, a noise caught her attention.
A thump, a bump, then a skittering, like a cockroach across the floorboards.
Sophie froze as every nerve ending suddenly fired to red alert.She held her breath and strained her ears for an encore, but all she heard was quiet.
Probably one of the neighbors.Or pigeons in the attic.Maybe her boiler had finally given up.
But there it was again.Louder now.
And it was coming from down the hall.
Sophie's stomach dropped.Her mind flashed back to some horror manuscript she’d skimmed last week – something about a guy hiding in women’s houses then ambushing them from the shadows, which she’d assumed at the time was written by some fantasist who’d never seen a woman naked.Sophie had thrown it straight into the trash pile, but in this sudden state of elevated heart rate, the details came hurtling back.
But she shook off the thought and rose to her feet.She was a grown ass woman, for God’s sake, not some airheaded horror movie cliché just waiting to get killed
