Silent Masquerade

There was a suitcase in the trunk, as well. He slipped out of the coveralls he’d donned in the men’s room at the airport, took off his suit coat and tie and put on a cardigan sweater from the bag. Last he threw the blond wig, fake mustache, baseball hat and horn-rimmed glasses he’d been wearing into the trunk and slammed it shut.

He was back on the highway seven minutes after he’d pulled into the car wash.

It took him five days to get to his destination, five days in which he barely slept, ate only fast food picked up at drive-through windows and made countless out-of-the-way detours to obscure his route. Outside a small town called Widow’s Peak, located at the top of a hill that looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, he put the car in drive and gave it a shove, watching as it rolled down the hill facing away from the town. The car careened into the gorge below and then, after only a moment, exploded. He waited until he was sure the fire had consumed all but the steel chassis, now charred almost beyond recognition, tossed a duffel bag over his shoulder and proceeded on foot into town, where he caught the Greyhound bus that was just boarding passengers on their way back to the Midwest.

* * *

CARA DUNLAP put the car in gear and rolled out of the driveway without starting the engine. When the car rolled onto the asphalt road, she started the engine and turned in the direction of the highway. Forty minutes to Boston, she figured, and then she’d leave the car and find other transportation. Boston might be a good city to get lost in, but it was too close to home. No, if she was going to do this, she was going to have to do it right. And that meant getting as far from Greensville as possible, and as quickly as possible. Once she got to Boston, she’d have to decide where to go from there.

By morning they’d have discovered she was gone, and found her note. She prayed her mother would let her go, wouldn’t try to find her. But her only hope for avoiding discovery, just in case, was a good head start—and not knowing where she was going herself.

In Boston she left the car on a side street, hailed a cab to the Greyhound station and bought a ticket for the next bus leaving the terminal.

She caught the bus just as the driver had loaded the last passenger and was locking the baggage compartment at the side of the bus.

“No luggage, miss?” he asked.

“Uh-uh,” she said, out of breath from running through the terminal. “Just this.” She held up a gym bag that contained a couple changes of clothing and a few personal items. The bag would fit under her seat or in an overhead compartment.

“Okay. We’re all set to roll, then.”

There were no single vacant seats. Cara sat down next to a man who wore a slouch hat pulled low over his eyes and appeared to be sleeping. She took a couple of deep, calming breaths before closing her own eyes in sheer exhaustion.

San Francisco, a big city, and one far enough away. About as far as you could get from Greensville, Massachusetts, without leaving the country. She’d have to find a job, a place to stay. Could she do that without identification?

She didn’t think she’d need to prove her identity to a landlord, but sooner or later an employer would ask for a social security number.

She wriggled in her seat, uneasily aware that she might have done better to plan ahead, lay some groundwork, before taking off. But then she would have been at greater risk of discovery. She’d watched enough TV, read enough books, to know that too much planning was usually what got people caught. Spur-of-the-moment was best. She had enough cash in her bag to buy a small working wardrobe, pay a couple of month’s rent and keep herself in bologna sandwiches and soft drinks until she had a job.

The man beside her snored softly and then made a little whimpering sound as he twisted slightly in his seat. She opened her eyes and gave him a sideways glance. His hat had fallen forward even more, and his head was now tilted in her direction. She wondered if she should take his hat before it fell off completely. But then she might risk waking him.

She eased over a little, hoping he’d slipped as far to her side as he was going to. She shut her eyes again, willing sleep to give her a few hours without the stress of her thoughts.

She was in a light doze when her neighbor’s head fell with a soft thud against her shoulder. Instantly awake, she craned her head to look down at him without moving her body.

Just as she’d thought, his hat had fallen off, rolling from his lap to the floor. Without it she could see, in the dim light cast from the low-wattage overhead bulb, that he had thick dark hair, a short beard, long black lashes that swept high cheekbones and a soft-looking full mouth that made him appear vulnerable in sleep.

In the small, enclosed space, she detected a hint of aftershave or hair cream, a popular masculine fragrance that had a clean, sharp tang to it. He gave another soft snore, and she noticed that his breath was warm and sweet.

There was comfort in his solid weight, in the feel of his curls just touching her neck; she could pretend that she was not alone, friendless, cast homeless into an unknown future. If he awakened while lying on her shoulder, she could always pretend she had been asleep and wasn’t aware he’d slumped against her.

She closed her eyes, and in moments she, too, was sleeping.

* * *

THEY AWAKENED simultaneously. Sunlight streamed in through the bus windows, making Cara blink in astonishment.

The man next to her sat up and frowned. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I have a tendency to do that on buses.” He felt around and then leaned forward to rescue his hat.

“S’okay,” Cara mumbled, looking away in embarrassment now that broad daylight exposed them so ruthlessly to one another.

He was terribly handsome, with dark blue eyes and a short growth of beard, and he was older, she realized, than he’d appeared while sleeping. But something about him seemed out of sync. It dawned on her that he didn’t seem the type to ride the bus. For some reason, he struck her as more of an executive type than a working stiff, despite his blue jeans and brown leather jacket.

She glanced down at his hands, which were busily trying to reshape the felt hat, and saw that they were long and well shaped, with blunt, clean fingernails. If he’s a blue-collar worker, he does his work with gloves on, she thought.

Cara peered past him to the scenery beyond the window. Farmland. But there were a lot of billboards whizzing by, an indication that they were nearing a town. She wondered what time it was, how far they were from their final destination.

Her neighbor started to rise. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

Cara stood up to let him into the aisle. She could see from his height that his legs must indeed have been cramped. She was tall for a woman, five foot eight, and he was about six inches taller.

He went back to the rest room, and she smiled to herself, thinking he’d used the euphemism to spare her embarrassment. She leaned across his seat to see out the window better, and his scent assailed her senses once again. She saw a sign that boasted a full-service rest stop and felt the bus slow down as it prepared to turn onto a wide blacktop drive.

Her seatmate returned just as she was rising to join the other passengers for the rest stop. “I guess we’re stopping for breakfast,” she said.

“Looks that way.” He stood back to let her get out and precede him off the bus.

In the restaurant, Cara went straight to the ladies’ room, thankful to find there wasn’t a long line in front of the cubicles. She washed up as best she could with the public amenities and ran a small purse-size brush through her red-gold hair. Her curls had begun to tangle from sleeping on the bus, and it took her a few minutes to get the brush through the mess. She retucked her white linen blouse into her khaki skirt and straightened her collar.

When she returned to the café area, she saw her busmate sitting alone in a booth near the windows with a plate of food already in front of him. On impulse, she decided to join him.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asked, standing beside the booth.

He gestured to the other bench. “I guess it’s the least I can do, after using your shoulder for a pillow all night.”

He barely glanced at Cara as she ordered coffee and toast from the waitress, but when they were alone, he said, “I don’t remember you being on the bus when I fell asleep.”

She shook her head, smiling. “You were asleep when I got on in Boston.”

He nodded and resumed eating.

“You must have been on the bus quite a while before I got on,” Cara said, making polite small talk.

“Why? What do you mean?” the man demanded.

Cara blinked in surprise. There hadn’t been anything offensive in her remark.

“Oh, look,” the man said, running his hand across his jaw. “I’m sorry I snapped liked that. Sleeping sitting up always makes me a little cranky.”

“That’s all right,” Cara said, “I was just making friendly conversation.” As if to confirm that, she added, “As long as we’re seatmates, we may as well introduce ourselves. I’m Cara D—Davis.”

“Bill Hamlin.” The new name came easily its first time on his lips, but he hadn’t missed the girl’s hesitation over her own last name. Now what could that be all about? She seemed too old to be a runaway, and yet he had a gut feeling that she was on the run. Maybe it takes one to know one, he thought, or maybe it’s a case of thinking everyone’s tarred with the same brush you are.

“Going to San Francisco?”

Bill nodded. “I guess.”

“You guess?” She put her cup back in its saucer and stared at him. “Don’t you know?”