Free Masquerade by Gayle Lynds Page B

or imagined?” Liz said. “The Walkers? Aunt Jane, Uncle Hamilton, cousin Michael?”
    They were alone at a long table in an empty classroom. He sat across from her, his spiral notebook closed at his elbow. She was hunched over her Beretta 92-F pistol, cleaning it.
    Gordon said, “Walker was a cover name we made up for you.”
    â€œYes, Sarah Walker. You didn’t create a Santa Barbara family for me, too?”
    â€œWhere are you getting such bizarre ideas?”
    She oiled the Beretta. “Is there something I should know? Something about me and my cover?”
    â€œWhere’d you get all this crap about a fictitious Walker family?”
    â€œMy CIA file.”
    â€œNot in the file I gave you.”
    â€œIn personnel’s. Here at the Ranch. I used the computer.”
    â€œWhen?”
    She looked up. His face was red and growing thick.
    She said, “Does it matter?”
    Swift and sure as a jackal, he lunged, grabbed her wrist, and twisted back her arm. The violence stunned her.
    â€œListen to me, Liz Sansborough.” His words were clipped, his eyes slits. “I’ve shown you everything that’s relevant foryou to know. What’s in personnel’s file is none of your damned business. It’s
top secret
.”
    Her belly churned, but her mind felt strangely calm.
    His face was close to hers. “You’re in the Company. You follow orders. Your orders are to stay out of government files you have no clearance to see. Do you understand?”
    She could slam her fingertips into his eyes. Go for his balls under the table. Her Beretta wasn’t loaded, but she could bash it against his head . . . but why did she think those things? That was the way she’d been taught to treat an enemy.
    â€œYes.” Her tone was brittle.
    He released her and inhaled deeply. “I didn’t want to hurt you, darling.” His voice was completely different again: Smooth, composed, the voice of the man she admired. “Being in the Company isn’t a game. The rules are serious. Life and death. What made you even want to look in your file?” He stared as if trying to probe her brain. “I don’t want you to get hurt in the field, or, God forbid, killed.”
    â€œOf course not.”
    A hot tide of anger rose in her throat. Who
were
Jane, Hamilton, Sarah, and Michael Walker? If they were real, did she know them? Were their identities lost in her past?
    And why had the mere mention of them made Gordon lose control? What else didn’t he want her to see . . . or know?
    Dinner that night was spaghetti. The hot scents of oregano, thyme, and garlic filled the cafeteria. Liz sensed she’d had this meal many times with an elderly white-haired lady who spoke Italian and smelled of just-baked bread. The lady had a sideboard with ugly scrollwork in her living room, and when Liz was a little girl she’d loved to hide inside it.
    Who was that white-haired woman?
    A neighbor? A grandmother?
    Later that night Liz studied Gordon’s sleep patterns—the periods of restlessness, the periods of immobility. When he enteredanother phase of deep sleep, she again prowled across the camp and broke into the personnel building. Again she used her access code to enter the computer. But this time the computer refused it:
    CANNOT READ. EXIT OR TRY AGAIN.
    Gordon had blocked her code.
    The early morning sky was pristine blue and cloudless over the Rockies. Lying on her cot, Liz stared out at it and thought of the photo of Gordon and herself on the beach in Santa Barbara. There was something about it—
    â€œYou’re awake. Good.” Gordon stood over her. As always, his smile was warm. “Put on your jogging clothes. We’re going for a drive.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYour endurance test. A twenty-mile run.”
    As she dressed, she eyed him suspiciously. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if he’d never exploded and twisted