Masquerade (2 page)

Name:
Beth Ritmour

Age:
24

Demographics:
Originally from Chicago, moved shortly
after graduation from high school.
I currently live in the small community of
Cape Girardeau
,
Missouri
.

Occupation:
Dental assistant

Social
history:
Divorced one year.
Not dating, even
casually.

What is keeping you from
moving forward in your life?

You said to be honest, right? Well, if you hear the words often enough,
you start to believe them. My marriage ended because I could not satisfy my
husband and, even though I know love is a two-way street, I
can’t
seem to let his words go. I wish I could date again, but I am afraid to find
out he is right.

Chapter One

Beth rung the piece of
paper in her hands like it was a rag she needed to dry, wondering for the
umpteenth time what she had gotten herself
into
.

As the train slowed in
equal measures with her heart’s increasing speed, she spread the note out on
her lap, trying to iron the wrinkles out with her hands, and read
again
what she had committed to memory.

Take the 08:30 train to
Chicago
.
Tickets await you at the on-call window. It is important that you take only
this train. Missing it will end your journey before it starts. Upon arrival, make
your way to the address listed on the front of this card. Arrive promptly at
1600 hours.

Further instructions await you there.

Beth twirled an escaped
tendril of auburn hair around her finger as she searched the simple missive for
clues, and then turned to look out the window. The city was a far sight
different from the small community she had come to love. Her apartment looked
across the
Mississippi River
to plains filled
with knee-high corn this time of year. Here, concrete towers looked angry and
foreboding,
and the heat of summer only made them shimmer
with sinister intent. It seemed different from when
she’d
lived here.
Was it the city or her that had changed?

The screech of train
brakes, along with the pervasive smell of diesel-fueled engines and heated
steel rails reminded Beth the train had almost come to a stop. The urge to
stay, to let the train carry her through the turn-around and back to her home, cemented
her to the seat more effectively than sweaty summer skin on leather. This
wasn’t
like her. She
didn’t
take
off for parts unknown without a single idea what would happen at the other end.
Beth clutched the paper to her chest. It would be easy. Just sit here and let
the train take her home. Home was safe.

Frigid bitch.
Her ex-husband Steve’s
words flash-froze her intent to flee. She
wasn’t
frigid. She knew she
wasn’t
. Still,
like
she’d written on the application that had kicked off this journey, if you hear
the words often enough, you start to believe them.
She’d
thought him wrong for the longest time. Before Steve, there had been a brief
moment filled with passion she
couldn’t
seem to
recapture. The flash of bodies, of dark hair trailing after liquid kisses in a
frenzied moment felt branded in her mind, yet her body no longer registered
even the slightest reaction, only the lingering pain of loss.

Beth stared out the
window, trying not to remember. The only way to prove her ex wrong was to get off
the train. They were in the station. She could hear the passengers around her
shuffling through the process of gathering their belongings.

She wiped her hands on
her new body-hugging jeans and reached for her luggage, walking off the train
on unsteady legs into the humid July heat of
Chicago
. At the curb, she flagged a cab, willing
her hands to be still.

Something slammed into her
like a yellow-checkered-black-masked nightmare. A cab slid into view as Beth’s knees
buckled, and she crumpled to the ground. Her elbow hit first, and then somebody
cried out. Maybe it was
her
. Beth
couldn’t
tell. She was too busy dealing with the pain pulsing from an arm that felt wrenched
from its shoulder socket as the hot, pebbled cement outside the train station
dug into her shoulder and back.

Beth tried to sit up, but
the world kept doing this weird, wavy thing. Maybe she should just lay down for
a minu—

“Miss?
You
okay?
Miss?”

The words filtered
through her brain like walking out of a fog.

“Miss?”

“She’s not answering. Somebody
should call 9-1-1.”

“N-no,” Beth said, trying
again to sit up. Something or someone held her down. Her vision cleared, and
she could see a bearded, middle-aged man waving his hand in front of her face.

“Please.
I’m
all right.
Really.”

With obvious reluctance,
the man eased his hand from her shoulder and helped her sit up. It took another
moment for her world to right itself enough, so she knew she was okay.

A woman stood next to the
man, her finger poised over her cell phone.

“No need to call the
paramedics.” Beth moved her neck from side to side and wiggled her fingers and
arms, stifling a wince of pain. “See. Everything works.”

The bearded man helped
her stand, and she was gratified to feel only a fleeting dizziness.

The woman, dressed in
jogging clothes from an interrupted run, flipped her phone shut. “I still think
you need to report this.” She looked skeptical but stuffed the phone back in
her armband.

“I have an appointment. I-I
can’t be late for it,” Beth said. “And no harm’s done.” She brushed gravel off
her arms, picked up her suitcase, and looked around for her purse. Her stomach
dropped like an anchor, landing somewhere halfway between her ankles and China as
she realized it was nowhere around. “Where’s my purse?”

“It was stolen, Miss,”
the cabbie said.
“By the guy in the black mask who threw you
to the ground.”

“I didn’t see him. I
thought the cab hit me.”

The bearded man waved his
hands. “No, no, Miss.
Not my cab.
It was a robbery.
Not an accident.” He wrung his hands.

“It happened so fast, I
couldn’t tell.
It’s
all right. I understand that now.”
Beth knew her smile was tremulous at best, but she tried to reassure him. Now, if
she could only reassure herself. “Everything is in my purse.
Everything.
My money, my ID, my phone.”
She slumped against the
cab as reality struck the final blow. “My train ticket home. What am I going to
do now?”

She’d
spent her last two years of high school in Chicago. Her parents had relocated
to
San Francisco
shortly after
she’d
settled in
Cape
Girardeau
. She
didn’t
know
anyone here anymore.
Except Tony.
Beth hugged herself.
She
wasn’t
that desperate.

Was she? She
didn’t
even know if he was still around, anyhow.

The crowd had moved on.
Even the jogger had set off to finish her run. Only the cabbie remained. “So
sorry, Miss. Do you want to call the police?”

Beth sighed. “I guess
I’ll have to now.”

The cab driver stayed
with her as they waited for the police and she reported the theft. The officer
held his notebook, but wrote hardly anything down, and Beth realized she would
most likely never see her wallet again. It was quite clear her missing purse
wasn’t
a priority.

“What phone number can we
reach you at?” the officer asked.

Beth’s stomach nose-dived
again. Her cell was in her purse.
So
she gave them the
only local number she knew.
The one on the piece of paper still
clutched in her hand.

After the officer left, she
stood there trying to figure out what to do. She had no money, no
identification, not even a phone. There was no one she could go to for help.

Beth
spread
open
the crumpled missive that had sent her on this wild-goose chase.
She stared at what appeared to be her only lifeline, with no clue where it
would lead her. Standing here
wasn’t
solving anything
and she really didn’t have much of a choice, except to head for the address
she’d been summoned to.

“There’s no one I can
call. I
don’t
know a single person in
Chicago
. How am I going to
get there?” Beth
hadn’t
realized she’d said it aloud
until the cabbie offered her a ride. “I don’t have any money to pay you with,”
she said.

“That’s alright, Miss.
Next time you catch a cab, you tip extra big.”

Relief dissolved her
anxiety and Beth took her first deep breath of the day. For the first time
since
she’d
boarded the train this morning, she began
to feel hopeful.

The cabbie waited for an
answer. A smile was the only way Beth could pay him back, and she flashed him
one that was beyond grateful. “I will pay it forward.
Definitely.”

Fifteen minutes later,
they arrived at the address. The timing was uncanny as
she’d
managed to arrive just prior to the hour the invitation mentioned—4:00 p.m.

The cab seat, sticky warm
though it was, felt like a haven. A huge part of Beth
didn’t
want to get out and she sat glued to the seat.

“Miss?”
Baer, as the cabbie had introduced
himself
, looked at
her in the rearview mirror. “Are you all right?”

Not as certain of herself
now, she nodded. “I think so,” then stepped to the sidewalk, her legs shaking
almost as hard as her heart pounded.

“Umm, Miss?”

“Hmmm?”
Beth answered, still trying to tamp down her queasy stomach.

“Do you have a change of
clothes?”

She held up the small bag
she’d
packed. “Yes.”

“You might want to
change.” Baer said, pointing at her.

Beth ran her hands over
her hips and found a huge gash in the denim on one cheek of her ass. Any nerves
that had settled down now flared with embarrassment. Color-infused warmth
flooded her face as she clamped a hand over the gaping hole in her jeans.
Her brand new I-feel-sexy-in-them jeans.
The ones
she’d
bought just before purchasing her first ever thong.
The thong that now revealed flesh that had never seen sunlight, peeking out
through fingers that
couldn’t
quite cover the denim-free
area. Could this day get any worse?

She backed up until the
building stopped her.

Baer leaned toward the
passenger window. “You sure this is where you want to go?”

She looked again at the
piece of paper. “Yes. I have to.”

Beth could see he
didn’t
want to leave, but she waved him on. “Go.
You’ve
got to work. I’ll be okay.”

She watched as he pulled
away,
then
turned to stare at the building in front of
her, one hand firmly covering as much of her ass-cheek as she could. Her
parting words to Baer echoed in her head.
I’ll
be fine.

Maybe.

Chapter Two

A bar?

Beth stared at the garish
neon that seemed out of place in the mid-afternoon heat. Her mysterious
benefactor had sent her to a
bar?
For the trillionth
time, she wondered why she had answered that ad. For that matter, why had she
even picked up the magazine at the grocery store? She never read Cosmo.

She
wasn’t
frigid. She just had some issues to work out. Who
wouldn’t
?
The first
guy
she slept with ditched her.
And
Steve? Her ex was nothing if not blunt about how cold
and unimaginative she was in bed. Her sex-drive had simply taken a very long
vacation.

Logic failed at that
point because Beth
didn’t
have a clue about how to get
it to come home.
She’d
spent many nights in her empty
apartment trying to figure that out. A year later, she managed to replace the
furniture Steve had taken
when he moved, but not her libido
.
Sending in the application had seemed like a joke until
she’d
received the acceptance letter, giving her one week to request vacation and prepare.

It had been the most
nerve-wracking week of her life.

Now here she stood. Back
in a
city
she swore she’d never return to with no
purse, her ass hanging out for the world to see, standing in front of a brick
façade painted with ornate masks.

Masquerade.

Leave your identity, not your manners, at the door.

What had she gotten
herself
into
? Once again, the urge to run threatened
to turn Beth around. She rubbed her sandal-clad foot along the back of her
other leg, wondering if she really could go through with this.

She knew nothing about
this mysterious benefactor, about this bar, about anything. For all she knew,
it could be a front to lure unsuspecting women into any number of lurid things.

Yet
she’d
gotten on the train. Some part of her hoped this would be a life-changing
experience. Beth clutched her small suitcase, left with little or no choice. How
would she get back home? She stretched her arm, easing a stiffness already
settling in from her fall. Did she even want to go back home?