Moonlight Masquerade (Edilean 8)

“If we stay here too long, people will come searching for us, won’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And if someone were to just walk in here, there’s a possibility that bullets would be fired.”

This time Reede just nodded.

Sophie glanced at the doors that looked out over the living room. She didn’t want to think about the fact that the only way out was across a narrow beam. It was too dangerous to think about Reede walking across one of those pieces of wood. “I guess our only real hope is for you to sneak out without being seen and to tell someone. Do you think they saw your horse?”

Reede was watching her, and the fear in her eyes was debilitating. He knew from his rescue experience that if they worked together they could do it, but he also knew from one especially bitter attempt that he couldn’t carry a whimpering bag of fear. What Sophie needed was some determination. Actually, anger would be good. But how could he make her that angry in just seconds? His first thought was to remove his mask and show her the truth about him. But that wouldn’t work. He didn’t want her angry at him. At least not in that way. She needed to trust him so she could . . . His head came up. She needed to prove to him that she could do it.

He looked at her. “If they’d seen the horse, they wouldn’t be so quiet. Sophie, I won’t leave you here alone, and the only way out without being seen is for both of us to cross that beam and go down the ladder. But you couldn’t possibly do that.” He put his head back and acted as though what he’d said was the end of it and he was going back to sleep.

Sophie stared at him for a moment before she spoke. “What does that mean? Why can’t I do it?” She was curious as much as anything else.

With his eyes closed, Reede smiled in the most superior, patronizing way that he could manage. “Because you’re so short. You can’t possibly reach the overhead beam, so you can’t hold on, and besides, you’re so top-heavy you wouldn’t be able to balance. You’re not exactly aerodynamically sound.”

Sophie blinked at him a few times as she took in what he’d just said. Not aerodynamically sound? What human body was? And just who did he think he was to say such a thing? An airplane engineer? “I’m not—?” she began, but her tongue tripped over itself so much that she couldn’t complete the sentence. She glared at him. “I’m top-heavy? You know something, Dr. Aldredge, you’re a jerk. A top-of-the-line, first-class jerk. I’ll have you know that I can balance perfectly well and I can assure you that my arms are long enough to reach the overhead beam.”

With anger surging through her, she got up and was only vaguely aware that Reede was right behind her. As she stepped out onto the square beam, she didn’t look down, she just put one foot in front of the other. For the first steps she could reach the overhead support. It was high above her head, and if she tripped she could never use it to hold her, but touching it gave her balance. She inched along, her mind full of all the rotten things men had said to her in her life. They’d leered at her, followed her places, made passes . . .

She stopped thinking when she got halfway across the beam. Below them, the men were talking over the radio. She became fully aware that if they looked up and saw her, she’d be a target. Panic nearly overwhelmed her.

“I’m here,” Reede whispered in her ear, “and you’re doing great. Just a few more steps and you’re done.”

She turned to look at him. His eyes behind the mask were bright and alert, not at all sleepy. “You said all that on purpose, didn’t you?” she whispered.

He gave a little smile and said, “I think you’re aerodynamically perfect and if you pop out of that thing I’ll probably fall backward and break my neck.”

Her fingers were like claws on the wood above her head, but she still managed to smile. “Couldn’t have that, could we?”

“No.” He nodded toward the safety of the wall, then put his hand on the small of her back.

Reede looked down and saw that the two men had moved into the kitchen. They could only see the two people above them if they came around the corner. And they’d turned up the radio, which had started an argument between them.

When Reede looked back at Sophie he could see the fear growing in her eyes. Yet again he knew he needed to distract her. “Sophie,” he said softly, “sometimes good people do bad things.”

She turned her head slightly to look at him. Had he found out that she’d stolen the Treeborne cookbook? How could he? Maybe he’d assumed it, since she wanted to mail it back to Carter. Maybe—

“Not that a person intended to do anything bad,” he said, “but it sometimes happens. Here, put your foot next to mine. There, that’s good. Now go a little bit that way. Great. So a person should be forgiven, shouldn’t he?”

He? Was he talking about Carter? “I think he should have been honest with me,” she said, then her foot slipped. Reede grabbed her about the waist with his left arm and kept her from falling backward.

Sophie’s heart was pounding in her chest, but Reede seemed unperturbed by her near fall or even by the fact that they were balancing on a four-inch-wide chunk of wood with nothing below them.

“Honest?” he said, sounding as though nothing had happened. “Maybe he would have been honest if he’d had a chance.”

“Are you talking about . . . ?” She had to think to remember the name she’d used. “Earl?”

“Earl? Your ex-boyfriend who is profoundly stupid? Why in the world would I talk about him?”

In spite of the circumstances, Sophie gave a little smile. “I don’t know.” She was moving along the beam by quarter inches and she didn’t dare look down or at the end. She kept her eyes on Reede. It was better to think about what he was trying to say.

“But sometimes we need to walk away,” Sophie said. Her hands were hurting and her feet were aching. It seemed that she’d been on that blasted beam for days.

“But sometimes a person should be forgiven no matter what,” Reede said emphatically. “Walking away isn’t always the right thing to do.”

She had no idea what he was talking about and she was so frightened, so jittery, that she couldn’t think clearly. When her shoulder touched the wall, she almost gave a yelp of relief.