“Right,” Reede said. “Agents will put on the costumes so the leader doesn’t know they’re missing. Jeff said I was to leave you and go identify them, but I told him what he could do with that plan.”
Turning, he looked at her and put his hand to the side of her face. “It still startles me how beautiful you are. If we ever get out of here . . . ”
He bent as though to kiss her, but Sophie pulled back. “I think it’s time you removed your mask,” she whispered as she put her arms up to untie it.
Reede reacted quickly. One moment he was on the bed next to Sophie, the next he was standing and looming over her. “I better go . . . uh, check on everything.” He left the bedroom.
Sophie sat there, blinking at the closed door. She was almost beginning to think there was something wrong with his face. Maybe in one of his heroic rescues he’d been wounded, scarred even. Maybe that’s why he didn’t like being in Edilean, because people stared at him. Maybe he preferred being in Third World countries because he fit in there. His scars or disfigurement weren’t as noticeable.
Or maybe he just liked running around in a mask once a year. Sophie stood up, smoothed down the beautiful silk dress Sara had made for her, and went out to the living room. It was showtime.
Three hours! Sophie thought. She and Reede had been dancing and talking to the other people at the party for three whole hours—and it seemed like twenty.
Reede was better at socializing than Sophie was. While holding her hand, he went to every male at the party and said he was trying to guess which cousin was under the disguise. With this game he got each person to talk. Of course they ran into several people who were young FBI agents, and Sophie soon realized that was part of their verification of her as a witness. If she said one of them was the man she’d heard, she would have been discredited. But no one sounded like the man.
At nine-thirty a helmeted man wearing a gladiator costume—which meant he had on very little clothing—took her away from Reede for a slow dance.
“How are you holding up?”
She couldn’t see his face, but she’d recognize his raspy voice anywhere. Mike. “You look . . . ” He had an incredibly beautiful body!
“Don’t say it. This getup is Sara’s idea of a joke. Have you heard any voices you recognize?”
“None. Have you found the bomb?”
r /> “Yes,” he said.
Sophie gave him a smile of joy. “I’ve been worried.”
“All of us have been, but we brought in some dogs and found it.”
“Which building was it in?”
“Welsch House. It’s one of the oldest in town. Sara got so mad when she heard where it was I had to send her home.” Mike whirled Sophie about to the music, then drew her closer. “So how are you and the doc getting along?”
Sophie glanced at Reede standing by the far wall and talking to a man dressed like Daniel Boone. Nearby was a woman in a Martha Washington costume. “Good,” she said.
“That’s all?”
Sophie smiled. “Maybe better than that. We get on well and he makes me feel that I can do things.”
“Not like home, huh?”
Startled, she looked at him.
“I see things about people,” he said. “I saw you on the day you arrived in town and now you look different. Your eyes have changed.”
“A lot has happened in these few days,” she said.
“And it’s my guess that even more happened before you got here, didn’t it?”
Sophie’s face drained of color. Mike was a retired detective who had connections with the FBI. Had he been told of Sophie’s thievery? When this was over, would he arrest her?
Mike was watching her intently. “I was talking about the beer incident,” he said softly.
“Beer?” She had to think to know what he meant. “Oh, right. That.” She was so relieved that he wasn’t referring to a much more serious matter that she relaxed.
“Sophie, if you need any help on anything—legal, criminal, whatever—let me know. Nothing will shock me.”