An Embarrassment of Monsters: A Dark Romantic Suspense Novel (Alace Sweets Book 3)

by MariaLisa deMora

  Doc showed the depths of his composure by grasping the man’s hand and pumping it up and down firmly. “I’m Doc, that’s right. Good to meet you, August. Alace has good things to say about you.” Doc released the handshake and dug into his ear, pulling out an earwig. “She doesn’t need me now. I’ll go put this by your computer, Owen, and then I’m going to straighten up my room.”

  “Is he for real right now? He can’t do that. Owen.” Owen lifted his gaze and met August’s amused one as they listened to Alace’s increasing annoyance. “Stop him. The two of you are having a moment, I get it, but stop him.”

  “Doc, Alace isn’t done with you. She politely requests you resecure your comms, please. She said please like five times. It’s amazing really. She sounds honestly distraught. I’ve never heard anything like it. Can you get back on comms?” August’s lips spread in a smile as Doc slowly turned and stared at Owen as if he’d lost his mind. “Pretty please?” Doc fumbled the device, placing it back inside his ear.

  “Jesus, Owen. Remember me telling you I sometimes didn’t hate you anymore? Remember? This is not one of those times.” Alace sounded annoyed, but Owen knew it was a front.

  “Doc’s back on comms, Alace. Feel free to thank me later.”

  “Time to debrief, boys. Let’s get into the house. Get that garage closed, too. Just leave the car outside for now. Owen, set up in your office. We can use the camera on your laptop so you can get out of the gear.” Alace’s take-charge attitude would always be welcome, Owen realized. “I’ve got about thirty minutes before Lila wakes up, so let’s make it count. Call me in three minutes. Your time starts now.”

  The disconnect severed the channel between all of them, and he laughed softly at Doc’s stunned expression.

  “She’s always like that.” Owen turned and pointed at the tablet mounted to the wall as he took off his glasses and peeled the throat mic from his skin. “And she’s almost always present. Let’s get started.”

  The actual debrief didn’t take long, less than the twenty-seven minutes Alace had allotted. August had aborted his walk-through of the planned mission to assist Owen with his, so Ashworth remained to be dealt with. They wound up in the kitchen afterwards, unanimously gravitating towards the empty coffeemaker. Five minutes of small talk from Doc filled the time until they all held mugs of hot coffee, Owen and August adding only stilted responses when pressed.

  Owen hated it.

  He and Doc had fallen into an easy friendship so quickly, and even Alace was more comfortable around him than this man. He decided to attack the issue directly, get whatever it was out in the open.

  “What bugs you about me?” Owen lifted his mug and sipped noisily. “There’s something off, and we both know it, so spit it out.” The man’s eyes flitted toward the mounted screen, and realization flooded through Owen. It wasn’t him the man had a problem with; August was censoring his speech with the expectation Alace was listening.

  Owen pulled out his phone and tapped into the security system. He walked over and showed the screen to August, the data indicating he was the only connection at the moment. “Don’t mean she won’t dial back in, but she’s good about announcing it when she does. We have an”—he grinned at Doc, remembering the hard-earned truce between Doc and Alace—“agreement.”

  “You have an agreement. With Alace Sweets.” August shook his head, glanced at the phone screen again, and lifted his mug to hide a disbelieving grin. “You think she abides by your agreement?”

  “Yeah, I do. The woman is intelligent, and sure, she’s hyper-inquisitive; that’s what makes her so good at the research and investigation part of any mission. That and her tenacity. She’ll follow a thread for longer than most, but she also finds much more than anyone else.” He gave a slow side-to-side shake of his head, emphasizing his belief in his own words. “What she isn’t is disloyal. She says something, you can believe it. She’s not going to fuck her people over.” Owen realized he must hold more knowledge of Alace’s background than she’d given August. Some of it isn’t mine to tell. If she hadn’t trusted the man with the info, he didn’t even want to allude to it. “She and I have worked together in the field.” Yeah, he could stick to what he’d witnessed and still make the same impact. “She had more than one chance to angle things her way, but we were in lockstep all the way. Loyal to a fault. So when she tells me she won’t intentionally eavesdrop on our conversations here, I believe her.”

  “I second that, actually.” Doc nodded towards Owen. “I haven’t known her as long as either of you, but when I called her tonight, she not only picked up, she immediately switched into work mode without a word of annoyance. She was soothing me, handling a dozen things at once, and still asked permission to tap into the system here so she could talk to me easily.”

  “Consider me enlightened.” August’s southern accent stretched the letters out long, his tone still disbelieving.

  “No, man. I get it. Alace Sweets is a force of nature, someone who feels unfuckable with. But Alace, the Alace I know? She’s my friend. At the end of the day, not only are we partners and equals when it comes to the missions we choose, but she’s my friend, and I have to trust she’s always got my best interests at heart.” He drained his mug and set it on the counter, grinning when Doc brought the coffee carafe over, refilling it. “She’s scary as hell, but she’s my Alace.”

  “You met the husband?” August’s expression held a transitory touch of distaste, and Owen wondered if he imagined it. “Thinkin’ to poach, might want to think again. He’s a good dude.”

  “Yeah, Eric and I are acquainted.” Owen remembered their first conversations over the comm system, Eric often siding with Owen when it came to thoughts on how to keep a pregnant Alace safe. “Our first encounter couldn’t have gone better.” Jealous Eric would always be Owen’s favorite, because it meant the man was still as deeply in love with Alace as he’d ever been. “But if anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s Alace Sweets.”

  ***

  Alace

  Head in her hands, she massaged her scalp with stiffened fingertips, running the sequence of events back through her mind.

  “Alace, it’s done now. Do you want to go downstairs or come to bed?” Even without turning around, she could picture Eric’s expression. Supportive concern and his love for her was a rock she’d break against if she were too near him right now.

  She started the process of securing her workstation, first checking the entire video collection had uploaded to a cloud server, then verifying her address seeker was working on hits to the previous location. She’d written a quick script that would attach to every individual trying to gain access and snake back to their location. IP addresses weren’t as anonymous as most folks thought, and even the ones who’d used an anonymizer weren’t immune to the script. If it encountered a secure VPN connection, the script would write a sequence of malware bytes to the computer, inserting in the registry of the computer to make them harder to eradicate. That malware would then replicate itself, turning on various functions until it was a working keylogger that would dial home upon demand.

  With the battery removed and laptop stored, she locked the drawer and stood, still facing away from Eric. “Shower first, then bed. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “Alace.” She hadn’t taken a single step yet, and Eric was already on to her. The mattress moved, covers rustling, and then his warmth enveloped her. Even before his arms encircled her, before his feet braced hers on either side, before his lips pressed to her temple—she felt owned and possessed, supported in ways she’d never be able to put words to. “Beloved, it’s okay to be upset.”

  “I’m not angry.” He scoffed gently, mouth against the side of her throat. “I’m not, not really. I could have been, had already decided to be pissed as hell that Owen would put me in the position he did, risk the team by going off on his own and being a hero. I was talking to Doc and redirecting August, and all the time I was writing my speech in my head, calling
him reckless and careless, angry he didn’t care about what we’ve been building.”

  “What happened? If you aren’t angry now, what is it? What are you feeling?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s a lot less familiar than anger. When Doc told me where Owen’d gone, it was like something broke loose inside me. He said Owen was upset, something I’d already discerned from my own read of his behaviors earlier in the evening. By that point, by the time Doc called, I had already seen the videos.” She twisted around, peering up at Eric’s face. His arms tightened around her, holding tight.

  “His little girl. The girl he rescued only weeks ago. Eric, one of the videos was of her. It had been taken only hours before he got to the compound, and I know Owen had already been beating himself up that she suffered the assault after he knew the location. He’d known where Kelly’s little sister was for a day or more but held off until he could get things sorted. And then the video happened.” She shook her head, staring at Eric.

  “As soon as I realized he knew about the video, I understood he wouldn’t wait for long, but I didn’t expect him to go off on his own like that. He didn’t have a strategy at all, exit or otherwise.” Alace fought for control of her face, hating how her chin trembled. “He didn’t call me. Not first, not before, not even last. Why didn’t he call me, Eric?”

  “I don’t know, Alace.” He bent to press his cheek to hers. “And you won’t know until you ask him.”

  “I should have asked tonight. Just now, I could have asked.”

  “It’s harder when you can’t see him, read him. Not only his face with the video but everything. You’re a master at interpreting someone’s body language, and if you’d asked tonight, you’d be cutting off that avenue of information.” Eric swayed back and forth, moving them in a slow rhythm. “I bet when you do talk to him, though, you’re going to find there’s nothing malicious in his reasons. That it wasn’t a lack of trust in you and your partnership. He values you and your opinion, Alace. But more than that, he likes you.”

  “I thought we were friends.” She hated how her voice shook.

  “You are friends. I consider him a friend, and I don’t have the same kind of relationship you do. He and I aren’t close, but we’re friends.” Mouth next to her ear, he reassured her, his certainty a force to be reckoned with. “If he knew how he hurt you tonight, Owen would be devastated. He will be once he sees. Trust me, once he realizes what he almost threw away by not thinking, he’s going to be pissed at himself.”

  “This all feels so stupid.”

  “Feelings are harder than facts. Feelings are messy, unpredictable, and sometimes uncomfortable.” Eric leaned back, his expression soft and sweet as he stared at her. “And they don’t come with instructions. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be scared. It’s not stupid, not at all.” Brushing the tip of his nose against hers, he smiled. “It’s human, Alace. It’s human.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” The single word—that fucking, fucking word—held enough confidence and assurance much of the tension in her muscles melted away. “And it needs to be said. Alace, it’s okay to be human.” He gave her a squeeze and touched her lips with his. “We’re all human. Now, go get your shower, and if we’re lucky we’ll have a nap before the lovely Lila decides it’s time to eat.”

  It’s human to feel these things. Something she knew intellectually but always felt on a plane above. “What you said helped. I just—I don’t want to lose him, Eric. I told him, I told him when we set out that he couldn’t start down this path with me and then change course.”

  “Then remind him of what you both will lose.” He gave her a nudge. “But do it tomorrow after sleeping.”

  “Yeah.” She straightened. “The important thing is he’s home safely.”

  “And Shiloh is safe. Among the most important things are the facts Shiloh and Kelly are safe and experiencing the true love of a family for the first time ever.” Eric glanced towards the bassinette and back to Alace. “It’s never too late to love.”

  Shiloh. She remembered the little girl dangling from her arms upside down, trusting Alace wouldn’t drop her, would hold her tight, keep her safe. Everything in that child’s life had been topsy-turvy for so long, like that nerve-jangling dangle, and things were barely beginning to right themselves around her. “I get why Owen would have reacted the way he did. He was protecting his family. Instinct, to take on the largest and closest perceived threat.” She turned to look at Lila, sleeping with arms thrown over her head, open and vulnerable.

  “We do everything we can to defend those we love.”

  Eric dipped close, his mouth capturing hers, lips softly caressing. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark and hooded, face taut with desire.

  She leaned into him, chin tipped up for more as she murmured, “Shower later. Love me now.”

  “Always.”

  One word.

  Fucking, fucking Eric.

  Chapter Twelve

  Owen

  Two weeks after Kuellen had been disappeared, Owen sat in the kitchen eating cereal and watching an early morning news app on his phone. He had the sound turned down to keep from disturbing the kids, only loud enough to hear as the reporter read from her prompter.

  “Today the county prosecutor suggested a high level of confidence Ashworth will plead guilty to one count of manslaughter at his arraignment tomorrow. However, a confidential source indicates more charges are pending, which means a guilty plea for Miles Garcia’s death will not necessarily stop the judicial clock. There has been some discussion Ashworth will enter an Alford plea, implying innocence while still pleading guilty, but the defense counsel would be well advised to consider Colorado’s statutes surrounding victim restitution. With so many potential victims, it’s unlikely Ashworth would be able to secure a cash bond to escape pretrial detention.”

  He tuned her out until the piece was nearly over, looking up to watch closely as the camera zoomed in on her face. Alace had texted him earlier that Colleen Houghton was supposed to end her segment with a shout-out.

  “Finally, before we sign off for the morning, I wanted to give my personal book club recommendation for a local best-selling author. Alace Sweets has written several criminal thriller novels and has a healthy fan base, not just here in Colorado, but around the world. My great-aunt, who grew up in Northern California, has proclaimed them riveting. Of course, my great-aunt also refers to her old Berkeley professor as ‘that nice Mr. Kaczynski,’ so you might not want to follow her lead.” Houghton smiled at the camera, the edges of her mouth curling up so gradually it happened in slow motion. “Take it from me, these books are to die for.”

  “What’s wrong?” Owen looked up to see Doc standing in the doorway and realized he was standing, the half-full bowl of cereal and milk splattered across the floor. Kelly peered around Doc, curious eyes scanning Owen up and down before landing on the phone still in his hand.

  “Dropped the bowl.” Owen closed the app then locked the phone’s screen, laying it facedown on the countertop. “I’m a klutz today, apparently.” He grabbed a handful of paper towels and stooped to gather the bowl and spoon, swiping the puffs of cereal off the floor. “At least the bowl didn’t break.” He looked up as Doc drifted closer, his gaze now tracking between the phone and Owen. “Did I wake you? Is Shiloh still sleeping?”

  He hoped she was…that he hadn’t woken her. The nightmares had returned with a vengeance a few nights ago, sending her screaming to hide underneath Kelly’s bed multiple times per night. The timing was interesting, because while August stayed with them, taking the guest bedroom as his own, Shiloh’s dreams had pretty much ceased, disappearing quickly. She’d been intrigued by the giant of a man, preferring his company over even Kelly’s. Owen had talked to Alace last night, hoping for an update on when they could expect him back.

  Weird how he fit into the household as easily as he did. Owen recognized it was odd, but anything that made his kids happier or healthier was way up
on his list of good things. August, with his rough country speech and loud laughter, had found a fan in the tiny little girl, and Owen wanted to give her anything she desired. I’ll call Alace in a bit, check again if she’s got an update for me.

  “What were you watching on the phone?” Doc knelt next to him, more paper towels added to the mess soaking up the spilled milk. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost when I walked in.”

  Owen checked the room, verifying Kelly had retreated back up the hallway towards the bedrooms, then still kept his voice low as he explained, “The reporter said something that caught me off guard is all. The way she said it made me wonder if she knew something.” He shrugged as he stood, tossing the saturated paper towels away. “Just my imagination.”

  “That’s Colleen Houghton, right? The reporter Alace met?” Doc handed him the rest of the trash for disposal. He turned on the water at the sink, rinsing his hands and leaving the water running for Owen. “I’ll catch the piece online, see if I see anything.”

  “Good idea. Two sets of eyes and all that.” Owen turned off the water and accepted the kitchen towel from Doc to dry his hands. “It struck me odd. Off, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  Doc’s hand settled on his shoulder, and Owen caught himself before he leaned into the man. Get a grip, Marcus.

  “Dad?” Owen was running up the hallway before Kelly’s shout had a chance to die away. He loved that title, being verbally acknowledged for the position he found he wanted more than anything. Both Kelly and Shiloh had readopted it when August was here, the man’s not-too-subtle encouragement all the motivation the kids needed. Him referring to Owen as “your dad” carried more weight than Owen’s repeated “my kids,” and it had become another reason they’d enjoyed having August with them.

  “What’s wrong?” Owen swung through the open doorway into Kelly’s room, his ears telling him both children were present, his eyes confirming Kelly held Shiloh in his lap, the kids seated in one corner of the room.