He didn’t need Kelly’s response to tell him what had caused the kid to call out.
The window above the bed was closed, intact, not even a crack. But on the outside looking in were two large eyes, luminous pupils glinting in the dark. They were too far apart to be human eyes, too tall to be a dog. He cautiously approached the window, and they pulled back, then rose higher. He was close enough now to see more details, the dark fur and snout definite clues.
“It’s a goddamn bear.” Owen lifted his arms as he waved and shouted, “Yeah, bear. Ware, bear. Go on now.”
The bear fell back to all fours, turned away, and began to trundle off through the backyard.
“Life is always interesting with you, Owen.” He turned to see Doc crouched next to the kids. “Being a natural bear repellant one of your many specialties?”
“Yeah, they take one whiff of my pits, and it’s game over for them.” He settled on the floor next to Doc and held his arms out for Shiloh. “Come here, pretty girl. Were you scared?”
Shiloh settled into his lap, her cheek pressed to his chest, face turned away from the window. She nodded and mumbled, a muffled “Uh-huh,” coming from the vicinity of her mouth.
“Most bears are more scared of you than you are them.” Doc made a sound of disbelief as he leaned against the wall, Kelly curled up in his lap. “No, really, they are. There are exceptions, of course. Apex predators like a grizzly fear little, and bears that have been acclimated to human contact won’t be afraid either. Those are what the DNR calls nuisance bears, because they’ve been taught to depend on people for their food. Most of the time, an encounter outside of the woods will be something like this, where a bear wandered out and something smelled good, so they got curious.”
“And in the woods? What happens then?” Kelly shifted so he could see Owen, apparently unwilling to move from Doc’s embrace.
“In the woods, you’ll often catch only a glimpse of them as they move away from you. That’s what I mean by they’re more scared than you. Wild bears prefer not to be around people. We smell, we’re noisy, and we disrupt the natural order of things. If a bear approaches in the woods, either they’re sick and confused, they have a baby nearby and are protecting their cub, or you’ve not been practicing good craftsmanship and you smell like food.” He rumpled Shiloh’s hair, then smoothed it out, fingers threading through her locks to straighten them. “Avoiding the encounter is best, by backing away, or you can make yourself big like I just did, so you look like more of a threat. Running is never a good idea.”
“What about a grizzly? Wouldn’t you want to get away from them as fast as you can?” Doc’s grin said he already knew the answer to his own questions but wanted to hear Owen’s version anyway.
“Well, grizzlies can outpace a human running. They’re a lot faster in a short distance sprint than we are, so running isn’t really an option.” He made a face and looked down at Shiloh, rewarded by her soft giggle. “One accepted way to deal with a grizzly is to play possum until they lose interest. I don’t have any grizzly stories, but I’ve seen plenty of black bears. It’s all about respecting the animal and their space and letting them be wild—which means the person gives way.”
“What are you gonna do about the backyard bear, Daddy?” Shiloh’s soft voice made Owen smile. Complete sentences were always good to hear, meaning more forward progress for her. A journey straight to mental health after all the suffering she’d endured.
He hadn’t watched the video of her in the cabin. Owen knew he couldn’t, not and keep his own sanity. Doc had observed the activity captured on the film, but muted, so they couldn’t hear Shiloh crying. It was in moments like that Owen wished he’d killed Kuellen and Warrant slower, more viciously, taking the eye-for-an-eye to greater heights. With the video in their possession, it had been easier to locate other copies of the film online and eradicate them, marking each server for later destruction. Owen had vowed to get to them all.
“Our little ole backyard bear might be a nuisance bear. I’ll call the local ranger station and ask about it, see if they’ve got any tagged bears in the neighborhood.” He gave her a squeeze, laughing when she pretended to squeak from the force of his hug. “I’ll clean the grill, make sure we’re not enticing Mr. Bear close to the house, and I’ll put in some motion-triggered lights farther away from the house. We’re safe here, Shiloh. You don’t have to be afraid of bears. Just remember the rules.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Owen’s eyes dipped closed, and he soaked in the power of the emotions rolling through him.
Something he’d believed taken from him forever, in the most dire of ways, and yet here he was, sitting in a house surrounded by people he cared about. Filling a paternal role for two kids he loved more than life. Not more than Emma, never that, but in opening himself to these kids, he’d found his capacity for love was so much more than he’d ever believed.
“Shiloh, I love you, you know that, right?” Owen blinked, clumped lashes making it hard to see at first. “Kelly, I love you, too. Do you guys know how much I love you?”
Kelly shifted around on Doc’s lap, sharing a long look with Shiloh before turning his gaze on Owen. “Do you love Doc, too?”
Startled, Owen lifted his eyes to find a similar amount of surprise in Doc’s expression. The man’s features were asking a question Owen didn’t understand. Maybe a version of, You gonna answer that, buddy? “Yeah,” he told Kelly slowly. “I love Doc, too.”
Shiloh giggled and turned to face Owen, cupping his cheeks with her hands. “We lub you too.” She giggled again, the sound light and airy and full of happiness. “It’s like we have two daddies.”
Owen’s gaze locked with Doc again. The man smiled slowly, then broke their shared stare as he shook Kelly lightly before setting him on his feet to one side. “It’s a love fest, for sure. All that love still won’t fill our bellies, though. I think it’s past time for me to see what I can make for breakfast. Half a bowl of cold cereal isn’t enough fuel for the day.” He climbed to his feet with a groan, then laughed. “Gettin’ too old to hang out on the floor like that.” Doc glanced at the window, empty now of the early morning visitor who had kicked off their gathering. “I need some helpers for the kitchen. Daddy Owen needs to get some work done, which means you two little monsters are with me.”
“Yay.” Shiloh’s arms pushed straight up into the air, her clenched fist nearly clipping Owen’s jaw. “I a monster hepper now.” He lifted her, and she giggled at him, determinedly raising and folding her legs in a crisscross, so she dangled above the floor. “Carry me, Daddy Owen.” Resting her hands on his forearms, she nodded twice, her expression solemn. “Daddy Doc needs hepp.”
“That’s gonna stick, huh?” He pulled her close, propping her on his hip as he rose from the floor. “I don’t hate it.”
“Hate’s wrong.” Her chin bounced twice, tears threatening. “Hate’s mean.”
“Then it’s a good thing I don’t, huh?” Gathering her hair loosely in one hand, he swept it over her shoulders, setting it loose in a stream down her back. “How do you feel about being a monster?”
They exited the room, following Doc and Kelly up the hallway towards the kitchen.
Shiloh’s face scrunched as she thought seriously about his question. “Kelly says if I do somethin’, I needs to own it.” Leaning against Owen’s shoulder, her voice got small when she asked, “Is bein’ a monster bad?”
“Not at all.” Owen stopped as Doc turned, addressing both of them. He locked gazes with the man again, reading only sincerity and support, and his shoulders lowered a couple of inches as he accepted the meaning behind Doc’s words. “In this house, there are only good monsters.”
Leaving the kitchen and breakfast in Doc’s hands, Owen made his way to his office, closing and locking the door behind him. Doc had a key and permission to enter at will, but securing the door was about protecting the kids from the kind of images Owen would be looking at.
He’d gotte
n a message from one of his darknet researchers earlier, the notice waking him in time to catch the live version of that reporter’s segment. The notification, ignored until now, indicated a potential connection had been identified. Taking out two of the pedo ring members had only built a more ferocious fire in Owen’s chest to find and deal with the rest of them. These deviants who believed buying and owning people—stealing children from their families and homes, and delivering them into hell—was their right. They would find out just how wrong they were.
Logging into Alace’s secure network, he opened their shared document, the same one they’d been using for months. Owen didn’t care; it made for a nice consistent method of communication. Alace was pragmatic, too, but also a little superstitious. The document had kept them in touch even under dire circumstances, and continuing to use it was an extension of the same luck they’d enjoyed then.
He was surprised to see Alace’s icon was active, pulsing with color instead of being grayed-out as it would have been if she weren’t logged into the system.
“She’s either asleep at the computer, or already up.” Owen slapped his forehead, uttering a muffled, “Duh.” The reporter. Of course, Alace was up and watching, analyzing, and no doubt dissecting every word.
Words appeared on the document, the letters flowing from nothing into coherent thoughts in front of his eyes. Magic.
That segue about the Unabomber was a bit much, I thought.
Owen grinned as he typed in his reply.
Did her great-aunt even go to Berkeley? And that smirk at the end, like she was playing a cat n mouse game? Someone should tell her to keep her best cards closer to the vest.
Alace’s cursor jumped down and then sat on a new line, blinking monotonously, unmoving. After a moment, he filled the void, wondering what Alace was thinking.
Her info on Ashworth was good to hear. I worried when they just charged him with the one m. I know you said not to sweat it, but he needs to pay for everyone he killed like that.
The investigation into Ashworth had shifted from their brand of justice to what the rest of the nation expected. August had tipped off the cops about what he’d found in the house before Alace had pulled him out to help Owen. August had taken a thermal imaging infrared camera with him, one that plugs into a phone for the display, allowing for easy video recording of what was seen. Using the device, it had been easy to spot one male prostitute’s body in the basement wall, the location for the construction project that had been used to kill Ashworth’s second wife.
August had pretended to be with the contractor actively working on the new project, explaining his presence in the house and lending validity to his claims with one fell swoop.
The cops had gone in with guns drawn, hustling Ashworth out of the house and into the back seat of a cop car, complete with light bar blazing blue and red. Twenty minutes after the forensic team had entered, they’d escorted the current Mrs. Ashworth outside, taping off the whole house as an investigation scene. The first body had been one Miles Garcia, a local boy known to the police as a male prostitute.
Confirmed, her great-aunt did attend Berkeley during the period Theodore Kaczynski was on staff. Odd she’d pick that killer to use to build a connection with. We don’t deal in innocents.
Owen’s laughter spilled out and he shook his head.
Not like there’s much out there similar to us. We’re one of a kind, and I’m sticking to my story on that.
He imagined Alace fighting not to roll her eyes.
It’s early. What do you need?
True to form, she put the unknowns and unknowable behind them, deciding to focus instead on the reason he’d approached her this morning.
In a split-second decision, Owen launched the encrypted video chat software they used, grabbed his identifier from this session, and pasted it into the document, knowing she’d understand what he wanted. Sure enough, within seconds, his video window lit up with an incoming call. Owen picked up the headphones as he clicked Accept, settling them into place before the image fully resolved.
“I’ve got a lead. I need your input on my plan, and if you’re willing, we can work the mission as a team.”
“Yes. Whatever you need.” Alace answered without hesitation, her gaze drilling through the screen and into him, her annoyance that he’d suggest she might respond differently scarcely hidden. “We are a team, Owen. We have to be transparent, or all this, everything we’ve built will, at best, fall apart.” Her mouth twisted, and he stayed silent, waiting for whatever it was that pained her. “I don’t want it to fall apart. This, and yes, by extension you, matter to me. Don’t push me away again.”
“I’ll hold so tightly you won’t see a separation between us, Alace. That was—extenuating circumstances sounds like a cop-out, I know. But it involved my kids, and all I could see or hear was red.”
“Then you need to get a grip, because we know there are at least six other copies of those videos out in the wild. None have appeared on any darknet nodes, yet. That tells me the ring kept certain things private, reserving them for those most trusted members. Probably through some semblance of self-preservation, they knew their personal enacting of scenes shouldn’t be for public consumption.” The muscles next to her eyes tightened, lids lowering a fraction of an inch. “You can’t go rogue on me every time we uncover a new repository.”
“I won’t.” He hesitated, then decided to share a truth with her. “I scared myself, Alace. I was all emotion and no coherent thought, and I could have fucked things up badly. That would have only hurt my kids more. I won’t do that. I’m not going to promise, but you’ll know I’m for real by what I do over the next months. I won’t go off like that again.”
Alace was still, unmoving. He couldn’t even see her chest rise or fall with breath. He knew this wasn’t a stalled video connection. No, this was Alace thinking, weighing options, and making a decision.
“Tell me what you’ve got.” Her words came slowly, deliberately, as if she were evaluating each as they flowed from her lips.
Owen breathed deep, his jaw thrusting forward as he gritted his teeth tightly. The level of anger took him by surprise, and he forced it back, shoving it down until it wasn’t an immediate concern. Need to do my job. Blowing the air out, he reminded himself, Alace is waiting. Through the video, she offered a tiny nod, an acknowledgment of how hard this was, and why. “Donald MacLeod. He’s in Jersey, down near Philly.”
Her fingers worked the keyboard out of sight of the camera, and he did the same, pulling up his folder of information and clicking the button to share his screen. “My guy got into his financials and ran dates to ground. Around the time of the auction Shiloh and Kelly were in, he’s got some major outlay that doesn’t line up with anything going on in his life. Transfers narrowly underneath the federal alert level, but multiple.” Owen tore his gaze away from the photos of bank transactions to lock eyes with Alace. “More than enough to buy a couple of kids.”
“Any priors, official or not?” She blinked and angled her head away as if she already knew the answer to her own question.
“You know this already.” Owen’s laughter morphed into a sigh. “No official priors, not even any looks from law enforcement. But those in the know, they know him for sure. He’s got his fancy house in the suburbs, then owns a multi-building compound in upstate Pennsylvania. Plenty big enough for parties. Funny thing is, his wife and family never travel with him. I can’t even find information that the wife knows about the second property.”
“She probably does. Women hide information absolutely as well as men.” Alace gestured towards the camera in a way he took to mean she wanted control, so Owen unshared his screen. A moment later, Alace’s computer popped up on his monitor, and he moved it out of the way so he could keep the video in view. “The wife isn’t pristine.” A series of photos flashed across the screen, children in various private moments, each image shot from high above in an angle that looked like a stationary camera. “She’s got
this on her computer.” Alace’s lips twitched. “My guy,” she deliberately used Owen’s language, “couldn’t get her financials, but he did drop a USB in their driveway she picked up.”
“I want them both.” Teeth worrying his lip, he studied the image of the wife Alace had parked in one corner of the screen. “They have kids, Alace.”
“Okay. So here’s what I’m thinking.”
Forty-five minutes later, they had a solid plan, just the two of them, how they preferred things to be. With a couple of helpers.
Knuckles rapping at the door behind him startled Owen, and he snapped upright, out of the deep slouch he’d adopted while he and Alace went through the ideas and concrete details for the next couple of days.
“Owen, breakfast is ready.”
Now Alace smiled, white teeth glinting briefly between broadly stretched lips. “Sounds like you need to go, Owen.”
“Be right there, Doc.” Owen had called over his shoulder and turned back to face Alace fully. A nagging sense of guilt and anger at himself simmered in his blood, acid burning his stomach. “I didn’t mean to put you in a bad spot, Alace.” He gave her a headshake, the movement sharp, jerky with tense muscles. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Partners.” By not acknowledging his apology, she was telling him it truly was in the past, and clearly communicating she didn’t want to talk about it again.
Message received. “BFFs,” he agreed and sat there, watching as she disconnected without another word. “She’s my best frand.” He spoke truth to the still air within the office. The sense of unease that had been hovering over him throughout their conversation slowly bled away. “She don’t even know we’re besties.”
Computer shut down, he exited the office and turned into the kitchen in time to see Doc shooting a burst of canned whipped cream directly into Kelly’s mouth. “Me too,” Shiloh shouted, clapping, then stood with her mouth open like a baby bird. Doc obliged and looked up at Owen.
An Embarrassment of Monsters: A Dark Romantic Suspense Novel (Alace Sweets Book 3) Page 27