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

by MariaLisa deMora

  “Okay.”

  She watched as he picked up the phone, grinning at whatever messages Owen had sent. He noted the times in a small notepad he pulled from his pocket and smiled at her. “Let me know when you’re ready to get up. No rush.”

  The steel bands tightened around her belly and low back again. More fluid gushed out from between her legs, joining the puddle on the floor. She breathed slowly, focused inwards as the pain came towards her in a rush, clawing at her control before it eased. The baby moved in tiny increments, no longer the swooping changes in position she’d become accustomed to. As the contraction eased, Alace took in a deep breath, surprised at how easily it came. The baby’s moving down. The reality of what was happening hit her like a train, and Alace looked up in time to see Eric stride out of the bathroom. His smile was like a blinding beam of happiness, heating her from the outside in. The baby’s coming.

  “You need to call your mom. I had another contraction. Things feel like they’re moving fast, Eric.” She swallowed. “Maybe call the doctor, too? See what he thinks we should do about staying here or going to the hospital?”

  “I have a call in to his service. They said he was at the hospital already, so we can expect a response quickly. I’ll wait to talk to Mom until after, keep the suspense to a minimum.” He dropped a towel on the floor and knelt between her feet. “Keep me from having to field her every-five-minutes texts, too.”

  After the rocky start to their pregnancy, Alace had been wary of letting anyone know about the baby. She had become seriously fond of Eric’s mother, and the woman had taken Alace to her heart. That whole relationship wasn’t something Alace knew how to navigate, so she’d left most of the talking to Eric. The moment they’d told Phoebe about the pregnancy, she’d flown from Malibu to spend a week in which Alace was forced to idle during the day, making up the work after her mother-in-law had gone to bed. During that week, Phoebe had bought everything needed for the nursery, and Alace had slowly realized her mother-in-law’s tastes were in line with her own. One of the purchases was a gorgeous sleigh crib Eric had yet to put together.

  “Okay, up you come.” Eric’s hands under her elbows lifted, and she was on her feet. He’d laid a trail of towels to her work chair, which he’d carefully draped with a double layer of towels. “Off with that.” Her wet sleepwear went up and was gone, leaving her chilled, skin pebbling with gooseflesh. Then a nightgown came down, fit over her upraised hands and arms, and arranged until her head poked through the neck hole. “Let’s go sit, yeah?” She shuffled with him towards the chair, conscious of the wetness trickling down her legs. At least the gushing waves of fluid had stopped. “And down.”

  The moment her ass touched the chair, another contraction took control of her body, the cramping sensation more acute than before. She groaned and folded an arm over her belly, fingers spread where the pain was the greatest.

  “Another?” Eric’s voice held an edge, and she nodded, then realized he’d missed one entirely. The thought was lost in the pain as it crashed against her.

  Alace allowed herself to sink inside it again, focusing on the individual areas of her body impacted by the implacable process of bringing a child to air. Her pelvis hurt, aching worse than it had in days. Moving and spreading to make room for her. The walls of Alace’s uterus were rigid, tightly drawn into a barrel. This is natural. I just need to work with it.

  “Beloved?”

  Needing silence, Alace waved her hand at him, chin buried to her chest as she breathed and breathed, pulse pounding in her throat. She counted each rise and fall of her ribs, the tension in her muscles forcing the pace of steady and slow, Alace going with the dictates of her body. The pain began ebbing, and she blinked as she glanced around, surprised to see nothing had changed in the room. It had felt like she’d been wholly focused on merely breathing for a hundred years. Eric knelt in front of her, palm cupping her cheek.

  “The doctor says we should head in now. Something about transition phase.” Eric’s face was pale. “I’m going to carry you to the car, Alace. We need to go. Now.”

  “Okay.” She scooted forwards in the chair, sodden towels sliding with her. “Oof.” She tried to rise and failed, dropping back to the chair, which rolled backwards. “I’m a mess.” One hand on her belly, she looked at Eric. “I’m ready, though. I wasn’t sure, you know? Before? But I am now. I’m ready.”

  Eric brushed a kiss across her lips as he gathered her into his arms. “You’ve always been ready, Alace, my love. You’ve just given yourself permission now.”

  Chapter Four

  Owen

  The blank surface of the computer monitor mocked him.

  Alace is having her baby. Owen scratched at his ear, fingertips finding the tiny ball of gristle and scar tissue in the center of the lobe, the only remnant of the boy he’d once been.

  Growing up in the middle of a big family, massive gatherings held every summer meant anyone who held an iota of relationship to the Marcuses, his father’s family, or the Thandalls, his mother’s family, were invited. It was not unheard of to have more than a hundred people on his parents’ farm for the three-day-long reunion. That kind of persistent familial connection was what he’d always seen in the future for himself. Not taking over the land or business, that was for his older siblings, but he’d always expected there would be a place for him, too. The military had never been intended to be a lifelong career. He’d seen it as an opportunity to see the world for a couple of years and earn the chance of having college paid for.

  Due to transportation delays, his first leave from basic had been eaten up simply getting to his specialist training docket. Then right after that training ended, a spot opened up unexpectedly for a coveted position. Scheduling for all of that meant the first time he’d gotten to go home after signing up was nearly a year later, when he’d arrived barely in time for the reunion.

  He pinched his earlobe, letting the pain zing through him.

  His ex-girlfriend had been at the reunion, which didn’t make sense. Until she’d turned around with heavily laden arms, and Owen had encountered his own eyes in the face of the prettiest little baby girl he’d ever laid eyes on.

  Emma.

  Owen abruptly pushed up from the chair and stalked out of his office towards the kitchen. The nightlight was still on in Kelly’s room, and he slowed, coming to a stop where he could see the boy.

  Curled into a tight ball, Kelly had positioned his hands protectively, one covering his crotch, the other twisted into a fist in front of his throat, holding tightly to nothing. The bath had revealed a lot of what he’d taken to be bruising on the boy’s face was a layer of dirt, and with that washed away, Kelly looked much younger than the thirteen he’d claimed. The soil staining the boy’s hands and knees hadn’t come out no matter the gentle persistence with which Owen had scrubbed. Swallowing hard to drive a swell of nausea back down, he took a cautious step into the room. Listening to Kelly breathe from here wasn’t a great diagnostic tool, but the bubbling rasp that had so worried Owen was no longer present. He blinked and caught a shine in Kelly’s face, suddenly uncertain the boy was still sleeping. The hair that fell over his forehead shielded his eyes from direct view.

  “You up?” Not a whisper, but not a loud voice. If Kelly was indeed asleep, Owen’s question was unlikely to wake him.

  Moving swiftly, Kelly retreated along the mattress until his back was to the headboard. The move was one Owen had seen many a returning soldier make. Boy’s been to hell and back again. Making a keening sound, Kelly fumbled frantically at his neck and Owen realized the boy was groping for the wide collar the man who’d owned him had made him wear. Finally reassured it was still gone, Kelly stopped the sound and slumped, shoulders rounding down in exhaustion that had everything to do with the weeks he’d been a prisoner. The way his gaze moved around the room indicated he was immediately alert, but his expression showed no fear. It was just a reaction to his situation, not me. Nothin’ personal. “You find Shiloh? An
ything?”

  Owen shook his head. “Not yet. I might have a way to identify the location, though. I wanted to check on you before I got started. You hungry? Need a drink or anything?”

  “No.” Curling down, Kelly made a nest for himself on the pillows. Feet tucked underneath the shirt Owen had put on him to sleep in, the boy wrapped his arms around his knees and waist. Making himself a small target for any aggression. The position told Owen as much as any story the boy had related so far. His voice held the weight of tears when he reminded Owen, “Just need to find Shiloh.”

  Owen studied him, nodded briefly, and left the room without responding. Kelly’s misery was oppressive, suffocating. It was clear the boy didn’t honestly think Owen could find his sister. Not before terrible things could happen to her. Maybe not alive.

  Back in the office, he logged into his system and entered the private VPN info Alace had drilled into his head. Once there, he was able to navigate into the folder he needed, finding all the sorted info Alace had promised would be there. She hadn’t skimped on anything, and once again, he recognized the enormous benefits of having someone like her on his side.

  Alace is having a baby.

  He scratched the lobe of his ear, pulling the neck of his shirt up over his mouth. He opened the first folder and dove in, reading through verbose auction notes about the buyers and the lots they’d bid on. Six other male/female sibling pairs had sold on the same night, but it was easy enough to recognize Kelly by the description of him. With the buyer identified, Owen settled into a rhythm of digging through the info Alace had provided to find various tidbits needed to craft inquiries, then circling out to the darknet to chase the info down there. The buyer had a prominent profile on multiple forums, with a high confidence rating, higher even than Alace’s alts. Shit.

  Owen followed the trail, building a portfolio of the man until he stumbled on what he’d hoped for.

  A mistake.

  This man wasn’t one of those Alace had already traced land purchases for, which meant Owen was casting nets in the dark. His net eventually snagged on a detail with the opportunity to give him the break he needed. The man had uploaded images of his constructed cabin and lean-to for his pack. That’s what he always called them, the children he bought—and sold. Owen had found him as a source noted by buyers for several single children. After securing himself a pair, at times he’d keep one and dispose of the other. Or perhaps disposed of one as he had Kelly, and then rid himself of the remaining child if they turned out to be suboptimal for his purposes as well.

  The mistake he’d made in those images was threefold.

  First, he hadn’t stripped the metadata from the images, which in this case provided an exact location marker. Within minutes Owen was studying satellite imagery of the site, confirming the existence of both the cabin and outbuilding Kelly’d described. The second mistake was in going back to the same reseller for one of his returns. The boy had talked about a man until the name had made it into a set of business notes about the source. Earl. The third mistake was with one of the images where he hadn’t bothered to blur out the make and model of his truck shown in the distance. From that, Owen was able to find his license, lock down his name, verify a home address—and the fact he had three biological children. Owen grimaced when he realized they danced around Kelly’s age like stair-stepped siblings.

  The crux of security was to have something you know, something you have, and something you are.

  Earl Warrant wasn’t the smartest of perverts.

  And Owen now owned him. Earl might not know it yet, but it was true.

  Name, social, birth, family info—and tucked into a folder hidden in the man’s vulnerable cloud storage—the deed for an isolated cabin near a river in upstate New York. Within three hundred miles of the campground Owen had been in yesterday morning. Just like the others Alace found. Definitely a fetish ring.

  Owen set aside the personal information he’d uncovered. That would be for Alace to deal with. She did the paperwork, he would handle the wetwork.

  A noise behind him had Owen turning around. Kelly stood slumped in the doorway.

  “You hungry, kiddo?” He got a nod in response. “Okay. Give me half a minute to shut stuff down.” As Owen closed out of connections, he kept an eye on Kelly drifting closer. Minimizing the final window flashed the image of the cabin on the screen.

  “That’s it.” Kelly’s shocked voice shouldn’t have offended Owen, but it did. What, does the kid not realize I keep my word, always? “You found him? That’s the place. The cabin. When can we go get Shiloh?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere.” Owen began the shutdown routine for the computer and took a breath before spinning slowly to face the boy. Just from the kid’s expression, Owen knew he’d be in for a battle. “When I’m ready, I’ll go.”

  “You can’t leave me here. I won’t stay.” Kelly’s chin jutted stubbornly. The fire in his eyes was one of the first real signs of the boy’s personality Owen had seen. He hated like hell to be the one who’d squash that bit of spirit, but there was no way he could let the boy believe he’d be in on what he’d expect would be the rescue mission. The real mission would be far different, filled with red and pain. And redemption, as Owen would be releasing more children back to their homes.

  A memory of a dusty compound from Central America flashed through his mind, the acrid scent of terror filling his nostrils. That had been the first mission after he’d lost Emma, and when he’d seen a tiny girl about her age, dark eyes staring up at her tormenter, it hadn’t been a mere decision to alter the trajectory of the mission. It had been a soul-deep imperative.

  He shook his head, forcing those thoughts to the back of his mind where they stayed. Never leaving him because it was his fault Emma was dead, and no matter how many kids he saved, he’d still never find redemption. The boxed-up, shoved-down, painful thoughts were his purgatory, the knowledge his crucifix.

  Focused glare aimed at Kelly, Owen pulled in a deep breath before laying down the law. “You will if you want to see Shiloh again.” The instant those words were out of his mouth, Owen regretted them. Kelly’s flinch was huge, as if he’d been surprised by a physical blow. Owen had taken it too far, been too harsh, a needless cruelty used against a boy already brutalized by monsters. Other monsters. “I didn’t mean it that way, kid. That’s not…” Mouth twisting against the emotions swelling inside him, Owen shook his head, not reaching out because he knew Kelly would reject any contact right now. Regret kept his tone quiet, his words simple as he tried to explain. “What I meant to say is I don’t work with folks. I do my stuff alone.”

  “If I promise to stay right here, will you go get her now? I won’t be bad. I promise. I’d wait in that bedroom. Wouldn’t leave.” Kelly’s eyes glassed over as he stared into Owen’s eyes, growing desperation visible on his features. He tried to strike a bargain. “Now that you know where she is. You can save her. Like you saved me. I won’t get in the way. You don’t have to worry about me. I know how to behave. I’ll be good.” As the boy spoke, each word appeared to be another assault against the uncertain control of his emotions, and by the final syllable, his lips were quivering uncontrollably.

  Owen’s arms were heavy, dragged down with the remembered weight of the boy as he carried him out of the woods, carried him into this house. There was nothing he more wanted to do in this moment than gather Kelly close and promise him everything would be all right. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let this kid get any deeper under his skin than he was already, and promising something like that would be the equivalent of a blood oath for Owen. Instead, he did what he could. He told the truth, trusting Kelly to be able to take it on.

  “I have to learn more. I have to know exactly what to expect. I know where the man’s real house is now, too, and I’ve got eyes on it.” Owen had sent a signal to the video doorbells of the houses across the street, changing not only their sensitivity but the routing of alerts. When they spotted a vehicle leaving
Warrant’s house, he’d know. “One day at the most and I’ll have what I need.” He pressed his palm to his chest, hoping the kid would understand this was a promise he wouldn’t break for anything. “One day, one day only, and I promise I’ll go get Shiloh.”

  Kelly’s head dipped and shook, more a tremor than a nod, and he took a jerky step towards Owen. Unsure, Owen stretched out a hand, ready to catch the boy if he fell. At his movement, Kelly stumbled into a slumping run, crashing to a halt against Owen’s chest. His arms wrapped around the boy instinctively, holding him upright, as Kelly’s fingers wound into his shirt. The boy was crying, great whooping sobs of grief and relief, a dam of control that had been under pressure for so long it had finally shattered.

  “I got you.” Owen spoke the only words he could think of, carefully cradling the boy to him. “I got you.” He repeated the words, counting Kelly’s breaths, mentally gripping tightly to the single thread of control that was holding him together. “I got you.”

  “You—” Kelly hauled in a giant breath, his shoulders hitching up and down. “You promise?”

  “I promise you. Only hours from now I’ll be on my way. I’ll be on my way and I’ll do my best to bring her back. I’ll go and I’ll do my best.” Owen let his eyes slide closed, darkness swooping in around him, the wetness against his chest proof against the monsters that so often plagued him. “I’ve got you, and I promise you.” He settled back in his chair and let Kelly climb into his lap, curling up against him much as he had the pillows earlier, now with the extra barrier of Owen’s arms to hold the world at bay.

  As Owen swallowed back his own tears, listening to the boy continuing to weep, his thoughts weren’t what he’d expected. Instead of the I’m so fucked he might have thought only a day ago, his focus was on helping make everything about Kelly’s life better. Starting with bringing his little sister here, dragging her straight out of hell to do it if he had to.