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

by MariaLisa deMora

  The reporter named a coffee shop Alace knew, and the location was quickly agreed upon, the timing shifting to an hour from now to accommodate the need to secure a photographer.

  Before hanging up, Alace said, “One more thing, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes?” The one word was guarded and quiet, as if the woman thought Alace was already having second thoughts.

  “What’s your name? I can’t call you Jessica’s little sister in my head as we’re talking.”

  That husky laughter was disarming, and Alace understood it was a triggered thing used to defuse awkward situations. At least I have one tell to watch for. “Colleen Houghton. And I’m the older sister by about fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll see you there, Ms. Houghton.” Alace disconnected and keyed in a few final details to Eric, then looked up to find Owen and Doc both staring at her. “What?”

  Doc reached out with a shaking hand, silently asking for her to return the gesture. She did, and he clutched at her, weaving their fingers together, his grip painful in its intensity. “Matters more than you know, Alace.”

  “What?” She eyed Owen, who was staring at their clasped hands, a peculiar expression on his face. “Owen?”

  “You’re a better person than you’ll ever allow yourself to believe, Alace.” His gaze lifted to meet hers. “I’m proud to be your friend, you know that?”

  “Can we cover Kuellen in twenty minutes?” She untangled her hand from Doc’s. But before they fully separated, she gave his fingers a tiny squeeze she hoped told him how much his reaction meant to her. “That’s all I have before I need to leave.” She looked over her shoulder at the kids again. “I should change Lila before we head out.”

  “Kelly, is Lila still sleeping?” The boy’s head whipped around to look at Owen, and he glanced down, then back up, nodding. “Wake her up sweet and slow for Miss Alace? She needs to change her diaper before they leave.”

  “Awww. They gotta go already?” His pout was different from the guarded child Owen had described, and even as Alace considered this, it faded, the boy’s expression changing to one that was stoic in the extreme. “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll be back soon, Kelly.” Alace caught sight of one disbelieving eye behind the hank of hair that always seemed to be in his face; then he bent over Lila, his soft sing-song voice barely audible. “Kelly?” He looked back up, his finger held tight in Lila’s grip as he shook her hand back and forth gently. Alace crooked her pinky finger at him. “I promise.” She turned back to Owen, and his broad grin was immediately annoying. “What?”

  “Nothin’.” He tipped his chin down, and she saw the flash of teeth before he schooled his features. “About Kuellen, he can wait. He’s just a distributor, probably one of thousands. Maybe I can find his suppliers if I look that direction. Up to now, I’ve been focused on the content on his servers. Let me attack it from a different vector for a little bit.”

  “I’ll hold August for a day. We’ll see what the reporter gives us. Do you have names and dates I can copy down of the suspected deaths we’ll want to put in front of this Colleen?” She huffed out a sigh. “It’ll be fun to see how well she can keep up.”

  “Take care she doesn’t lap you, Alace.” Doc’s cautioning words made her bristle, then she looked at Owen, who appeared even more offended on her behalf. “I’m not saying she’s smarter than either of you, but don’t discount her acquired skills as an investigative reporter. She will be accustomed to look for the story behind the story. Calling out of the blue will be a flag, and anything you bring up could look suspect. She’ll consider everything from a personal vendetta against Ashworth to collaboration, or even whistleblowing if she can draw lines between you and anyone on the force. As someone who has had his fair share of interviews, trust me when I say giving her an hour to prepare means every question has three different outcomes in her mind. How will you broach the topic?”

  “Baby talk, introduce Eric, chat about books in general, segue to local history, news articles, allude to confidential interviews with male prostitutes, mention the community complaint without talking about the neighborhood, backed up by a calendar of events I can hand over. Followed by the family photo to accompany the article, a signed copy of my most recent book, and then Lila will need to feed which gives me a chance to bond with her via her sister, when she tells her sister I cut the interview short to tend to my child.” Tipping her head to one side, she gave him a real smile, the tiny quirk of her lips few people saw. “My strategy at a glance.”

  He swore quietly and shook his head. “Owen, you weren’t kidding.”

  “Told you she was scary smart.” Owen slapped Doc’s shoulder lightly, grinning and nodding like a maniac.

  Alace withdrew the smile and instead turned her flat, cold stare on the doctor, pulling on decades of dissociation to generate one of her most useful tools.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  ***

  Owen

  “Still waiting,” Owen called out before Doc rounded the doorframe into the office. Since Alace had left earlier, even knowing it would be hours before they’d hear anything, he and Doc had both been antsy, waiting to hear how it had gone from her perspective.

  “I know we are, you ass. I was coming in to ask about dinner.” Doc folded his arms across his chest, one shoulder leaned against the doorframe. “Kelly claims he’d like to have hot dogs, again. Wanna guess why?”

  “Shiloh asked for hot dogs.” Heels against the edge of the desk, Owen rocked his chair back on two legs. “I’m not a fan, personally. What would you prefer?”

  “Anything except hot dogs. I’ve got little in the fridge, though. What would you think about delivery?” Doc’s expression didn’t give anything away, but Owen knew the man was sensitive to their efforts to stay not just below radar but entirely off the grid. “Or, I could do a pickup instead. Pizza or chicken?”

  “I’m glad I don’t have a normal office chair.” Owen let the front legs drop back to the floor, the thud shaking up through him. “Or I’d have tipped over backwards, no doubt.” Pizza can be delivered. He liked how Doc had given him options not only for the food but for the acquisition method. “You volunteering to actually leave the house. I’m shocked.” Doc seemed to have no desire to learn the city so far. Owen could relate. Beyond the required trips to the grocery store and other places, neither of them had done much exploring. “Chicken.”

  “You got it.” Doc turned to the hallway but paused and turned back, looking at Owen over his shoulder. “I understand it now. I get it.”

  “You get what?” Hands hovering over the keyboard, he waited patiently for whatever it was Doc felt he had to communicate right now. Doc was like that. A man who could hold his peace for hours and days, but once he’d come to an insight, he’d beat down a door to explain.

  “How Alace can be good people, too.”

  “Alace is good people. Never doubt that. It’s truth, down to the iron in the earth. It’s my true north. I couldn’t do what I do without believing in her.” He turned his chair, legs catching on the rug he’d placed under the desk. Frustrated, he half stood and lifted the chair, placing it where he’d wanted. His gaze locked onto Doc the instant his ass hit the seat again. “If you believe in me, then you believe in Alace. There’s no middle ground, Darren. I thought you had my back already. Was I wrong?”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant at all.” Doc shook his head rapidly, staring at Owen, his expression filled with consternation. “I do. You’re not wrong. I absolutely do. I see my own role supporting everything you do, and nothing’s changed. Nothing. I just—” He eased into the room, one hand extended towards Owen. “Conceptually and intellectually I understood everything before I met her. I did. But now, meeting her. Did you see her in the kitchen? Did you see her at all? See how she reacted and instantly had a solution which is genius in design.”

  “I saw her.” Owen rested his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his thighs. “I know her
, inside out.”

  “She’s brilliant.” Doc scrubbed along his jaw with the edge of a hand. “Kelly told me how she was outside, too. She balanced her fears and desires for her own daughter’s safety and well-being against Kelly and the need she saw in him for affirmation of his caretaker role. She went with the kindhearted response. I think she’s empathetic to a fault, and yet clearly believes herself incapable of that same compassion.” His mouth twisted to the side. “I get it now, you know?”

  “I do know.” Owen pushed out a heavy breath. “I do. Thank you. Means a lot, man.”

  Doc stepped backwards, rapped his knuckles against the doorframe once, and disappeared up the hallway.

  Owen twisted to face the computer, elbow hooked over the back of the chair as he awkwardly tried to type on the keyboard. Laughing silently at his own efforts, he shifted the chair around and settled into place. “Time to see if my efforts paid off.” Ten minutes later, he heard the car engine rumble from the garage. As it died away, he listened intently for the kids, not hearing anything in the house. A glance at his phone showed a text confirming Doc had taken them with him.

  With the promise of complete focus in front of him for the next few minutes, he settled his headphones in place and logged into his secure server, from there to his secure VPN, and finally into an anonymizer system to access his messages from the darknet work boards. “Yaass.” He opened an email from one of the operatives he’d tapped to review footage, looking for identifiable individuals. This guy had come through for him in the past, and Owen expected nothing less now.

  He skimmed the shared document, hoping to get a sense of scale when it came to the kids. Not that it really mattered. One child on Kuellen’s stash was enough to damn him in Owen’s eyes, and Alace had already found multiple foster kids. At least none of those had been—

  Another message flashed into his Inbox from the same guy, with a different attachment. This one came with a narrative: Repeat actors raised suspicions. Found eight frequent fliers. Cataloged by location if available. Thought you’d want this, too.

  The garage door opening was audible through his headphones, and he glanced at the clock to find he’d been working for not quite an hour. He flicked a look at the doorway, then back to the computer screen. Saving the second document to one of his servers, he then made a copy of the shared document the guy couldn’t modify and backed out of his systems.

  Running footfalls preceded Shiloh by only seconds, and he turned to face the door, arms stretched wide. She rounded the corner at full speed, her arc bringing her directly to Owen, and he wrapped her in a hug, standing and twisting back and forth so her feet and legs swung wildly.

  “Dinner’s ready.” Doc was grinning at them from the doorway when Owen looked up, Kelly peering around Doc’s hip. “Bring the little monster with you when you come.”

  “She’s not a monster,” he argued, laughing when Shiloh immediately parroted the words, “I not a monster.”

  Doc’s arms raised zombielike, and he cackled. “You’re not the monster…” His stiff-legged walk covered ground, and he was on them before he finished with “I am.” Shiloh was sandwiched between them until Doc pretended to try to grip and drag her away from Owen, who dramatically protected and saved the little girl. With Kelly’s laughter ringing around them, Shiloh’s giggles in his ear, and Doc’s amused chuckles, Owen couldn’t help but grin at the rightness of the moment.

  After the meal and cleaning up the minimal dishes, he sat on one end of the couch while Doc occupied the other, kids sprawled between them. Kelly’s head was on Owen’s knee and Shiloh slumped against Doc’s side, leaving Owen relaxed, gently threading his fingers through Kelly’s heavy, thick hair. “Time for bed, kiddos.” With no argument from either, they slipped to the floor and headed to their rooms. He looked at Doc. “It isn’t supposed to be that easy, right?”

  “They’ll get there. At some point you’ll be silently wishing for the days of easy compliance.” Doc’s gentle gaze followed the kids to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “I’ll go help them with teeth and jammies. I know you’re dying to get back on that computer.”

  “Hey, it’s my work.” He didn’t argue the desire to get back into the reports he’d received. It’d be a lie Doc would pick up on, and he hated the idea of doing anything stupid that might create friction in their friendship.

  “No, it’s your calling.” Doc was walking along the back of the couch and touched Owen’s shoulder. “And it’s okay to be passionate about your calling.” He disappeared up the hallway, his words floating behind him. “I am.”

  Owen heaved himself off the couch, stretching as he made his way back to the office. Headphones on, he followed the normal log-in protocol, quickly finding his place in the shared report again, noting the last modified time matched his previous access. He glanced at the page count and sighed. Only twenty-two to go. Picking up with the next line of information, he worked his way through the remaining individual segments of the first report, flagging half a dozen for more research. Owen wavered, tempted to call it a night and go back out to see what Doc was doing after putting the kids to bed. The second report appeared to glow in the background, attached to the email, which defined what was likely the sickest of the offenders.

  “Fuck it, I have to know what we’re up against.” Resettling his headphones in place, he queued up a favorite work playlist, one that helped him focus because he knew every word, every riff, and every drum solo.

  The researcher had included multiple stills from each video, showing the abused child’s face as clearly as possible for identification, then focused on the abuser—many of whom wore masks—and the setting, drilling into the details that could provide clues for the actual site. Electric outlet plugs, lighting styles, knickknacks, even the style of shelves lining the walls were datapoints that would all lead back to a specific location.

  As he went through the first several reports, he found the children were all different. Boys and girls, tall and short, thin and chubby. The only constant was they were between five and eleven years old. The abusers ran the same gamut of variance in terms of body type, height and weight, hairy or bald, smooth or bearded. The settings were unique by individual, which meant every scene by the different abusers shared whatever props had been present at one of their previous scenes.

  Owen turned the page to the next set of images and froze.

  Shiloh’s face stared out at him, tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks.

  Shiloh.

  Frozen in his chair, he was locked on the picture, seeing her as if for the first time again. Her features too thin, nose beaky in her malnourished state, the collar around her neck resting heavily against her collarbones. Owen realized he could hear himself breathing, the noise rushing through his nose, filling the room. His headphones were on the floor across the room, ripped from the computer.

  The memorized weight of a blade rested in his palm, the balance of tang and handle a living force. A metallic scent of hot blood filled his nostrils, and he fought to keep the memory of taking tiny Shiloh through the door to her brother in the front of his mind.

  Owen stood, the chair threatening to topple backwards, salvaged by him reaching out quick as a snake to keep it upright. Storming through the doorway, he made a sharp turn up the hall towards where the kids slept, only to come up short at Shiloh’s room.

  Her pink unicorn nightlight cast enough dim illumination to show the empty bed, and panic clawed up his throat to obliterate his ability to take another breath. He whirled and reached for Kelly’s door, always cracked—like Owen’s it was never closed all the way in case Shiloh needed him during the night.

  A diminutive foot stuck out from underneath Kelly’s bed.

  Tiny, child-sized, and covered in delicate pink socks.

  Pink socks.

  Clean pink socks.

  The hold on his throat loosened enough to let a sip of air seep through.

  Tiny because she was small, not becau
se she was starved. Clean because she had a dresser bursting at the seams with new clothing.

  He pulled in another breath, this one deeper, the scents fading away until all he could smell was boy. Healthy, sweaty, safe—Kelly was safe.

  Shiloh is safe.

  Another inhale, ribs expanding more smoothly, shoulders lifting as muscles relaxed.

  My kids are both safe.

  Owen looked up the hallway and saw Doc’s door standing wide. That was a room normally closed tightly once the man went to bed, not inviting any nocturnal visitors. At the other end of the hallway, a door allowed a broad band of light to shine through, pinpointing Doc’s location.

  He stalked up the hallway, past his office to arrive in front of the room they’d set up as a home trauma unit, their multi-bedroom house a must to accommodate all they needed. A sturdy, movable table was pushed to one side, the angle of its wheels showing the direction from which it had come. It and the countertops along the walls were covered in containers of various sizes, each filled with medical supplies.

  Doc had a label maker in his hands, using his thumbs as if he were texting to input the data for the next identification label. He looked at Owen, offered a nod, then looked back down at the device in his hands. “Hey.” Doc’s greeting was soft and distracted, and some of the rigid bands around Owen’s chest eased a little more.

  “The pornographer…the guy I told you about.” Owen knew it wasn’t a complete sentence, knew it didn’t convey anything of the dark, rolling anger still rushing through him, but somehow Doc understood.

  “When are you going after him?” He gestured around the room. “I want to be prepared.”

  Prepared in case Owen needed assistance. There were no children at risk with this mission, not directly. It would be an intelligence-gathering foray, with an eye towards breaking Kuellen to expose his network of like-minded sick fucks. The stills from the abusers his researcher had branded “frequent fliers” made Owen believe they were a pedo ring who taped and broadcast their demented desires. Maybe even the ones who’d been buying sibling pairs. Finding Shiloh in the mix had set the idea in stone. He remembered speaking directly into the camera, talking to whoever had been watching on the other end.