Seeking Worthy Pursuits: A Dark Romantic Suspense Novel (Alace Sweets Book 2)

by MariaLisa deMora

  He tipped the wooden structure upside down and got close, angling his head so his cheek was perpendicular to the surface, much as Alace had done in the field earlier today. There were weathered scratches across the grain of the wood. Multiple lines of impressions, laid into the surface four at a time. Suddenly he realized what those mysterious markings were on top of the holding pens. He’d bet money that each was an access port, too small to exit through, or perhaps barred somehow, but a threat-free window or opening so the killer could watch his victims. Fuck. It was one thing to think maybe the killer forced them to dress in spandex for a performance and another to find a possible validation in that theory.

  He left the barrel as it was and went back to the rest of the stash.

  The small glass bowl and a spoon could have been used to feed the captives, but as Owen lifted them to look at the bottom of the bowl, he caught a faint whiff of diesel fuel. A study of the spoon confirmed it was discolored about halfway up the stem. He glanced across the tarp, not seeing what he expected. On his feet again, he stifled a groan as he stretched and looked at the fading light. He’d been hunched over the items long enough for his hike-stressed muscles to stiffen up slightly. Without a word to Alace, he took off at a trot through the woods and into the field, angling directly towards the pit. The covering lifted with little effort this time, and he heaved it open. Jumping down into the pit, he crouched and scoured the corners, finally seeing the tiny pieces of white he’d expected. They were the crumpled remains of Styrofoam. When he stood, Alace was right there, head cocked to the side as she stared at what he held. He flinched when she reached out, and at her narrowed gaze, he deposited them into her hand.

  She looked at them for a moment, then him, and then off towards the camp, as if she could see the items laid out on the tarp. “Homemade napalm?”

  Owen nodded.

  Alace turned on her heel and stalked away, back rigid, shoulders back.

  Oh, she’s pissed. He shivered as he climbed out of the pit and reseated the hatch in place, one eye always on her retreating form. A pissed Alace wasn’t something he knew how to deal with.

  He took his time returning to the camp, spending the brief walk turning over in his mind what he knew from his study of the cache. The killer dressed to fit his fantasy on site, which included clothing himself like a hillbilly in flannel and bib overalls. Overalls with a belt didn’t make sense, but that was the only thing the leather strap could be. The wig was both camouflage and trophy, built as it was from the scalps and heads of victims. It bugged Owen that it seemed to contain reminders of only three women, but maybe the killer was going for a certain look. It was at odds with the hillbilly clothing. He shook his head. I can’t expect everything to make sense right off the bat. The food stash was self-evident, no real explanation needed—portable, with a long shelf life, it was the bare minimum to extend, not sustain life. He hadn’t looked closely at the buckets, but the brown staining along the rim of one marked it as a probable toilet, the others likely transports or water containers.

  The napalm didn’t fit. Neither did the exercise wear.

  Stopping in the strip of land where the natural grasses failed to thrive, a ten-foot line demarking the end of the clearing and the beginning of where the trees owned the land, he stood in that place that was neither this nor that, and pulled out his phone.

  The undisturbed cache. Napalm equipment rested inside the buckets, laid on their side, the brown staining of the top bucket in the stack extending down the inside, proving his theory about its usage. Utilitarian, they were grouped by function. The half barrel filled in a corner of the pit, food in an opposite corner. The clothing was all in a single stack resting on what looked to be a large, flat box he didn’t remember seeing.

  He flipped ahead in the photos to the ones he’d taken of Alace’s arrangement. Her stacks were arranged as clothing, strap to the side, food with the bowl and spoon, and buckets beside the half barrel. The box wasn’t in the picture.

  The chill of the shadows made him shiver, and he glanced up to see the sun balancing at the edge of the earth, brilliance shining through the trees in streams divided by those immovable sentinels. They’d lose the light in minutes.

  He finished covering the distance to camp with long strides. Fists on his hips, he scanned the contents of the tarp, verifying the absence of the box before he looked at Alace, stretched out in her hammock, the top edges curling in so he could scarcely make out her face.

  “What was in the box?”

  “What’s the leather for?”

  Tit for tat? Really? He bit, letting her set the hook of promised information against his desire to know. “Belt. Weird as hell buckling system with those laces, but I think it’s a belt.” She was silent, and he took in three slow breaths before the steady glint of her eyes was interrupted by a blink.

  “Flower seeds. Full packets as well as empty ones. What do you think about the buckets?”

  Buckets? They had a clear usage in his mind. Three total, one was a toilet, the other two for storage or transport. He gave her the bare minimum to count as an answer. “Functional usage, nothing special.” He thought about the half barrel, remembering the gritty feel of the interior wood against the tips of his fingers. “Was the half barrel used as a planter?” The round impressions on each pit where the killer rested the barrel, they made more sense if there was soil inside, weighting it heavily.

  “Maybe.” She was quick with that answer. Too quick, which meant he’d missed something about the barrel. Dammit. “Napalm?”

  Owen jerked his chin up in acknowledgement. “The glass bowl smelled like diesel, probably because it was never washed. Diesel evaporates but leaves a residue. What’s up with the spandex leggings and tanks?”

  “Layering.” Alace shifted slightly, the hammock gently swaying back and forth. “You look at the wig?” The swaying became more pronounced as she sat upright, then flung her legs over the side and dug her toes into the dirt, stopping the motion. Her lips were again a strained line, clamped tightly together. Almost as if she were fighting nausea, and not for the first time.

  “I did. You match the vics with the samples?” Her head moved as she turned her flat gaze on him. That’d be a no. He gave her the names of the ones he suspected. “Weird how he doesn’t harvest from each of them. If it was a trophy, I’d expect it to be multicolored with dozens of different lengths.” She came out of the hammock and toed into her camp shoes, then wordlessly walked off into the trees.

  Owen stared after her. Guess sharing time’s over. “Good talk,” he muttered.

  Snug under his covers, thirty minutes later he watched her return to the darkened campsite. She bent over her backpack, then approached the stack of wood she’d placed in a crude fire ring and crouched. A flickering light accompanied the quiet click of a lighter, and she quickly set the kindling afire. The well-known sounds of burning wood filled the air, the crackling advancement of destruction sending streams of cinders to the ground as it tore out of control.

  Owen blinked and reality reasserted itself.

  The tiny flames crept along the kindling slowly, not at all the conflagration he’d seen in his mind. He shifted and turned, putting his back to the fire as he tried to ignore it. The sounds were unceasing, working their way into his ears no matter how hard he tried to cover them, how tightly he clamped his fists to the sides of his head.

  “Owen, you okay?”

  Oh, no. She didn’t get to trigger him and then act all concerned. Without filtering his words, he flung that worry back at her, using false care as a toxin. “Are you okay, Alace?”

  She stripped his anger away with a single word. “No.”

  Awkward in the hammock now, he threw himself into contorted positions to turn and face her. “What?”

  “I keep feeling sick.” That gaze settled on him, the dancing light from the fire giving her expression an uncertain cast he never expected to see on her face. “I was going to tell you in the morning, talk through
what your plans would be for the rest of your investigation before I headed back to the parking lot.”

  At her statement, something in his chest settled, not even having announced it was awry. From her earlier reaction, he knew when he’d shown up without warning she’d felt threatened and he’d lost a certain measure of her trust. When he’d explained he didn’t quite trust her, he’d lost a little of her consideration for him. When he’d matched her in reviewing the cache, he’d earned a tiny bit of her ire. All of those had been weighing on him, consuming energy as he turned it over and over, trying to find a way to win it all back. By her telling him she would be leaving this mission up to him, it was like she’d pushed a reset button, returning to him everything he thought he’d lost.

  Her stare was tangible, pressing heavily on him and demanding he answer her earlier question. Owen gave in to the inevitable, approaching it from an angle where he wouldn't have to admit to weakness. That simply felt too dangerous around her.

  “I was down in Colombia. I took out my mark on target and within the timeframe demanded. Did my job, you know? But, before I could get the proof required, the jefe’s men set fire to the compound.” He paused and swallowed, beating back the remembered taste of ash on the wind. “Without evacuating it.” Another pause, this longer, hoping she’d give him an indication she understood. “I don’t like fire much.”

  Their gazes locked and she nodded. Then she leaned forwards very deliberately, never looking away as she stirred the fire with a stick, causing sparks to shoot high in the air, giving the flames more life so they flared and danced, knowingly filling the space between them with the thing that most frightened him.

  And that, my friends, is Alace Sweets in a nutshell, he thought.

  ***

  Alace

  Squinting through the opening of the hammock, Alace was treated to the changing brilliance of the stars, followed by the first rosy tints of the sky announcing the sun’s imminent arrival. She didn’t bother checking the time. It didn’t matter here.

  Owen still slept, which should be no surprise given the length of time it had taken for him to surrender to his exhaustion the previous evening. The man had tried valiantly to remain still, but even a softly cleared throat and the huff of a frustrated sigh had betrayed his lack of slumber. She’d fallen asleep before him, and now she was up before him, which was fine.

  The rolling in her stomach hadn’t yet begun, but from the acid in her mouth, it wouldn’t be long. Better to wrestle her way out of the hammock now, before it became a desperate sprint to gain privacy.

  The moment she inclined her torso off the hammock, the nausea hit, instinctive swallowing keeping things at bay as she extricated herself from the fabric. She made it three running strides into the trees before her stomach betrayed her. The retching seemed to be unending, a running undulation of her body in reaction to the tiny being now growing in her middle.

  A baby.

  Eric would be pleased. There was no doubt in her mind about his reaction at least. They might not have been a couple for long, but the connection was solid, his faith in her unwavering. He accepted her as she was, no trying to change her or adjust things to fit into his life before. He’d willingly taken on all of her, and she’d be forever grateful.

  A child limited her in ways she hadn’t considered. Finding the spotting in her panties the previous day had shocked her, a seeming betrayal by a body that had never let her down before. This nausea, morning sickness by her reckoning that didn’t restrict itself to the actual morning, was another. An uncontrollable reaction that was not only uncomfortable but made her furious.

  I should apologize to Owen, she thought, as she evaluated the receding wave of nausea. Done for now, but likely to resurface if she didn’t get something light in her stomach. Most of her anger yesterday hadn’t been because of him, even if he’d wound up the target. She wouldn’t, but even considering the apology was a step away from where she would have been standing a year ago.

  Wood striking wood behind her was worthy of a glance, and she watched Owen stack sticks into a log cabin square, a less intricate arrangement than she’d used last night but perfectly serviceable for a small, morning fire. He struck flint on steel, the muscles and tendons in his jaw standing out in relief, pulled tight. The story he’d shared ran through her head, and she imagined the memories he had to ruthlessly suppress to be able to kindle a fire. Saliva pooled behind her teeth, and she spat it to the ground with a thrust of her tongue. A swipe of the back of her hand across her lips was all the cleanup needed; she’d managed to bend over far enough to not even spatter on her bare toes. She retreated to her pack and grabbed her toiletries, slipping her camp shoes on before going deeper into the woods to take care of the rest of her business.

  By the time she returned to their camp, the dry wood was burning brightly, a welcome warmth already radiating from the fire.

  Owen grunted at her. Fully dressed, he hunched over his pack as he returned various items to their normal storage spots. Their joint food bags had already been retrieved from where they’d hung them in a tree, and his camp stove was ready with a capsule of fuel, waiting on something to cook.

  Alace grabbed her food bag and took out four packets of oatmeal, then a full package of jerky. She could afford to be generous since she had only a day’s trek to return to her car. “Here.” She thrust the food towards him with an unneeded explanation. “Your pan’s bigger.” Another reach to her pack, and she returned with a water container. He was staring up at her, the look on his face bland and blank, hiding any emotion he felt towards her offerings. She decided to add in a personal plea. For a man like Owen, a born caregiver who hadn’t yet realized why he did the things he was driven to do, it would be something he couldn’t ignore. “Feed me.”

  Their positions didn’t change. Still, a sense of static electricity built up along her skin, standing hair on end all over her body. Then he broke it with an easy smile, lines close to the corners of his mouth rounding in an echo that said he smiled all the time. It took a moment to reach his eyes though, and she watched with interest as he consciously engaged the muscles there, curving his eyes over rising cheeks. If she didn’t know better, didn’t know him as the consummate actor he was, she could believe her request had tripped his trigger into happyland.

  The tension in his shoulders and arms put the lie to that. He took the food and water from her hands, and she was aware how carefully he handled the items, ensuring he didn’t touch her in the process. Fear. She breathed deeply, catching a whiff of more than unwashed body, the acrid stench of stress-sweat confirming her thoughts.

  “Nausea isn’t any worse, but I’m still going to leave you to it today.” Moving deliberately, she turned her back to Owen, ignoring the prickle of gooseflesh all along her arms. She might trust him intellectually, knowing in her head that she wasn’t his mark, but her body protested allowing a threat to be this close and unobserved. The survival instincts she’d spent decades honing exploded with a klaxon blare of warning. If he’d noticed her reaction, she didn’t see it when she turned around, angling to sit in the hammock, stilling the swinging movement with her feet against the ground.

  “Okay.” His apparent focus fixed firmly on the pan of cooking oatmeal, he had fingers and knife flying as he minced pieces of jerky into the mixture. “Anything in particular you’d advise me to watch for?”

  “Another six miles or so there’s a second field to the north of the trail. You’ll have to bushwhack for half a mile or more to get to it. I marked it on the map in your packet. It’s a pretty big file, so you should download the update before I go, use my connection.” An involuntary tensing of the muscles near his eyes. Something in what she’d said was unwelcome. Reviewing her statement, she thought she found the reason. The question was whether she should address it directly or beat around the bush. A flash of her dreams last night rolled through her head, the wash of red across her mind’s eye stark and jarring. Direct it is.

  “T
he download doesn’t include any tracking scripting.” An aborted glance towards her highlighted how correct her guess had been. “Owen.” With harsh emphasis on both syllables of his name, she leaned forwards slightly and waited impatiently until he lifted his gaze and looked directly at her. “My old handler used trackers on me without my knowledge. It ruined the relationship.” An understatement if ever there was one, and for a moment, her memories swept in from that night not long in the past when she’d confronted that handler—the man she’d thought her friend: Regg—the finality of smoke rising in the distance, reflected as a dwindling column in the rearview mirror of her gig-worthy junker. “I value your contributions too much to risk setting us down that kind of path. I’ve been upfront with you about what tracking elements I’ve included in any items provided or software required to do your job. You can trust me.” It always came down to such a simple, single concept. Trust, the confidence that what another person did, or said, or offered was the truth. Faith. “And I believe I can trust you.”

  Owen’s gaze was unwavering, locked on her face, but she noted his hands didn’t slow, the knife flashing and moving in motions of unadulterated confidence. “Okay, boss lady.” He blinked, and the slant of his shoulders changed, lowering the slightest amount, a signal that whatever else he was going to say, he was just a bit more comfortable with her at least. “Ma’am.”

  Alace didn’t try to hide her smile of relief.

  That didn’t stop her from drawing the knife from her ankle sheath and flicking it towards him, tang driving into the ground inches from the sole of his boot, handle quivering in place. “I think my knife’s sharper. Give it a try.”