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

by MariaLisa deMora

  “No, no.” She woke the computer, going through the usual routine to get logged into the system she needed. “I got this.”

  The satellite images she found were recent, timestamped the previous day. She accessed the ones she wanted, zooming in close and shuffling the picture around until she located the first clearing. From overhead, it looked the same as the day she’d walked down the trail back to the parking lot.

  Opening another window, she navigated to Owen’s folder again and opened his report. Making a note of the location, she returned to the overhead images and searched for one that covered the area. She zoomed in quicker this time, easing the image around until she saw a break in the tree cover. Scanning the screen, she saw nothing out of place, a flat field in the middle of a stretch of woods. She flipped over to the folder with Owen’s write-up and saw what she remembered. He’d left the half barrel in place as she’d instructed. Now, however, the clearing held nothing foreign like that. Nothing at all. She could see the outline of the holding pits, and what was probably the cache pit, but other than that there wasn’t anything exceptional about the clearing at all.

  Owen had been right. It had been an active field, and the killer had returned at some point in the past three days, putting it to bed.

  Now Owen wasn’t checking in.

  Fuck. She should have tagged his bag or something inside so she could find him now. Maybe this was how Regg had felt, what had led to him bugging her clothing and supplies? She shook her head. It didn’t matter. The fact was she couldn’t find Owen because she hadn’t. Had even gone so far as to tell him she wouldn’t do it.

  Something about the folder bothered her, and she navigated back to it, looking at the contents again. Nothing had changed. Since she’d left Owen in the forest, he’d logged in twice, once updating the document they used to share information, and once just to look around, maybe just as she was doing now.

  He’d logged in.

  Because I left him the satellite Wi-Fi.

  Which she could track, even if it wasn’t actively transmitting.

  In seconds, she’d accessed the system she needed, and it took only a few additional keystrokes to bring up a map. There was a blinking green dot on the map, hundreds of feet away from where she knew the established trail was. She turned on the topographic overlay and saw the dot was at the bottom of a ravine. It could be just the pack, but she didn’t truly believe that.

  Back to the satellite imagery, she found the correlating place and zoomed in as far as she could. Dammit. The tree canopy was too thick to see anything on ground level at the bottom of the ravine.

  Angling back in the chair, she tore her gaze from the screen and tipped her head back, staring at the textured ceiling overhead. Alace allowed her gaze to follow lines and whorls in the texturing, finding random patterns that required no effort to trace, tracking back and forth across a small section of the ceiling. The same basic patterns appeared in different segments, and she found her gaze drawn to one repeating pattern, an imperfection in the finishing tool perhaps, a particular twist of muscle in the movements required by the laborer. Similar to how she solved puzzles, finding the replicating complaint and zeroing in on the causative agent until it could be removed from the equation.

  She needed Owen out of the woods to go after Temple and save Todd from whatever the woman had planned for him.

  Planned wasn’t a mistaken conclusion. Mackie Temple had arrived at his home and entered using a code similar to the one Eric had used, her car parked in the garage protected from spying eyes but exposed to Todd when he’d driven in. He hadn’t been upset to see Mackie in his kitchen. Surprised, yes. Mad? Not at all. From that, Alace concluded she’d been a frequent enough visitor to have worn away the shock of Todd seeing her. She was currently listed as missing, and he was dating her sister with intent to take the relationship further. She was missing, and the subject of great distress for that sister/girlfriend, and he didn’t immediately go for his phone to call Maddy and relieve her distress.

  Was she really missing after all? Alace hadn’t mapped her trail to Utah, not closely. She’d followed up with the boyfriend and witnesses, but nothing leading up to the change in location. Maybe it was Maddy, not Mackie? What possible reason would Maddy have to drug and abduct Todd? That line of questioning led nowhere, because there was absolutely zero explanation Alace knew.

  Alace closed her eyes and sighed. The heat from Eric’s hands registered, curled around her calves, holding her legs steady in his lap.

  “How well do you know Todd?” Eric started to answer immediately, and she held up a hand to halt him. “Hear me out.” He made a sound and she pulled in a breath, hoping to get through the next few minutes without seeing the hard edge of his anger. “You’ve been friends forever, but do you know him behind closed doors? He’s dating Maddy, we both know that, you from meeting her and me from my investigation. Dating Maddy and hoping for more. But I found evidence he might be seeing Mackie, too. And I think Maddy found out. Just before Mackie moved away, there’s an argument and I surfaced a photo that showed him backing Mackie, not Maddy. The footage I looked at today, Eric, he was surprised when Mackie showed up at his house. Shocked, even. But, what he wasn’t was ecstatic that the missing sister of his girlfriend was standing in his kitchen. So I’ll ask you again—how well do you know Todd?”

  “Not as well as I thought, clearly.” The ache in Eric’s voice caused her stomach to clench, and Alace lifted her head to look at him. He was staring at her legs, gaze following the gentle up and down movement of his hands. “I thought Maddy was the one for him. That’s what he’s been saying, anyway. He’s known them forever. You knew their parents were friends?” Alace nodded, mentally marking it as yet another area she hadn’t investigated deeply enough. “So he’s known the twins since they were all kids. He and Maddy, though, they have been super close for the past few years. Timing was never quite right for them until now, but he’s carried a torch. Why would he risk that to have…what? A fling with Mackie? That doesn’t make sense.” Eric’s eyes drifted up, and their gazes locked together. “I can’t imagine him doing that, love. I really can’t. There’s got to be a different explanation for the picture you saw.”

  “And his reaction to her being in his home?”

  “Fuck, Alace. I don’t know. Maddy’s convinced Mackie’s boyfriend had something to do with her disappearance. If she’s not missing, then where has she been?”

  “I don’t know. I can see if I can find out. I’ve got to get my guy out of the woods first, so he can go after Todd. Whatever is going on, the way she attacked him doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that she’s firing on all cylinders.” Alace glanced at the clock on the computer, brows scrunching together at how late it had become. “I’ve got a couple of other things to follow up on. If I can’t get my guy, or I think it’s getting too late, I’ll activate someone else. First I have to be sure where she took him.”

  Eric continued holding her feet and legs as she rolled back towards the desk and computer. She was sitting sideways, twisting to reach the keys, but there was no way Alace would complain about the position. If Eric needed to touch her to remain in control, she’d give him every opportunity he wanted. Alace was about to minimize the tracking software when she realized the dot had moved. As if she’d done it with her mind, wishing and hoping Owen was still mobile, and poof—the tracking showed he’d traveled about a hundred feet. He was angling down the ravine, and studying the map closely, she saw the notch in the ridge he was headed towards. If he could get over that rise and stay on track towards the lot, he could cut two days off the trek out.

  Still. There was no guarantee he would be in any shape to go after Temple, and even if he made it to the car in record time, he was still hours away from where she needed him.

  A hunter named August Brooks would be her next choice to activate, and she knew he was one who’d do exactly as asked without question. Which was part of the issue she had with cueing him up for so
mething this sensitive. If he truly trusted and believed material presented in a brief, August wouldn’t be swayed, moving forwards with conviction towards the goal. He was like an ICBM in that fashion, with no recall button and no reset.

  A minimized window flashed at the bottom of the screen, showing activity.

  Alace somehow wasn’t surprised to see it was Owen’s assignment folder.

  ***

  Wilderness area

  The ground shook underneath their feet as the very air around them began pummeling against all exposed skin in rapid pulses. The replacement wig, their prized sacrificial covering, threatened to fly away in the face of the driving winds but was held in place with one hand.

  Chin lifted, their eyes stared overhead, wide and unblinking as a dark object plummeted towards them from the sky. Ominous, large enough to block out the sun, it slowed in descent, finally coming to rest only yards away.

  Their shirt and pants were plastered to the front of their body, fabrics stretched taut by the force of the downdrafts caused by the machine.

  The side yawned open, and they didn’t need any more invitation than that.

  With a quick step, they strode towards the noisy monster and climbed into the darkness inside.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Owen

  When he opened his eyes lying at the bottom of a gully folded into the surface of a mountainside, Owen took a few seconds to realize what had happened. The dried blood and tender-to-the-touch goose egg on the back of his head told part of the story, but his landing position more than a football field length downhill from the game trail he’d been following was another part of the answer. The what and how of his fall determined, he spent a few moments trying to sort out the why, finally deciding it mattered less. No matter if the edge of the trail had given way or his ankle rolled on an unfortunate stride—he was far more concerned with the condition of his body and pack to give it more effort than that.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and held it as he ran his hands along his ribs, finding an entire section where pressure against the skin made sweat bead along the back of his neck. Not broken, he made certain of that by palpating them enough to diagnose only bruising, but their current state didn’t make it easy to do anything like remove his pack or twist around to look for a water source. It was a struggle, but with the pack finally retrieved, he hunched over it as he waited for his breath to settle down; each reckless drawing in of air poked sharpened swords between his ribs.

  Delving into the depths of the pack, he found his food and water were undamaged, but of all the damned things to be broken, the tablet hadn’t survived. Not intact. The surface was shot through with cracks, and he grunted in disappointment at the loss. He didn’t even try to turn it on, digging back into the pack to find the satellite Wi-Fi Alace had left with him. That seemed unscathed, not even a scratch on the sides, and when he turned it on, the lights cycled in the normal fashion, finally landing on a steady amber that told him there were no available connections. Whatever network the device worked from was either blocked by the trees or the satellite wasn’t in orbital sync. Not entirely unexpected, given the remoteness of his location, but a definite damper on his mood on top of the unrelenting pain from his torso.

  Fortunately, the ribs were the bulk of his damage from the fall. He had a multitude of scrapes and bruises, but nothing else of note. Owen repacked the backpack and strapped it in place with effort. Then, using a nearby tree as a leaning post, he worked his way upright only to nearly collapse again, the rib pain now extending farther around his torso. Hands on his knees, he fought the overbalancing weight of the pack until he could stand a little straighter, avoiding landing on his face through sheer determination. Inch by inch, he adjusted until he hit the point where he could no longer ignore the throbbing, holding there while he caught his breath. Then, with gritted teeth, he pushed past the pain to fully upright, fingers gripping the bark of the tree tightly.

  It took him three hours to travel half a mile, the deadfalls and rock piles seeming to join forces to block his way. At least the movement loosened me up. He smirked, knowing better than to attempt a laugh, his shoulder pressed hard to a tree in exhaustion. He gave himself only a moment of respite. It was less than five minutes before he was moving again, getting closer to the parking lot with every wavering stride.

  “Time to camp.” The idea of relaxing into his hammock was overshadowed by the pain he knew would face him in the morning when it came time to exit the cocooning fabric, but right now he didn’t care. Food, water, painkillers, and sleep—that was the recipe to a more productive day tomorrow. He’d lost hours today unconscious at the bottom of the ravine, and as much as he’d tried to ignore the frequent bouts of dizziness that attacked as he bent and twisted, stepping under and over the deadfalls in his path, he’d field-treated enough concussions to recognize the signs in himself.

  Two hours later, he had a full belly, was well hydrated, and had cleaned the blood from his head wound, giving him a chance to finally settle down into the hammock. Owen had nearly drifted off to sleep when he remembered he needed to check the Wi-Fi again for a signal. Eying the backpack leaning close but clearly out of reach against a nearby tree, he evaluated the effort needed to get there from the hammock and extrapolated the amount of time it would take to regain this level of loose relaxation, and very clearly and distinctly said, “Fuck it,” just before he went to sleep.

  The next morning showed the wisdom and foresight he’d had in taking both a bottle of water and the painkillers to bed with him, because it took the maximum dose and nearly thirty minutes before he felt like attempting to get out of the hammock. It woulda been the same if I was in a tent. I’d just be layin’ on the sticks and rocks I wouldn’t have been assed to clear out before I set up. Once he had a fuel cube lit and a pan of water beginning to boil for coffee and hot cereal, he rose from his crouch and was pleased he didn’t stagger at all. That lasted only moments before tripping on air as he took the three strides to the backpack. “Dammit.”

  He retrieved the broken tablet and Wi-Fi device, placing them nearby as he reclaimed his position next to his cooking spot. Edge of a tarp under his ass, he settled with his back against a tree and sipped the hot coffee as he booted up the Wi-Fi, keeping one eye on the cycle of lights along the front edge while he poured a careful amount of water over the oatmeal mixture he’d measured into the second enamel mug. Setting his breakfast aside to steep, he huffed in surprise when he saw the signal had settled on green, indicating a strong connection to a satellite overhead.

  Finger to the button on the tablet, he held his breath as he pushed it gently, shocked when the screen lit up, the words on the welcome screen disjointed and fractured by the cracks spiderwebbing through the surface. The lock-screen of the tablet waited for his credentials, and Owen just as gently laid his thumb on the fingerprint scanner, grinning fiercely when it was accepted and the screen brightened. He watched as the device found the connection and a folder opened on the screen, a document automatically opening.

  He leaned closer, tilting his head to the side as he read what Alace had written to him. Only brief updates since he’d told her about the second field, followed by a series of demands of increasing intensity that he check in, unsurprising since he had basically fallen off the radar. Heh. Fallen.

  Owen rotated the tablet, the on-screen keyboard flipping around with the movement until he had the keys over the less cracked section of the screen. His first touch resulted in the screen darkening ominously, and he wondered how long he had before the touch recognition gave up the ghost. With that in mind, he sipped the rest of his coffee and ate while he sorted out in his head the report he needed to give, trimming it down to the most succinct debriefing he could.

  Dishes set to one side, Owen gripped the tip of his tongue between his front teeth and with one finger tentatively tapped out his report, then rotated the device so he could see the icon to save the document, touching it with a final motion.


  Third field found, retired like first. Means second is her active location. Yes, you were right, killer is female. It’s Mackie Temple. She showed on-trail, then at field. Not dressed for long hike, so base probably nearby ranger fire tower. She knew I was there, tracked me. HUNTED me. I evaded, was headed to trailhead bushwhack-style but descended ravine in unorthodox manner. I’m fineish, tablet much less so. Will continue to car. Full debrief soon.

  The folder indicated Alace had just been active, so she’d see his report right away unless she was in the process of moving on with her day. Owen looked at the battery meter with a frown. The tablet was draining much faster than normal, and he cursed his fall again.

  The document changed color, glowing briefly, and Owen saw a familiar light green cursor blinking at the end of Alace’s last update. His cursor lay after his closing punctuation and was blue. She was online and was reading what he’d written.

  The green cursor moved down line by line until a new paragraph opened.

  And Alace brought him up to speed on the fuckery that had been going on, with all the pieces that didn’t make any sense laid out in her direct way.

  Rotating the tablet so the on-screen keyboard was at the least-shattered end again, he mentally composed his response.

  Hours from location.

  He felt his face twist with distaste at what he had to say next. Few things bothered Owen more than not living up to his commitments, and telling Alace the truth would put him on the sidelines—given where he was and the condition of his ribs. His failure burned like an ember in his belly.

  Secondary assistance may be needed.

  The surface of the tablet flickered, dimming until the text on the screen was nearly unreadable. “Dammit.”

  Moving now. Tablet dying. Will keep Wi-Fi on. Not tracking me, my ass. Thanks, boss lady.

  Save icon tapped, he verified the changes had uploaded, then watched the screen. Alace’s cursor moved down and opened a new paragraph just as the surface went black.