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

by MariaLisa deMora

  “Because you’re smarter than I am, and you look at things differently. I go in, I see what I see. We go in,” —the emphasis was intentional— “we see so much more.” He scanned the room out of habit, then looked back at the tablet propped in front of the TV. “If I get in there and need anything, you’re only a subvocalization away, not a wait-until-I-extract-my-own-ass length of time. I’m—” He stared at her image and decided to lay it all out there, knowing it would be an abrupt change to an uncharacteristic amount of transparency. She’ll get it. If anyone could, it’s her. “I’ve been on my own during a lot of missions. Many of them, even if I’d had a handler in my ear, I woulda done the same damn thing anyway, regardless of the orders barked. There’re too damn many though where I’m still second-guessing myself, and that shit eats at me. I didn’t hate getting to know you. I think we work well together, and back there in the woods, I know for a fact we saw things the other missed or misread. I think I’m pretty damn good at my job now.” Her stare seemed less emotionless and more focused, but still lifted the hair on the back of his neck. “I think I’ll be better with you in my ear.”

  Owen clamped his lips shut and waited, a parade-rest form of forced stillness that he’d used on so many missions. This wasn’t unlike lying in a high hide, waiting on the target to turn a corner or take a single step into the clear. He was ready to jump into action in a nanosecond but could hold this position for hours if Alace needed that long to process.

  She didn’t.

  “I’ve decided I won’t do any more gigs, personally. I’m retiring from that side of the business, officially. As of now.”

  From offscreen, there was a relieved-sounding sigh, then a rustling, and Eric’s hand came into view, the backs of his fingers trailing down Alace’s cheek in a slow caress before disappearing back offscreen.

  “What you’re offering me feels like a good fit for this partnership, but you need to be sure.” She’d leaned into Eric’s touch, and now straightened her head, stare never wavering from the camera. “This work, this ‘mission’ as you’d call it. It’s been part of me for a long time. At one point, I truly didn’t have anything other than the work. Giving it up won’t be easy.” Her lips lifted for a second in an expression more grimace than smile. “The gigs were my life until I met this guy.” A head jerk indicated the side of the room where Eric waited. “And now I’ve got so much more to protect.” The muscles in her throat worked, but her voice was steady as she continued. “If you put me in your ear, give me a voice during the gigs, I don’t know if I’ll be able to give it up if you decide it won’t work.”

  Owen let his shoulders droop, a forced relaxation he didn’t truly feel. What Alace was doing was unheard of. Adrenaline junkies like them didn’t give up the fix voluntarily. There was no way in hell he could ever do that, no matter who might ask him to. If she was being honest about her motivation, though, Alace might be the only person he knew who could actually do it. The idea she’d get a vicarious thrill riding along on his missions was amusing, but as he studied her face, he realized she was deadly serious. She recognized she’d be trading one addiction for another and setting the tone for the rest of their partnership together.

  “What’s your middle name?” Owen’s question clearly surprised her, the dilation of her pupils giving that much away.

  “What? Why?”

  “What’s your middle name?” Owen leaned forwards an inch and added a strident tone to his repeat of the question, keeping their gazes locked through the electronic device.

  “I don’t have one. Why?” Alace shifted slightly, the movement abruptly terminated, but her discomfort had already been telegraphed.

  “If we’re gonna be besties, I think I should be able to use your middle name if I need to get your attention or call your ass out on bullshit.” Rough, masculine laughter rumbled through the speaker. It seemed the off-screen Eric did not disapprove of his tactic. Noted. “Me and Alace Sweets, besties.”

  Eric remained engaged, shooting back with, “You know she took my last name, right?” Muscles around Alace’s mouth tightened at the statement.

  “All the more reason to know her middle one.” Suspecting Eric could see him, even if the camera’s field of view didn’t extend that far, Owen adjusted his position to look towards where the man probably sat on the stool, a positioning that still didn’t entirely make sense. At her side but not equals didn’t strike him as acceptable for someone like Eric. “Help a brother out, man.”

  “She doesn’t have one.” A shadow on the wall lifted a shoulder, head angled to one side in a casual stance. Eric was comfortable with this exchange. Good. “No lie.”

  “Then I reserve the right to give her one. Alace Ward will work for now.” Owen reached out and picked up the tablet, bringing it closer to his face, returning his gaze to Alace. He liked the easiness he saw there, an acceptance of the careful joking he’d introduced. “I’m gonna roll. Tell me where to pick up the camera and earpiece. Goin’ with my gut, boss lady. I’m feeling a sense of urgency on this one.”

  “I’ll message you.” That was all Alace gave him before the video call disconnected.

  Owen grinned at the image of himself reflected on the tablet screen. Adopting the most Southern accent he could muster, he told his reflection, “She’s gonna be my best frand.”

  Laughing, he finished packing and exited the room, and once in the car cranked the engine, giving it only a moment to warm up before he was back on the road. The burner phone was plugged in and charging when it gave a soft, discreet ping indicating an incoming message. Gaze flicking ahead and back, Owen looked for the gleam of metal in places where it shouldn’t be. The last thing he needed was to get stopped by a local cop for using the phone while driving.

  Tapping the screen, he navigated to the text message and glanced down. Selecting the map link that had been sent, he enabled the directions and settled back into his seat, listening to the monotone voice telling him it was nearly an hour to his destination. That put it within thirty miles of the house, which was a good position to launch their op from.

  “I like her.” Owen rolled his shoulders, the pull from his ribs less than only a few hours ago. “She’ll do.”

  Working with Alace was a unique kind of thrill. She could manifest items seemingly from thin air, like the stash of goodies she’d had left in his car. “Or a pair of electronics that should be hard to come by yet turn out to be available within ten minutes of the request.” He shimmied in place, hands tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “Intoxicating.”

  The drop location for the devices was low-key scuzzy, the back room of a bar where all he had to do was walk in through the kitchen entrance. Without a word spoken, the man occupying that room looked him up and down with a quick nod, then tossed Owen a zipped plastic pouch before turning back to the wide griddle. Owen took the hint, swiveling to sidle out through the door, one eye on the cook while he surveyed the parking lot. Still empty.

  Returning to his car, he drove a couple of blocks away, pulled into a shopping center, and parked.

  Only then did he open the pouch, finding a tiny earwig in a protective case, a camera that looked shockingly familiar, a set of individually wrapped flesh-colored bandages, and a pair of clear glasses. In lieu of a helmet to secure the camera, it had come with a harness that would hold it stable against the side of his head; the connecting cable would snake down his back to a pack he would put on his belt. Easy peasy. His phone pinged, and he glanced down to see a message saying only, Call me.

  With the ringing on speaker, he was free to continue to fiddle with the camera, grinning at the tiny weight as he held it in his hand.

  “Which will you use?”

  No preamble, no lead-in, just straight to the chase with Alace. Owen shook his head. “Which?” He glanced at the glasses, seeing the tiny opening in the center of the nose piece. “Oh hell, glasses. All day long, the glasses.” He ignored her laughter as he lifted them from their case and found a lanya
rd underneath, intended to secure the glasses. “Why’d you do two options?”

  “Look at the backside of the larger device. It’s intended to clip to clothing in addition to being head-mounted. If you get into a position where the glasses break or get knocked off, it’s a good backup option.”

  The luxury of having what was needed on a mission was thrilling, and Owen laughed under his breath as he asked, “If I wanted an ORSIS T-5000 Tochnost, could you get me one?”

  “A Russian sniper rifle?”

  Owen blinked. “My estimation for you just went up by like a million points.” He scoffed lightly. “You just pull that from your giant brain, or what?”

  “Or what.” She didn’t laugh, but humor vibrated through her words. “I’ve got a voice search running on this call, and it pulled up the result while you were still talking.”

  “Holy crow. Okay, make that a billion points.” He shook his head. “You coulda played it off like you just happened to know the most elite sniper rifle in production today, but you gave up one of your secrets.” He leaned back in the car seat and smiled out the windshield. “Million billion.”

  “Is this you being relaxed around me? This humor and shit?”

  “If I say yes, will you admit we’re besties now?” Owen closed his eyes and shifted, finding a more comfortable position. “Because we totally are.”

  “Either camera will work. Both together is a better idea. The glasses connect to the throat mic and stream live, as long as there’s at least an LTE data connection. I’ve already checked the coverage maps; the house shouldn’t pose a problem. The more traditional camera stores to the box but also streams. It’s higher quality, so needs a better connection, which also won’t be a problem at the location.” Alace had swung right back into work mode, and Owen matched her change in trajectory.

  “I’ll use both. Do you have a heat detection overlay on the floorplan?”

  “Yeah. I can port that to the tablet now and we can go over it. There’s something wonky about what I’m seeing.”

  “Well, if Alace Ward says it’s wonky, I know that shit’s completely fucked up.”

  He caught her muttered “Jesus” and grinned.

  “Send away, boss lady.” The tablet dinged, and he looked over to see an image on the screen. “Let’s walk through this.”

  “I expected two signatures, at the most three. I see four.” When the image moved unexpectedly, Owen realized she’d not just sent the file but had tapped into the device and was currently controlling it. She’s all kinds of badass. “See the large dark spot in the center, that’s the stairwell. There’s an oddly placed wall at the bottom, but that’s the only structural anomaly I can find.” A floorplan flicked into existence, then became opaque, showing the yellow and orange blobs through. The darkness did line up with the stairs, but he frowned at the difference in hue. “There’s two anonymous signatures showing on the first floor.” She huffed in what sounded like annoyance. “I’ve got another pass scheduled in about ten minutes with much higher resolution. Should be able to tell male or female from that one. It wasn’t in sync, so I had to wait for the satellite to complete a rotation before I could retask it.”

  He blinked. She spoke so casually about redirecting a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment to look at a house, it took him aback. “And I thought I had contacts.”

  “Yeah, well.” There was a rustling on the phone, and he wondered if she had retreated from the chair to the bed. Considering what he thought the medical issue might be, he hoped she was taking it as easy as she could. Alace let out a growl of frustration. “When you’ve helped as many people as I have, you make some unique friends.”

  “No friend like me, though. Am I right?”

  She ignored his comment, saying, “I got access to some earlier footage.” The view changed on the tablet’s screen, and he watched as Alace flipped through a series of images. Two of the shapes moved around the building, appearing in various rooms throughout the period the footage covered. There was a third shape, slightly less concentrated, that stayed pretty much in place. There was slight shifting side to side, but he couldn’t discern any great amount of movement. Owen kept his mouth shut, waiting for Alace to show him what she’d found. Then three became four, and that fourth shape appeared in several images, just inside the main door, then into a bedroom, and then still in the bedroom but much less concentrated, becoming more like the third shape. “That ties to the time Todd was taken.”

  “You think that fourth figure is Worthson.” Not a question, Alace’s own statement said as much, but Owen wanted to verify.

  “I do.”

  “Then who is that third one?” He studied the image. “Can you roll backwards to the pictures where that third shifts a few inches to the side?” On demand, the images moved, finally pausing at the one he’d indicated. “Is that solar loading, maybe? Sunlight coming in through a window? Why would it be so dim, though. Doesn’t make any sense if it’s on the first floor of the house.” He reached out and touched the screen, grinning when it reacted. Quickly changing the page view of the floorplan overlay, he grunted when lines and colors matched again, but differently. “They’ve got a basement.”

  “Makes total sense if they moved Worthson to the basement. Still not sure what that other thing is, though. Don’t forget that we have two unaccounted for subjects with the mother and the grandfather, but since neither has been seen for years, it’s a slim chance it could be either of them.”

  Easily mapping distances given known standards for things like doors and stairs, he committed the layout to memory. “It’s vague enough in outline, it might be an overheating appliance, or even a furnace. Given the nighttime temps, it could be something like that. No sightings means deep graves somewhere, probably back in the woods.” He rearranged things to show the first floor, and memorized that, too. “Do you have outside imagery of the structure itself, and the surrounding buildings and approach?”

  “Yeah.” The view disappeared, then reappeared. “You done with this?” He grunted and it disappeared again, replaced a moment later by an overhead view. “I bought time on a drone earlier. My guy just sent this like ten minutes ago.”

  “A million million billion,” he muttered, watching the changing background in the video. It zoomed up a street that he saw turned into a cul-de-sac, not his favorite residential area layout because it only allowed for a single direct approach and egress. A car was backing from a driveway, and the drone gained altitude, dropping back down at a stomach-wrenching pace once past the vehicle. Whoever the pilot was, he knew his shit. It paused in front of the next house, and the image zoomed in on the street address, verifying the location, then the video methodically mapped the outside of the house. One story plus the basement, unlike most of its neighbors, the house appeared older than the surrounding residences. They’d had their roofs raised, added attached garages, eaten up available yard with expansions. This house was tiny in comparison. From the floorplans, he knew it held several rooms at ground level, two bedrooms with a Jack-and-Jill bathroom between, master bedroom with its own bathroom, a den overlooking the backyard, and an open-plan kitchen, dining, and casual living room that were lined up across the front of the house. “No windows into the basement, but lookie there.” He touched the screen and the video froze. “That was a window well once.” Right at ground level, there was an indentation in the foundation. “See? And another one nearer the corner.” Touching the video again caused it to continue, and he wasn’t surprised when it rounded that corner and he saw two more. “They’ve been closed off. From the weathering on the material, it was done a while ago.”

  “Whatever they did, the windows are no longer present, which means there’s no solar loading in the basement.” Alace sighed in his ear, and he analyzed the sound for tones of exhaustion, finding them. “What else do you need, Owen? Do you want to wait for dark to attempt entry?”

  “I’ve got a thirty-minute drive, which means I’ll get there just before sunset.
I’ll scope what I can—” He touched the video screen and exposed the player controls, using the rewind button and running the footage backwards until he was at the approach again. “What do you know about the houses around theirs? That one where the car just left, who is that?”

  Rustling, then tapping of keys meant she must be on a computer separate from the one connected to this tablet. He ran the footage forwards and backwards a few times, taking stock of the woman driving the car.

  “Single owner, she works an evening shift at a local hotel as hostess in their restaurant.” More tapping. “No kids, and her history doesn’t show an active boyfriend.” A pause, then lowly, “No vet bills since her dog died last year.”

  “That’s my hidey hole, then. I’ll gain entry to her house and use the proximity to the subject’s residence to figure out my next move. I’ll have you in my head, and you’ll see everything I see. We got this in the bag, Alace.”

  “I’ll monitor what I can until you get in place. I do see a low-level security system at your launch point, so you’ll have that to deal with.”

  “Got a make on the garage door opener? That’ll help cut down the time I spend idling in the driveway.” He laughed. “I have my tools, too.” She rattled off the name of a popular national brand and he grinned broadly. “Roger that, boss lady. I’ll let you know when I’m in place.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alace

  She hated this.

  Not the takedown portion of a gig, which was the culmination of hours of research and investigation. That was satisfying to the extreme.

  She hated being sidelined. Relegated to observer status.

  It was a necessary demotion, not just for the pregnancy, but because of her promise to Eric. I won’t knowingly lie to him, ever. Still, being downgraded to watcher status sucked ass.

  “Base, do you read me?”

  Owen’s question came through her headset loud and clear, so she flipped the microphone down, engaging it, and responded, “Roger that.”