Alace

“I get it.” She wanted to put this behind them, wanted to let Eric know she wasn’t upset over his display outside. She also wanted to do this without him mentioning where she’d been. After seeing Regg’s house, and knowing the resources upon which he could draw, she wouldn’t put it past him to have had Eric’s house bugged. Her whole array of countermeasures up to this point required the only devices be in her things. Now? All bets were off. If Regg were listening, he would know she’d been gone, but not where.

The door closed behind them, shutting out the world, and she was surrounded in Eric. His scent in her nose, his body under her hands, his home protecting them both. Lifting to her toes, she placed her mouth to his ear and breathed, “Not safe,” hoping he would understand.

Proving once again that he was brilliant and in tune with her, Eric nodded, turning his neck to place his mouth to the side of her head. His response was a simple “Okay.” Then he lifted her, hands under her ass, one palm tracing the back of her leg as he wrapped it around his waist. “Fuck, I missed you, baby.” He didn’t have to say it, but his actions showed her the trust she’d worked so hard to gain remained, even after her absence, even after everything.

Palm threading up the back of his neck, she used her fingertips to bring his head down, meeting his mouth in a blistering kiss. He deepened it, and then deepened it again, thrusting in her mouth, toying and playing with her tongue as he kissed her. He broke away with a groan and pressed his forehead to hers. “Wanna go upstairs?” Evidence of his desire wedged hot and rigid against her, and she arched her back, rubbing up and down slowly, smiling as his pupils dilated, lids dropping to half-mast. “That a yes?” He snaked a hand down her back, flattening his palm at the small of her back and holding her in place as he ground against her. “God, I hope it’s a yes.”

“Yes.” She ran her fingers through his hair and then gripped, holding tight as her head dropped back. He took the movement as the invitation it was intended to be, and she felt his mouth hit her neck, hot and soft as his lips worked along her skin, then a flash of hard as he teased with the edges of teeth, threatening a bite she’d welcome.

“Are you attached to these jeans?” His hand settled on her ass again, and she felt his fingertips tracing along the seam, pushing and pulling at the fabric. “Are they your lucky pants?”

She grinned. “Yes.” Bringing her head upright, she gave him a mock glare. “Don’t even think about it.” One night in Malibu he’d ruined her favorite pair of leggings, ripping the seam between her legs so he could fuck her hard and fast, bent over the edge of a park table, uncaring who might see. He’d laughed when she complained while tying the sleeves of his shirt around her waist, letting the fabric drape over her ass, hiding the telltale damage, telling her that he liked them, too, since he’d gotten lucky while she wore them.

That was one of the things she loved about Eric. As staid as one might think his profession might make him, he had a definite wild side that backed up the man he’d appeared to be from the first night they’d met.

“Damn.” He jostled her as he cleared the first three stairs in a jump, then carried her to his bedroom where he proceeded to take her jeans off without ripping them.

But only barely.

It was the next morning before she broached the topic of Regg, and even then, she only did so from an oblique angle, giving her words extra consideration. They were in the kitchen standing side by side near the coffee maker, lifting cups in companionable silence. “Can you arrange to be just mine for a couple of days?”

He bumped her shoulder with a chuckle. “I’m yours, baby. Anytime, anywhere. You want me, you got me.”

Alace grinned, flicking him a glance under her lashes. She shook her head at his easy teasing, liking how it made her feel even while she refused to consider the heat building in her chest at his words. “Like, can you take off work and just be with me?”

“I can do that.” His easy agreement had her leaning close, chin lifted. He didn’t make her wait, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. “My pleasure, baby.” His murmured words vibrated against her lips, and she kissed him this time, softly.

“Text me and let me know when?” She knew he’d have to shuffle things to open time in his schedule. Eric was good at his job, and busy. She recognized the heavy load he carried from the amount of work brought home to tackle as they lounged on the couch. It would probably take him at least a couple of days to arrange something, move things around. “I’m going to run downtown today. You need me to pick you up anything?” Downtown Denver was a smorgasbord of shops and stores, several of which sold exactly the kind of bug sweepers she needed to get her hands on. She would also make some personal purchases in preparation for the trip she’d planned.

They couldn’t talk about Regg here. Even sweeping the house wouldn’t give her the kind of confidence she’d need to tackle the topics beating at the back of her throat, begging her to confide their secrets. Hell, most of the things I’ve already talked about in this house would earn me life and put Eric on the fast track to disbarment. She wouldn’t do that, couldn’t put him at risk. He needs to be above reproach.

“When I come home tonight, I’ll be all yours until Monday.” Alace’s neck twisted, and she stared at him in surprise. The corner of his mouth quirked up and he smirked, the look sinfully attractive on him. “What?”

“Just like that?”

As with everything Eric had done, he made it just that easy. “Yes.”

One word, she thought, leaning over to kiss him.

***

Alace beat Eric home by less than an hour, still enough time to put everything into place. She’d purchased three days’ worth of clothing for them both, and used an app on a café kiosk computer to rent a mountain cabin under an alias purchased from who she was now thinking of as her new paper guy. She also paid cash for another junker, trading in the one she’d been driving since it had been out of her sight while she was at Regg’s house. That acquisition was probably overkill, but then again, the four bugs sitting wrapped in foil on Eric’s kitchen table might tell a different tale. Bugs this time, listening devices, not trackers. The foil wasn’t the sexiest solution, but it was a quick and reliable one.

The technology purchased today had worked well, providing silent indicators as she tracked down the devices. Alace frowned, then let the expression smooth from her face. Nothing to worry about. I have everything covered. Given the location of the bugs, Regg had likely brokered a deal with a local guy who must have felt Eric was the real target, regardless his instructions. Eric’s study, the handset for the phone also in that room, the kitchen, and living room were the locations for the bugs. She’d spent a lot of time in two rooms in this house, as well as the outside patio. Those being the bedroom and living room. Only one of her favorite places had been targeted. She scoffed softly. Amateurs. A pro would always cover the bedroom. More secrets exchanged lips there than any other room.

She heard Eric’s car pull into the drive and reached out, watching as her fingers curled around the package of bugs, sweeping it from the counter and into the bag with the rest of her things from Regg. They would all be finding a different home in about thirty minutes, and it was likely Regg would be in a frothing rage soon after.

Alace stared at the display on the phone one last time before removing the battery.

No back trail to trace. The only thing she needed to do now was convince Eric to take her newly acquired car. Oh, and strip to his birthday suit in the back seat.

Easy, she thought, then laughed.

***

What will he do? That thought circled through Alace’s head, gaining volume with every repetition. Now that he’s learned what I am? What I’ve been? She stared at Eric, his expression showing that his lingering frustration with her hadn’t left him. She hesitated. If he were already angry or regretting bringing her into his life, the knowledge she’d divulged might be all it took to tip things to the point where he washed his hands of her.

She cleared her throat, wincing as it burned with a dry rasp. She’d been talking for nearly two hours without pause. No letting him get a word in, no stopping for a break—it had been something she needed to purge from her psyche, needed to get it all out, empty herself, and pray there would be enough left of her to go on if Eric stood and walked out the door.

“And that’s…that’s it.” She swallowed, tongue drier than her throat had been, the click of her efforts uselessly loud in the silence. “That’s who I am.” I don’t know what else to be.

Alace became hyperaware of her breathing. Tiny sips of air in through her nose, and back out, lips closed tight to hold in everything else she wanted to say. All the feelings that had no place in this discussion, because before they went there, Eric had to understand what she’d learned.

I’m a monster.

She’d killed people. More lives taken than her hands could hold. And for what? Why? On the say-so of a man who had played her for a fool. A deadly fool, and a tool he’d wielded with surgical precision, casting her on contracted waters and reeling in blood money.

Eric stared at her from his seat near the cold fireplace. After dropping the bags of contaminated goods at a clothing donation box, she’d driven them high into the mountains, following printed directions to find the remote road that led to the cabin, both their phones left at Eric’s home. Their drive had been silent, and she’d been thankful Eric had read her mood so accurately. She’d needed that time to compose both her words and emotions, making it so she could reel off the details of everything learned during her trip out east.

Eric spoke, his expressionless voice huge in the empty space, no wall hangings or decorations to soften the sound. “Are you done?”

She nodded, and he stared, eyes never leaving her face. “Yeah. That’s all I had to say.” What more does he want to hear? A pedigree of the death dealt out at her hand?

“No, Alace.” He’d never sounded this cold. Not once. Not since she’d met him. Eric had always held warmth and softness in his voice for her. This is it. She angled her chin down, eyes moving, gaze tracing along the edges of a floorboard, tiny cracks in the wood fibers exploding around a nailhead. Damaged by the very thing holding it secure. “I asked you if you’re done.” She nodded, indicating both acknowledgment of his inquiry and confirmation he’d heard her correctly. “Alace, look at me.”

She rolled her lips, then licked them, finding no relief from the terror that bound her throat tightly. Everything felt so fucking precarious, like it could fall apart, the beauty of an autumn leaf crushed under the weight of her life. He moved then, just shifting one foot back as if he were preparing to rise, and she flinched, nearly falling from her perch on the tall stool by the counter. She’d chosen this position because it had no escape routes. There was a single door into the cabin, and Eric was nearest that opening. He could and would stop her from leaving if he wanted to, and she’d needed to know there wasn’t an easy out from what she had to do.

“Alace.” Pitched an octave lower, he called her name. “Are you done?” The emphasis on the final word finally hit her, and she darted a glance at his face, expecting derision and an ugly hatred, finding instead his expression held caution instead. The question wasn’t if she were done speaking, which she was, as her mouth was tied tight, fear of losing everything she’d ever wanted holding her mute. No, Eric was asking if she was done.

Locking her gaze to his, she nodded slowly, giving every slight movement the weight of a life-changing decision made wedged in a tree in Regg’s neighbor’s yard. I am. I can’t go back there, not with this fear lodged in my gut. I’d make a million mistakes, and I’d die. I’d lose you. I am so very done. She didn’t utter a word, didn’t say any of what was speeding through her mind, but kept her focus on his face, waiting.

“Alace.” He shifted in the chair again, feet angled farther from the seat, knees spreading as the thick muscles of his thighs tightened and bunched. He kept his hands on the arms, and she watched his fingers dig into the leather and wood, the relentless grip leaving his knuckles white, bloodless. “Come here, baby.”

She unwound her feet from the legs of the stool and felt for the floor with her toes, her body somehow expecting it to be gone, surprised into a stumble when it remained in the same place she’d left it. One hand on the stool to stop its fall, she let it settle back onto all four legs before she took a step. One step became two, and then she was running across the distance, watching in disbelief as his arms lifted and he leaned forwards to scoop her up. Then she was settled on his lap, burrowing close, taking comfort in his hold. I never want to leave him again.

He held her, the sobs ripping through her as the scorching mix of relief and horror flooded her veins. She’d done it, told him the fear that had rooted inside her as she watched a tiny screen. In moments, her belief in Regg and what they’d done together had eroded, gone and falling away like rust as he blatantly tried to manipulate her. Everything she’d thought a firm anchor in her world gone, setting her adrift with a sudden belief she’d done so much wrong. Evil.

Fingers twisted in his shirt, she held tight, Eric’s arms secure around her. She cried and tried to explain, managing only partial sentences garbled with her pain. “Their families…someone’s father…it was me…” She lifted her shoulders, wrenching in a breath that burned the back of her throat, bringing with it the stench of her own fear. “If I was wrong, what does that make me?”

“Are you a sniper? Taking care of things from so far away you can’t even make out details?” Her body jolted with his question, and she shook her head, leaning forward to bury her face against his chest, pulling in what might be her final breath filled with the scent of him. “No, you aren’t someone who stayed removed and followed orders. No soldier, you’ve always been an active participant in these ‘gigs,’ as you call them.” She stilled, swallowing past the lump in her throat, not sure where he was going with this. “Did you ever, one single time, ever in your life take out someone without placing yourself in their life in some way?” She shook her head, coming to rest with her cheek to his chest, his heartbeat thudding fast in her ear. “Not one single time? You always got close?”

He paused for a moment, and she assumed he wanted an answer. She gave him the cold truth. Two minutes and forty-seven seconds. “I always made it personal.”

“And you could make it personal because you found out for yourself what they were. What they did. Who their victims were. It became personal because you lived in some way what they had done. Am I right?” His logic resonated, and a glimmer of hope danced along the edges of his words. “You never took Regg’s word for it, did you? You always, always did your own research. Boots on the ground, you dug in until you found something to support what he’d told you.” She nodded, eyes flooding with fresh tears. He was right, and she’d somehow lost that perspective, drowning in her fear that she’d become the bogeyman. “Did you ever walk away? Tell him he got it wrong?”

Her head jerked up, and she gasped, hands fisted in his shirt thudding against his chest at the realization. “I did. I did. More than once. The first one he argued, God, how he argued. But he had the wrong person. I knew it. I knew it, Eric. It wasn’t the wife who’d killed their foster kids. It was the husband’s brother.”

She was dizzy, memories slamming into her. “Oh my God. There were more, I remember them. I remember them, now. Thank you.” One of his arms loosened and his hand came up, cradling the back of her head and pushing her face into his neck. “I did. I make certain. I never told him, but I always make certain.” She shuddered convulsively and sobbed, the release of her fears nearly as painful as their realization.

“Shhhh, baby.” Eric’s words and hands soothed her, erasing stroke by stroke the tense anxiety that had lived in her bones for days. “I got you.” He kissed the side of her face, lips sliding through the sheets of tears flowing from her eyes. “My Alace.”

***

Eric

It had taken hours, but Alace had finally calmed enough to tell him about the others, as she called them. The marks she’d turned away from. After her revelation in this Regg’s backyard—and Eric wished with everything inside him that she’d trusted him before now so he could have been there for her, but the past was past, and they had to focus on the now—she’d only considered the…successes. Is success the right word? He shook his head, not wanting to delve too deeply into the things that covered.

He knew what she did. Wasn’t a fool, so he’d realized long ago what she was. An assassin. A vigilante, delivering sentences, punishment dealt out by a tiny damaged woman who somehow had convinced herself to become both judge and jury for people who slipped through the cracks of the judicial system. Executioner, too.

He’d been surprised by her response when he got home from work, anticipating her morning request had covered a need for days where they wouldn’t leave the bed for anything other than necessities. Then, she’d been waiting. Met him in the driveway and handed him a note that said she had everything taken care of, they were going away for the weekend, and, oh yeah, by the way, she was afraid they were being watched. He’d changed clothes in the back seat as she drove through the rural outskirts of town, clambering over the seat and into the front when he finished and shoved everything, including skivvies and a favorite pair of shoes, into a bag.

Her discarding their things had hit him with a heavy sense of dread. Somehow the action made everything seem more real, especially since it was only after that she spoke, telling him tersely they had another two hours to get to the cabin. Eric had tried to read her, wanting to be supportive of something that mattered but he couldn’t understand. She’d been taut, drawn tight. A thick dread had filled the air until it was suffocating. Since she seemed to need it, he gave her silence for the remainder of their drive, reaching over to rest his hand just above her knee, feeling her relax as the miles rolled past.

At the cabin, he had forced himself to sit and listen to a brutal litany of events so incredible as to be absurd, and yet he believed her. As he had with everything she’d shared with him, he believed her. Somewhere in the middle of her recitation, his head had made the shift from Alace’s boyfriend to the lawyer he’d been for so long. Not seeking something prosecutable, but simply seeing the cause and effect in everything she spoke about, drawing different conclusions based on the evidence presented. He could see her points, could empathize with her on many of them, but there were pieces that didn’t line up against flaws in her stories.

At some point, he realized this wasn’t because she was wrong, just that she was human. This wasn’t some fucking movie where everything would be tied up tight and sweet by the end credits. This was a woman who had been handed a shit life and tried to make it different. She’d reached for something that would make her horrifying experience less so, and found in herself the desire—and more, the ability—to create situations where justice could be meted out.

If this were a fairy tale, she’d be the badass hero saving everyone in a life-or-death thriller.

It wasn’t fiction, though. Every person’s name that fell from her lips represented a life interrupted. Families torn apart, children deprived of a parent, or parents living without children.

Still, the crimes her targets committed—heinous. There was no other word. She’d surely saved more lives than she’d taken. He watched as she deflected any mention of that. She couldn’t consider the possibility, and had been so focused on her imagined failing that for her, there was no other outcome. Not until he laid it out for her.

Lying beside her in the bed he’d carried her to after she’d cried herself to sleep in his arms, her body shaking as she was torn asunder by relief that she hadn’t turned into the monster in the dark. She’d never killed blindly, hadn’t taken anyone’s word for the need to erase people from the world. She’d demanded proof, found it herself if it wasn’t already available, and—most importantly—she’d walked away when it wasn’t forthcoming. He suspected if they looked for those targets now, they’d find them dead and gone anyway, dealt with by a less conscientious agent.

She’d profited from the deaths. It was her livelihood, and she’d made no bones about that. But the payoffs, as she called them, had come from thankful survivors, grateful that she’d ended an unending horror that trailed them through their lives. And based on her scattered recollections, far more money went to charities than she’d banked. She didn’t have a home, didn’t have anything to pour money into except getting ready for the next target.

So that’s what she’d done. That was her life.

Was. He reiterated the claim firmly in his mind. No more.

Tracing along her nose with a fingertip, he smiled as she twisted, pressing her face into his palm in her sleep. So much trust. Every word spoken had been a gift of belief that he was the person she thought him to be.

Beautiful and otherworldly, she’d been unflinching in her revelations, vicious in her descriptions of herself, determined to draw the worst out to lay it on the table. He was glad for that. No skeletons waiting to trip them up later, he believed he’d heard the worst of it tonight. She had clearly been bracing for a different outcome, one where he washed his hands of the monster and walked away.

Eric had always prided himself on having a strong moral compass. Exposed to the foulest of humanity by his job and blood, he felt he had developed a good bullshit detector. Alace’s determination to only see the worst possible outcome rang true. She wasn’t playing some kind of false sympathy card with him. She truly saw herself that way. The damn thing was, she was right. By the laws of man, she had done wrong, taken it upon herself to deliver a self-proclaimed guilty verdict and then deal with the punishment. As the law saw things, there were no differences between her and her targets.

There is, though.

Through the years, there had been many times he’d left a courtroom disgusted with the outcome of the legal system. Watched as murderers and thieves walked free, stepping lithely through a loophole when the ones upholding the system were held to the highest of standards. Innocent until proven guilty was critical to the system, but when you knew in your gut the person was guilty and they walked free anyway—there was a reason for high rates of burnout in his profession. The helplessness of knowing you’d done your best and it wasn’t good enough, and there would eventually be innocents who would inevitably pay for your failure.

Alace changed the equation. She balanced the scales blind justice couldn’t manage, wedging her thumb against the law until things came back to true. Guilty punished in ways appropriate to the crime, and the victims finally able to move on with their lives.

She’d whispered a question to him just before falling asleep, and he hadn’t been able to answer it at the time. He could now, though. After thinking things through, finding his way, he knew.

“Can you love someone like me?” Her words had shaken free from her mouth with a quaver that spoke of fear. Fear he would walk away without looking back.

She told me anyway.

Trust. Something he had craved from her, and she’d given to him by the handfuls today. Baptized him in a rush, plunging into the water beside him, depending on him to not let her drown.

Eric tightened his arms around her, feeling her body curve trustingly into his. Immersed in an exhausted sleep, she shifted, lifted her head and placed her mouth against his throat. Soft as velvet her lips touched him, glided to his chest and her head turned, cheek to his skin.

Alace changed the rules. Changed me.

He knew his answer.