Eric

Holding the wheel steady as he steered across lanes to pass a semi, Eric glanced to his right, devoting a moment to study the face of the sleeping woman leaning against the door. From the moment she’d stepped from the shadows of the cabin in the woods, he’d been running on fear and panic. Even when she convinced him to eat, he couldn’t choke down much, focused on getting them up the road and towards home while studying traffic behind him, looking for any vehicle that seemed to stick around for too long.

Alace Sweets.

She hadn’t asked about what he’d found out in her background. Not yet. She would, though. Someone who lived on the verges of society as she did wouldn’t pass up a chance to know where the holes in their walls waited. There hadn’t been any real holes in her story, though. Not that he could ever find. Querida Pansy O’Dell had a life story, one that was well-crafted and believable.

If he hadn’t been in bed with her when she had that damned panic attack, he would have never known Querida wasn’t real. Everything pointed to the thick paper trail painted over her past being exactly what she’d portrayed on the surface. Sweet-natured, middle-income child of boomers who hadn’t wanted to rack up education loans so bypassed college and had been working her way through various cities along the front range of the Rockies. A good waitress was in high demand during tourist season, and she’d been good.

That flashback had been his only crack in her story, but damn, it had been a big one. With a name to anchor it, he’d set about tracing every fact he could pay for. Using investigators recommended by a friend of a friend, Eric had kept everything at arm’s length, not associating his name with any of the inquiries. It had been nearly six months in when he had the first real break. Alice Swete was considered a person of interest in the death of a man acquitted for charges of molesting and killing a nine-month-old baby. The man had been murdered about a month after a six-man grand jury refused to issue a warrant. Information found with his body identified four of the six men who had accepted payoffs to juggle their vote. The other two finally broke their silence, reporting they’d had family members threatened. It seemed the pedophile had been thorough in his efforts to remain free.

The killing was inventive, showcasing a raw anger the authorities felt would be the killer’s quick downfall. The lead investigator on that case said in a press conference that rage made slipups inevitable. Unorganized killers were opportunistic. The investigator had refused to speak regarding how he felt about the molester’s death, but his face said a thousand words. As part of his studies back in law school, Eric had voluntarily enrolled in several micro-expression training sessions with a renowned researcher. Learning to see emotions people weren’t even aware they were communicating had given him a major advantage in a number of high-profile cases. It had also allowed him to see the investigator’s glee that the man had been killed by impalement, just like the infant.

Eric twisted his neck and studied Alace for a moment, seeing her toned muscles stretching atop a wiry frame. Much of the cushioning she’d carried previously had been worn away in the months since he’d last seen her. Alabama Alace had looked much like Denver Alace. Cuba Alace, on the other hand, looked like someone who had spent the past nine months hiking in rough conditions, never eating enough, and sleeping in only limited quantities.

She’d been on the hunt at least that long, he knew, based on her recitation of what she’d been doing.

After they gassed up and grabbed a bag of burgers, he had driven east to swing through the campground so she could collect her things. Parking two curves away from the site, he had waited outside the vehicle, heart in his throat as he watched her fade into the scrub and trees. Fifteen minutes later she had reappeared, sleeping bag and some other bags dangling from her fingers as she moved through the undergrowth. One instant she hadn’t been there, the next she was, and he’d let out the breath he’d been consciously holding.

Once on the road, she’d shown a voracious appetite in spite of everything, spending the time eating and talking. So much to say, there were so many things she seemed to want to explain. She’d talked herself hoarse, head weaving on her neck from exhaustion until he put a stop to it, lifting her hand to his lips to kiss the backs of her knuckles. “Sleep, beloved.” How fitting that word. Not only had she been Querida when he met her, but her real last name, Sweets, also held the same meaning. She’d done as he asked, and the trust shown him made his throat tight. So much time had passed, but when caught up in an urgent need, she still hadn’t doubted he would drive away from that cabin with her.

When she’d called last night—he shook his head at the thought, only last night—he’d known immediately that whatever…case—in his head he didn’t know what to call them, but knew she spent significant time investigating, so case seemed most likely—she’d been working had gone horribly wrong. The tidbits he’d pulled from her over the hour they’d spoken, tiny hints carried through the call in slow, single words at a time, had taken him nearly too long to thread together. Thank God for tech, he thought, knowing he’d have to eventually explain to her the trace he’d worked on her phone. Having the location gave him a direction, one he’d embarked on almost before she’d hung up on their call.

Since his lucky break to locate her down in Alabama, Eric kept what his friends laughingly referred to as his bugout bag packed and ready to go. A lightweight, biometric-locking folder held copies of everything he’d learned about Alace, along with pictures of her taken the night of his stepmother’s party. He’d been surprised at how those, paired with images of a much younger Alace, traced the line between her truncated childhood and the adult woman he’d met. So little to go on, it had been a wonder he’d found even a trace of her. Her small-town high school yearbooks granted access to a single image per year. Shy, or self-isolating, Alace didn’t do band or choir. She wasn’t in drama club, and didn’t play sports. Her test scores and eleventh-grade GPA told him she was far more intelligent than he’d believed. The notes her grade school teachers had written about her shone a spotlight on the losses a bad environment could wring from a person.

Her brutal rape had taken so much more from her, nearly ending her life in an alley. I think in some ways it did end life as she knew it.

He tipped his head to the side and watched her for a moment, trying to reconcile the worn beauty seated next to him with the wretched child on the video. The men and boys had targeted her, that much was clear from the get-go. With the money and determination to dig deep, Eric had located more footage than the single file those local cops had found. Dozens of minutes captured on devices. The entire event had taken a long time, and to watch the pack as they spread out around her, shoving her back and forth with brutal strength, Alace’s expression frozen into a terrified mask, suffering with clear disorientation from repeated blows to the head and face—it had been all Eric could do to hold on and watch.

But he had.

From that point, he had studied her case. Spent untold hours with his head bowed over his desk as he pored through trial notes and documents, had forced himself to watch the videos a dozen times, trying to isolate and identify her assailants. Strangely, most were still alive. The ringleader had died of disease, and his inner circle through a series of weirdly tidy accidents that when you were looking at them in a group were clearly not as advertised, but they’d been spread out enough and were different from each other so law enforcement never twigged to the ties. A small group of the men lived untouched by tragedy, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the similarities there—family men, every one. He had no doubt she’d verified they were good to their families, because just having children wasn’t enough to save them. Many of the dead men had children. It hadn’t taken his PI long to sort through information on those men, and as their private lives were uncovered, Eric had no illusions about the countless children saved from ruin by Alace’s actions.

That had given him the first inkling she was what she seemed, a good woman and not a straight-up psycho. In each case—I’m sticking with that until I have a better word—the death fit the crime. Or crimes, in so many of the cases.

Alace moved, just a tiny motion, but it caught his attention, and he turned to see her looking at him. She’d gone from asleep to alert within a breath, and her gaze was locked on his face, studying something she’d seen there.

“Hey, did you sleep okay?” She didn’t respond, and he couldn’t keep his mouth still. “Not that I think sleeping propped into the corner of my truck is going to be comfortable, but at least you got a little shut-eye, yeah?”

He let the silence lay between them for a time, fixing his attention back on the road. False dawn lightening the eastern horizon made the shadows stretch in odd ways. Movement announced by a soft brushing of fabric against the seat preceded heat from her hand on his arm, fingers curling around the bend of his elbow as she braced herself against the vehicle’s movement to lean in and brush her mouth across the corner of his jaw. Pausing near his ear, she whispered, her response scarcely loud enough to make out the words over the rush and rumble of tires against the pavement. “I slept very well, thank you.”

Eric pulled in a breath, trying and failing to keep it steady, the heated rush of her breath against his skin an unexpected aphrodisiac. Her head settled against his shoulder for a moment, fingertips digging into his skin as she held on, and he wanted to shift, get his arm around her, pull her close—but with a woman like Alace, trying to hold on would get you empty hands. He already knew that from experience, so he relished the fact she’d initiated this contact, giving himself over to having her lean on him even this much. “I’m glad, baby.” Her seat belt clicked, and her ass slid across to the inside edge of her seat, so her body was folded tight against his arm. “You hungry or need a bathroom break?” With his other hand, he gestured ahead, knowing she’d see the motion by the dashboard lights. “There’s an exit in another five miles with a truck stop.”

She was quiet for so long, he wondered if she’d slipped back into a doze. Then her head rolled to press her cheek against the curve of his chest. He rested his chin on top of her head, holding her in place for a moment before she sighed and shifted away, stretching up to drop another tiny kiss along his jaw. “I could use a stop.” Back to her seat, she secured her belt again. “You’re taking this all very well, Eric.”

He parried with a quick, “You studied me, right?” She would have had to, and it wasn’t like he was ignorant of why she might have shown up in his hometown. Not once he knew what she did for a—Is it a living? Does she make money from her cases? He shivered. Father. No, he’d considered her motives for going after the esteemed Amos Ward and none of them had to do with money. Every allegation through the years shone a spotlight on his father Eric would much rather have never seen.

Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is power. Eric shook his brain free from the trite sayings his father was so good at.

A pattern had emerged, and it was clear to Eric there had to be something behind all the accusations. Smart, or lucky, his father had been careful to only target interns and staffers with little influence, and in those circles, having little influence meant even less money.

Alace hadn’t responded, so Eric forged forwards into the silence. “So, you have to know I’m not stupid, Alace.” He marked how she first jolted at his use of her name, then slowly eased back into the seat, affecting a relaxation he was confident she didn’t feel. “While we’ve been driving, you talked about New Mexico, and told me a lot of what you uncovered there. You need to know I’ve a good understanding of the man in Alabama, too. I kept watching, hoping you’d resurface. Instead of you, though, your evidence hit the news centers a month after I made you run out of town. I know it was you, because until it was brought forwards, everyone else in that town believed the lie that man shoved in their faces.”

“Eric—”

He didn’t let her interrupt, talking over whatever argument she felt compelled to provide. It was still dark enough to feel intimate in the truck’s cab, and he didn’t want to lose that feeling, wanted to keep her comfortable, safe, even while he laid out a few things for her. “But what I’m getting at is, you know I’m not stupid. I didn’t come find you without knowing what you do. I’m sure I will never know everything, and God…I’m also sure I’m okay with that, because what I do know is—” He cast around for a word, finally settling on how he’d felt when it all came together in his head. “—unsettling. Stunning. But, I think I’ve come to know you, and I believe in the woman you’ve shown yourself to be. It doesn’t matter what name you wear, you’re always still Alace Sweets underneath. I’ve had the past few hours to think on your words, on the story you told, and, baby, I gotta say, I’m not disregarding the differences in our positions, but that man, Waterdrum…he was a monster.”

“You’re romanticizing this, Eric. I’m not a monster slayer.” She paused, and he heard her quavering inhale before she said, “I’m not a nice person. Don’t make this…me something I’m not.”

Straight to the heart of everything, even afraid of rejection, his Alace didn’t shy from head-on confrontation. Wasn’t a surprise, not really. “Yes, you are. And no, I’m not. You took a man’s life. He’d killed countless kids. It’s not a tit-for-tat thing. I’d venture to say you don’t do anything on a whim.”

“No, I’m not the impulsive type.”

“Except with me.” He didn’t turn, didn’t look at her, just tamed what wanted to be a broad grin down into a smug smirk. They’d be home in thirty minutes, and then he could take his time convincing her of how he felt.

“What?”

“I seem to remember one night you did something entirely unexpected.” He reached out, latching onto her hand again, pulling it over to rest against his thigh. Her fingers tensed in his, holding tightly. “You told me to stay, against everything we both knew were the right things to do.” He gave her a squeeze, holding until she returned the pressure. “That’s kinda impulsive, baby.”