“Guys? I’m adding August to the channel now.”
A rumbling filled Owen’s ear, and he jerked, seeing Doc similarly startled.
“You there?” The same southern accent he’d heard earlier dripped from those two words, and Owen grinned.
“Yeah, we’re here.” Owen stepped backwards and turned, headed towards the interior door. “You comin’ back, or what?”
“Or what, asshole. How big is your garage?” This came out as “gayrodge” and Owen stopped, staring at Doc. Is this guy kidding? What a fucking asshole. “Got room for a bike?”
“Our garage? It’s a two-and-a-half car. Yes, we have room for a bicycle, or two.” Shaking his head, Owen stepped through into the kitchen. “We’ll leave the door open for you.”
“Not a bicycle, what the hell? A motorcycle. I ditched the car and picked up my ride.” This was pronounced like motorsickle, and fully cemented Owen’s understanding of the man’s origins. The assumed slur was nothing more than his accent, because August was southern, through and through. The rumbling grew louder, echoing through the garage and into the house.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, he and Doc watched August ride a motorcycle right into the garage, as promised. One quick three-point turnaround later, August dropped the kickstand and killed the engine, the ringing silence somehow more startling than the overwhelming noise had been.
Owen glanced back at the tablet on the wall, but nothing indicated either of the kids had woken from the unexpected noise. He turned around just as August stood up off the bike and took a step forwards, hand out. “Doc, right? I’m August.”
Doc showed the depths of his composure by grasping the man’s hand and pumping it up and down firmly. “I’m Doc, that’s right. Good to meet you, August. Alace has good things to say about you.” Doc released the handshake and dug into his ear, pulling out an earwig. “She doesn’t need me now. I’ll go put this by your computer, Owen, and then I’m going to straighten up my room.”
“Is he for real right now? He can’t do that. Owen.” Owen lifted his gaze and met August’s amused one as they listened to Alace’s increasing annoyance. “Stop him. The two of you are having a moment, I get it, but stop him.”
“Doc, Alace isn’t done with you. She politely requests you resecure your comms, please. She said please like five times. It’s amazing really. She sounds honestly distraught. I’ve never heard anything like it. Can you get back on comms?” August’s lips spread in a smile as Doc slowly turned and stared at Owen as if he’d lost his mind. “Pretty please?” Doc fumbled the device, placing it back inside his ear.
“Jesus, Owen. Remember me telling you I sometimes didn’t hate you anymore? Remember? This is not one of those times.” Alace sounded annoyed, but Owen knew it was a front.
“Doc’s back on comms, Alace. Feel free to thank me later.”
“Time to debrief, boys. Let’s get into the house. Get that garage closed, too. Just leave the car outside for now. Owen, set up in your office. We can use the camera on your laptop so you can get out of the gear.” Alace’s take-charge attitude would always be welcome, Owen realized. “I’ve got about thirty minutes before Lila wakes up, so let’s make it count. Call me in three minutes. Your time starts now.”
The disconnect severed the channel between all of them, and he laughed softly at Doc’s stunned expression.
“She’s always like that.” Owen turned and pointed at the tablet mounted to the wall as he took off his glasses and peeled the throat mic from his skin. “And she’s almost always present. Let’s get started.”
The actual debrief didn’t take long, less than the twenty-seven minutes Alace had allotted. August had aborted his walk-through of the planned mission to assist Owen with his, so Ashworth remained to be dealt with. They wound up in the kitchen afterwards, unanimously gravitating towards the empty coffeemaker. Five minutes of small talk from Doc filled the time until they all held mugs of hot coffee, Owen and August adding only stilted responses when pressed.
Owen hated it.
He and Doc had fallen into an easy friendship so quickly, and even Alace was more comfortable around him than this man. He decided to attack the issue directly, get whatever it was out in the open.
“What bugs you about me?” Owen lifted his mug and sipped noisily. “There’s something off, and we both know it, so spit it out.” The man’s eyes flitted toward the mounted screen, and realization flooded through Owen. It wasn’t him the man had a problem with; August was censoring his speech with the expectation Alace was listening.
Owen pulled out his phone and tapped into the security system. He walked over and showed the screen to August, the data indicating he was the only connection at the moment. “Don’t mean she won’t dial back in, but she’s good about announcing it when she does. We have an”—he grinned at Doc, remembering the hard-earned truce between Doc and Alace—“agreement.”
“You have an agreement. With Alace Sweets.” August shook his head, glanced at the phone screen again, and lifted his mug to hide a disbelieving grin. “You think she abides by your agreement?”
“Yeah, I do. The woman is intelligent, and sure, she’s hyper-inquisitive; that’s what makes her so good at the research and investigation part of any mission. That and her tenacity. She’ll follow a thread for longer than most, but she also finds much more than anyone else.” He gave a slow side-to-side shake of his head, emphasizing his belief in his own words. “What she isn’t is disloyal. She says something, you can believe it. She’s not going to fuck her people over.” Owen realized he must hold more knowledge of Alace’s background than she’d given August. Some of it isn’t mine to tell. If she hadn’t trusted the man with the info, he didn’t even want to allude to it. “She and I have worked together in the field.” Yeah, he could stick to what he’d witnessed and still make the same impact. “She had more than one chance to angle things her way, but we were in lockstep all the way. Loyal to a fault. So when she tells me she won’t intentionally eavesdrop on our conversations here, I believe her.”
“I second that, actually.” Doc nodded towards Owen. “I haven’t known her as long as either of you, but when I called her tonight, she not only picked up, she immediately switched into work mode without a word of annoyance. She was soothing me, handling a dozen things at once, and still asked permission to tap into the system here so she could talk to me easily.”
“Consider me enlightened.” August’s southern accent stretched the letters out long, his tone still disbelieving.
“No, man. I get it. Alace Sweets is a force of nature, someone who feels unfuckable with. But Alace, the Alace I know? She’s my friend. At the end of the day, not only are we partners and equals when it comes to the missions we choose, but she’s my friend, and I have to trust she’s always got my best interests at heart.” He drained his mug and set it on the counter, grinning when Doc brought the coffee carafe over, refilling it. “She’s scary as hell, but she’s my Alace.”
“You met the husband?” August’s expression held a transitory touch of distaste, and Owen wondered if he imagined it. “Thinkin’ to poach, might want to think again. He’s a good dude.”