House of Fire (Unraveled Series) (16 page)

“I know you always
said you would never get married, but I am hoping I can change that,” he
whispered. “Take that back. I
know
I can change that.”

“James,” Delaney
started, but the buzz of her phone interrupted her thought. She hesitated,
feeling the pull to the message.

“Just get it,” James
sighed, turning onto his back to look at the ceiling.

“Give me one sec,”
she said as she grabbed the phone to see a text from an unknown number:

Holston killed
him. Today is the day. I hope you’re up for it. - V.

Delaney inhaled a
sharp breath, the panic setting into her body.
Today is the day. She’s going
to end it all, but how? Who did Holston kill?

“I’m going to grab
some breakfast,” James said as he flung the covers over, sliding on a pair of
shorts and a t-shirt. He ran his fingers through his hair, opened the door and
disappeared down the hall before she could respond to his comments about marriage.
Getting married was the last thing on her mind. She needed to focus on staying
alive.

“Shit,” Delaney
whispered as she scrambled out of bed and tossed on her clothes. She followed
James down the hall into the kitchen where Michael and Mark sat next to each
other on the stools, drinking glasses of orange juice.
Thank God.
Empty
muffin wrappers and banana peels filled their plates. The steady voice of the
anchor on WLUK’s morning news show was muffled on the TV behind them.

“Sleep well?” Mark
smirked as he stood up and tossed his garbage in the trash. “Help yourself to
some food. There’s plenty here.”

“Let me guess, Mom
made the muffins,” Delaney said as she pulled two glasses from the cabinet,
handing one to James who took it while refusing to look her in the eyes.

“You bet she did. She
brought the ingredients from home. She knew you guys wouldn’t have them,”
Michael chimed in as a smile spread on his face. He adored Ann’s baking. He
loved everything about her. Delaney forced a reciprocal smile; she was
beginning to think that her father was the true saint in the marriage.

“Where is she
anyway?” Delaney asked as she reached for the orange juice. James beat her to
it and poured his own glass, sliding the container back on the counter. She
cast a sideways glance before pouring her own.

“She went for a
walk,” Mark said as he flipped through the channels, stopping on ESPN Sports
Center. “She said something about getting fresh air. She left about a half hour
ago.”

“Did she say how long
she’d be gone?” Delaney asked as she peeled the wrapper from a muffin.
Blueberry muffins were Ann’s specialty, although there was little that Ann
couldn’t bake and cook without rave reviews from her family. It was her
grandmother’s recipes, she had insisted, passed down generationally. Despite
her mother’s best efforts to teach her, Delaney was hopeless in the kitchen.
Domestication wasn’t in her blood; Delaney had chalked it up as a deficiency
she was okay with.

“Whatever it is,”
Michael lowered his voice, leaning in as he waved his index finger between
Delaney and James. “It’s not worth it. Life is too short for these little
spats.” He twisted his body and faced the TV.

Delaney looked at
James, her cheeks flushing as she thought of the past three years her parents
had gone through. Her mother had lived well past her “expiration date” and had
been, according to the doctors, cured of cancer. The chance of remission was
always present, but they had effectively removed the cancer and had removed the
death sentence along with it. Enduring through the scrape with death gave his
advice an unfaltering credibility. Michael Jones was right. James nodded his
head in agreement as he pulled a banana from the basket on the counter.

“Your mother should
be back any minute,” Michael added with his back to her. “Her walks are usually
around thirty minutes max. I usually go with her, but she insisted on going
alone to clear her head.”

“To clear her head
about what?” Delaney asked, leaning across the counter of the island. James
whacked her arm with a banana. He shook his head in disapproval.

“I think she’s
ready,” he said. Delaney stared at the back of her father’s head, desperate to
peel back the layers of secrets beneath his skull.

“Ready for what?” she
asked. “The boy in the picture?”

“Yeah, the boy in the
picture, Delaney. It’s just too bad that Ben and Megan aren’t here. She wanted
to tell you one day when all of you were together. She thought she might have a
little time left, that she’d be senile by the time she had to tell you.”
Michael turned to face Delaney, his eyes gleaming with a sense of relief from
the anticipated unfolding. Mark flipped around to face Delaney, shooting her a
questioning look.

“About what?” Delaney
breathed the words, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“Why we left the farm
in Amberg.”

20

June 17 - 8:20 a.m

The water trickled
down Evie’s back, the shower head dispensing a slow pressure of lukewarm water
at its best. She closed her eyes to the vision of Holston placing the gun in
Givens’s hand, releasing the trigger. An apparent suicide. How long would it
take until someone discovered the body? The student and faculty population was
meager; the summer months turning the campus into a silent, barely breathing
entity. But Parker Tower’s grand opening during the quiet months meant a push
for area businesses and residents to rent out the facility for conferences and
even weddings. The community would flock to the area and Givens’s recent
resignation would garner interest. The body would be found soon, if it hadn’t
been already.

Evie gazed up at the
shower head nozzle filled with hardened chunks of calcium. The tile was caked
with soap scum and residue. It hadn’t been cleaned in months, maybe years. She
had almost stopped to get a gallon of bleach after she had witnessed the
murder. The whole rental unit needed to be doused, but she hadn’t wanted to
raise any more suspicion, to leave a larger trail than she already had.

If it hadn’t been for
the black-wigged woman, she would have been in the clear, but there she had
stood, in the back of the building, puffing her smoke in Evie’s face. Holston
would know that she was back. He was spiraling out of control; leaving a
high-profile body for discovering based on the suspicion that the police
department would deem it a suicide was careless. The department would
investigate the entire scene. He had gotten away with it before, though, his
connections inside the police ring too deep. Her thoughts ran to Sanchez. He
had been at the gala; Evie had seen him just moments before Delaney had surfed
through the crowd to reach her. Evie pounded her fist against the tile, letting
the water continue to bead off her clenched body.

Norway filtered
through her mind, the thought of Ryan on his boat, trolling for his daily
catch. She missed the smell of salt and fish - the smell of Ryan. She had felt
calm in Norway, a sense of merely being had almost made her stay. She could
have learned to love a life of simple means and peace off the grid. Evie
wondered what Ryan was doing, her ears begging to hear his soothing, playful
voice. She needed him to be a sounding board for her in the wake of Holston’s
wrath. She had instantly felt the darkness seep in as she’d stepped off the
plane in Wisconsin. Evie needed the sand between her toes, the waves crashing
against the shore.

She whipped the
handle down, stopped the flow of the showerhead and grabbed a towel. She rushed
to her phone and punched in Ryan’s number. His voice answered on the other end,
requesting that the caller leave a message. She hit the end button. It wasn’t
enough just to hear his voice; she needed to talk to him. She needed his
insight, his reassuring words and encouragement. She was missing something - a
piece of the puzzle that brought them all together.

The image of her
sister’s brown, flowing hair popped into her head. There had to be more. She
had spent her time researching Holston to no avail. She ran through the
details. George Boyd, born 1952, orphan after parents were killed in a car
accident. No siblings. No criminal record. Devout Catholic. Janice and Ken
Hinske were known foster parents that owned a crematory. Met a waitress, Ann
Jones, at House of Steel. Adopted a two-year-old girl.

Evie closed her eyes,
thinking of Ann Jones. She wouldn’t have knowingly given up her child, even if
it was Holston’s child. This was a woman who had adopted two other boys, a
woman with a kind and loving heart that fell prey to a horrible man. Something
must have happened that she had kept secret. Evie ran the towel through her hair,
drying it with a few quick wipes. Something was missing. She needed answers
dating back to when she was born. She picked up her phone and punched Appleton Library into her search box. They opened at nine a.m.
Only thirty
minutes.

21

June 17 - 8:45 a.m

Delaney felt the gravity
of her father’s words:
Why we left the farm in Amberg.
“A better life”
had been enough for her as a six-year-old when she had asked why her parents
had sold the farm. She had learned to stop asking questions, her parents
shushing her anytime she asked about the farm or where she’d grown up. “Not
much to talk about,” they had said. More than twenty years later, not much to
talk about had become a family crisis.

“Why did Mom take me
to Uncle Walt’s without you?” Delaney asked, treading carefully. She glanced at
Mark who flicked off the TV with the remote, the silence swelling between the
four of them. James wrapped his arm around Delaney’s waist in preparation or
maybe nervousness. Delaney wasn’t sure.

“I just wish Ben and
Megan were here, but they are in Chicago for the weekend,” Michael said,
looking at the time on the microwave. The green neon lights glowed 8:45.

“What time did she
leave?” Delaney pressed.

“Just before eight.”
Michael went back to rubbing his temple.

“It’s been more than
thirty minutes, Dad. It’s almost been an hour,” Delaney scolded as she ran to
the laundry room to grab her running shoes.

“She’s fine,” Mark
said. “Just wait for her to get back.”

“Dad, what happened?”
Delaney yelled through the hallway. “What the
hell
happened?”

“Mom will want to
tell you all together,” he repeated.

Delaney came panting
back to the kitchen, shoving her sockless feet through the shoes. She left them
unlaced, standing in front of her father.

“Dad, you have to
tell me,” Delaney pleaded. “Was it Holston Parker?”

“What the hell are
you talking about, Delaney?” Mark spun to her.

“Mark’s boss?”
Michael asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“George Boyd. Holston
Parker. He’s the same guy,” she panted, the past six months rushing through her
body. Her father’s blank stare registered; he didn’t know about George Boyd.
She flushed, feeling regret as she realized she had outed her own mother. The
betrayal to her mother stung as she waited for someone to say something. But no
one reacted to her earth shattering news; it meant nothing to them.

“I don’t know who
George Boyd is.” Michael looked at Mark, his face contorted in confusion.

“I’m not following,
Delaney,” Mark said as he shook his head.

Delaney hesitated as
she tried in vain to process the intricate details, the holes gaping between
what she knew about Holston, Evie, and their connection to Delaney. What she
had experienced was the destruction they had brought to her life. She had
killed a man and never told the police or anyone else. They would never forgive
her. Ann Jones had kept a secret for more than twenty years and had no
repercussion until now. Maybe now wasn’t the time; Delaney needed more time to
unravel the rest of the secrets. She exhaled, feeling the immediacy of finding
Ann. She needed to concentrate on that; they all did.

“A few months ago, I
was flipping through the newspaper when Mom and I saw a picture of Holston
Parker. It was a picture of the groundbreaking at Parker Tower. Mom pointed to
the picture, claiming that it looked like someone she used to know. A long time
ago,” Delaney started, feeling her father’s eyes study her. “But she said she
didn’t know Holston Parker. She thought he looked like a man by the name of
George Boyd.”

“So Holston Parker
looks like a guy she knew a long time ago. What twenty years ago? People
change. I’m sure it was just a resemblance,” Mark said, his words running
together. Mark was annoyed; he always rushed his words when he became
impatient. He wasn’t afraid to show it with Delaney. Living together hadn’t
helped.

“I thought that, too,
at first,” Delaney lied, knowing that her mother’s connection to Holston Parker
was real. “But I looked it up and found out that Holston Parker changed his
name. He was born George Boyd.”

“You looked it up?”
Mark asked, glancing at James. “You, the most unconnected twenty-something I
know.”

“Fine, I didn’t look
it up. I had someone check into it for me.” Delaney shot a look to James. He
knew it was Kandy, but that didn’t matter right now.

“So Holston Parker is
George Boyd. That’s fine. What does it have to do with your mother?” Michael
pressed.

“I don’t know. Not
yet anyway. All I know is that she meant something to him and I don’t know that
he ever really got over her.” Delaney danced around the truth, carefully
studying her father. “He found her last night. I saw them talking for a few
minutes before she fled to the bathroom. She was crying.”

“She was off last
night, ever since she talked with you in the bedroom.” Michael nodded toward
Delaney, rubbing his temple vigorously now. “But I thought it was about the
picture. I didn’t know there was more.”