House of Fire (Unraveled Series) (2 page)

Delaney wiped her
forehead with the back of her hand, sticking the loose strands of hair back
with the moisture.
Sanchez is not following me. He’s not working for Holston
Parker
. Delaney repeated the words over and over, hoping they would stick -
that she would eventually believe it. Delaney exhaled and brought the gun back
up, pointing it at the target, the fedora appearing once again.
Steady.

***

Delaney pulled June’s
VW Beetle up to the back parking lot, the Leighton campus undisturbed except
for a handful of faculty cars. The blue emergency light glowed in the early
darkness of the night. The campus had an extremely low rate of violence and
reported crimes. The case with Theron last winter was a red mark in an
unblemished, empty book.
A freak and isolated incident that happened to
occur on campus,
officials had said. The campus was moving on. The town was
moving on. Everyone was moving on, except Delaney.

The warmth of the
summer day had cooled considerably since she had left the range. Her skin rose with
goose bumps as she slid through the side door of Maloney Hall to swap keys with
June. Their offices were adjacent to each other, separated only by an
upholstered room divider that every corporate working stiff would recognize
the wall of “cubicle nation.” June and Delaney had talked about taking it down
much to the disapproval of maintenance. They had agreed to take it down this
summer when the maintenance staff was thinned out and focused on outdoor
projects.

“How was it?” June
asked without bothering to turn around.

The smell of oils
teased Delaney’s nose as she tossed the keys on June’s desk and craned her neck
to see the canvas in front of her friend. “Oils aren’t usually your thing,
what’s up?” Delaney asked as she eyed the vibrancy of a campus landscape June
had captured. It was of “Leighton Hill” where students congregated during the
late spring and early fall with their blankets, Frisbees and books. The hill
overlooked the river that meandered around the outskirts of campus. Picturesque.
Delaney wanted to slash red streaks through the scene.

“Trying new things,
just like you,” June replied, finally turning to Delaney. “Are you sure you
don’t want to tell me anything? Nothing you want to get off your chest?”

June was a single
woman that had never married or had children a misnomer in the small
community, for all of Wisconsin even. She had been accused of being a lesbian
early in her career, but she had never denied the rumors because she found it
offensive to other lesbians to defend herself. June was simply a woman who
chose to put her profession first.
Less headaches
, she had once told
Delaney. But June’s maternal instincts were emerging; her eyes studied her
knowingly, like any mother of a teenage daughter. She knew Delaney was hiding
something. Delaney's excuse to use June's car - that she didn't "trust" her older Civic - wasn't holding.

“No, but thank you
for the offer. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Delaney said as she swapped the keys.

“Have a good night,”
June called as Delaney made her way down the hall.
Shit
. June was close.
Too close.

Delaney careened
down the vacant hallway, the walls swallowing each footstep when a man’s
muffled yell bounced in her ears. Her body stopped mid-step to hear a woman’s
voice follow in a long, soothing shush. Her whisper sifted through the air,
wrapping around Delaney’s ears. Delaney held her breath, waiting. The voices
stopped, silence ensuing before the whistling of John, the night maintenance
guy, echoed through the halls. John walked past her with buds stuck in his ears,
nodding before ducking into another office with his cart.
What the hell was
that?

Her phone buzzed in
her back pocket; she slipped it out to see the words flash across her screen:
Where
are you?

James.
Delaney had resisted in the
beginning, unable to cope with the reality that James was coming back into her
life. Their coffee date back in March had been awkward at first, each skirting
the conversation of their seven year hiatus. James had finally taken a stab,
asking her if they could forget about California and everything up until that
very moment. She had agreed; if they ever wanted to move on - if
she
ever wanted to move on - they would have to bury it. The rehashing of events,
Delaney had learned from that night in the barn, was destructive.

Delaney moved her
fingers across her screen as she walked through the silent hall:
On my way
home. I’ll call you when I get there.
She needed more time to decompress.

In February, James
had moved back to Milwaukee, finding a condo on the east side near an office
his firm had opened. She took the two hour trip twice a month, always visiting
Ann and Michael Jones first thing Saturday mornings. She was greeted every
visit with steaming eggs and fresh cinnamon rolls. Her father had given up on
the eggs, much to the relief of the rest of the Jones family and the uncooked
eggs. Ann was back to herself, cooking and keeping the house remarkably clean -
the kind of clean that made you feel inadequate and particularly lazy at life.
The kind of clean that could only be achieved by cotton swabs and bleach.
Delaney had never understood that particular obsession.

She pulled into the
driveway of Mark’s home, just ten minutes from campus, passing by James’s SUV
parked on the road. It was a Wednesday, the middle of the workweek. They rarely
visited each other during the week - the daily grind of their professional
lives never left any amount of energy to take the two hour drive.

James’s head popped
out of the front door as he dashed toward the sprinkler to turn it off, the
last spurts of the water dripping from the hose. The fresh, green blades of
grass were just beginning to poke through the straw. Mark had purchased the newly
constructed home in March, just weeks before Delaney moved in. The twenty-five
hundred square foot, single-story home was the perfect picture of classic
suburbia in Wisconsin - a slightly varied version of the other twenty on the
block. It was beautifully stapled with a brick facade and front door with a silver
inlayed trim outlining a stained glass window. Square columns, a three stall
garage and a gabled roof. Check, check and check. Suburbia at its finest.

The space was
uncomfortably large, both Delaney and Mark swimming in the extra space unlike
their previous city life experiences. It had thrown them off balance, watching
the soccer moms buzz in and out with their mini-vans and large SUVs. It was all
a little too “burb” for Delaney, but the comfort of Mark kept her there. She
had nowhere else to go at least not within the limits of Appleton.

Just as Delaney
shifted into park, a barefoot James paddled around the house dressed in a pair
of athletic shorts and t-shirt. She took in his fit and strong build, watching his
calf muscles contract as he entered the garage. Delaney glanced in the rearview
mirror to catch two women stealing looks as they passed the house with their
golden lab and scooter-riding boy. The suburban families loved their labs. The
avid goose hunters trained them for retrieval, the moms walked them and the
kids pulled their hair. She smiled at their stares. James was gorgeous, she
agreed.

“I’ve been waiting
for you,” James said as she opened the door.

“I’m worth waiting
for. What are you doing here?” she asked, watching as his tanned body glistened
in the garage light. Just a few hours in the summer sun had bronzed his skin to
a perfect sun-kissed look.
Why did I shut you out for so long?

“I wanted to see you.
I decided I couldn’t wait until the weekend,” he said as he wrapped his arms
around her, the warmth cradling her as he found her lips and pressed his own hard
against hers. They had both decided that their long-distance relationship had
some benefits. Their reunions were like two hormonal teenagers releasing their
pent-up sexual tension. Despite knowing each other for almost fifteen years,
their relationship still had that new couple passion. It was like the new car
smell that no matter what, each and every time you got in the car, it smelled fresh
- free of the dirty laundry or years of abuse.

“Where’s Mark?” she
whispered, pulling away just enough to let the words escape her mouth.

“At the office,” he
murmured. Delaney’s lips curled into a smile as James lifted her from the
ground. She instinctively wrapped her legs around his torso, feeling the solid
resistance of his body on her throbbing thighs. The excitement burned through
her body, her nipples hardening underneath the cotton of her bra as he grabbed
her butt.

She wondered if the
women were still standing there, gawking at the two of them while covering the scooter
boy’s eyes and secretly wishing their husbands looked like James did craving the
passion in their own, uninspiring marriages. Delaney never wanted this to go
away. She never wanted to get married.

2

June 13 - 6:00 p.m.

Evie inhaled,
allowing the fragrances of the warm Norwegian Sea to saturate her lungs. She
would miss the smell of the salt-water fish, the sounds of the water lapping at
the shores, and the rocking boats. The occasional blow horn that sounded at the
docks and the bellows from fishermen would soon dissipate. The fresh aromas of
cafes and their daily baked bread and fresh brewed lattes would be a distant
memory. The weightlessness of her life had consumed her, freed her at first and
begged her to stay. And she had almost given in. Almost.

She dug her toes
deeper into the sun-beaten sand, watching as the white granules sifted through
the cracks between her toes. Evie would miss most everything about Norway, but most
of all, Ryan. She had finally found someone who understood her pain. Someone
who had lived what she’d lived. Someone who believed the insanity of it all.
Evie hadn’t trusted anyone so deeply since Elizabeth.

She had stayed longer
than she had anticipated and longer than he had wanted her to on that night
when she had walked back into his life with news that his father was dead. They
had argued at first, yelling until both had exhausted themselves into sporadic
moments of tears that were only interrupted by intermittent consoling until the
early morning hours. Opening the wounds they had both sewn shut with years of
pain and denial. Finally, they had found a begrudging acceptance of Elizabeth’s
death. The recent tear of Joe’s death, however, brought searing revenge to both
their minds.

Her “father” had been
responsible for both their deaths; his actions had set forth a deadly motion that
even Holston couldn’t deny. He had hired Henry, letting an accused rapist into
his circle and into the lives of both Evie and Elizabeth. And Holston had sent
his two men to the barn that night back in Appleton where they’d killed Joe in
pursuit of Delaney. Holston Parker was a killer. Both Ryan and Evie agreed; the
madness had to stop.

Ryan had been
persistent that they return to Appleton to gather the evidence and build their
case for the police, but Evie had denied his plea.
Suicidal
, she had
muttered, insisting that they take it into their own hands instead. After all,
she’d had no problem sinking bullets into the three men back in Holston’s barn
after she had burned it to the ground. And Holston had no problem skirting the
police, claiming he had no knowledge of the dead men on his property.
Drug
dealers
, the paper had read. Evie laughed when she’d read the headline
before the bitterness overtook her; he had pulled a veil over the entire town,
yet again. The mess she had left was damaging - it had to have been an intricate
clean-up plan with an immense amount of connections to keep Parker Enterprises
above the water.

Evie had scoured the
papers, looking for any missing persons report on Ethan or a notice of death, but
there had been none. Holston had made him disappear; he’d gotten away with the
murder of the boy he had once taken in as his own. The knife twisted deeper
into Evie’s gut.

She lounged in her
beach chair, spotting the red letters that formed the name ‘Betty’ across the
fishing vessel’s hull, shining against the last rays of the island sun. Her
crucifix tattoo expanded as she breathed in, the ink spreading even further
across her shoulders - the ink living, breathing across her back. She would
right the wrongs; goodness would prevail. She absently reached her hand up to
her arm, feeling the raised skin on her bicep from the bullet wound. Its pink
ugliness was slowly fading, her wound healing with time. It had been six months,
but it would always serve as a reminder of what he had tried to do.

She pulled the
picture of the waitress out of her straw tote lying next to her, fingering the
curled edges before tracing the outline of the woman’s face. Her red lips shone
in the faded picture, her House of Steel badge turned upward, gleaming in the
fluorescent lighting of the diner. A picture of her mother, the woman she now
knew as Ann Jones.
Delaney’s sister.
She still hadn’t come to terms with
it. With Holston Parker’s world turned upside down, it was time to return with
or without Ryan. To finally put an end to it all.

3

June 14 - 11:30 a.m.

The screen reflected
in Delaney’s eyes, the Leighton PeopleSoft screen waiting for her to submit the
final grades of the twenty-six students in her Art History course. The spring
semester had been a slight improvement from her winter term, although twenty-four
weeks later, she still heard the sound of the ax suctioning into the man’s head
in her nightmares. The crackle of the fire, the singe of the smoke in her lungs.