House of Fire (Unraveled Series) (21 page)

“To go see a woman
who might have some answers. She’s staying at the Fox Motel on the north side
of Appleton,” Evie said as the Focus hummed, its engine resisting against her
heavy foot. A four-cylinder definitely didn’t suite her. The wind whipped Delaney’s
hair across her face into a chocolate striped obstruction. She rolled up her
window, wallowing in the heaviness of the silent car.

“Is it safe? Who’s
the woman?” Delaney asked.

“I don’t know her
name, but she’s working with -” Evie paused. Her voice was pained, unwilling to
say the word.

“Your dad,” Delaney
finished for her.

“I don’t really
consider him my father,” she said, her eyes focused on the road. “It doesn’t
seem right. It never seemed right. He never loved me.”

“I believe that,”
Delaney whispered as she looked at Evie’s profile. She couldn’t imagine what
Evie’s childhood had been like. Michael Jones was the exact opposite of Holston
Parker. A twinge of guilt sprung through her body as she thought of the own
privileged childhood she had always taken for granted. Her parents had been
over-protective and strict, sure, but she now knew why.

“It’s a long shot,
but she might know why he took Ann,” Evie said, clearing her throat. “I first
saw the woman last fall when I realized he was trafficking women. He bought
her.”

“Are we sure we can
do this? Human trafficking, murder, kidnapping,” Delaney started, listing the
horrific marks against Holston. “What’s going to stop him from killing my mom?
From us?”

“He’ll kill me,
there’s no doubt in my mind, but I plan to get him first,” Evie said as she
switched lanes, veering in and out of traffic. A man wearing a baseball hat in
a pickup truck flipped her off and laid on his horn.

“I hope you do,”
Delaney said as Evie made one last lane change and swerved onto the off ramp.

“The police will be
busy investigating the death of President Givens. At least we got that going
for us,” Evie offered. “He did it last night on campus. In Givens’s car. Made
it look like a suicide.”

“Do you think they’ll
believe it? Will they investigate?”

“Well, it depends on
what the evidence looks like, if you know what I mean,” Evie said. “But he’s
getting sloppy. Careless. He’s unraveling so now’s the time to strike.”

Evie took a sharp
right as the Fox Motel’s neon sign blinked half-heartedly in the morning sun.
It flickered, on the verge of either bursting into flames or taking its final
breath before heading to the junkyard.

The motel was a
single strip of rooms, fifteen stained white doors lined in a row; the faded
burgundy siding sweltered in the sun. Two battered cars and a moped sat in the
parking lot. It was the type of motel that charged by the hour - the kind that
was featured on the news as the location of the latest drug bust. A motel where
sleazy, lunchtime affairs happened. Delaney was sure that nothing
good
ever happened at Fox Motel.

Evie pulled in next
to the broken sign that was missing half of its letters. It read ‘Off.’ It
seemed like a warning - the danger ahead sign that every teenager in a horror
flick blissfully ignored.

“What’s the plan?”
Delaney asked as Evie turned the key, silencing the hum.

“I don’t have one,”
Evie replied as she slid her wig on, adjusting it on her head with fluid,
well-practiced movements.

Delaney opened the
car door into the stifling heat and onto the cracked, weeded concrete. She
walked up to the screen door of the office and held it open for Evie. A
freckle-faced teenager behind the counter stared down at his phone with his
feet lounged on top of the counter. His eyes finally wandered up after Delaney
let the door slam shut behind her, rattling as the wood frame settled in its
spot. He hopped to his feet, setting his phone down as he eyed up Evie first.
He tilted his head with a little jerk and flicked his floppy hair to the side.
His eyes moved down to her legs and high heels and finally back up to her short
dress resting on her upper thighs.

“Err, sorry about
that,” he mumbled. A box fan set inside the window buzzed behind him, but the
room was still sticky, reeking of must and sweat.

“No problem,” Evie
purred as his face flushed. It wasn’t going to take much to get information out
of this kid.

Delaney flashed a
smile, resting her hand on the counter to lean forward. His eyes shifted to
Delaney’s v-neck t-shirt, the tiniest gap exposed a mound of cleavage.

“Can I - uh, help you?”
His voice cracked. He couldn’t have been much older than fifteen, maybe sixteen - a late bloomer, his parents most likely the owners of the motel.

“We’re looking for a
friend of mine. Blonde, middle aged, striking emerald green eyes. She’s been
staying here. She likes red,” Evie breathed. Delaney looked over at Evie
beneath the aviators.
Cherry?

“Florence?” The boy
flicked his hair again.

“Yeah, Florence,”
Evie repeated as though she had known all along. “What room is she in?”

“Number four. I
didn’t see her leave today. She should be here. She doesn’t usually leave in
the mornings,” he offered, his eyes back on Delaney’s chest.

“Thanks, hun,” Evie
snapped as she turned and slammed the screen door open. Delaney scuttled behind
her, flashing one last smile at the boy before following Evie into the bright
sun.

“That was easy,”
Delaney said as they followed the overgrown path past door number twelve.

“It always is, isn’t
it? Men can be manipulated so easily. It starts young,” Evie replied as she
made short, quick strides in her heels.

“Something tells me
Florence isn’t going to be as easy. I think I know Florence, by the way. I ran
into her two days ago. Well, running into her isn’t exactly what I would call
it,” Delaney said. Evie’s strides stopped, the heels skidding against the
concrete.

“Where?”

“Well, I heard her
giving head to President Givens in his office for starters,” Delaney offered.
Evie pulled her sunglasses down, her blue eyes staring at Delaney, waiting for
more.

“When?”

“Two days ago. I was
in my office, working late, when I went to grab some tea. I heard her screams
and went to check it out. I didn’t see anything, but I heard. Can’t mistake
that noise,” Delaney started.

“And?”

“I ran back to my
office, but Givens saw me on his way out. He stopped to talk, but I don’t think
he suspected that I knew anything. At least, I don’t think anyway. After I
finally left, she stopped me outside of the building. She told me that
President Givens had influential friends. She told me it wasn’t as bad as it
seemed,” Delaney recited.

“Yeah, right.”

“Then I saw her the
next day with Holston, in his backyard, while I was on my morning run. She was
wearing the same clothes, and he gave her a small, yellow envelope.” Delaney
paused, thinking about what possibly could have been in the envelope.
Florence’s red shirt stung in her head. Delaney preferred to call her Cherry;
it seemed to fit her better.

“I saw her at the
gala last night,” Evie replied, nodding her head as she processed the
information.

“I did, too, but she
was cleaned up last night.”

“Wearing a black
wig,” Evie confirmed.

Delaney nodded her
head as she looked down the doors to see the brass number four hanging crooked
from the once-white door. The whole joint needed a facelift.

Evie began walking
again, cruising past ten, nine, eight, until they both finally stood straight
in front of the number four, the brass glistening in the sun. Evie held her ear
up to the door before she stepped back and raised a closed fist to the door.
Delaney elbowed Evie and pointed to the small window next to the door. A puff
of smoke filtered through the window.

“What do you girls
want?” the voice rasped through the window screen.

“Just to talk,” Evie
said. Another stream of white blew through the screen.

“Your father doesn’t
know you’re here. He wouldn’t be too happy to see you,” Florence mused.

“No, he wouldn’t,”
Evie replied.

“We just have a few
questions. It will only be a few minutes. We want to help,” Delaney offered.

“There’s nothing you
two little hunnies can help with,” she sung through a hoarse throat. “What’s
done is done. I’m moving on and so should you.”

“What’s done?”
Delaney asked, feeling the panic rise in her voice.
Ann.

“President Givens,”
Evie answered. “But we don’t care about that. Where did he take her?”

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about.” Florence streamed another steady puff of white.

“Yes, you do,”
Delaney pressed as she stepped toward the screen, looking into the window to
see the green eyes staring back at her through the mesh. The cigarette dangled
from her bare lips. Her face was clean, completely scrubbed of any makeup. Dark
bags slung low beneath her eyes, the wrinkles deeply set in the corner of her
eyes and on her upper lip. Decades of chain smoking littered her stripped face,
and her dirty roots led to frayed, blonde ends. She sat in an old wooden
rocker, creaking back and forth, wearing a bright red negligee - silk, with
spaghetti straps - that extenuated her large, low-hanging breasts.

“I don’t, hun,” she
breathed. “But I could take a guess.”

“Go for it,” Evie
said.

“You’re lucky that
one’s with you.” Florence looked past Evie and pointed to Delaney. “How are
Mark and Ben?”

Delaney inhaled,
sharpness in her chest at the mention of her brothers. “They would be better if
Holston Parker didn’t have their mother. How do you know my brothers? And what
was in the yellow envelope?”

Florence paused,
taking a long, hard drag from her cigarette. The white stem was almost gone,
the cigarette burning close to her lips. She blew the smoke through her nose
this time, the smoke filtering down toward her chest.

“Holston was
returning what was rightfully mine. Information and names of what I had lost a
long time ago. I earned it back through a few small favors to your father. And
my guess would be that he took her back to Amberg,” she finally said as she turned
her eyes to Evie. “Your father is trying to right his wrongs. He’s not who you
think he is.”

“How can you say that
after what he has done to you?” Evie spat. “I saw you in that barn. You were
bought by him. Don’t you have any value on your life? Where are those other
girls, Florence?”

“The other girls are
right where they should be,” she replied coolly. “And my life isn’t incredibly
valuable anymore, little Evie. Making amends at the end is what’s important.
Righting all the wrongs you’ve done in life. That’s what God will remember.
Your father taught me that.”

“My father is a
murderer, the scum of the earth. He’ll go to hell for all the wrong he’s done
in life. What did he do to you?” Evie seethed through the window.

“He provided an
opportunity
.”
Florence hung on the last word as she took her last short puff and snuffed out
the cigarette in a full ashtray on the table beside her.

“Getting forced to
have sex isn’t an opportunity,” Delaney snapped back.

Florence cackled a low
laugh before she stopped her chair and pressed her face against the mesh of the
screen. “Tell my boys, Mark and Ben, that their mum says hello.” Florence’s
face disappeared into the shadows of the room as a floral curtain waved across
the screen, separating them from the woman in red.

27

June 17 - 11:00 a.m

Delaney stood
paralyzed in the beating of the summer sun. The rays penetrated her blank face,
threatening to scorch pink streaks across the apples of her cheeks just like
they had every summer as a child. The pink streaks were always accompanied by
the imperfect dots, the boys of her neighborhood taunting her with the nickname
“Freckles.” She had despised the jaunts. She was sure the freckles were forming
with each second she stood immobile in the rays.

Florence was Mark and
Ben’s birth mother, if Florence was even her name. The air swirled, Florence’s
revelation suffocating her. She swallowed hard, opening her mouth to dig into
the woman behind the curtain when she felt Evie’s hand against her arm. She
shook her head, her blonde hair waving against her shoulders in a warning sweep
as she stepped back onto the sidewalk. Delaney stood planted, unable to move
her legs.

Mark and Ben had
never talked much about their birth parents or about their lives before Michael
Jones had picked them up in the hardware store and brought them
home
to
Milwaukee when she was six. She had asked a few times about their past only to
be shushed by Ann Jones.
Respect their privacy
, she had said with a pat
on her leg. The infamous pat that she had begrudgingly learned and used on
Michael Jones just this morning.

However, Delaney was
six and did what most six-year-olds would do. She stopped asking questions and
waited in the nooks and crannies of the Jones’s ranch for the adult whispers.
They never came, though. The only information she had discovered, years later
through Ben, was that their mother left their father for another man in a
Mustang to live in California and become a tattoo artist. Their inconsolable
and fallible father, unable to cope with the loss, had drunk himself to death.
Their parents had failed them irreparably by the age of six and ten. Ben had
shrugged his shoulders in the way most adolescent boys do. There wasn’t a whole
lot else to say.

Another Jones secret.
The
festering mysteries buried deep in their family history were revealing
themselves quicker than she could heave the dirtied earth away. Yet it was
muddied, the keys to the whole ungodly mess cruising around in a sleek, gray
Mercedes.
Ann Jones and Holston Parker.
As much as Delaney feared
unearthing the rest of the secrets, she longed to pull the rope, reaching the
pinnacle of the disaster. She needed to know who she was. Her entire
twenty-eight years a reality she was told to be the truth. A reality that in
fact had been obscured by the smeared lenses of rose-colored glasses. Delaney’s
tightly constructed life was being chipped away, one color at a time, until
everything was gray.