House of Fire (Unraveled Series) (7 page)

“The Jones family is
quite talented. Your brother was excellent to deal with as the project manager.
He successfully brought Mr. Parker’s vision to light. The Parker Tower is an inspiration
for our campus. Our community.” He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his
foot in front of the other.
Just leave
. She nodded again in agreement
before he added, “Are you attending the Gala tomorrow evening?”

“Yes, I’ll be there.”
Delaney forced a smile. She envisioned his hand wrapped around the woman’s
mouth, holding her tight against his body, maybe even pulling her hair. Cherry
the prostitute should have scratched him with her claws, making three perfectly
lined streaks down his face. Explaining that to the crowd at the gala would
have been an interesting blunder. Surely, his wife would be thrilled to know
about the woman giving him head in his office. The sound of a train horn
funneled through her open window, the long pulls drawing her back to the
conversation.

“Good,” he said as he
pushed himself from the frame and stepped back into the hall. “Your parents
have much to be proud of. I hope they can make it as well. Good night. Don’t
stay too late.”

“I won’t. Good night,”
Delaney recited as he disappeared from her door. His footsteps echoed until
they vanished just like the woman’s had minutes before. She threw her head
back, letting her hair fall along the backside of the chair. The moistened
strands at the nape of her neck tingled in the breeze from her window. Holston
Parker and President Givens were friends, but how close were they?
I have to
get out of here. Leighton. Appleton.
The knot in her stomach released as
she pulled her phone from her pocket. A missed call from Kandy with a K.

8

June 15 - 6:00 p.m.

The engine whirred to
a stop as Evie turned the key of the Ford Focus rental. She had flown into the
Milwaukee airport and driven the two hours north, not willing to risk flying
into Appleton with Holston Parker’s men on watch. He would be waiting for her to
return, to make a mistake, but she wouldn’t, not this time.

Her stiletto stepped
onto the curb, the car parked beneath the cool shade of a rustling oak tree
just a few blocks from her destination, her favorite childhood hideaway. It was
the only sanctuary that would give her peace - a sense of clarity - before she
continued on her journey.

Her blonde hair
swayed as she walked, moving back and forth like the pendulum of a clock
against the pink trench coat. Her time was dwindling. She needed to find the answers
to her questions before she killed him. She needed to get in and out. A fast
kill. A devastating slash before she vanished in the wind. She would finally
blow away like she had always dreamed.

Evie’s small frame
whisked along the sidewalk and through the alley until the steeple of St.
Mary’s became large in her view, raised high like an endless peak to the sky.
She grabbed the heavy metal handle, her hand not much bigger than it had been
as a child, and slipped into the dim glow of candlelight. The earthy smell of
incense wrapped around her as she moved along the wall toward the confessional.
She pulled her large sunglasses down, the coffee brown contacts shifting as she
scanned the empty church. Her knife, the first stop after securing the rental
car, was tucked inside the belt of her dress. She longed for the familiar grip
of her 9mm. Stealing a gun would be difficult but not impossible. Until then,
the knife would have to do.

The familiar pair of
angels looked down on her; she had missed the angels, their gold-tipped wings
and elongated arms of protection reaching out to her. She needed them more than
ever. She welcomed them back, feeling their strength run through her veins. She
stood before the confessional, one side exposing the familiar black pants and
black shoes of Father Haskens. She lifted the curtain of the other side and
slid onto the bench, her body erect against the back.

“Confess your sins,
young sheep of the Lord,” his voice began through the grated metal. St. Mary’s
was one of the few churches in the community that still held masked
confessional. She envisioned Father Haskens’s thinning, white hair and black,
horn-rimmed glasses on the other side, his jowls hanging close to his priest
collar. He hadn’t aged for twenty years, an undying man as though Jesus himself
refused to call him home; his time for helping his flock not yet expired.

“Father, I will sin,”
she began, her voice even.

“Young sheep, repent
in the Lord. If you have not sinned yet, be still. He is calling your name to
cease your thoughts,” he interrupted.

“My thoughts will not
stop. My actions will not stop. I am asking forgiveness for what I must do to
save others.”

“Evie,” Father
Haskens whispered. Evie exhaled. The clamoring of Father Haskens emerging from
his bench echoed through the chamber. She followed suit until they stood face-to-face.

“I didn’t recognize
you,” he said before he moved to sit in the pew, his hand grasping the back of
the pew ahead of him as he slowly lowered himself.

“I’m not asking for
guidance. I’m asking for forgiveness,” Evie repeated.

“The Lord will guide
you if you listen, but you must quiet your soul before you hear him.”

“I have, Father,” she
insisted. “It’s something I have to do. He is calling me to do it.”

“Are you sure?” Father
Haskens slid his glasses from his face, wiping the creases in his bridge. “The
Lord does not revel in violence, nor revenge. It is His right to judge on the
final day. Not ours.”

“I’ve never been more
sure.”

“My Evie, I’ve known
you since you were a child. I’ve seen you pass through life, always a sheep of
the Lord, but on the edge of the flock. Do not stray from the Lord,” he warned,
pausing as he set his hands, swollen and wrinkled, on his knees. Father Haskens
also knew his little Evie wouldn’t relent. She wouldn’t change her mind, and
she wouldn’t leave without the repentance. “Ten Hail Marys and five Our
Fathers.”

“Thank you, Father,”
she said, bowing her head before turning to go, her heels clicking against the
polished stone of the church.

“Evie?” his voice
called to her. Evie stopped, never turning, unable to look him in the eyes. She
waited, feeling her heavy breath in front of her, filling the stifling silence.
“Be vigilant.”

9

June 15 - 6:30 p.m.

Laughter seeped in
through her window as she sat immobile in her office chair. Cherry and
President Givens were long gone, seconds having turned to minutes. She had
heard a car engine rev and then disappear - the soft laughter lingered against
the walls. Delaney perched in her chair to see a young couple walking down the
sidewalk, their hands interlocked as they swung with their strides. The man
with a beanie cap held a guitar in his other hand, the bottom dangerously close
to scraping the concrete. They smiled at each other before he kissed the top of
her head.
Love.
That’s what it is supposed to look like.
She
looked back down at her blank laptop screen. She hadn’t even had the chance to
turn it on before President Givens had walked in. She had been staring at a
blank screen the entire time.

Delaney stood up, her
clothes clinging to every inch on her skin, and shut her office door to redial
the missed call on her phone.

“I hope you have
something,” Delaney said before Kandy could even say hello.

“How bad do you want
it?” Kandy whispered, raspy and dripping with sex.

“It better be pretty
damn good,” Delaney replied. Kandy’s call had brought her face-to-face with President
Givens; it had to be worth something.

“How bad?” she
whispered again.

“Damn, Kandy, just
tell me all ready,” Delaney pressed. She had forgotten how incredibly
frustrating Kandy could be when she was in one of her moods. She had spent four
years with her, Delaney should know.

“Fine, no games. One
day I’ll work you over, Delaney, and you’ll like it,” she started, the sound of
bubble gum popped in Delaney’s ear. “Holston Parker, sixty-one. Born George
Boyd in Wausau, Wisconsin, to a William and Isla Boyd. Looks like they both
died in 1958 in a car accident when boy George was six. The boy was in the car
but didn’t die. He jumped around foster homes in Wisconsin and never got
adopted, according to my source.”

“Your source?”

“Yeah, my source. You
wanted the dirt. I couldn’t find it so I went to a friend. An old acquaintance
of mine. A real computer freak. A hacker guy,” Kandy said. “He was a good
client of mine. Liked kinky pictures. Had a fetish with sock monkeys. You know
the ones with beady eyes, the ones you make with a sock?”

“Jesus, okay,”
Delaney whispered, moving down to sit in her chair. Her jeans crawled against
her legs, her skin beginning to itch.

“Seems like he went
off the radar for a while until he changed his name to Holston Parker when he
was eighteen. The rest of the story is like a damn magazine. Real golden boy.
Rags to riches type of deal,” she breathed, her voice running together, “You
didn’t tell me he was a billionaire with a capital B. You got your head in the
right place, girl.”

“Keep going.”

“Must have gotten
some experience on construction sites in his early twenties, then he started
his own lumber company out of an old rundown warehouse and grew a construction
company from scratch before moving on to real estate. The latest stat says he’s
worth three point five billion dollars. His headquarters of Parker Enterprises,
as I’m sure you know, are in Appleton, Wisconsin.”

“Yeah, I got that
part,” Delaney said. The information wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, at
least for a billionaire, except for jumping around the foster system.

“Not a bad man to be
messed up with, if you ask me.” Kandy popped another bubble.

“Dubble Bubble?”

“You got it. I’m on
my tenth one in the past hour. The flavor,”

“Goes so fast,”
Delaney finished as she fanned the back of her neck with a post-it pad.

“A fuckin’ billionaire,
Delaney,” Kandy repeated. “Now you’re talking. Imagine what you could do with
that kind of money.”

“I got it.” Delaney
stopped the pad of paper, looking at the clock on the wall. 6:30 p.m. Her
stomach growled. “How much do I owe you?”

“This one’s on me,”
Kandy offered. “A slip of the nip is all it took.”

“Kandy, you didn’t
have to. You have to stop doing that. Have some self-respect for yourself,”
Delaney started in on Kandy, reminiscent of their studio days.

“I know, but I didn’t
mind,” Kandy quipped. “I like the control. You know my deal.”

“Do you think your
guy could scrounge up anything else? Dig a little deeper? Holston Parker has a
daughter by the name of Evie Parker,” Delaney started, the small pixie of a woman
flashing through her head.

“He didn’t say
anything about her, but I’ll ask. I’ll get back to you in a couple days. Fred
is taking me on a little trip to the Bahamas. I need it, you know. I work
pretty damn hard.” Kandy let a high pitch laugh slip.

“Kandy, I want to pay
this time. Seriously, just let me know how much it is. I’ll send you the cash. It
will make me feel better.”

“Like you aren’t
digging dirt on some unsuspecting victims?” Kandy asked.

“Victims?” Delaney
repeated with a laugh before lowering her voice, “Have fun in the Bahamas,
Kandy. I owe you.”

Delaney slid her phone
in her pocket and closed her laptop with a click. She eyed her StudioDK mug of
tea before she resolved to let it stay until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.
Or the following day after that. Maybe she needed a break from campus. The last
two nights had only resulted in soaked t-shirts, scandal and seething
resentment. She exhaled, grabbing her keys before popping just inches of her
head out the door. The silent halls were unchanged except for the faint smell
of wood, musk and sweat all dripped into one.
Cherry’s perfume.
Delaney
cringed as she stepped into the empty hall, following the same steps both the President
and Cherry had taken only moments before. She was treading on a disgusting
revelation she had no interest in knowing. She should have left with June. For
that matter, she should have never come to Appleton.

Her hand hit the side
entrance door to open into the lingering sun of the early evening. Her natural
inclination to squint caused her to walk right past the red shirt. It was the
puff of cigarette smoke that turned her head. The smoke drew Delaney’s eyes to
the stinging cherry-colored shirt.

“Did you like the
show?” Cherry dragged a long pull on the cigarette before throwing it on the
ground, the burn only half-way up the stem. Pink lip-stick stained the butt on
the ground, her foot smothering the red burn. Delaney’s eyes moved back up to
the woman’s face. Cherry was middle aged, although her outfit wouldn’t have shown
it. She was in her late fifties, early sixties.

“I’m sorry?” Delaney
stopped, squinting into the sun to face her.

“I saw you in the
office down the hall.” Cherry focused her bloodshot eyes on Delaney. Her face was
covered in a thick layer of concealer and powder that hid the blemishes of her
skin. Her neck crawled with the same red imperfections Delaney imagined were underneath
the makeup. The woman’s eyelashes fluttered underneath the black clumps of mascara
that had gathered from days of reapplied coats. The pink lip-stick had faded to
a dull hue. It reminded Delaney of the times she spent in front of the mirror
as a young girl, pinching her lips for that same color. Except, Cherry was far
from the inexperienced innocence of a young girl. Cherry was seasoned, well
beyond perfection.