House of Fire (Unraveled Series) (4 page)

The corners of his
mouth burned in Delaney’s mind as she reached for her knife. Her fingers ached
to slash the smile from his face, the facade he had mastered during his climb
to the top. He had the whole town fooled, the university groveling at his feet,
and she was playing to his whims.
An understanding,
he had said.
Most
people call it blackmail
.

“I am more than
pleased to bring the most deserving individuals the opportunity to dine for the
first time in our facility. I hope you are enjoying the atmosphere, the
elements.” He made a grand gesture toward the glass that sent Delaney reeling
in her seat.
“
And most of all, that you enjoy the meal brought to you by
the freshest ingredients in the student garden. It’s been a long, beautiful
journey to bring this facility to the campus. I look forward to many more years
of celebration of scholarship here at Leighton,” he finished as he stared at
Delaney one second too long, his eyes penetrating her skin as June gave her a
sideways glance.

Holston handed the
microphone back to President Givens with a nod and another ritual shoulder pat
before moving toward the crowd.
Count President Givens in his circle.
Delaney inhaled, feeling the burn in her lungs as he passed her. This time, her
eyes steadied on him as he passed. She wouldn’t let him defeat her again. It
was petty, she knew, yet she counted it a small victory all the same.

“You got an extra
stare, Ms. Jones,” June whispered. “You know, he’s single and loaded.”

“Never,” she
whispered back, her words disappearing into the applause as if she had never
spoken them at all.

4

June 14 - 6:30 p.m.

“It’s right here,
what more do you need?” Evie accused, her index finger slamming onto the glowing
screen in front of her as soon as she heard the front door open. She stood up
from the kitchen table and walked to the foyer, her bare feet pressing against
the softness of the cork floor. The headline read, “Missing Man, 38, from Green
Bay.”

“You have no idea
that it was him,” Ryan replied, walking into the cottage. Ryan’s quaint home
was located on the foothills of Lofoten’s mountains, an unlikely find for a fisherman
of his status. Ryan had snapped up the fixer-upper in a heartbeat, though, pouring
all his hard-earned money into the purchase. Without a family to support, Ryan
had nothing to lose.

He slipped off his
undershirt and shoes, the aroma of the sea lingering in Evie’s nostrils. She
would miss that smell. She would miss him, but she wouldn’t leave without
giving it her last, exhaustive breath. She didn’t know if she would be able to come
back.

“It has to be.
Gunnar’s gone, and he’s out of control. His tight ring is spiraling. Holston
picked the wrong guy to kill. Too many connections,” she said as she scanned
through the article for the twentieth time. The police had no leads. Kurt Dodd
had simply disappeared one day. Although the paper hadn’t reported on his
background, Evie guessed that either they didn’t know yet or were choosing not to
divulge all the personal details so she had done a search herself. Kurt Dodd
had an extensive background of incriminating cases, yet none that had landed
him in jail. He had skirted charges of assault and prostitution due to his lawyers
weaseling their way into bargains and community service.
A joke
, Evie
thought. The unjust criminal system let villains walk, free to entangle themselves
among good, law-abiding citizens. Kurt Dodd had up and vanished from his job as
an insurance agent, abandoning his wife and house. Kurt Dodd was missed, unlike
the rest of Holston Parker’s kills.

“Evie,” Ryan started.
His body, thick from years of manual labor and fishing, moved toward hers.
“Look, I know this is hard, staying here in Norway, but I never asked you to
stay, and I just can’t leave. It’s just too much to go back. Nothing is going
to take that pain away. Even if your father is dead, it’s not going to bring
back Elizabeth or my dad. It’s just not.”

Evie flinched at his
words,
your father
. She had removed herself from him, creating an idea
of him that she no longer was connected to. He wasn’t her father. She wasn’t
his daughter. She couldn’t be a product of the monster she knew him to be. As much
as she knew she couldn’t bring Elizabeth or Joe back, the revenge would be
sweet. To know that Holston Parker was dead, gone from this earth and unable to
hurt anyone else was what mattered.

“I’m doing this alone
then.”

Evie stared into
Ryan’s deep eyes, the pause telling of his response.

“I guess you are,”
Ryan replied, feeling the finality of the statement. He had known she wasn’t
going to stay in Norway forever, although Ryan hadn’t expected what was
developing between them and, from what he could tell, neither had she. He
didn’t want her to go, but knew it was time. She would never be able to move on
with her life with Holston Parker still alive.

“Will you come back?”

“Do you want me to?”
she replied, leaning against his bare chest as his arms wrapped around her thin
shoulders.

“Of course, I do,” he
said, kissing the top of her head. She bent her head upward, searching his eyes
for the truth in his words. His warm lips pressed against hers before he
slipped down the strap of her beach dress, revealing a bare breast.

“I’m leaving
tonight,” she murmured as her nipple hardened with the graze of his hand.

5

June
14 - 7:30 p.m.

Delaney swept the brush against
the duck cloth, the sound of rain pattering against the window behind her. She
had closed the books on her first year, finalizing the grades and enduring the President’s
luncheon. It would have been a tolerable lunch had it not been for Holston
Parker and his beady, black eyes that had slashed through her skin. James. Painting.
Her life. It would all be so much better without Holston Parker in it.

She stared at the
dingy beige walls in front of her; her office needed a major renovation, the
whole building did. Her walls needed a fresh roll of honey-coated yellow and
artwork. The space was desperate, only housing a small desk, a half empty
bookshelf with her favorite art books and two chairs. Her art area was shoved
to the right side of the space, rolled canvases and plastic containers of tubes
and brushes crammed in the corner. She hadn’t been capable of bringing herself
to move in. The permanency of the situation was too much for her to stomach.

She paused, setting
the brush down on the easel to crack the small window in order to let in the
rhythmic pattering of the rain. The warmth of the summer day hadn’t subsided in
the building yet, and the facility managers weren’t liberal on the air
conditioning, especially now that the semester had ended. She inhaled the smell
of freshly fallen rain, the earthy mugginess wafting through the space. The
rain prevented her from opening it anymore, although she wondered, if it helped
anyway. She bent down to roll her jeans, which were smeared with paint and
shredded with tiny holes. She felt at home in the decade old denim - each curve
hugged her body in the right place and each hole told a story of the artwork
she had created. Their softness rubbed against her skin in the same familiar
way each and every time she put them on. She grabbed the bottom of her barely
white cotton t-shirt and waved it, feeling the breeze blow onto her navel and
chest.
Her painting uniform couldn’t change
, she thought, reconciling
herself to the fact that she would have to bring in a fan the next day.

She lifted her red-soaked
brush to the canvas again, letting the peaks of the flame lick toward the edge.
Delaney had tried to suppress that night, burying it deep just as she had with
the memory of the church basement, yet the memory had resurfaced fourteen years
later with the murder of Richard Rowan. The relief she had felt with his death was
what had finally began the healing process for her - an itching, scabbing one
at that. But it had merely been the first step, and she needed to do the same
with Holston Parker. She would allow the guilt of putting an ax through a man’s
head to resurface so that she could deal with it and extinguish it. Holston
Parker wouldn’t control her life.

The flames of the
barn smoldered a bright red and orange on the canvas. Delaney envisioned the
man inside, his skin peeling back from the heat of the flames. She had no
choice. She had to save Evie and Theron. She would do it again. Her thoughts
wandered to Evie and the memory of her head cocked over the men as she emptied bullets
into their bodies. She hadn’t hesitated, not a flinching moment. She had been sure
of her decision. Calculated, confident. Delaney would learn to be the same.

As Delaney finished
her last strokes, highlighting the flames with white, she closed her eyes to
see Evie’s face; her smooth complexion, her blue, penetrating eyes. Delaney
wondered if she would ever see Evie again, if her overseas sabbatical would
ever end. Evie didn’t seem like the kind of person to relish being on the run. Holston
Parker would find her, or Evie would find him. Either way, there would be a
bloody collision at some turn. In a distorted sort of way, Delaney missed Evie
and the way her tiny body had crashed into her life. Evie had more clues, more
pieces to the puzzle Delaney was desperate to put together.

All Delaney had
uncovered was that, at one point, Holston Parker was George Boyd. She had
Googled George Boyd one night on June’s computer, too afraid to do any searching
on the new laptop she had purchased after hers had been stolen that night.
Delaney hadn’t found much on George Boyd of Wisconsin; her investigative skills
clearly inept. She had previously avoided most forms of technology and social
media as much as she could, the interfaces and websites unfamiliar. If she ever
wanted to get anywhere, she was going to need help. She needed to find someone
that couldn’t be traced back to her, someone that could find information about Holston
Parker without him knowing.

Kandy with a K.
Her studio mate back at Madison
had moved out to Florida after she had connected with one of her filthy-rich clients
on My Campus Hotties. Kandy had left Delaney with her phone number,
begrudgingly, urging Delaney to get on Twitter instead. She was constantly navigating
through sites, some device always connected to her ear or hand.
Kandy was
perfect for the job.
Delaney reached for her phone, the rain now pouring
against the glass in sheets. She slid through her contacts, landing on the Ks.

“Delaney Jones,”
Kandy drawled in a playful, sweet Southern accent.

“Kandy with a K,”
Delaney replied, smiling to herself as she envisioned Kandy lying in a chair,
martini in her hand.

As talented as she
was, Kandy had always been on the prowl for a man to take care of her. No doubt
she had the body for it and the heart of coal didn’t hurt. She had no qualms
stomping on men who thought, or even just had an inkling of premeditation, of
saying an unkind word to her.

“With what do I owe
this pleasure?”

“A favor.”

“Of course. Don’t you
want to know how I’m doing?” Kandy finally dropped the fake accent, resorting
back to her Midwest roots.

“Sure, go,” Delaney
said, knowing that Kandy was doing just fine.

“Florida’s
amazing, as I'm sure you would have guessed. Hank is a bit of a bore, but he’s worth a load of cash and likes
my company. I paint when I feel like it and when I don’t, I shop. I take his
credit card, and boom, shopping commenced. I think I’ve got it made for a bit.
Delaney, you really gotta try this out,” Kandy encouraged. Delaney didn’t doubt
that Kandy believed she had it made - that she had hit the motherload of all gold-digging.

“I’m sure I do,” she
replied as the rain beat against the building, the sound amplifying with each
passing second.

“What’s that favor
you were talking about?”

“Well, you know how
incapable I am at technology, right? A blundering ass, I think you once said,”
Delaney paused to listen to Kandy’s chuckle before continuing, “I need a little
help digging up a little dirt on someone.”

“Ms. Delaney Jones.
What kind of dirt? A guy? Are you finally seeing someone?” Kandy also had a
thing for gossip, a habit Delaney had never understood or engaged in. A characteristic
she had realized early on had most likely caused her lack of friendships with
women through her adolescence. But Delaney hadn’t minded Kandy’s obsession, as
long as she didn’t have to partake in the nasty back-stabbing game.

“Well, I’m seeing
someone, but this isn’t the guy I want you to look up. The guy I want to know
more about is just an acquaintance that my mom may have known,” she started.
An
acquaintance
. A blackmailer would have been a more accurate term.
Murderer.
Even better.

“Ooh, juice please,”
Kandy perked.

“No juice, just look
him up. I just want anything you can find on him. His name is George Boyd. He’s
in his late fifties or sixties, I’m guessing. I’m thinking from Wisconsin, but
check the entire U.S.,” Delaney replied, watching the water flood the sidewalks
below.

“I’m not a hacker,
Delaney,” Kandy laughed. “I don’t know where you exactly check for people’s
background, but I’ll do my best. I’ll start a search myself and if I can’t find
anything, I have some friends that can do some digging for a fee.”

“I figured you would
know someone, you always do,” Delaney complimented, laying it on thick.

“You know me. The
power of social media and connections. You should try it someday,” she teased.
“Even my mom has a Facebook account.”

“I’m good, Kandy.”