House of Steel (31 page)

“Probably not.”

“Theron?”

“He’s fine.”

“The nurse?”

“She’s at the end of the hall with another
patient. We’ll have to go now. There’s a set of stairs on the other
end. Good thing we stopped at this hospital. Limited staff.” He
smiled as he gulped down the last of his drink and threw the empty
cup in the garbage.

Evie tore the tape off her hand and slid the
needle out, watching the drops of blood collect on her hand before
they rolled onto the bed. She placed the tape back on her hand,
stopping the flow of the blood.

“The monitors. On your chest,” Ethan
whispered, pointing to her hospital gown. She reached inside her
gown, tearing off the patches adhered to her chest. A loud beep
filled the room as the monitor flat lined for a moment before it
stopped. Evie looked up to see Ethan by the outlet, the cord of the
monitor in his hand. He dropped the cord and scooped her up into
his arms, hiding her tiny body inside the bulge of his arms. Evie
tucked her head into his chest and closed her eyes, feeling the
ripples of his body rub gently against her face. The pain in her
ribcage screamed as he made his way down the hall and into the
stairwell. Her body jerked with the jolt of the steps, but they
needed to go. Holston would be here soon, and she couldn’t confront
him now. Not when she wasn’t ready.

Ethan hit the door open, rushing them into
the bright sun and cold winter wind of a brisk Wisconsin day. Evie
felt the sting on her cheeks, letting the burn sink deep into her
skin. She knew she wouldn’t feel the Wisconsin wind much longer.
They would go far away where he wouldn’t find them.

“The car is just twenty feet away. Are you
okay?” he whispered as he darted in between cars, her feet dangling
from underneath the hospital gown.

“It’s freezing, and we probably look
suspicious as hell,” she muttered into his chest, the heat of her
breath grazing against her face.

“Yeah,” he grunted as he bent down to open
the passenger door of her gray sedan. He had removed the GPS
tracker according to Evie’s instructions, leaving it twenty minutes
just outside of Appleton. He placed her in the car, slamming the
door shut before hopping in and revving the engine. He tore out of
the parking lot and onto the pavement of the road. They sat in
silence waiting at a red light before Ethan pressed his foot heavy
on the gas and turned right onto the highway. Evie exhaled.

“You said the drive was only one hour or so
from here?” Ethan asked as he looked at Evie. Her body barely
filled the passenger seat.

“Yeah. It’s not far after the Michigan
border.” She squinted in the wicked glare of the sun. They would be
there before dark but could only stay long enough to get what she
needed.

“He’ll know we’ve been here. Once he figures
out that I’ve helped you, he’ll check my accounts and see that I
withdrew all my money,” Ethan said.

“Ethan, you shouldn’t have - ”

“I had to. We’ll need as much as we can to
get as far away as possible. Out of his reach.”

“I can’t let you do this, Ethan.” Evie sat
up, wincing at the pain that radiated through her body.

“It’s not your choice, Evie. I make my own
decisions, and I made this one a long time ago. We both knew that
he was destructive, but we both had to play along. Be puppets in
his show. You’re a fighter, Evie, and I’ll fight alongside you as
long as you’ll let me.” Ethan reached over, placing his hand on her
leg buried in the loose cotton.

“Ethan, it’s not your fight.”

“He made it this way. He started it with
Henry. I never wanted to see you hurt like that.”

“When you convinced me to be a fighter.”

“You were always a fighter, Evie. I just had
to convince you to bring it out.”

“Well, it looks like it didn’t turn out well
for either of us,” she sighed, pulling his hand away from her
leg.

“Don’t give up yet,” he said reaching his
hand into the backseat, pulling a plastic bag onto her lap. “Your
clothes are in here.”

“Thanks.”

“Your knife’s in the black bag in the back,”
he said, gripping the steering wheel once again. The hum of the
engine filled the silence between them. “And your wallet and the
money.”

“You found it? How?” she asked. She had
stashed her wallet with her counterfeit IDs, passport, and stack of
cash in the bag underneath the cot. She had planned on coming back
to the room to get Theron and her bag.

“Dumb luck,” he replied with a smile.

“And the barn? How did you know we were
there?” she asked, studying the profile of his face.

“When you tore out of the pub, I knew
something was going on. I slipped Mark and Joe a little something
and took off after you. The barn was my first stop. It usually was
-” He stopped before looking back at Evie.

“What?”

“The usual spot for Gunnar.”

“For what?” she asked, knowing the answer to
her question, but she wanted someone else to say it. To make it
real.

“Do you really want to do this, Evie?” he
asked as she nodded her head. “Where I picked up the bodies.”

“Why?” she whispered, feeling her body sink
into the seat.

“I don’t know, Evie. He’s Holston. I felt
like I owed him after he had taken me in. I was abused, broken from
my father, and Holston, he convinced me. It wasn’t hard. It was
actually pretty easy; I’ve only done it a couple times. Ever since
Gunnar wanted to stop running the bodies,” he said before he added,
“I wanted to tell you. I really did.”

“And Joe?”

“I left him for Holston to clean up.”

“I can’t believe Joe is gone. I didn’t
know,” she started, letting the conversation fall. She couldn’t
think about Joe’s body lying somewhere, waiting to be dumped.

“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered.

“Did you get rid of your phone and Mark’s?”
she asked as she sifted through the bag to find her pants. She
pulled out the black cargo pants and put them up to her face. The
smell of smoke permeated her nostrils as she inhaled. At least the
barn was gone.

“Yeah. Both phones crushed and in the
garbage at the hospital,” he replied without looking at her. Evie
watched him, staring at his defined jawline, his eyes fixed on the
road. He had, after all, come back for her. He had saved her from
the barn and from Delaney’s house. She owed him something.

“And my phone?”

“In the bag,” Ethan replied. Evie dug deeper
into the bag and pulled out the phone. She flipped to her photos,
finding the picture of Gunnar’s arm.

“There’s so many,” Evie breathed. “So many
more than I thought.”

“What is that?” Ethan asked, leaning over to
look at the phone.

“The initials of the people Gunnar killed.
That my father killed,” Evie replied, studying the arm. “Henry’s
here. H.T.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I haven’t taken care of twenty-two bodies,
I can tell you that. Only two,” Ethan said, looking at Evie. “One
on Friday and one a few months ago. I had no idea.”

“Richard Rowan was on Friday,” she said as
she took one last look at the initials before she slid the screen
away. “What happened to Theron?”

“Some students found him in an alley on the
other end of downtown. Away from Atlas Pub and your space at the
shop. The news is reporting that he is stable at Appleton Medical
Center.” Ethan’s voice drifted off. “How did that happen
anyway?”

“Gunnar, that Neanderthal. He was slicing at
me with a machete, and he missed. Slit right into that kid’s
chest,” she sighed. ”It’s a long story.” She slid the gown off and
pulled her shirt over her head. She looked over at Ethan, smiling
back at her.

“You know I had to steal a peek.” He held
his hands up as he laughed.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I was curious. I always have
been.” He turned to study her face, waiting for her reaction. She
sat in silence before a small smile crept onto her face.

***

The gray sedan pulled into the long driveway,
winding along the dense evergreens. “The driveway is plowed,” Ethan
said, his voice stirring her awake. She blinked several times,
letting the landscape of the cabin soak in as she shifted her body
up to look out the windshield.

“Hector takes care of the cabin and yard
even though my father…” she paused, the word father felt dirty in
her mouth. “He doesn’t come here in the winter. Hector’s the
groundskeeper.” The compacted snow crunched beneath the sedan as
they rolled up to the entrance. “The last time I was here was with
Elizabeth, more than ten years ago,” she added as she surveyed the
expansive cabin stuck in time against the same trees and same lake
that she remembered from her teenage years.

The cabin itself seemed more ominous against
the beauty and solitude of the nature surrounding it, darker now as
if someone had suffocated the light much like her father had
snuffed out Elizabeth’s light. Henry’s light. Now, he was meddling
with Delaney Jones, a woman she had thought she hated up until
yesterday.

“Pull off to the side, near the back,” she
said, looking closer at the cabin and adjacent out building to the
left before she finished, “In case someone decides to show up.” He
pulled around the side of the house, moving the car out of sight
from the main entrance.

“Do you think he’ll come here?” Ethan turned
the key, stopping the engine. The silence hung in the air as he
looked back at Evie examining the cabin.

“No, and I’ll be quick.”

“Do you want me to come in?”

“No, stay out here. It will only be a couple
minutes,” Evie said as she pat her leg, feeling the metal of the
knife against her leg. “You have a gun, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, sliding his hand into his
jacket.

“Keep it, for safe measure.” She smiled at
him before she pulled the handle of the car door and felt the ice
break beneath the tread of her black boot. She shut the door,
feeling the stillness of the winter surrounding her. The silence of
the familiar woods from her childhood had once soothed her, but
now, the trees stood watching her, waiting for her to make her
move. She had never been to the cabin in the winter. Her father had
only brought her here in the warm summer months. The barren trees
stood stark, void of the life and vibrancy she had remembered.

Evie’s legs and body ached with each
movement as she crept up to the cabin along a path that had been
cleared. “Thank you Hector,” she whispered into the silence as she
made her way up the steps to the porch on the back side of the
house.

As she reached the top, she turned her body
to the shores of Lake Michigan where the waves crashed against the
white beach. Large chunks of snow and ice thrashed in the water,
the waves bringing them closer to the piles of snow accumulated on
the beach on which Evie had once buried her feet into the warm sand
ten years ago; it was now deep beneath the inches of snow and ice.
The sweet warmth of the summer wind and sun had been replaced with
the churning, freezing water threatening to seize the remaining
shore. It was all an eerie reminder that everything had
changed.

Sliding her hand into her pocket, she
retrieved a tension wrench and a long, thin pick, and then bent
down, inserting the wrench first into the lock. She knew she would
destroy the lock, but it didn’t matter. They would be long gone
before Hector ever figured out she had been here. She placed her
hand on the knob, turning it once until she felt the plug inside
the lock release. She pushed the door open, a high-pitched beeping
resonating in her ears as she slipped through the door.

“No,” Evie whispered as she scanned the dark
room. She hadn’t anticipated an alarm system. Last she had checked,
he hadn’t installed any alarm systems in the cabin. She would know,
or should have known, considering she was the director of security.
He had entrusted her with all his properties, or so she’d thought.
She ran to the hallway near the garage, finding the control panel
for the system and punched in 1197 - the same code to his house in
Appleton. The beeping stopped.

“It’s not secure if you use the same code.”
She smiled as she turned back to the main area of the house and
navigated her way to the living room. A wall of windows facing Lake
Michigan streamed the light gray sky into the room. The brown
leather furniture. The cobblestone fireplace reaching twenty feet
in the air. The bookshelves flanking the fireplace filled with
books. It remained undisturbed, just as it had been since her last
visit. Her eyes scanned the bookshelf on the left, looking to the
third shelf almost ten feet up. She narrowed in on the navy blue
book with gold trim and lettering. It was still there. She pushed
an overstuffed chair against the bookshelf, climbing onto the chair
to reach the first row of books.

“Too short,” she whispered as she looked at
the shelf. She slid the tip of her boot onto the first shelf,
launching herself another couple of feet into the air as she
grabbed the wood with her right hand. Her wounded arm dangled at
her side as she gripped onto the shelf, pausing before she reached
it up slowly. The pain shot through her arm as she raised it
higher. Just as her fingers reached the navy cover, and she secured
it in her grasp, she lost her grip on the shelf. Evie’s legs
crashed into the chair below her, causing her knees to buckle
before she fell to the floor where her bandaged arm slammed against
the hardwood planks, sending jolts of agony through her body. The
book sprang loose from her hand, landing on the spine as the pages
fanned out into the air.

Evie rolled over, looking at the blank pages
standing straight in the air. It was the same book she had found
when she was a teenager. A blank book, no type on the pages. She
flipped the pages to the front of the book, exposing the inside of
the back cover. The eyes of the woman in the picture, still neatly
taped inside the back cover, stared back at her. She traced the
outline of the woman with her fingertip as the woman smiled back at
her. Her mother.