House of V (Unraveled Series) (11 page)

And would I still have the same
revolting feeling to having children of my own had I grown up as I should have?
Maybe I would be married with children of my own instead of standing in an
interrogation room at a police department agreeing to one year of parole. But I
couldn’t look back on life with regrets. This was the hand I had been dealt,
and I was going to do the best I could with it, even if it meant succumbing to
the parole.

Sister Josephine. That was why I
needed to be here.

The agreement meant I would stay
here, within the confines of a parole officer. With any luck, James would be
able to negotiate the terms of the parole officer, and I could be monitored in
a different location within the state. We had all agreed that staying in
Appleton wasn’t feasible long-term, and most likely, a hazard to my safety. The
state would need to sign off on the papers; the ones that I hadn’t signed at
this point. James was finalizing the agreement with his contact, and he had
urged me to wait on diving into the case until I signed the papers.

So I stood in the room alone,
waiting for James to come back with the papers and for Sanchez to return after
excusing himself for a phone call. My thoughts fled to Sister Josephine. Why
had someone taken her? What could someone possibly want from her? Then the most
important question of all, when was it going to end? When would the tragedy
surrounding my life and the people I associated with stop?

I turned my head at the sound of
the door to see Sanchez with a coffee in his hand. He set it down on the table
across from him, in front of my chair.

“I thought you might need this,”
Sanchez said as he sat down, opened his folder and leafed through the first few
pages. He stopped and looked up at me before he motioned for me to sit down.

“Thanks,” I said, taking one last
glance at the mirror where Delaney was surely standing - my sister, the reason
why I wasn’t out on the open waters of the sea with Ryan - before I found
myself in the seat across Sanchez, staring into the blackness of the coffee. I
liked my coffee black. No cream, no sugar. Just like life.

“Two days,” he said, pulling out a
single piece of paper. “We have two more days to find Sister Josephine.”

“When was she taken?”

“Two days ago, sometime in the
morning. Officer Hobart went to her apartment to finish another round of
questioning, but she wasn’t there. He called the Church to see where she was, and
the office assistant, Carol, said that she was staying with her. When Hobart
went to check out the house, Sister Josephine wasn’t there. He went to the
Church and found her bike, but no Sister Josephine. According to Carol, she
never saw her come in. This was around ten in the morning,” he said.

“And the letter, you saw the letter
that she got, right? Since you saw the email that Delaney sent me,” I replied,
closing my eyes to see the passage. “Psalm 116:15: Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints.”

“Yes, Delaney informed us of the
content of the message. Sister Josephine should have come to us right away. No
one should feel like they should take the law into their own hands,” Sanchez
said. His eyes hardened for a brief moment as he turned the sheet to me.

“Yeah, well, you can’t exactly
always trust law enforcement to do their jobs. How’s the sweep of your
department going? Did you get rid of all the corruption? Your track record for
keeping a clean crew isn’t exactly on par,” I said, digging in a little harder.
I didn’t want to get in a spitting contest with Sanchez, but he needed to be
put in his place after his comment. I saved countless lives by taking the law
into my own hands and made his department look like the fools that they were.

“We’re clean,” he replied flatly.
“Without a doubt.”

“Good.” I said, not entirely
convinced.

Silence.

“We’re not getting off on the right
foot here.” Sanchez sighed, leaning back into the chair as he massaged his
forehead lightly.

“I can’t disagree,” I said, leaning
forward in the chair to look at the paper in front of me. As much as I hated
being here, I needed to find Sister Josephine, with or without the Appleton
Police Department. I was here, and there was no going back.

“I need you, whether I like it or
not. Not everyone in the department sees it that way, but I don’t care because
it’s my department. We have a reputation to rebuild and a job to do. And we’re
just not there quite yet. We need more information on this case, the inside
scoop on who Holston was and what past he had. There’s no one better than his
own daughter.”

“I’m not his daughter,” I
corrected.

“You know what I mean. You knew him
the longest and discovered what he was doing before any of us did. You took him
down before we could get our heads out of our asses,” he said as he signaled
his hand to the mirror behind him.

One of the officers from the zoo
stuck his buzzed head in. “Yeah, Chief?”

“Turn off the camera for a sec.”

“Chief?”

“Just do it, Hobart. I’ll tell you
when to turn it back on.”

I eyed the camera in the corner of
the room before setting my eyes back on Sanchez.

“I know you took
Theron
Olson.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” My face was as straight as an arrow. I’d never played poker, never
gambled really, yet I’d be one hell of a player. I didn’t break.
Ever.
I’d only taken
Theron
Olson
after Gunnar had sliced through his chest. I hadn’t planned on taking the
student Delaney slept with, but he turned out to be good bait for both Holston
and his henchman Gunnar. It was too bad that I wasn’t able to take care of
Holston back then, right along with Gunnar.

“I know you took
Theron
Olson and set the barn on fire. I also know that you
killed the three men in the barn.”

Wrong.
Only two.
Delaney took care of the third. My face was still, not a single twitch or
blink. I could go like this forever, however it was infuriating to think this
was how Sanchez thought he should build trust.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” I repeated.

“The point that I’m trying to make,
one I’m not doing very well apparently, is that I know what you did, and I’m
not doing anything about it,” Sanchez finally said.

“No evidence.” I shrugged my
shoulders indifferently.

“
Theron
Olson paid me a little visit after your picture was splashed across the
newspaper,” he rebutted.

“Oh yeah?”
I said coolly, still not moving. Sanchez needed me so I wasn’t going to confess
to anything. Trying to threaten me so I would trust him wasn’t going to work.

“He said it was you that took him.
He recognized your eyes,” he said.

“A lot of women have blue eyes.” I
was beyond aggravated at this point. Sister Josephine was out there in the
hands of some psychopath and needed our help.

“Not like yours.”

“My sister has the same eyes.”

Sanchez cleared his throat and
moved back into his seat. “I told
Theron
we didn’t
have enough evidence for a criminal charge at the time, but that we would
investigate. He told me not
to ?
that
he didn’t want to press charges because he didn’t want to get involved in the
whole ordeal. He wanted to move past everything, but he said that he just
needed me to know. I think he needed to get it off his chest, to be honest.”

“I don’t see where this is going.
Sister Josephine is out there?
”

“What I’m trying to show you,
although apparently I’m not being clear, is that I’m doing you a favor. I’m not
looking further into it. I don’t care if I can find evidence that corroborates
your guilt. Hell, I don’t want to find it. The whole department needs to move
on and start solving the cases that we have in front of us so we can put a stop
to all this?” Sanchez waved his hands in the air, unable to finish the
sentence. He was trying not to insult me, but I knew that “all this” was
referring to
me ?
my
association with Holston Parker and the events of the last year and half. “Too
many lives have been taken. And I think you can help put a stop to this,”
Sanchez finished.

“I don’t accept favors. I don’t
want to owe anything to anybody,” I replied.

“It’s not yours to accept or
decline. It’s already done.”

I was silent, trying to process how
this conversation was getting us any closer to trusting each other.

“How did you do it? How did you get
out of there so fast?” Sanchez leaned back across the table as his forehead
glistened above his black brows.

“Where?”
I
asked, knowing the answer he was looking for. I never would have been able to
get out of the country as fast as I had without Ryan’s help, but I was never
going to give Sanchez his name.

“Who helped you? Who picked you
up?” Sanchez asked as his eyes flashed wide in inquisition and his lips cracked
a hint of smile. “I’ve wanted to know for a year.”

“I can’t tell you that,” I said,
folding my arms across my chest. I would never give up Ryan. Sanchez could torture
me, but I would never utter his name.

“It’s off the record.”

“I know.”

“Damn.” He let out a small sound
that sounded like a laugh, but I wasn’t sure if Sanchez was capable of
laughing. I was familiar with the restricted ability. He cleared his throat and
his face fell back into the more comfortable seriousness I was accustomed to.

“As much as I hate to say this
because I don’t advocate taking the law into your hands at any point, I want to
tell you that you did a damn good job tracking down Holston Parker, and I’m
glad that the son of a bitch is dead,” Sanchez added.

“Me, too.”
For the first time, I felt my face lighten and my lips part, curling into a
small smile I tried to press down. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t suppress
the relief I felt every time I thought of pulling the trigger.

“Well, I’m glad we can be on the
same page with at least something,” Sanchez said, returning his own thin-lipped
smile before tapping the paper in front of me that I hadn’t looked at yet.

A photocopied letter of the note
Sister Josephine received in the confessional sat in front of me. The words
were scribbled in small, cursive lettering.
Tread carefully, Sister
Josephine. Psalm 116:15
:Precious
in the sight of the
LORD is the death of his saints.
The words were verbatim to Delaney’s
email. The letter was printed on a white piece of paper with a torn top. The
sides and bottom were straight and clearly intact.

Sanchez slid another photocopied
sheet next to the first one. It was another letter on the same type of paper
with a torn top, straight sides and bottom.

“This one was found taped near a
side entrance of the church. Sister Josephine’s bike was found on the grass
just ten feet away. Carol was on the other side of the building and never heard
a sound.”

The same handwriting was sprawled
across the note.
Tick-tock goes the clock. Matthew 7: 7-8: Ask, and it will
be given to you; seek, and you will find;
knock,
and
it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and
the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

My eyes scanned through the letter,
reciting the verse from Matthew. “He’s looking for someone. Asking for
something, but what?”

Sanchez slid a third piece of paper
in the row, the final one glaring back at me in the same curved lettering.

I want
Evie
Parker. You have four days to bring her to me. Or else, tick-tock, you’ll never
find God’s flock.

My chest squeezed my lungs, the air
fighting to come in and out to sustain my life, but my body stopped and so did
the air as I read my name.

So here I was,
Evie
Parker, a girl that preferred to be unwanted, and I was being hunted.
Both by Sanchez and a mysterious man who had taken Sister Josephine
as ransom.

“So that’s why you needed me. You
need me to be bait,” I accused, my eyes following Sanchez’s still outstretched
hand to his uniformed shirt; black, both crisp and clean. I wanted to grab a
fistful of the shirt and pull it toward me, yet I refrained, and instead,
watched him carefully.

“That’s not what I want and that’s
not why I need you
-
”
Sanchez started.

“Bullshit and you know it,” I
called, slamming my finger into the sheet.

“I thought you could help?
”

Help. He thought I could help by
exchanging me for Sister Josephine. It was an easy transaction and an easy
decision.
Nun for killer.
Ask a hundred people and you
would hear the same response. Which would you save?
The nun
every time.

“I’ll do it,” I replied. “Let’s do
the exchange. Tomorrow work well for you?”

“
Evie
,”
Sanchez yelled, slamming his open folder shut. “I’m not suggesting that at all.
I’m not giving you up to that bastard. I needed you to know that he’s after you
and that we are going to do everything we can to protect you and to get Sister
Josephine back.”

I bit the inside of my mouth down
hard, glaring back at the window where I hoped Delaney was still standing. I
wondered if she knew about the letter and about the psychopath trying to hunt
me down. To get to me, he killed Father
Haskens
and
took Sister Josephine. They were simply more notches to my belt. Elizabeth,
Ethan, Father
Haskens
.
All dead
because of me.
Because of him, Holston Parker.
I thought I’d taken care of the problem but apparently not. And if I didn’t do
anything to help find Sister Josephine, she would be dead, too.