House of V (Unraveled Series) (16 page)

Sister Josephine winced out in
pain, letting her lungs inhale the oxygen through her mouth. The heat in her
mouth dissipated, but the dryness remained, scorching her throat as she tried
to swallow.

“I suppose you want some water,” he
said lightly, his body still bent only a foot away from her. “You know, that
reminds me of a book I used to read to my son when he was small. If
You Give a Mouse a Cookie
, I think it
was called. This mouse would go through crazy antics as the little boy
gleefully played along to his whims, asking for more, one after the other,
after the other. So, tell me, Sister Josephine. If I give you water, what will
you ask for next? If You Give a Nun Some Water…” he said as his voice trailed
off.

She cleared her throat, desperately
swallowing what felt like a dozen swabs of cotton, and muttered a barely
comprehensible, “Nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?” he asked, dragging
his finger along the concrete. She looked down to see that he had drawn a cross
in the dust on the floor, but she didn’t mind, she would need every bit of
God’s guiding hand to get her out of this. She saw it as a glimmer of hope.

“I miss my son,” he continued, his
voice traveling in the distance as if his son was a mere ghost, just as
forgotten as the building he was keeping her in. “And this is why you’re here,
Sister Josephine. You’re going to help me get back what was taken from me. I
will get my revenge. And since Holston Parker is already dead, I will get the
next best thing. It was because of
Evie
Parker that
he ended up dead.”

Sister Josephine’s eyes glossed
over in confusion. The man was looking for
Evie
Parker, but why had he taken her? She may not be enough for
Evie
to come back to Wisconsin. The man would have been better off taking one of the
Jones family members.

The man’s lips turned up into a
smile. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

She shook her head no, careful not
to lie, but to walk a fine line to not insult him. She had thought it was the
boy from her childhood, but now, the story didn’t seem to match up. She had no
clue how
Evie
might have been involved with his son’s
death.

He pulled the black ski mask from
his face to reveal an aged man, somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties.
A man not much older than herself, but she didn’t recognize him at first. She
scanned his nose, dark eyes and dark hair, but her head was cloudy, the pain
still soaring through it. She couldn’t be sure it was him. It had been too
long, and he had changed so much. They both had.

“If I held up a rock again, would
you understand, Josephine?” he asked with a smile.

Sister Josephine felt the pit in
her stomach hollow out and the breath clamp in her lungs. Her guardian angel
couldn’t have been any more wrong. The man standing before her was very much
alive and very much the boy from Cooper Orphanage that had conjured the only
fear she had ever known. And now, she feared, he wasn’t going to fail at his
second chance.

13

June 19, 4:45 p.m
.
Appleton, Wisconsin

“How’d it go?” Sanchez asked as I
climbed in the passenger seat of his squad car. I slammed the door shut and
listened to the silence between us.

“That good, huh?” he added.

I shrugged my shoulders before I
pulled the seatbelt across my body with a forceful click.

“I’m ready,” I said, waiting for
Sanchez to start the car, but he didn’t turn the keys. Instead, he looked at
me, and I waited for his onslaught of lecturing. I could feel it coming.

“
Evie
, I
know you did what you had to do. I also know that, because of Holston, you’ve
had a pretty messed up life. I think your parents know that and will do
anything to make things better. They’ve wanted nothing else except their
daughter back for the last year. They’ve begged me to go out and find you for
months, but you sure the hell didn’t leave me with much to go on,” he said with
a long pause. “I hope you got whatever you needed to out of your system and
that you can move on
with
them.
You’ve got a stash of free passes from the devil you had to call your father
for most of your life, but one day, they’ll run out. All that will be left is
you and you better hope like hell that you have yourself figured out when the
time comes,” Sanchez finished and then turned the key, the engine roaring to
life.

“And I want nothing else than to
catch this son of a bitch that has Sister Josephine. I am willing to do
whatever it takes to do that, but I won’t put you at risk to do it unless we
know without a doubt, that you won’t be hurt. You follow my rules, and I
promise you that this will end as it should. I can’t let anyone else die. Not
on my watch,” he continued.

“Your ass would be fired in a
heartbeat.”

“You bet it would,” he said as he
backed out of the driveway and onto the road to find Sister Josephine’s captor.

***

Appleton was just as I had left it
except now it had more locked doors. I’m guessing Appleton lost its gleaming
ribbon as one of the best small towns to raise your kids. It was a shame,
really, that my so-called father had to be a reason for that. Appleton,
otherwise, was a relatively “good” place as long as you weren’t me.

My childhood had been stained
unlike the rest of the kids here. An absent father who would bring me random
presents a few times a year was a far cry from most of the middle class
families that resided in Appleton. The presents Holston brought me consisted of
a small chocolate or used stuffed animal when I was young. I received those
presents maybe twice a year. One time, he had given me a gold chain only to
take it back the following day. I hadn’t questioned how he had afforded the
chain back then; I could only cry silent tears that he had taken it away. I now
shuddered at the thought of whose neck that chain used to be around.

Those presents got bigger as I got
older when Holston had made more money. He ended up getting me my first point
and shoot camera. That was during the BD time, right before Elizabeth died.
After I watched Holston kill Henry, I didn’t accept any more of his presents.
It turned out that I missed out on at least a dozen gifts. I realized after the
police started digging up bodies last year that the number of gifts I had
received over the years coincided with a death. Instead of getting gifts on my
birthday or Christmas, I received gifts when my so-called father killed
someone.

The Father Lifetime Achievement
Award goes to Holston Parker.

That’s why I loathed presents, or
at least, I
usually
loathed presents.
Ryan’s gift had been perfect, and all I could think about was holding that
blade in my hand again. I missed Ryan. I missed Norway. I missed everything I
had for the last year.

I shook the thoughts out of my head
as we pulled into the dim light of the streetlamps just past nine. The rows of
houses were variations of the same structures. The lawns were well-pruned and
three-stall garages were sealed shut. We pulled up to a ranch I had never seen
before, despite being only one street over from where I had picked up Delaney a
year ago.

“Remember, my rules,” Sanchez
repeated. He had mentioned it at least a half dozen times over the two hour car
ride. Our talk didn’t get us much further into the investigation other than the
reiteration of the facts that were laid out in the interrogation room back at
the Milwaukee police station. There was Fred Sullivan; the one body found that
was on Holston’s TBK list. Father
Haskens
was dead.
Cause of death, heart attack brought on my strenuous circumstances - i.e., the
intruder. Last, and most certainly the most unnerving for me, Sister Josephine
was missing and the perpetrator wanted me in exchange.

We ran through the list of past and
current executives at Parker Enterprises, but no red flags were drawn. All too
boring, too predictable and none, most obviously, individuals I would profile
as criminals or murderers. We both knew one thing, though; whoever it was, knew
that Holston and I were close to both Father
Haskens
and Sister Josephine. With that as a qualifier, we were left with more than ten
thousand registered parishioners according to the administrative assistant,
Carol. That lead wasn’t going to take us anywhere.

We went back to the TBK list.
Whoever took Sister Josephine and killed Fred Sullivan had access to the list.
I took the stand that the perpetrator most likely garnered a copy sometime
after Holston’s death. As far as I knew, he’d never let that planner out of his
pocket; I had only set eyes on it once during a “convenient” mishap at work orchestrated
by none other than yours truly.

I had snagged his jacket after a
meeting and thumbed through that planner in twenty seconds before carefully
returning it. Apparently, twenty seconds wasn’t long enough to see that he had
started a kill list with your own name on it. Sanchez disagreed with my stance,
though, arguing that only the FBI and Appleton Police Department had access to
that list after his death. My raised eyebrows and mention of Lieutenant
Schaefer didn’t get far with Sanchez; he rushed to defend the department and
its actions since the sweep they had done.

Regardless of how he got the list,
we both agreed that it could be any one of the criminals that he crossed during
his lifetime, and there was no way to track that history. We needed a focus. We
needed to go back to who would want me dead, but the only person I could come
up with was already six feet under. At least that I knew of.

The squad car idled in Mark’s
driveway while Sanchez made a call to the first officer tasked with patrolling
the house.

“Officer Hobart is a few minutes
out,” Sanchez said, turning toward me.

“Isn’t that the officer that was
with us in Chicago? He’s staying up all night?” I asked.

“Yeah, he was with us, but he came
in at ten today. He’ll be able to make it through the night, plus you know, our
staff isn’t that big,” Sanchez said. “A city the size of Appleton shouldn’t
need that many officers, but your legacy still keeps on ticking, Ms. Parker.
You’re keeping us on our toes.”

“You bet I do,” I replied, thinking
of how far we really had come in the last two hours. Earlier today, I would
have lunged at his throat with that comment, yet now, I could take it in
stride. What did Sanchez call it? Oh, yeah, trust.

“All right, well, thanks. I’ll see
you in the morning.” I grabbed the handle and opened the door into the mild,
summer night of suburbia.

“I don’t think so. I’ll wait until
Hobart gets here.” Sanchez scrambled out onto the driveway and stood on the
other side of the car, gazing at me across the top.

“I thought we were supposed to
trust each other,” I said with a smirk as I dodged my head around the patrol
lights. I knew Sanchez didn’t want to let me out of his sight and that letting
me stay here with Mark was already making him squirm.

“I’m working on it,” Sanchez said,
leaning against the top. “Give me some time. I don’t let any woman walk into my
life and start making demands.”

“I thought you might be the type
that would,” I said as I scanned the neighboring houses, listening to the
silence of suburbia at night. An occasional dog bark interrupted the crickets
that filled the stillness. I wondered how many neighbors had poked their heads
out of the windows to see the squad car in Mark’s driveway. I hoped not many
for Mark’s sake; there was at least one advantage to showing up at night,
hopefully suburbia was sleeping.

My head turned to a noise at the
front of his house where I saw Mark emerge through the front door barefoot in a
pair of shorts and a white t-shirt, making his way down the steps and concrete
path to meet us. I had last seen Mark barreling into the house in
Amberg
, his eyes catching mine for a brief moment before
I’d fled.

He looked the same to me with his
hair cut high and tight. His body was tall and lanky, but with more muscle than
I remembered. I smoothed out my hair and tucked it behind my ear. I needed to
stop doing that. It really wasn’t helping any.

“Sanchez,” he said, holding his
hand out. They connected in a hardy shake.

“Thanks for agreeing to let her
stay here. Officer Hobart should be here any minute. He’ll patrol the house,”
Sanchez said, scanning the street. “And another patrol will be in the
subdivision. They’ll both have unmarked vehicles so they don’t alert the
neighbors.”

“No problem. Delaney just called
and said they were about twenty minutes out,” Mark offered before finally
moving his eyes to me. They were talking about me like I wasn’t standing right
next to them.

I felt Mark study me, unsure how to
react. I had always kind of liked Mark, he was a no nonsense type of person,
just like me. And we worked really well together at Parker Enterprises, the
short time that we were there together. Yet now that he knew who I was, I
wondered how he would treat me. Probably like the killer that I was. I was used
to the judgment.

“Are you sure you’re okay with
this?” Sanchez asked. “It should only be a night or two.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Whatever I can do
to keep everyone safe and help out in the investigation,” Mark replied, finally
breaking his gaze at me to look at a slowing black sedan. “Looks like that
might be Hobart.”

“I’ll be right back,” Sanchez said
as he walked down the driveway to meet Hobart’s parked car.

The heaviness between us swayed,
and I realized that the awkward sexual pull that I always felt toward Mark was
still there. I tried to suppress it, push it deep down like I did everything
else. They were old feelings that I had no right having anymore. I reminded
myself that he was Delaney’s brother, and somehow, that made him family to me;
a family member that hated every bit of me, most likely right down to the core.