House of V (Unraveled Series) (24 page)

Ethan’s words pushed me forward,
you are a fighter.

I strode across the yard and ducked
through a few trees to the very edge of the property to the wooden garden shed
that was around twelve-by-twelve feet. It was painted a deep blue with white
trim with large
Xs
on the door like that of a barn.
That bastard and his barns.
I didn’t think I was ever going
to get away from them. I pulled the padlock up and waited for Delaney as I
turned to see all three of them still making their way across the lawn. The
reality was that I highly doubted anything incriminating or useful would be in
the shed, but we had checked the cottage from top to bottom. This was our last
shot.

Delaney slid the key in and opened
the lock before stepping aside.

“Here goes nothing,” James said as
I pulled the door open. The shed immediately flooded with light as a motion
sensor triggered the warehouse light hanging overhead. The smell of must and
fertilizer wafted through my nostrils as I stepped inside and surveyed the
neatly kept walls where rakes and shovels hung.

Agent Allen stepped in beside me
with his hands on his hips as he examined the walls.

“Nothing too out
of the ordinary.
Shovels, rakes, lawnmower,” he said, patting the John
Deere’s yellow seat with a thud. A sinking feeling welled through my body as I
scanned the corners of the room. There had to be something here. I hadn’t come
to the cottage to leave empty-handed. No sooner had that thought entered my
mind than my eye caught a ledge eight feet in the air. It was a small loft area
with more bags of fertilizer and chemicals.

“What about up there?” I asked,
pulling a ladder from the wall to my right. I set the ladder against the ledge
and began climbing when I felt the bottom of the ladder stabilize. I looked
down to see Agent Allen holding it. He didn’t trust me yet, but he was hoping
like hell, just like I
was,
that there would be
something - anything - to bring us closer to Sister Josephine.

“Be careful,” Delaney called as I
climbed on to the thin platform made of plywood. I stepped on areas of the
platform that had braces beneath.
Fertilizer.
Weed
killer. I took stock of the inventory, scanning for anything unusual when I
caught a wooden box the size of a milk crate with layers of dust and a small
hand shovel on it. I removed the shovel and brushed off the top, the dust
swirling in the air. I ran my fingers over the stamp that adorned the top. It was
a faded gray circle with a C inside of it.

“Finding anything?” James asked
from below.

I lifted the top open, holding my
breath as I set the cover on its hinges. Inside were three lines of envelopes
reaching from the front of the box to the
back.
There
had to be at least a hundred envelopes in the box. I ran my finger along the
edges, finally pulling the first one up. The familiar handwriting sent shivers
through my spine.

My Dearest Ann.

“Maybe,” I answered, flipping the
letter over slowly to see the sealed back. I slid my finger beneath the flap
before I stopped and put it back. “I’m coming down.”

16

June 20, 12:15 p.m.
The Cottage
Near
Lake Michigan

I set the wooden box on the grass
outside the shed. The four of us stood around it, examining the stamp before I
pulled the top open again.

“C,” Agent Allen said as he
squatted down beside it.

“Yeah, C,” I repeated. “These are
letters from Holston to our mother. All sealed.
Most likely a
hundred of them.”

“What’s the C?” Delaney asked.

“I don’t know, but a letter from
the kidnapper had a C on it,” I answered.

“That’s it? That’s what this box
is? We don’t have time to go through this whole box of love letters here,”
Agent Allen said as he stood up from a squatted position. He put his hands on
his hips before checking his watch. “It’s almost time to go. We should be back
around two. We need to prepare for tonight. We can bring the box back to the
station.”

“Just give us a second,” I said as
I pulled the first letter out and handed it to Delaney. “You do it.”

“I don’t know if I can
- ”
Delaney started before James took the letter in his own
hands. He slid his finger underneath the flap and lightly tore the seal.

“I guess you don’t have to,” I
said, watching James. As much as I didn’t want to hear his words or his voice,
I needed to know what the letters said. “What does it say?”

“It’s dated 1983.
My Dearest Ann, You’ll never quite
understand the magnitude of my love for you. The first time I set eyes on you,
I knew my world would never be the same. I needed you in it, and for a brief
moment, I had you. I had the beauty of your voice, the soft touch of your skin
and the luscious locks of your hair. I want nothing else in life besides you.
Please come back to me. I will show you the world and more.
With
love, George
.”

My skin crawled listening to
James’s trailing voice as he finished the letter.
George
Boyd; the name that he had given Ann before had become Holston Parker.
I
sighed, resigning myself to the fact that Agent Allen was right. I wasn’t going
to spend the afternoon sifting through these letters that were only going to
disgust me.

“I thought I had something,” I said
as I moved to pull the lid back over the top. I ran my finger along the C. It
couldn’t be a coincidence.

“I can’t stand to listen to that
all afternoon,” James said.

“Is there anything else in there?”
Delaney asked as her hand stopped mine from closing the box. She pulled a
handful of letters out.

“Just a hundred or so letters,” I
said, watching her stack the white envelopes on top of each other. Every letter
was addressed to
My Dearest Ann.

“Double check them,” Delaney said
as she continued to empty the box. James and I grabbed the letters and verified
that the letters were addressed to Ann. I flicked through my stack and watched
as the lettering of the address never changed. The same steady hand
pulsed
each letter of her name out with thick black ink
until I came to the second to last envelope.

“Josephine
Angeletto
,”
I read the name on the envelope aloud. I felt the stares of Delaney and James
before Agent Allen stepped toward me. His hands dropped from his hips.

“Sister Josephine
Angeletto
,” he repeated.

“Open it,” Delaney urged. I lifted
the seal gently and opened the flap to see a small, wallet-sized photo. The
black and white photo was printed on fading paper. The edges curled to a
tanned, burning color. A young girl with two boys flanking her sides looked
back at me. Dressed in white t-shirts and black pants, the faces of the
children were sullen except for a small hint of a smile from the little girl. I
stared at the boy on the right, maybe nine or ten-years-old, and recognized the
familiar black eyes set in his innocent face. I would recognize those eyes
anywhere; I had seen them for far too long. I flipped over the back of the
photo to see the date 1962 inscribed in Holston’s writing.

“Let’s see it,” Delaney said,
peering over my shoulder. I handed her the photo and moved on to the small
letter inside.

“Holston is on the right, but I
don’t know the other two. There’s a letter,” I said, unfolding the paper. “
To Josephine, I know you have it in your
heart to forgive me. I won’t ever apologize for my behavior on that night.
Psalm 99:11: For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all
your ways.
Your
Guardian Angel
.”

“Look at the sign in the picture,”
Delaney said, pointing to the edge of the photo before handing it to Agent
Allen. “The same stamp that’s on the crate is on the sign. There’s a letter O
after the C.”

“C-O,” Agent Allen said with a
sense of intrigue in his voice. “This has to be the name of a building or
something. If Holston is nine or ten in this picture, then he should have been
at an orphanage at the time. He bounced around to a few foster homes and
orphanages, but I don’t remember a name that started with a C.
Evie
, is this Sister Josephine?”

He held the picture in front of my
face. I studied the small girl’s features and face structure. She was maybe
only five or six. I closed my eyes to see Sister Josephine as she was when I
first met her; her rich espresso hair and patient, inviting eyes. I opened my
own to see the small girl.

“It could be,” I said. “If I had to
take a guess, it would be her.”

“And the other
boy?”
Agent Allen asked.

I shook my head. The other boy was
around the same age as Holston except
he
was a little
taller and leaner. His face was a pale white, the dark hair cut just like
Holston’s. The boy had his arms folded across his chest. I studied his face,
but I couldn’t place him anywhere.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It
could be anyone. He looks around the same age as Holston in this picture, which
puts him in his early to mid-sixties, but I don’t have anything else.”

“We’ve got to get this back to the
station and start working on identifying this kid. Plus, we have to find more
information about this building,” Agent Allen said as held out the photo and
pulled his phone out of his pocket. He snapped a picture of the children and
letter before he delicately placed them both back in the open envelope in my
hand.

“If Holston had anything to do with
it, he’s probably already dead,” James said.

A Guardian Angel.
I thought of Sister Josephine’s words that her guardian angel was still very
well alive. Holston had been her guardian angel. I couldn’t believe that Sister
Josephine could possibly say that, and I wondered how much Sister Josephine
knew about Holston. A sinking feeling overwhelmed my body. Sister Josephine had
to have known who Holston Parker really was.

***

“Any ID on the
kid or the building?”
Agent Allen asked as I shut the door to Sanchez’s
office behind us. We had already dropped Delaney and James off at Mark’s house.
Bringing the whole cavalry into the police station wasn’t a good idea,
according to Agent Allen.

“No identification on the kid. We
are searching through the records of orphanages, but haven’t come across any
that start with C-O,” Sanchez reported as he ran his hand through his hair. I
sat down in the seat across from Sanchez.

“Did you check records for
orphanages that are now closed?” I asked.

“We’re on it,” Sanchez replied.
“But it’s hard to trace. Without Sister Josephine here, we don’t have much to
go on. Carol said that Sister Josephine mentioned having a brother once, so we
are trying to track him down. Her adoptive parents are deceased. She doesn’t
seem to have any other family.”

“The church was her family,” I said
quietly.

“How many officers are planned for
tonight?” Agent Allen asked next to me.

“Twenty. We will stagger our
departure starting at 6:30. All officers will arrive at the location at 9:15,
after the party has officially started. We have twenty officers that will
surround the building once
Evie
goes in at 9:00.
We’re going to send Hobart in with you,
Evie
. Are you
still up for it?” Sanchez asked, leaning forward in his seat as he wiped a bead
of sweat from his brow. He needed me, and I wanted nothing else than to find
Sister Josephine. I was willing to walk into the belly of the beast and give
him what he wanted. Me.
But with one exception.

“No.”

Sanchez shot me a questioning look
before starting in, “Look,
Evie
, I gave you
everything that you wanted. Your ass could be sitting in prison for the next
few years -”

“I’m not going in with Hobart,” I
interrupted. “I thought we agreed that I would do this alone. I’m not going to
have that idiot ruin any chances of me finding out where Sister Josephine is.”

“Change of plans,” Agent Allen
said.

“We can’t risk it,” Sanchez
explained.

“You’re not risking anything. I’m
the one putting myself out there. They’ll be suspicious if I show up with
anyone. They know I work alone. They know me better than you,” I said, turning
to Agent Allen, his head slowly nodding in reluctant agreement. “Probably
better than I know myself.”

“You shouldn’t go in alone -” Agent
Allen started.

“Fine, but we’re tapping and arming
you,” Sanchez finally agreed. His eyes steadied on me, serious and unforgiving.
“If you -”

“It’s not about you or me, Sanchez.
It never was. It’s about bringing Sister Josephine back,” I said. “And I will
do whatever I need to do to make that happen.”

***

I stared at the reflection in the
mirror; I was a distorted and miniature version of the woman standing behind
me. She was more beautiful than I was with her long, flowing hair and peach
lips. I pinched my own lips and wondered how I got the short end of the stick.
Delaney held the open scissors in her hands before she dropped them on the
counter with a clank.

“I can’t do this,” Delaney said,
running her hand through her thick locks.

“Yes, you can. You have to,” I said
as the towel I was holding dipped below my shoulders. I pulled it up and
wrapped it tighter around my neck. Delaney lifted it up anyway and looked at
the bicep of my right arm.

“Is that where the bullet went in?”
She touched my skin lightly just below the scar.

“And came out,” I replied. I felt
the towel lift higher, my back now exposed.