House of V (Unraveled Series) (9 page)

I walked over to him, my head
hanging low as I worked the tears into my eyes. It took some major coercing on
my end, but within the twenty second walk, I had developed a small stream that
had rolled down my face. This was going to work. I stopped a few feet in front
of him and waited, but he didn’t look up.

“Excuse me?” I said in a small
voice with my best Wisconsin accent. As soon as he looked up, I brushed the
tear away from my face. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my mother just died -” I
tripped on the word, pausing, before I continued.

“And I need to contact my dad to
pick me up in Chicago tomorrow. I have no phone or other money. I need to send
him an email,” I finished, scuffing my toe on the ground. It seemed a bit
melodramatic, but I laid it on thick anyway. I had nothing to lose and the
flight would be leaving soon.

“Email?” he replied in a thick,
Norwegian accent.

“Mor.
Dode
,” I said in forced
Norwegian, the tears welling in my eyes again.
Mother.
Died.
I hung my head low before I reached
out my hand to point to the phone.
“
Telefon
?”

“Yes,” he replied quickly, tapping
his phone several times before handing it to me. His eyes were a cobalt blue,
his face patient and stricken with remorse. As I took the phone in my own hands
and flew through the screens to block the IP address and login to the anonymous
email account, I felt his eyes watching me with a soft sort of sadness. I
wondered if he would be happy to learn that my mother actually hadn’t died, or
would he be scornful that I had lied? My guess is the latter, so I typed the
message quickly.

Chicago, Lincoln Park Zoo. June
19, two p.m.
By the penguins.
All zoos have penguins,
right? V

I closed the internet browser and
met the gaze of the man - still patient, still sad - as I returned his phone.
My lips turned up into a meager smile as I said, “Thank you.”

He nodded his head as he
straightened his jacket and settled back into his seat.

Twenty-five hours later, I would be
standing in Chicago with three hundred dollars in my pocket.

***

I held my breath as I stepped off
the plane in Chicago, half-waiting for the swarm of officers to overtake me. No
one came, so I strolled into the warm summer air to flag down a taxi. I hopped
in and asked the woman to take me to Lincoln Park Zoo. I figured it was the
best place to go in Chicago to stay unnoticed. After all, everyone
should
be looking at the animals.

A hundred dollars later, I found
myself at Lincoln Park Zoo, meandering through the animal exhibits and watching
the animals walk aimlessly around in their cages. It was almost two, but I
didn’t know if Delaney had even received my message. With less than two hundred
dollars, my resources were scarce now, so I would have to rely on Delaney
helping me out. I usually didn’t operate this way, yet then again, I’d never
had a warrant out for my arrest.

I waited by the eagles, just yards
away from the penguins, standing near a bush that hid me just enough without
looking suspicious. Pretending to look at a map, I surveyed the scene ahead of
me.
Nothing out of the ordinary.

You could say that I had a knack
for surveillance. In college, I had a stint for almost two years guarding an
underground MMA fight ring. Adam
Carlburg
, the
budding twenty-year-old entrepreneur who organized the ring, recruited my
services after watching me scale the rock climbing wall in the university gym.
It took him a few tries, but I finally agreed, even though I didn’t need the
money. I stopped doing it when the ring broke up after a freshman was knocked unconscious
and rumored to suffer brain damage. I liked that job, and in fact, I liked my
job at Parker Enterprises. It turned out, though, that Adam
Carlburg
was a better boss than Holston Parker.

A woman in a green dress appeared
in front of the penguins, her brown hair blowing in the gentle breeze of the
summer afternoon. She flipped up her sunglasses to rest on top of her head
before she turned toward me, her body profile exuding a small round bump
beneath her dress. I recognized her face, slightly plumper, but just as I
remembered.
My sister.
Delaney.
Pregnant.

I scanned the area, looking for
anyone that would have followed her, but I saw no suspicious activity to turn
me away. I straightened my glasses and strode toward her, tucking the map into
the inside of my jacket.

Pregnant.
I didn’t anticipate to see her pregnant already, her maternal instinct not
necessarily something I would peg her for after the brief time we’d spent
together.

“A baby?
That didn’t take long,” I said, pulling her arm along as I walked away from the
penguins and toward the outstretched waters of the lake flanking the east side
of the zoo.

“Tell me about it. Where are we
going?” Delaney asked. She hesitated before she fell into step with me. There
was something in her voice that caught me off-guard, something that triggered a
jolt of awareness through my body.

“Delaney,” I said warily, turning
my head in all directions.

“I’m sorry,
Evie
,”
she whispered. “They tracked me after I sent the second email. They saw the
email you sent. But I promise
- ”

It’s all I needed to hear. I broke
the grip on her arm and sprinted toward the lake. I wouldn’t go down like this,
not now. Ryan was right; I shouldn’t have come back. It was too dangerous, and
now I had put us both at risk. I barely made it twenty yards when a black flash
emerged from a bush right behind me. I felt the arms around my waist and the
barreling body, soon after, that flushed me to the ground. My face scraped
against the concrete as he yanked my arms behind my back, the handcuffs
surrounding my wrists at once with a click.

Damn.

“
Evie
Parker, you are under arrest,” the man started. I closed my eyes, listening to
the voice. It was low and gruff, but it held a hint of familiarity. There was
a softness
, as if he was talking to a friend or family
member; a gentleness he probably didn’t like to admit. I would recognize that
voice anywhere.

“Sanchez,” I groaned, interrupting
the phrase I never wanted to hear directed to me.

“
Evie
, I
have to finish it. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do
can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to
consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney
present. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed. If you decide
to answer any questions now, without an attorney present, you will still have
the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney. Got it?”
Sanchez finished then pulled me up to face him. Delaney stood twenty feet
behind us where I had left her, pacing with her hands on her hips.

Damn, Delaney.

“Yeah, I got it,” I replied,
looking into Sanchez’s tanned face. He looked exactly as he had a year ago; his
skin a leathery tone that glistened in the sun. Sweat was dripping down the
sides of his face, and I was instantly embarrassed that he had caught me that
fast.

“Those glasses threw me off,”
Sanchez grinned, resting his hands on his holster.

I stared straight ahead, looking
past Sanchez at the still pacing Delaney. Two more cops appeared next to her.
If it hadn’t been for her, I would still be in Norway with Ryan. Now, here I
was, handcuffed and headed to prison.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Sanchez
said, reading my gaze as he nodded back toward Delaney. “After I got the call
about Father
Haskens
, we were on alert watching
Sister Josephine and Delaney. It was so close to the year anniversary. The fact
that the perpetrator didn’t steal anything and left in a hurry tipped me off
that he might be back to raise some more hell, so to speak. There was something
about it - too coincidental.”

“Great detective
work.”
I raised my eyebrows at him, amused with his gloating. If only
the Appleton Police Department had kept a closer eye on its own employees and
residents, I wouldn’t be here, handcuffed.

“So here we are,” Sanchez continued
as he leaned closer to me. Sweat-soaked Old Spice flared in my nostrils.
“Watching Delaney turned out to be good for me, after all. It got me what I was
looking for.”

“You’re going to go after me when
there’s someone out there that killed Father
Haskens
?”
I asked, not flinching with his stare.

“Yeah because we need you,” Sanchez
said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“You need
me
?” I asked. Delaney walked toward me with the two other cops
flanking each side like bodyguards. I eyed their holsters, their guns resting
alongside their hips. I suddenly became painfully aware of my situation;
handcuffed midday at the Chicago zoo. A mom with a stroller careened around
them, shielding her toddler’s eyes from viewing me.

“What’s that girl doing mommy? Is
she in trouble?” the little boy asked before the mom swung the stroller around
and fled the other way.

Even a toddler knew I was a train
wreck.

“Come with us,” Sanchez said as he
grabbed my wrists and pushed me forward to the exit of the zoo. He walked
behind me as Delaney and the officers walked alongside me. “We’ll talk and
walk.”

“Can you come in front of me? I
don’t want to talk behind me,” I said. I asked the question even though I knew
the answer.

“No. I don’t trust you, not yet
anyway.”

“
Evie
,
just do it,” Delaney said as she pressed her sunglasses back down onto her
face. “James is meeting us and can represent you. We can talk through this
all.”

“Talk through what?” I asked. Up
until this point, I’d kept my cool despite being arrested in the middle of the
day after being completely and utterly free for the last year. I was working to
put everything behind me and had moved on from the idea that I would ever have
a family back in Wisconsin. Ryan was my family now, and I had betrayed him.

“We need your help,
Evie
, and we’re willing to make you a great deal,” Sanchez
said.

A deal.
They were going to make a deal with me?

“This doesn’t seem like a great
deal to me. Tackled, handcuffed and led out of a goddamn zoo with three armed
officers,” I replied, the sarcasm dripping from my voice. “All set up by my
very own sister, whose life I saved.”

Delaney’s body tensed next to me as
we walked out of the zoo. People stared and pointed at the entourage we had
become.
So much for not being noticed.
I hated Delaney
for doing this to me when I was so close to setting things straight with Ryan
and moving blissfully on with a life in Norway. We could have stayed there for
the rest of our lives without any trouble, simply me and Ryan living in the
mountains. Instead,
a pair of Appleton police cars were
waiting to take me away. It dawned on me how bad they really wanted me. They
had driven three and half hours to get me.

“Sister Josephine is missing,”
Delaney finally whispered as she moved to the first car.

“What?” I asked. I thought I had
heard her say missing, but it couldn’t possibly be true. Sister Josephine was
missing?

“And we need your help finding her,
before?” Sanchez stopped, opening the back door.

“Before what?”
I asked, sliding into the back seat behind the confines of the bars. My body’s
initial reaction was to fight back, to kick the other door open and flee down
the street, but I focused my mind on Sanchez’s answer.

“Is it safe for you two to ride
together?” Sanchez looked at Delaney, ignoring me in the back seat. Delaney
nodded her head before she slid in beside me. I leaned my head over her lap as
far as I could until my cuffed arms were unable to push me any further.

“Before what?”
I asked again. My eyes concentrated on Sanchez’s gold badge. I wanted to hear
him say it, to know how serious it was and how good of a deal they were willing
to give me. I needed to know where we stood, how bad they needed me. I needed
him to say the words that I feared the most.

“Before she’s
dead.”

8

June 17, 8:10 a.m
.
Appleton, Wisconsin

Sister Josephine opened her eyes to
the sun streaming through the curtains of the unfamiliar room. She inhaled
sharply for a moment, scanning her eyes around the room to see a picture of
Carol’s gray cat, Mittens, on the dresser. Right next to it was her glass angel
statue.
That’s right
, she reminded
herself.
I’m at Carol’s
.

Carol, the administrative assistant
at the Church, had graciously opened her house to Sister Josephine after the
death of Father
Haskens
. Sister Josephine hadn’t
taken up the offer until she had received the anonymous note yesterday. She
couldn’t stay at the rectory or her own apartment anymore; it wasn’t safe.

She had contacted the only person
she knew that would help her get out of this mess. Sister Josephine still
hadn’t heard from Delaney, and she was afraid that
Evie
Parker wouldn’t be able to get to her in time.
Delaney might be
right
,
she silently chided herself as she still lay in bed. She should have gone to
the police right away. She would now, after she made a stop at the Church.

Sister Josephine thought of
Evie
as she swung the blanket away from her legs in a
gentle sweeping motion. In her memories, she always saw
Evie
as a child; the small girl that Sister Josephine had held all night after
washing her bloodied hands. Poor
Evie
had been thrust
into a life of violence she knew nothing about. She wasn’t made for that life,
but Holston had forced her hand into it.