House of Fire (Unraveled Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

art books and two chairs. Her art area was shoved
to the right side of the space, rolled canvases and plastic containers of tubes
and brushes crammed in the corner. She hadn’t been capable of bringing herself
to move in. The permanency of the situation was too much for her to stomach.
    She paused, setting
the brush down on the easel to crack the small window in order to let in the
rhythmic pattering of the rain. The warmth of the summer day hadn’t subsided in
the building yet, and the facility managers weren’t liberal on the air
conditioning, especially now that the semester had ended. She inhaled the smell
of freshly fallen rain, the earthy mugginess wafting through the space. The
rain prevented her from opening it anymore, although she wondered, if it helped
anyway. She bent down to roll her jeans, which were smeared with paint and
shredded with tiny holes. She felt at home in the decade old denim - each curve
hugged her body in the right place and each hole told a story of the artwork
she had created. Their softness rubbed against her skin in the same familiar
way each and every time she put them on. She grabbed the bottom of her barely
white cotton t-shirt and waved it, feeling the breeze blow onto her navel and
chest. Her painting uniform couldn’t change , she thought, reconciling
herself to the fact that she would have to bring in a fan the next day.
    She lifted her red-soaked
brush to the canvas again, letting the peaks of the flame lick toward the edge.
Delaney had tried to suppress that night, burying it deep just as she had with
the memory of the church basement, yet the memory had resurfaced fourteen years
later with the murder of Richard Rowan. The relief she had felt with his death was
what had finally began the healing process for her - an itching, scabbing one
at that. But it had merely been the first step, and she needed to do the same
with Holston Parker. She would allow the guilt of putting an ax through a man’s
head to resurface so that she could deal with it and extinguish it. Holston
Parker wouldn’t control her life.
    The flames of the
barn smoldered a bright red and orange on the canvas. Delaney envisioned the
man inside, his skin peeling back from the heat of the flames. She had no
choice. She had to save Evie and Theron. She would do it again. Her thoughts
wandered to Evie and the memory of her head cocked over the men as she emptied bullets
into their bodies. She hadn’t hesitated, not a flinching moment. She had been sure
of her decision. Calculated, confident. Delaney would learn to be the same.
    As Delaney finished
her last strokes, highlighting the flames with white, she closed her eyes to
see Evie’s face; her smooth complexion, her blue, penetrating eyes. Delaney
wondered if she would ever see Evie again, if her overseas sabbatical would
ever end. Evie didn’t seem like the kind of person to relish being on the run. Holston
Parker would find her, or Evie would find him. Either way, there would be a
bloody collision at some turn. In a distorted sort of way, Delaney missed Evie
and the way her tiny body had crashed into her life. Evie had more clues, more
pieces to the puzzle Delaney was desperate to put together.
    All Delaney had
uncovered was that, at one point, Holston Parker was George Boyd. She had
Googled George Boyd one night on June’s computer, too afraid to do any searching
on the new laptop she had purchased after hers had been stolen that night.
Delaney hadn’t found much on George Boyd of Wisconsin; her investigative skills
clearly inept. She had previously avoided most forms of technology and social
media as much as she could, the interfaces and websites unfamiliar. If she ever
wanted to get anywhere, she was going to need help. She needed to find someone
that couldn’t be traced back to her, someone that could find information about Holston
Parker without him knowing.
    Kandy with a K. Her studio mate back at Madison
had moved out to Florida after she had connected