Unraveled (The Untangled Series Book 1)

by Ivy Layne

  There wasn't much grass. Definitely no landscaping. The front steps were cinderblocks tilting in the dirt, the storm door sagging on its hinges.

  Evers gave me a forbidding look. "You stay in the car."

  "No." Before he could argue, I explained, "Warren knows me. I haven't seen him in a while, but he knows me. He takes one look at you—"

  I scanned Evers' charcoal suit and crisp blue-and-white striped shirt. He'd left off the tie, but that didn't make him look any less like a wealthy, successful businessman.

  Looking at him, no one would guess he was an excellent shot who could handle himself in a fight. To a man like Warren, anyone dressed like Evers meant one thing. Trouble.

  One look at Evers and Warren would barricade the door.

  "You need me. Warren wouldn't hurt me. He's not dangerous."

  "You don't know that. You said yourself you haven't seen him in a while. He's friends with your father, and your father is in deep shit. You don't know what's behind that door."

  "I know we have to talk to Warren. We're here now. I'm coming with you."

  Evers sat for a long moment, his eyes on mine, thinking. Finally, he opened his door. "Stay behind me."

  That I could do. Mostly.

  Evers tried knocking on the door and calling out Warren's name. As I'd expected, no response.

  I had a feeling if I hadn't been there Evers might have used a less conventional method of gaining entry. Something along the lines of putting his foot through the door.

  I called out, "Warren? Hey, it's Summer. Smokey's girl. Listen, I'm looking for my daddy, I just want to talk to you for a minute. Don't mind the guy with me. I know he's a suit, but he's okay. Could you open the door? I promise we're not here to give you any trouble. I just want to talk to you about my dad."

  The house remained silent. I tried again. "Warren? Please? I really don't want to bother you, but we came all the way out here, and I can't leave until I talk to you. If you could open the door—"

  A shuffle from inside and the door creaked open. Warren stood there, thinner than I remembered. He was a few inches shorter than me, and he’d always been round. Wide. Now his skin hung loose, and beneath his weathered tan he was gray. If I passed him on the street I might not have recognized him.

  He looked past Evers, his eyes coming to rest on me. A smile cracked across his face, and he pulled the door open more.

  "Summer, what are you doing here? I thought you were living in Atlanta."

  "I am, Warren. I've been looking for my dad. I need to find him. He's not returning my calls."

  "You came all the way out here?"

  "I didn't know where else to go," I said. "Can we come in and talk?"

  Warren shot a nervous glance over his shoulder and shook his head. "I wasn't expecting visitors, if you know what I mean."

  "I don't think we do," Evers said, craning his neck to look over Warren's shoulder into the dim interior of the house. "Let us in. We won't take much of your time."

  "We can talk out here—"

  I shook my head. "Warren, just five minutes? Please."

  He shot another look over his shoulder. When he stepped back to let us in, I fully expected to see someone else in the room. Maybe my father.

  The house appeared to be empty, but I quickly realized why Warren hadn't wanted company. The place was a bizarre combination of messy and organized. I hadn't known Warren was a hoarder.

  In the corner of the room, stacks of newspapers rose to tower above my head. Beside them, a wooden crate overflowed with old-fashioned alarm clocks, at least twenty or thirty of them. Another crate held toasters; toaster ovens, slot toasters—some of them older than me.

  Rocking chairs were crammed along one wall, the seats filled with stacks of boxes. Electrical cords spilled from one. Old clothes from another.

  Layers of filth had accumulated beneath Warren's haphazard collection of belongings. I doubted his house had seen a bottle of cleaning spray or a rag in decades.

  On the coffee table, I spotted a glass pipe, a lighter, and a small plastic baggie filled with a white powder interspersed with small whitish crystal shards. Shit.

  I don't do drugs. Growing up with my father and his ubiquitous pot smoking had been enough for me. I like a glass of wine or mixed drink now and then, and beer is okay, but drugs are not my thing.

  Still, you didn't grow up with Smokey Winters for a dad and not learn more than you wanted to about the tools of the trade. I knew pretty much every device you could use to smoke pot, from a glass pipe to a bong. I even knew how to carve an apple into a pipe and how to make a gravity bong from a soda bottle. Thanks, Dad.

  Despite my extensive education in pot smoking, I was pretty sure nothing on that table had anything to do with pot. Warren had moved on to meth. Shit. I closed my eyes and sent a prayer to the heavens that my dad hadn't made the move with him. Pot was one thing, but meth…

  Meth was an entirely different problem.

  Evers saw everything I did, probably more. He positioned himself in the room between me and Warren. Time to get this over with. I didn't want to hang out in Warren's place any longer than we had to.

  "When's the last time you saw my dad, Warren?"

  "Oh, it's been a while," Warren said vaguely, shooting another glance over his shoulder.

  I couldn't figure out what he was looking at. His house wasn't more than one big room. There were a bedroom and bathroom off to the side, nowhere near where he kept looking. The kitchen was behind him, but it, too, was empty. Behind that, there was just the backyard and more trees.

  "Okay," I said, not wanting to push too hard and scare him off, "Do you remember more specifically? Did you see him here or in town? Did he tell you what his plans were?"

  "No. I'm sorry Summer. I want to help you. I do. But your daddy didn't say anything. He's just—"

  Warren wrung his hands together, his fingers twisting, clenching until the knuckles were almost white. He shifted his weight and shot another look over his shoulder. This time I saw he was looking through the main room, through the window in the kitchen to the backyard.

  Something in the yard had him on edge.

  "What about my dad, Warren? You can tell me. I love him, but I know he's not perfect."

  "Summer, girl, you should go back to Atlanta. Take your man with you. Your daddy, he's been messing with some people, you don't want them to know about you. You let Smokey deal with his own troubles. He wouldn't want you here."

  Shit. Evers had told me it was bad. I'd believed him. Mostly. But this? Warren, like my dad, was generally too stoned to get scared. A warning from Warren was not comforting.

  "You can't tell us anything about when you last saw Smokey Winters or where he might have been heading?" Evers asked in a hard voice. Either he’d learned what he needed to know, or he was out of patience.

  Warren shrugged his shoulders helplessly, and with another nervous glance over his shoulder said, "I wish I could be more help. I really do."

  "Thank you for your time," Evers said, backing me towards the door. If I thought there was any chance we'd get more out of Warren, I might have argued or offered a bribe. Unlike the bartender and Jade, Warren was too scared to be useful.

  Fear shimmered in his normally dull, bloodshot eyes. I would have expected him to be nervous about the meth paraphernalia on the table, but he hadn't spared it a glance.

  He wasn't afraid we'd catch him with drugs.

  He was afraid we'd catch him with something else.

  Evers jumped off the porch, turning to lift me over the ramshackle concrete block steps. Instead of heading to his SUV, he took my arm and led me at a brisk pace around the side of the house.

  Warren, his voice high and desperate, called out behind us, "What are y'all doing? You can't go back there. This is private property."

  We ignored him. Following Evers into the backyard, I saw what he'd spotted and I'd missed. Across the rough dirt of the backyard, hidden in the trees, was a tiny, ancient camp
er.

  Smoke leaked from the cracked window. As we drew closer, I recognized the smell of it. Evers reached for the handle and yanked open the door.

  My father stood there, his hair straggly and badly in need of a cut, wearing an ancient Grateful Dead t-shirt and a pair of jeans faded white at the seams. His Winters-blue eyes, bloodshot and hazy, lit up the moment they fell on me.

  He broke into a wide grin and stumbled through the door, arms wide. Pulling me into his embrace, he rocked me back and forth, the familiar scent of patchouli and pot filling my nose.

  "Baby girl, baby girl. You're a sight for sore eyes. Your old dad is glad to see you."

  I didn't believe that for a minute.

  And yet, for all his faults, I relaxed into my dad's arms, relieved to have found him alive and in one piece.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Summer

  "Baby girl, you have landed a seriously nice gig," my dad said, lounging on the back terrace of Rycroft Castle.

  Seeing my dad in these surroundings was bizarre. His worn jeans, tie-dyed t-shirt, and scraggly hair did not fit in with the splendor of Rycroft Castle.

  He'd been quiet on the ride back to Atlanta, stonewalling all of Evers' attempts to get information. Evers asked about Maxwell Sinclair. Who they'd been working for. Exactly what Smokey had been doing for Maxwell and William Davis.

  Smokey had ignored him, pretending to nap. Evers grew progressively more irritated as each mile sped by, his jaw tight, eyes hard. By the time we reached Atlanta, he could barely grind out a word.

  I wanted to step in and bridge the gap, but what was there to say? Evers had his own agenda, and Smokey didn't want to play along.

  I had never in my life been able to get Smokey to do anything he didn't want to do. Smokey went his own way.

  Neither of us wanted him at Rycroft. For one thing, he didn't have the right to be there. It was Cynthia's house for the time being, and he was an uninvited guest.

  Evers didn't want Smokey unsupervised in my condo. To be honest, I didn't want Smokey unsupervised in my condo. I didn't need much imagination to picture all the trouble he could get into.

  The only other acceptable location was the safe room at Sinclair Security.

  The safe room. Such a friendly name for what I suspected amounted to little more than a locked cell. Of course, Smokey refused that option. I hadn't liked it much myself.

  My dad was in some trouble. I knew that. If he'd been working with Maxwell Sinclair, he'd been up to no good.

  But he was my dad. The idea of dropping him off at the Sinclair building to be locked away until he did what they wanted didn't sit right.

  He wasn't a good guy all the time, but he wasn't a criminal. Well, okay, he was a criminal. Kind of. He definitely broke the law when it came to drugs.

  If half of what Evers and his brothers suspected about their father was true and Smokey had been working for him, then he'd stepped well beyond misdemeanor possession.

  Why didn't that matter? Why couldn't I push him out the door let the Sinclairs deal with him? Their mother had been threatened. They had a right to be worried. If my dad had anything to do with putting their mother in danger, he should fix it.

  I was Team Evers, right?

  Right?

  Every time I wondered, all I could think was he's my dad. He'd never been a great father, but he was the only one I had.

  I wanted him to do the right thing, but I didn't want him hurt in the process.

  We pulled into Rycroft Castle intending to get rid of Smokey as soon as we could. Cynthia met us at the door and invited him to stay.

  Simple as that.

  Not simple at all and a terrible idea.

  We didn't have a better solution. Smokey and I were dead set against the safe room option. Evers wouldn't consider my condo or a hotel.

  Rycroft Castle was crawling with security. No one could get in and Smokey couldn't get out.

  Evers had confiscated Smokey's phone before we'd left Warren's house and refused to give it back. Smokey begged me to intercede, but one look at Evers and I'd kept my mouth shut.

  Sitting beside me, a whiskey in his hand, Smokey took a long drag on his cigarette, tapping the ash onto the flagstone terrace. I winced. "I'm sure we have an ashtray around here somewhere."

  Smokey shrugged. What did he care about an ashtray? Someone else would clean up the mess.

  "Look," I said, "Cynthia said it was okay for you to stay, but this is her place. You need to treat it with respect. You're a guest here."

  Smokey took another drag off his cigarette, blowing the air out in a thin stream. "You look good, Summer girl. Doing well. Happy. I don't want to mess that up for you. I don't have to. You could just open the door and let me walk away. I can't help your boy anyway. I don't know a thing."

  "They don't believe that. I'm not sure I do either."

  My dad gave me an entreating look. His eyes, so like mine, betrayed nothing but wounded innocence. "Summer, I know I'm not the best dad. I know I like my weed and whiskey too much. Know I wasn't always there for you. But do you really think I'm mixed up in some sort of real trouble? You know that's not me."

  He was saying everything I'd been thinking.

  And yet, behind his practiced expression, there was something else. Something canny and hard.

  "I can't believe you'd treat your dad like this. You don't have the right to take me prisoner."

  "You have free room and board in a castle," I said wryly. "I saw where you were staying with Warren."

  I shuddered a little at the thought of the ancient camper, almost as filthy as Warren's house had been. Whatever my father had done, he must have been scared to hide out there.

  With a sinking heart, I said, "Dad, don't lie to me. I know you're in trouble, and I know you can help the Sinclairs. I don't understand why you won't tell them what you know."

  "Because it's none of their goddamn business," Smokey said, taking a final drag on his cigarette before grinding it out on the bottom of his shoe and flicking the butt into the flower bed at the edge of the terrace.

  I made a mental note to pick it up and throw it out before I went in. I'd have to apologize to the cleaning staff and make sure they got a bonus, even if I had to pay for it out of my own pocket. My father was becoming a strain on my budget.

  "You need to stay out of my business, Summer. Safer for everyone that way."

  "How can you say that? I saw your place. I know someone broke in looking for something. I'm worried. You're my Dad."

  "Then act like it and do what you're told. Your boyfriend made me leave my stash at the trailer. Give me your phone so I can make a call."

  "No," I said, shooting to my feet. "I am not giving you my phone, especially not so you can call a drug dealer to come to Cynthia Stevens' house. Are you crazy? I don't care if she said you can stay here. This is ridiculous—"

  Smokey waved a hand telling me to sit back down, not the least bit disturbed by my outburst. I sank back into my chair, a familiar impotent frustration rising in my chest.

  I wanted to shout, to make demands, and I knew it wouldn't do any good with my father. He'd just give me the same lazy look and wait for me to burn myself out. Then he'd do whatever he'd planned in the first place.

  He shook his head at me in regret and said, "I don't know how your mother and I had such a boring kid. She was too together for me, but at least she had a spark. She had fire. You're all about rules and doing the right thing. Like a little hall monitor. Never any fun."

  Evers' voice came from behind us, tight and angry. "You need to shut the fuck up right now."

  His hand dropped to my shoulder, giving me a squeeze. He ran his knuckles across my cheek before moving to stand in front of us, arms crossed over his chest.

  He'd changed when we when we got back to Rycroft, but even in jeans and a T-shirt he was intimidating. Smokey blew me off without a second thought, but one look at Evers and he cringed.

  Proving he wasn't the sharpe
st tack in the box, he raised his chin in defiance. "Don't tell me how I can talk to my own daughter."

  "I will if you speak to her with anything less than respect. Your daughter is smart and successful. She works hard. She's fun. She's a great friend and everyone loves her. You? Haven't heard many people say that about you. If it weren't for your daughter you'd be locked up right now, so if you've got a brain in your head—which I doubt—I'd suggest treating her better."

  Smokey's eyes shifted away, and he declined to answer. Evers ignored him.

  To me, he said, "I have no idea what's gotten into her, but Cynthia insists that Smokey stay here. Says he's family. We'll stick with that for now."

  To Smokey, who still refused to meet his eyes, he said, "Security has you on their radar. They're watching you, stay away from the phones and behave yourself."

  Still no comment from my father. Again to me, Evers said, "Cynthia is looking for you."

  I met his worried eyes and tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I couldn't pull it off. "I'll go find her in a minute. Thanks."

  Evers nodded and left. So much energy trying to find my father, and now that he was here… I let out a long sigh.

  "Summer, girl, I get what you see in him. I'm not blind, and I know the Sinclairs. Rich as hell. He's a good score, but he is not looking out for you."

  Smokey lit another cigarette, taking a deep drag. When he spoke again, it was through a cloud of smoke. "He's got problems with his father, he's gotta watch out for his mama. You are not at the top of his list, you get me?"

  I gritted my teeth against the brush of fear at my father's words. Quietly, I said, "You're wrong."

  He was wrong. Evers said he loved me. He might have lied before and played me to keep me away from his friends, but he wouldn't lie about love. He wouldn't.

  Sensing weakness, my father dug deeper. "I know you can get around the security. You and I should just go. We can go back to your place or take off somewhere. You've got cash. Let's just get the hell out of here. He's using both of us. He used you to get to me and now he's only biding his time, thinking I'll give in. I can't help him find his father."