Hunting Delilah Read online

  She locked the car doors and sank down into the driver’s seat, letting the drugs go to work. An hour of rest wouldn’t kill her. She was probably safe enough out here, far enough away from Daytona and all the issues she’d had there.

  The painkillers kicked in, taking her down into the comforting blackness.

  Tapping on the car window woke her. For a panicked moment she was trapped and dying in a vat of blood as a laughing man who morphed between her father’s jowly face and Teddy’s handsome one pinned her beneath the thick red mire.

  Then Delilah surfaced, forcing herself to breathe through the panic and the pain. She hurt only when she moved. Somehow this was funny, amusement bubbling up, as irrational as her sleepy panic the moment before.

  A middle-aged, skinny man wearing a brown jacket with the gas station’s logo on it tapped on the window again. Outside the world had turned from gray predawn to full light.

  Delilah forced herself upright, gritting her teeth against the agony that radiated from her stomach like shards of broken glass, and rolled down the window.

  “Hey,” she said, giving him a tired smile, “can I get twenty bucks of regular?”

  On the road with a mostly full tank of gas and headed home in the daylight, Delilah felt a hell of a lot better. Not great yet, but she could see a future now instead of just running for her life in a crazy daze of pain and reaction.

  She winced at the tightness in her stomach, poking gingerly at her bandages with one hand as she drove. They felt dry enough, none of the wet pink leaking like it had the night before, and she hoped that was a good sign. No way could she go to a hospital at this point, not with the police heat down in Florida. Maybe once she got to Canada. They had free care there anyway from what she’d heard. She hoped they’d ask fewer questions.

  Her bottle of painkillers looked emptier than it had and she wondered how many were left and how many she’d taken. It was hard to count, but she knew she should ration them, at least until she could figure out how to get more.

  It took Delilah just over an hour to reach Atlanta. She pulled off the highway and onto familiar roads, her mood improving the closer she got to home. She’d never realized how attached she’d become to this place, but the idea of curling into her blue sheets and sleeping for a week safe and bundled away from the world lifted her flagging spirits.

  She turned onto her street and looked about. No police presence, that was good. The street was quiet, just about everyone would be off to school or work or wherever normal people went during the day. She drove past her home as a habit, scouting around just in case. She was tired, but not so exhausted that she could afford to let caution go completely.

  Something was off. The quiet street looked fine at first glance, the trees dancing in the morning breeze, lawns turned yellow with summer. Nothing looked out of place and no one was around. But yet, the scene nagged at Delilah and she circled again with the car, trying to pin down her growing feeling of dread.

  Then it hit her, that thing, the missing piece of the picture.

  Mr. Palmer, the retiree and Nam vet who lived next door, wasn’t out on his front porch. Delilah drove by slowly and noticed his paper sat on his white front steps, still in the little thin plastic baggie. The heavy rocking chair was unoccupied, no large green cup of coffee cooled on the railing.

  In the nearly eight months that Delilah had been living at this address, at least part time, she’d never seen a morning without Mr. Palmer’s gap-toothed, crooked smile as he read his paper. Even when it rained he’d sat on his covered front porch and watched the water stream down the copper chains that hung from his gutters.

  He wasn’t there. Delilah swung around and parked across the street from her house. She took a slow breath and thought about this new development. He could be sick, she supposed, or on vacation. Or he’d slept in for once. After all, she hadn’t been here in a few days and any number of things could have happened. He’d always joked about the shrapnel inside his chest killing him someday. Perhaps that day had come.

  She shook her head slowly. She didn’t like any of these possibilities. It felt off to her, wrong. What if the police were waiting inside her home? Wouldn’t they tell the neighbors to stay inside? She couldn’t be sure. She wished she’d risked taking a few moments to get her ID out of the hotel room.

  Of course, a few moments might have killed her.

  “Damnit. Damnitdamnitdamnit.” Cursing didn’t actually help. Her throat was dry as though she’d swallowed sand.

  It could be nothing. Or this anomaly could be the only warning of her impending death or capture. Death. She wouldn’t go with the police, not to jail. Walls closing in, doors locking, chains binding her.

  “Stop it, Dee,” she muttered as her heart rate spiked and the wound in her stomach started to throb in time to its pounding.

  She should drive away, go with her instincts and let this go. It was the smart thing to do, the professional thing.

  But she needed the ID and money in that house. Her other stash was in Kansas City, way too far off to be of use at the moment. Delilah couldn’t keep going as she was, there was just no way. Whatever might be lurking in there for her, she’d have to just face it.

  Her heart beating a rhythm in her throat, Delilah climbed gingerly out of her car and slipped across the street.

  Twenty-six

  Delilah avoided the front and moved as quietly as she could around the side of the house. With a wince, she reached over the wooden fence and opened the back gate. The back yard looked the same way it had when she’d left. The grass was dying and in need of a mow and the pecan tree had started to shed leaves. She glanced at the house, but the shades were drawn as they always were and nothing looked disturbed or out of place.

  She hesitated for a long moment, listening to the distant hum of the freeway and the closer intermittent rustle or chirp of insect and bird life. Delilah pulled her hoodie straight over her bandaging and took a couple careful breaths. The sunlight felt good and the yellow plastic chair on the back porch looked inviting. Her bed was close, just inside her home. She fought the urge to charge inside.

  Besides, if all was well, the house should be locked and she’d left her keys in Daytona Beach.

  Tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose as she forced herself to turn away and walked to the pecan tree. A small blue birdhouse was tucked into the first branching limbs. Delilah had added it and made a few modifications to suit her needs when she’d moved into the home.

  She undid the little hasp on the side and swung the birdhouse open. A clear sheet of plastic covered the entry hole, making it impossible for a bird or any other creature to nest within. Inside was a .32 revolver wrapped in a sealed plastic baggie and a spare key to the house.

  Delilah checked the gun. The ammunition looked all right, no rusting or weirdness. She spun the cylinder before snapping it back into place. The gun seemed to be fine, though she guessed it needed a good cleaning after being in this tree for a few months. She’d cleaned it sometime last spring, but couldn’t recall exactly when. Sloppy of her. She sighed.

  With the key in one hand and the gun held against her thigh by the other, Delilah approached the house.

  She unlocked the back door as carefully as she could. The utility room was dark, lit only by the slim beams of light filtering through the venetian blinds over the window. The house was warm, warmer and closer feeling than the bright and airy back yard.

  It wasn’t until she stepped into the kitchen that the smell hit her. Death, cloying and pungent. Blood and bile and a scent underneath of burnt plastic and ash.

  She slid along the counter, noting a cup sitting in the sink that she hadn’t left there. Then she jerked around the side of the kitchen, gun out and ready as her eyes swept the living room.

  What was left of Mr. Palmer lay in a grotesque heap displayed across her coffee table. He’d been gutted and drained in a horrific parody of a hunting kill. Delilah crept closer, her ears searching for any sound of
movement from the back hallway and bedrooms. Mr. Palmer’s blue eyes were clouded and stared at nothing. She gritted her teeth and bent to touch his foot. Rigor had set in, so he’d been dead at least a little while but not so long that the body had gone pliant again.

  The blue carpet had been pulled up and Delilah could see that her stash in here had been raided and emptied.

  Delilah forced herself away and walked, pressed against the wall, down the hall, checking each room. Someone had tossed the entire house and her clothing lay strewn about as though a temper tantrum had been thrown.

  She found the note sitting on her pillow.

  Delilah, it read, Yes, I know who you are. I know all about you. I know about Esther and Jake and Portland. Do you like your gift? I’m going to Portland to get you another one just like it. I’ll be seeing Jake and your daughter real soon. Love, Ted.

  She read the note twice and then crumpled it. That wasn’t enough. She tore it to pieces, her entire body shaking until she couldn’t stand upright and she collapsed onto the bed.

  “No, no no no no no,” she sobbed into the bed sheets, curling around herself. He’d found her, found this place. All those pictures she’d kept, the recent letters.

  She had to warn Jake, had to get him to take Esther and get away. If Jake would even listen. Once in the past a man had threatened her family, thinking to use them against her after she ran a little real estate con on him. It had amounted to nothing in the end, the man not knowing as much as he’d threatened he did. But Jake hadn’t forgiven her for her panic at the time, especially since she hadn’t even talked to him in the two years prior to that crazy phone call.

  But this wasn’t an empty threat. Ted was real and she trusted that he’d do exactly what he said he would. He’d tracked her to the hotel, traced her here. Found her IDs and money and all her pictures of Jake and her daughter.

  The money. Her IDs. Fuck.

  Delilah forced herself to uncurl. She needed to know if he’d found everything.

  He had. The bedroom stash was empty, as was the crawl space. He’d burnt something in the fireplace, pictures it looked like. The grate was still warm and Delilah started shivering all over again as she realized she’d missed him by an hour at most.

  She had nothing. No ID, no money. Just a gun and the scariest man she’d ever known going after the only people she gave a shit about. All because she’d gotten greedy and robbed the wrong damn house.

  She stood carefully. The freezer. Had he found that? She went back into the kitchen, avoiding looking at the poor dead Mr. Palmer. She yanked the ice trays out of the freezer and reached her hand up behind the ice compartment. Her fingers touched tape and Delilah’s heart lifted. She had an ID.

  She unpeeled the tape and plastic and retrieved the Kansas driver’s license. Lily Fairchild. The ID was barely professional-looking and had nothing else attached to it. It was the sort of thing an underage college student could use to get served in a bar and little more. It would get her into a storage unit in Kansas City where she had a better ID and some money and other things stashed.

  It, and the lump of diamonds and gold in her pocket, was a start.

  She had to warn Jake. The nearest phone was at a convenience store four blocks away. Delilah doubted that Jake would take a collect call from her and she lacked even so much as a dollar to her name at the moment.

  Another wave of nausea washed over her and she knew that whatever she did, she had to get out of this house with its stench of death. Nothing was going to help Mr. Palmer now.

  Mr. Palmer. Of course. He had a phone. It was a risk, but Delilah didn’t care. It would probably be days before anyone noticed anything wrong with either house. And if Ted got to Jake and Esther before she could warn them, well, this mess wasn’t going to matter anyway. Psycho Ted already had the IDs tied to this house anyway. It wouldn’t matter if the police traced things at this point. Her whole life was so fucked, all because of that bastard.

  She unlocked the front door and walked over to Mr. Palmer’s. His front door was unlocked. She brought his paper in; hoping that it would buy her some more time before anyone came investigating either place.

  Feeling a little bad about it but unable to help herself, Delilah catalogued the things in his house as she walked through the living room to the kitchen, searching for a phone. Nothing of easy value presented itself immediately. His furniture was old but comfortable looking, the house smelled of the cheroots he smoked and the bourbon he favored as well as that somewhat metallic undertone that Delilah associated as “old people” smell. He’d had a cat until this last winter. Tufts of cat hair still clung to the edges of the couch and claw damage marred one of the overstuffed chairs.

  Delilah picked up the phone, took a steadying breath, and dialed Jake’s home number from memory. With the time difference, he’d be just getting up, maybe getting Esther ready for school. She prayed that he would pick up instead of Nancy. She didn’t blame Jake’s wife for hating her, but this call was too important to wait on bullshit and cattiness.

  And Delilah was just too damned tired and hurt to care about what Nancy might think anyway.

  Jake picked up after four rings.

  “Jake? It’s Delilah,” she said, her throat tight and dry. God she didn’t want to say what had to be said. Not over the phone.

  “Fuck, Delilah. I told you not to call here.” He sounded as though he might hang up. He used her whole name, not her nickname. Not a good sign.

  “No, wait, don’t hang up. A man is gonna come kill you and Esther.” Shit. She hadn’t meant to say it like that, but it was out now.

  “What?” Jake’s tone spiked. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. This guy’s crazy. You gotta get out of town.”

  “Some guy is coming here to kill Esther and me, because you didn’t do anything? Sure, I totally believe that. Either you come clean with whatever is going on right now or I’m hanging up.”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She never could seem to reason with him, it was why she rarely called. The last six years had been conversations like this, round after round.

  “Don’t hang up,” she said and took a deep breath, gasping as a spear of pain ran from her stomach into her chest. The painkillers were wearing off, again. “This guy, his name is Ted. He’s crazy, okay. I didn’t do anything. But he knows about you and Esther, he broke into my house. He’s coming after you. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but you have to believe me.” She spit it out in a desperate rush, leaving aside most of it. Jake didn’t need to know about Florida or the mess here in Atlanta. That part would just piss him off. He only needed to know enough to convince him to grab Esther and run away from Ted.

  “Jesus, Lil. Are you drunk? On drugs? You sound horrible.”

  “Painkillers,” she admitted. “This guy stabbed me, Jake. He’s serious. This isn’t like before.” Even as she said the words she wished she hadn’t brought that up.

  “It isn’t? You don’t fucking ask after your own daughter for months and now you call saying I should just pack up everything and run? That’s what you do, Delilah. I’ve got a life here. Esther has a treatment tomorrow. We can’t just go away and miss appointments. You know what happens if she doesn’t get her regular transfusion? She dies. Do you give a shit about that?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. She must have sounded more broken and vulnerable than usual because she heard Jake sigh heavily.

  Then he said in a quieter, almost gentle voice, “Tell me what I need to know about this guy. I’ll go to the police and see if they can help. But you have to be honest with me.”

  The police? She shook her head, even though she knew Jake couldn’t see the motion. “The cops aren’t the answer, damnit. What’ll they do? They can’t just put a twenty-four-hour guard on you guys. They’re stupid and reactive. Trust me, I know cops. They’ll be no help at all against this guy, not until it’s too late.”

  “Yeah, well, some of us don’t live on the shady side a
nymore. Cops are paid to do their jobs and I’m going to let them. So tell me what I need to know and then let me decide how to protect my family.”

  She didn’t miss his emphasis. Despair bloomed inside her, a deep dark well, cold and empty. Jake wasn’t going to run. He’d stay put, thinking the law and a little extra vigilance would protect him against a man who cared nothing for law and was far deadlier than anything Jake had ever had to deal with. Ted was outside the understanding of someone like Jake. Hell, Delilah barely understood. She knew what she knew in her heart because she’d stared into his cold eyes with a knife sticking from her belly and then seen his gruesome work firsthand in her own living room.

  Anyone who could do that to an old man was on a whole other level from the rest of humanity.

  “He’s in his thirties, white, handsome in a tanned playboy way, with dark hair.” She hesitated. If she gave Jake a name and he went to the police, things would eventually tie back to Florida. She didn’t want that mess crossing over. The police already had her DNA and fingerprints, the fewer names they could tie to those, the better.

  “You have a full name, besides just Ted?” She could hear Jake rummaging for a pen.

  “No,” she lied. Behind the despair floated a terrible certainty. This wasn’t something she could flee from. Jake couldn’t help her, wouldn’t be able to protect himself or their daughter.

  “Delilah?” His voice sounded far away as she pulled the phone away from her ear.

  She hung up and leaned heavily into the counter. There was only one thing to do. She would have to go to Portland and protect her family herself. The shakes started again at the thought of confronting Ted, but she gripped the counter until they faded.

  Delilah turned away from the phone and started searching through Mr. Palmer’s house for cash. It was time to stop running and show this crazy Ted that he’d fucked with the wrong woman. She had to stop him. Somehow.