Desperate Paths Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY E. C. DISKIN

  * * *

  Depth of Lies

  Broken Grace

  The Green Line

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by E. C. Diskin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542040334

  ISBN-10: 1542040337

  Cover design by Kristen Haff

  For my parents—my biggest and best influences.

  I’m grateful to be yours.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION IDEAS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

  CHAPTER ONE

  DAY SEVEN

  7:30 p.m.

  BOLINE COUNTY JAIL

  BROOKLYN STEPPED INSIDE THE CELL, cinder block on three sides, and inhaled the humid, stagnant air. High on the exterior wall, a one-foot-square window provided the only reminder of the outside world. The lock clicked into the wall of bars behind her, and she turned to see the door already closed, the guard leaving. His footfalls echoed down the long corridor while keys jangled from his belt loop. Another door in the distance opened, then closed. Finally, silence rolled toward her from the end of the hall like a tidal wave.

  She hadn’t cried yet, or yelled, or begged for a phone call. At the house, she hadn’t focused on the police despite the constant shuffle of feet going up and down the front porch steps. Even the sight of the ambulance, driving away with the body, was a blur. Everyone around her had merged into a muffled background track while her mind looped through the previous hours, her thoughts stuck in a ditch. She’d already exhausted every emotion, and all she could hear was the sound of her own voice, yelling, screaming. She’d called him a monster.

  The crows, squawking in the sugar maple by the driveway, had been the only voices to cut through the loop. She’d wondered how many were up in those branches, and if they knew what happened—if they smelled death in the air.

  A young officer’s words had come at her incoherently and in no order: Go. You. Need. Station. His hand on her back felt harmless, an attempt at kindness, as he directed her toward the squad car. Official things had to happen. “Watch your head,” he’d said. She’d followed his instructions without question. He was going to help. Maybe she’d convinced herself it was a dream or a scene she was running—a lead role as the bad seed.

  But the cell door had slammed shut like an alarm. Her father was dead, and she hadn’t been able to explain why she was found wiping down the gun, why the room showed signs of struggle. Why his blood was on her hands. She looked down at them now, washed clean, but not.

  Formal arrest and a mug shot would be next. Her blank expression would be interpreted as an admission of guilt. There would be national coverage of the small-town scandal. Everyone she’d ever known would see her photo on the evening news. They would all wonder if they’d ever really known her at all. Her sadistic former Eden High School gym teacher would probably be watching, nodding smugly at the news. He’d never liked her, and once she had realized there was no way to change his mind about the low grade he’d given her senior year, she’d told him that, someday, he’d see her on TV and realize that cutting gym class meant nothing in the scheme of things.

  Instead, he would see her mug shot. Rumors would swirl. Those church ladies would whisper about her entire family. People would believe what they wanted to believe.

  She sat on the bare mattress, leaning back against the wall, while rusty springs squeaked beneath her. Eyes closed, she silently pleaded for guidance. Mom. She struggled with what to say next. Her mom couldn’t help. Maybe no one could. Brooklyn could not tell the police what happened. It was an impossible situation.

  Her diaphragm froze into a solid mass as reality set in. Panicking, she tried for a breath but couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She kept inhaling as heat rushed up the back of her neck. Her hands began to tingle. Black spots appeared in her field of vision, the edges closing in. Jumping up from the bed, she pushed herself against the back wall of the cell, as if she needed to stop it from collapsing on top of her.

  In seven days, she’d gone from strolling through New York’s Central Park to being locked inside a jail cell in Boline County, Illinois. Seven days. Her mom used to say that if an entire world could be created in seven days, there was no better number.

  But it was just another of Mom’s lies.

  She was tapping on her chest when a noise barreled toward her from the end of the hall. That giant steel door was opening, its hinges squeaking. She squeezed her eyes shut, pushed through the exhale. A single ray of light shining through the small window cast a tiny spotlight on the floor in the corridor—to a penny just beyond her reach. Is help coming? she silently asked the penny.

  The guard’s keys jangled on his belt with every step. There were too many footfalls. Someone else was with him. She moved toward the door and crouched, squinting at the coin. The keys and shoes were getting louder, closer.

  Finally, she saw the Lincoln Memorial embossed in the copper. Tails.

  She stood and backed away from the bars, bracing herself as voices bounced off the concrete and steel. She had her answer.

  Help had not arrived.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DAY ONE

  Monday, May 13

  IT WAS JUST AFTER 4:00 a.m. when the bliss of unconsciousness ended and a piercing pain behind Brooklyn’s eyes demanded attention. Her dehydrated brain was begging for mercy. As usual, the late-night tryst had done its job—distracting her and lulling her to sleep—
but reality always returned too early.

  Tony’s arm was draped across her naked body. He slept like the dead. Lifting his limb to escape, she glanced at the activity tracker on his wrist, another reminder of how little they had in common. Brooklyn never sought out exercise or drank enough water, though she did walk a lot. Probably five miles yesterday. Maybe six. There was the walk from the East Village to the restaurant in the theater district, the constant hustle between kitchen and dining room during her seven-hour shift, and finally, around midnight, after several tequila shots, she and Tony had walked another seven blocks to Sixty-Fourth and Fifth, to his gorgeous one-bedroom that overlooked Central Park.

  Her mom would be horrified. She used to joke about trying to be more modern but had always encouraged Brooklyn to avoid alcohol until marriage because it would lessen her resolve against “untoward advances and sinful desires.”

  After searching Tony’s bathroom for Advil, Brooklyn lay on the couch, scrolling through Instagram on her phone. Her roommates had posted pictures from some bar in Hoboken last night. She wondered whether they’d fessed up to the stalking or played it cool. Cindy had come home a few days earlier gushing over a guy she’d met at an audition, and her online research had uncovered his bartending job across the Hudson in Hoboken.

  Finally, the sun came up and it was safe to leave. Brooklyn bound her unruly hair up in a loose ponytail and pulled her jeggings, sweatshirt, and Birkenstocks from the cinch sack she’d dropped by the front door. The first morning after sleeping at Tony’s, she’d put her stained white button-down dress shirt, black pants, and grease-bottomed sneakers back on and stepped into an elevator full of middle-aged power suits and yoga pants, exposing herself, like a girl in a cocktail dress, as the casual hookup she’d become. Now, whenever Tony texted to see if she was working that night, she brought a change of clothes. Her roommates had begged to meet the mystery man, but that would make him a boyfriend, and she didn’t know what he was. All she knew was that nights were long and painful unless she slept at Tony’s. He was the ultimate distraction.

  She scanned the bed for anything she might have left behind. The bright morning sun filtered through the windows, spotlighting the prematurely thinning hair on the crown of Tony’s head. He never mentioned it, but he was always rubbing that area, as if his hand were a yarmulke that would prevent her from noticing. He was probably obsessing about it. He was unlike anyone she’d ever known—his only religious dedication seemed to be to his daily two-hour prework workouts, and he moved through the world with supreme confidence. Her dad would be horrified by this exotic, Armani-wearing animal who waxed his back and got manicures and facials. He’d probably use the information as a segue to another sermon about how New York was full of weirdos—that, in fact, the whole country was being taken over by “gender-bending whack-a-doos.”

  Brooklyn grabbed her bag, scurried to the door, and, moving in slow motion, unlocked it with one soft click, turned the handle silently, and escaped without detection.

  Outside, the park’s thirty-seven acres of lush trees, shrubs, ponds, and wildlife reminded her of Eden, her hometown of six thousand in Boline County, Illinois. Brooklyn had run as far and as fast as she could from Eden, but after growing up in the country, she would always relish open spaces.

  The sea lions in the zoo were barking loudly as she entered the park, flooding her mind with memories of her mother’s first and only visit last August. Her mom didn’t care about museums or shows, Ellis Island, or the Statue of Liberty, but she’d insisted that Brooklyn find them a church—probably hoping it would remind her daughter to join one—and asked to see the zoo. She had read about the zoo’s exhibit of California sea lions, supposedly the most vocal mammals in the world. But that day, not one uttered a sound. In a failed attempt to get them to talk, her mom had shouted and danced around, sending both mother and daughter into hysterical fits of laughter. But now, a full chorus echoed through the early-morning air.

  She made her way through Midtown and farther south, grabbing a coffee and later a cup of fruit from Benji, the vendor on the corner a few blocks from her place on Second Avenue near Fifth Street. Despite being in a city of eight and a half million, her neighborhood had a small-town vibe. The shop owners and vendors had become daily sources of smiles and waves. Dad couldn’t have been more wrong about New York—or “that cold haven for godless souls,” as he liked to say. There was nothing cold about it. And the best part, what he couldn’t understand and she never said aloud, was that she finally fit in. No one was an outsider in New York City—everyone belonged, no matter where they came from, what they believed, or how they looked.

  A shiny penny on the sidewalk in front of her building drew Brooklyn’s attention to the ground. Will I get good news today? she silently asked. With three auditions in the last week, she hoped at least one would lead to something. But when she bent down to grab the penny, it was tails up. The answer was no. She looked around for more coins, refusing to accept the omen, but found none.

  The apartment was quiet, the only noise coming from the beeping trash truck below their windows. Jess and Nina’s bedroom door was slightly ajar: both were asleep. Nina was still wearing last night’s clothes, and Jess’s feet were hanging off the bottom of her bed. Brooklyn’s room was empty—which probably meant that the trip to Hoboken had worked out nicely for Cindy.

  Collapsing onto her twin-size bed, she dropped the penny into the mason jar half-filled with more of the same, emptied her bag onto the quilt, and recounted last night’s cash. Fifty went to her purse and the rest to the cigar-box headshot fund. The photograph she was currently using, graciously gifted by her mom last summer, wouldn’t do if she was serious about acting—it looked like it came from a Walmart photo booth back home.

  She took a hot shower, chugging a cold-water bottle along with some charcoal tablets—her regular inside-out detox—and wrapped herself in a towel. The phone pinged from its perch on the toilet lid, and the screen lit up. It was a text from Ginny: Dad’s in the hospital. You should come home. Burns Memorial.

  Brooklyn stared at the words on the screen, dread rolling up her spine. She hit the “Call” button and sat on the toilet. She would forever associate that hospital with death.

  Ginny’s voice mail picked up.

  “It’s me. Just got your text.” Brooklyn strained to keep her voice down. “Couldn’t you at least call me? Please, Ginny, call me back.” She hadn’t spoken to her sister since December, days after Ginny had sent a nearly identical message.

  Thirty seconds later, a trio of dots began dancing on the small screen until Ginny’s response appeared: Can’t talk right now. Working. Assumed you’d get that message later. He broke hip. Surgery today.

  It should have been a relief that it wasn’t something worse, but surgery at Dad’s age felt like a big deal. And even if he came out of it okay, his recovery might be daunting. He was all alone in that big house. And he might even need her help at the store. He and Ginny barely spoke. That text was like an earthquake tremor, threatening to destroy her new life.

  She went back to her room, threw on some clothes, and pulled up flight options on her phone.

  A text from Tony popped onto the screen: Why do you always leave before I wake? Starting to think you’re a vampire.

  A smile emerged. He was far sweeter than she assumed he’d be the night he hosted ten other brokers in her section at the restaurant. They’d been obnoxious, growing louder with each bottle of wine. He’d left her a thousand-dollar tip and asked for her number. She’d pegged him for an ass, only relenting when he returned the next night, undeterred. But she always left his apartment early because their stark differences were too glaring in daylight. She was sure that her allure would be gone in the morning, and maybe his too. She was painfully aware that her attraction was connected to the way he made her feel and her desperation to escape reality, if just for the night.

  My dad’s in the hospital, she replied. I gotta get home. Be back in couple wks.


  Three little dots appeared before she could exit out of the app. Sorry to hear it. Where’s home?

  BFE. Southern IL. Locals called southern Illinois “Little Egypt,” a century-old nickname that had something to do with the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers converging along its southern borders like the Nile, so she and her childhood friends joked that whoever had first coined “BFE,” a.k.a. “Bum Fuck Egypt,” had obviously lived there too.

  ??? Why did I think Caribbean? Tony wrote.

  She knew why. That first night together, he’d marveled that she was so different from the women he’d been with. She and Tony had lain in bed, naked, and he acted as if she were some sort of goddess. “Where do they make beauties like this?” he’d asked, examining her forearm as if she were a mannequin. “Dominican Republic,” she’d drunkenly offered. He’d said her lips were like Angelina Jolie’s, praised the wild black hair she’d spent her entire life trying to tame, compared her caramel skin to J Lo’s, and said that her green eyes sparkled even in the darkened room. Every feature he praised had made her an outcast among her classmates as a child.

  Her mother had constantly reassured her during those painful bouts of insecurity that she was a watercolor in a sea of charcoal sketches. “And everyone loves a watercolor.” It always made her smile, but nothing her mom said had helped quite as much as that moment in the dark when Tony asserted with his over-the-top confidence that everything about her was magnificent.

  Born there, she texted. Raised in IL. Adopted.

  Ah. Hope your dad is okay. TTYL

  She replied with a smile emoji and her own “talk to you later” and put the phone away. It was nice. Weird. They barely knew each other.

  She packed a bag, found a cheap ticket online, and calculated the daylong journey ahead—the flight to Lambert in Saint Louis, the train to Carbondale, and, finally, the car ride home to Eden. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t seem to stay away. It felt as if the last year had been a cosmic joke.

  Only nine months earlier, her mom had taken Brooklyn and her roommates out for a celebratory meal in their new, funky East Village neighborhood. Dad was furious that she was dropping out of school in Boston to live in New York, but Mom had volunteered to fly out and help her get settled. They’d sat at an outdoor table in a wildly decorated courtyard, sharing sangria and Italian bread, exhausted by the multiple trips up to the tiny sixth-floor walk-up.