The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(96)

She was happier, but it made her careless and cocky around her dad. It wasn’t long before her sixteen-year-old face, with a smart mouth shaped so much like her mother’s, was forced against a couch cushion until she thought she would pass out.

A month later, a filthy tea towel was pulled across her nose and mouth while she clawed at her dad’s hands. When at last he let go, her frantic first intake of air smelled like the booze on his breath. That was the day Ellie Deacon stopped drinking. Because that was the day she decided she would run. Not immediately, and not from one bad situation to something worse. But soon. And for that, she would need a clear head. Before it was too late.

The catalyst came in the middle of a dark night, as she awoke in her room to find his weight on top of her and his jabbing fingers everywhere. A stab of pain and his soused voice slurring her mother’s name in her ear. Finally, mercifully, she was able to push him off, and as he left he shoved her hard, sending her head snapping backward and connecting with a crack against her bedpost. In the morning light, she ran her finger over the dent in the wood and groggily scrubbed the spot of blood from the pink carpet. Her head was aching. She felt the sting of tears. She didn’t know where she hurt most.

When Aaron discovered the gap in the rock tree the next afternoon it was like a sign from above. Run. It was hidden, secret, and big enough to conceal a bag. It was perfect. Filled with a tentative spark of hope, she had looked at Aaron’s face and let herself realize for the first time how much she would miss him.

When they’d kissed, it made her feel better than she thought she could, until his hand reached up and touched her sore head. She’d jerked away in pain. She looked up and saw the dismayed look on Aaron’s face, and at that moment hated her dad almost as much as she ever had.

She wanted so badly to tell Aaron. More than once. But of all the emotions surging through Ellie Deacon’s body, the most acute was fear.

She knew she wasn’t the only person frightened of her father. His payback for any slight, real or perceived, was swift and brutal. She had seen him issue his threats then carry them out. Hoard favors, poison fields, run over dogs. In a community struggling to survive, people had to pick their battles. When every card was on the table, Ellie Deacon knew there was not one person in Kiewarra she could truly rely on to stand up to him.

So she made her plan. She took her saved-up money, and she quietly packed a bag. She hid it by the river, in the place where she knew it wouldn’t be found. Waiting for her when she was ready. She booked a room in an anonymous motel three towns away. They asked for a name for the reservation, and she automatically said the only one that made her feel safe. Falk.

On a piece of notepaper, she scribbled his name and the date she had chosen and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. A talisman for luck. A reminder not to back out. She had to run, but she only had one chance. If my dad finds out, he will kill me.

They were the last words she wrote in her diary.

There was no smell of dinner in the air when Mal Deacon let himself into the farmhouse, and he felt a hot flash of irritation. He kicked Grant’s boots off the couch and his nephew opened one eye.

“No bloody tea on yet?”

“Ellie’s not back from school.”

Deacon snapped a beer from the six-pack by Grant’s side and went through to the rear of the home. He stood at his daughter’s bedroom door and took a swig from the can. It wasn’t his first of the day. Or his second.

His eyes flicked to the white bedpost, with the dent in the wood and the mark on the pink carpet below, and he frowned. Deacon felt a cold spot form in his chest, like a tiny ball bearing. Something bad had happened there. He stared at the dent, and a grotesque memory threatened to emerge. He took a long drink until it slid back silently beneath the shadowy surface. Instead, he allowed the alcohol to carry the first tendrils of anger through his veins.

His daughter was supposed to be here, and she wasn’t. She was supposed to be here, with him. She might be late, a rational voice barely whispered, but then he’d seen the way she’d been looking at him lately. It was a look he recognized well. The same look he’d seen five years earlier. A look that said, enough. Good-bye.

He felt an acid wave surge through him, and suddenly he was slamming open her wardrobe door. Her backpack was gone from its usual spot. The shelves showed one or two gaps in the neatly folded clothes. Deacon knew the signs. Her sneaking around. Keeping secrets. He’d missed them once before. Not again. He wrenched drawers out of the dresser, upending the contents on the floor, his beer spilling on the carpet as he rifled through for clues. Suddenly, he stopped still. He knew with cold certainty where she’d be. The same place her bloody mother used to run.

Little bitch, little bitch.

He staggered back to the living room, hauled a reluctant Grant to his feet, and thrust the truck keys at him.

“We’re going to get Ellie. You’re driving.”

Little bitch, little bitch.

They took a couple of cans for the road. The sun burned orange as they tore along the dirt tracks toward the Falks’ place. No way was she leaving. Not this time.

He was wondering what he would do if it was already too late when he caught a glimpse, and his heart jumped in his throat. A single sudden movement as a pale T-shirt and familiar flash of long hair disappeared into the tree line beyond the Falks’ place.

“She’s there.” Deacon pointed. “Heading toward the river.”