Path of Destruction

by Cara Dee

  "Hey, the girl exiting that club shit-faced with that rock star looks an awful lot like the stepdaughter of that dead guy we're looking for."

  Yet, for several months, even a couple before she met me, Ade moved around freely without looking over her shoulder.

  I wasn’t eighteen back then. I wasn’t naïve or sheltered. I didn’t come from abuse and neglect. No trauma clouded my judgment. So, while she was ranting about him being dead, that she was just stupid, that she wanted to forget…yada, yada…I was wondering if there'd even been a crime committed.

  I wouldn’t trust Ade's assessment for shit, and who knew if her mom had checked for a fucking heartbeat or pulse. How sure were they that he was dead?

  "Lincoln," Kid complained, sounding whiny as fuck. "Can't we do something?"

  "Am I your damn parent? Go play with the other kids."

  Except, he had a point. I was losing too many hours staring at walls.

  "Let's go work out," I grunted.

  *

  "Seven," Kid panted.

  "Nice try—five," I corrected. The weather was nice, and one of the chin-up bars had become available when we stepped outside. "Try to hit twelve this time."

  "In a row?!" he spluttered and lost his grip.

  I sighed as he hit the ground with a thump.

  Nunez chuckled, then jerked his chin at me. "You got your affairs in order, man?"

  "Getting there." I inclined my head. "Spoke to Pop earlier, and I've got a job waiting for me, too."

  My cousin had hooked me up with a marketing firm. I'd be in the music department, so I reckoned it was pretty damn perfect.

  Kid heaved a breath and grabbed on to the bar again. One. Two.

  I side-eyed Nunez. "Will you, uh…"

  He nodded once, knowing what I was getting at. He'd look after Kid best he could.

  I hadn't broken the news to Kid about my not being able to visit yet, which I would have to do soon. It pissed me off. Parolees weren't allowed to do much, frankly. I'd recently learned visiting inmates in prison was one of the many things considered a violation. That said, there were special circumstances. In rare cases, a parolee could be granted visitation rights, and I'd do everything in my power to get it—if I got out. One step at a time.

  Until then, I'd stay out of trouble, keep up with my payments to Mack, and rely on Nunez while he was still here. If I wasn’t mistaken, he'd get out a few months before Kid was eligible for parole.

  *

  With a stolen Twizzler from Kid hanging out of my mouth, I dragged my feet to the phones before dinner. Pop was trying to instill manners in me, and apparently, I should call and thank Ade for preparing my next home.

  I dialed the number and waited for the call to be accepted, not expecting some kid to answer.

  "Hello?" he called.

  "Uh, yeah, is Adeline there?" I asked.

  "Sure. Mom!" he shouted.

  I winced and held away the receiver. It must've been Morgan's youngest. Abel. Who now called Ade Mom. That was fucking strange.

  "I don’t know," I heard him say to someone. "What's a correction…um, facility?"

  My mouth tugged up. That oughta be enough for Ade to know who was calling.

  "Oh. Correctional facility. It's prison. Thanks, sweetie." Ade must've taken the phone from him, and then it was her voice filtering through. "Hi, friend."

  I lifted a brow. "Friend?" We weren't gonna be all buddy-buds now.

  She laughed softly. "I'm not gonna call you enemy."

  "You could call me Lincoln."

  "Meh. How are ya?"

  Who was this? I'd gotten a glimpse of her feistiness when she last visited, but not enough to change my opinion. In my head, she was timid and insecure these days.

  I didn’t get along with the spineless ones very well.

  "Peachy," I drawled. "Listen, I hear you've been hunting and gathering to make my apartment homey, so I called to say thanks." There. Done. Now I was ready to hang up.

  "It was nothing." She was dismissive about it. "We went to the Salvation Army for some furniture that was missing, and I found a cool secondhand store that had some vintage band shirts I think you're gonna like." Didn’t sound like nothing to me. "By the way, now that I have you on the phone, I have two questions for you. One, what size in pants do you wear?"

  "Uh." I twisted my body as much as possible and tugged at my pants to see the label. Truth be told, her mile-a-minute rambling put me in a bit of a daze. "It says XL."

  "Dammit. All right, and last question: what do you want for dinner when you get out?"

  And right there, I reached my limit. "Ade, you're not gonna become my keeper or friend. You don’t owe me anything, there's no need to go outta your way to help me, and I'm pretty sure Pop and I will stop at some diner."

  It wasn’t a five-minute drive back to Detroit, and there was a burger along the way with my name on it.

  Ade took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It would be easy to hang up on you." Sounded like she muttered jackass under her breath. "Instead, I will kindly inform you that I was only offering to cook for you and your father. I figured a restaurant might be overwhelming, and I'm guessing it's been a while since you had a good, home-cooked meal. That’s all." And there was another whispered dickwad at the end.

  I scratched my bicep and smirked at the floor.

  "Takeout will be fine," I said. "It's none of your concern."

  "Okay. Should I stop sending crossword puzzles?" she wondered.

  I grimaced. What'd she go there for? I'd received three of them now, and they provided a decent distraction. "I didn’t say that," I grunted. "Gotta go." I hung up before we could end up chitchatting about the fucking weather.

  *

  In the last few days leading up the hearing, I realized I was a walking time bomb. During the day, I worked, spent time with Kid, and went to sessions that weren't for shits and chuckles anymore. Now it was official work—for my psych evaluation. I'd become another file, another piece of paper, in which a psychologist evaluated my mental state to later present the scores to the Board.

  After spending ten years in monotone, flat, and predictable, everything was suddenly unstable. With it, my mind became unglued, and I walked around antsy, jumpy like a fucking addict going through withdrawals, and my mood shifted between irritated and anxious.

  The anxiety built up at night when I slept fitfully and dreamed vividly about my last days of freedom.

  "Eat more," I told Ade.

  Dinner in the backstage area before our Indianapolis show was a loud spectacle. Crew and band members dove for pizza boxes while putting up a nice façade for the handful of fans who'd won a meet-and-greet through a radio show. Ade and I kept to the background, though I forced myself to be polite and answer some questions, too.

  The most predictable question I could be asked was, "Lincoln, what's your favorite guitar?"

  Did it matter? These kids couldn't afford the gear I used.

  Spotting Lars, one of our security guys, outside, I saw a brief escape and told Ade I'd be right back. Then I left the room and caught up to the beefy blond in the corridor.

  "Hey. Question: I know fans try to sneak in here and there, saying they know us, but do they ever ask for girlfriends and wives?" I crammed the last of my slice into my mouth. "In short, has anyone asked for Ade or claimed they know her?"

  "A few times, sure." He nodded thoughtfully. "Most of them make up a new name and hope we're removed enough from the band that we don’t know."

  "Most of them," was what I got stuck on.

  "Yeah," he chuckled wryly. "We get a few creeps who do their research. Mikey's wife has her own stalker. He comes by from time to time playing the family card in hopes of getting in."

  "What about Ade?"

  He inclined his head. "Once or twice, I think. Yeah—Boston, I remember, and Diego was on duty in Philly… He said someone asked for her, too. Bastard claimed he was Adeline's dad but wouldn’t agree to us getting her for
him."

  There we go.

  I woke up with the feeling of someone stepping on my chest. The phantom pain spread across my upper body and made it difficult to breathe, until I gained my bearings and the memories faded.

  Blowing out a breath, I jumped down to the floor and splashed some water on my face.

  Who the fuck did I think I was back then? I should've gotten the cops involved. Instead, I had to obey my wounded ego. Since we wouldn’t be going to LA for the interview, bringing her to the police to talk about the death of her stepfather wasn’t gonna happen. So I was still a pussy—the weak-ass motherfucker who couldn’t let go of a tiny dancer junkie.

  "I want you to do me a favor," I told Lars. "If that guy comes by again, I want you to have a location figured out. He doesn’t want security around, so give him the name of a bar or whatever. Be done with him, tell him you don’t wanna see his ugly fucking mug again, and say Ade will be at…whatever place at a certain time with her friends. I'll take it from there."

  Pissed and strung tight, I hit the floor to do push-ups.

  "Some fuckin' hero," I grunted heavily.

  I was just gonna rough him up. At first, anyway.

  * * *

  1998

  She looked sick. Hunched over the toilet wearing nothing but a pair of panties, she looked seriously ill. Her ribs showed, her arms were too slim, and her skin was pale.

  I paced the hotel bathroom and caught a glimpse in the mirror, which showed I'd lost weight, too. I brought a hand to my face and brushed a few fingers over the dark circles under my eyes.

  "He's not going away," Ade cried. "He didn’t torture me this much when he was alive."

  He's still alive, baby.

  I was fucking sure of it.

  There was no way I'd tell her, though. I was handling it. I'd get her closure, and then we could move on—together. Away from this.

  Wouldn’t his death bring enough goddamn closure? Can't get any more final than that, idiot.

  I shook my head, silencing the voice. This had to work. It was only a matter of time before Lars came to me and said the motherfucker had shown up again.

  "Come here." I got Ade a glass of water and sat down with her on the floor. "I'm sorry." Guilt stabbed at me. If I hadn't brought her stepdad to life by talking about him, asking too many questions, and forcing Ade to face her demons, she wouldn’t be riddled with nightmares and daily panic attacks. "It'll be over soon, I promise."

  "How?" The hopeless look in her tear-filled eyes broke me to pieces. I hugged her close while she sobbed against my chest, and the rage inside me grew. "I c-can't do this anymore, Lincoln. I'm wrecking your life."

  "Don’t say that." The words rushed out of me, and the thought of her leaving made me wanna hurl. "We'll figure this out."

  She shook her head, whimpering. "There's nothing left. He took everything. I w-wanna die—"

  "Shut up," I growled.

  *

  Shouldering my guitar case, I waited for Ade to get ready. Detroit waited outside the bus, and we'd arrived two hours late.

  "Okay," she coughed.

  "Hold on." I brushed my thumb under her nose and spread the powder over my gums. "There. Let's go." I grasped her hand, and we stepped off the bus as she threaded our fingers together.

  We were parked behind the hotel where we'd do our interview shortly, so there were no paparazzi bugging us.

  "I just want to point out," Ade said, keeping her voice down, "that we haven't fucked in days."

  I draped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "Maybe tonight." If I could.

  I doubted it. Sex sickened me. I didn’t know what sex meant to her anymore. She acted like a whore 'cause she'd been treated like one—even by me.

  She poked my side and squinted up at me. And her eyes…they were empty. The only brightness came from coke.

  "Don’t make me worry you don’t want me," she teased.

  I'll always want you.

  *

  "Everyone get the fuck out."

  It wasn’t often Morgan spoke with authority like that, so when he did, people listened. My brows lifted as crew from makeup and wardrobe scattered, taking a few PAs with them.

  The other guys in the band were in the suite, ready for the cameras, so that left Morgan and me in the room next door.

  "Where's Adeline?" he asked.

  "Taking a shower in our room." I buttoned up my uncomfortable leather pants. I wore them sometimes at shows; otherwise, I was a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. This pair was new, tight, and—according to the stylist—made me look edgier. "What do you want?"

  "The same as always?" He looked tired. Loosening his tie, he took slow, aimless steps around the living room area and glanced at the equipment left behind by the crew. "Two people I've come to care for have a toxic fucking relationship, and I'm doing my best to get them help."

  I stepped into a pair of black boots and swallowed hard. "I know it's toxic. I'm trying to change that."

  "How?"

  I couldn’t tell him. If he knew Ade's story and that her stepdad was most likely alive, Morgan would undoubtedly encourage me to have the fucker arrested. But if he knew I was planning on punching the daylights out of said fucker first…? Another story. And I needed to see him for myself. I needed to be face-to-face with this guy who'd hurt Ade since she was a young child.

  He deserved to suffer.

  "I'm working on something," I replied. "You're gonna have to trust me."

  "Easiest way to get screwed over? Trust an addict."

  My head snapped up, and I had every intention of putting him in his place until I saw his expression. He spoke from experience. Someone had fucked him over, someone who was using.

  "Who?" I lit up a smoke and walked closer to him.

  He smirked bitterly. "Both the ex-wife and a former best friend."

  I didn’t say anything. Over the course of a couple months, Morgan and I had gone from strangers to almost buddies. I could tell, if our situation were different, he was a man I'd like to get to know better. He was closer to Ade, and I hoped I'd get the chance to catch up once the tour was over.

  "You make it kinda hard to be an asshole to you," I told him.

  He snorted. "That’s the sweetest thing I've ever heard." He snatched my smoke from me and took a couple puffs. "I quit two years ago."

  "I can see that."

  He handed it back. "You could have her arrested, you know."

  My brows shot up.

  "Bear with me," he said, running a hand through his hair. "There isn't a court in this country that wouldn’t sentence her to a rehab facility. As far as I know, she doesn’t have a record. She'd get a slap on the wrist if she were taken in for possession or something like that. She'd get clean and go through counseling. No running off."

  Halfway through his idea, I was shaking my head. This was fucking nuts. It was Ade's criminal record he was playing with as if it were a poker game. This was some serious shit, not to mention his plan had a lot of loopholes and missing pieces.

  If we pulled this on her, who's to say she wouldn’t end up hating us for betraying her? Fuck that.

  "You've lost your mind," I told him, and a beat later, there was a knock on the door.

  It was Lars.

  Chapter 20

  Adeline Ivey

  1998

  During the interview, I sat cuddled up in a corner with Morgan. I was drowning in a hoodie that belonged to Lincoln, and I'd shucked my jeans for a pair of soft tights. I was running hot one second and cold the next. Morgan smirked when I pushed my leg warmers up and down.

  "I'm cold," I defended and yanked them higher up.

  "That’s not weird," he replied quietly. While keeping me company on a highly uncomfortable sofa, he was also here to do his job. His eyes were glued to the four members of Path of Destruction. From here, I could tell Lincoln and Tony were bothered by the bright lights. Mikey was flirting with the interviewer.

  "Don’t g
ive me another lecture," I whispered.

  He side-eyed me, then shook his head. "You're on something, aren't you?"

  Barely. Just something to numb me.

  "I'm sorry." I hugged his bicep and rested my head on his shoulder. "I know I'm a horrible person."

  "No…" He sighed and put an arm around me instead. "You're incredibly young, and you're coping all fucking wrong." There was no venom in his voice. He was merely stating a fact. "I wish you'd trust me and Lincoln to get you help. Hell, at this point, he needs help, too."

  I wasn’t worth saving. Lincoln was.

  "Have you started working on the next album?" the interviewer asked.

  The guys exchanged looks, and it was up to Lincoln—as the primary songwriter—to answer.

  He cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "Tony and I are writing a bit, and we'll be back in the studio this winter."

  "We have some shows overseas before then, too," Sam said.

  "What're your plans?" Morgan asked me, keeping his voice hushed.

  "I don’t have any."

  "Adeline." He lifted my chin, a troubled look on his face. "I'm seriously worried about you."

  I didn’t feel anything. I waited, I tried, nothing bubbled up. "Let me go," I whispered, and he knew I wasn’t talking about the gentle grip on my chin. "I'm too messed up, Morgan."

  He wouldn’t understand how deeply my self-hatred ran. Was it even hatred? These days, the strongest emotions were panic and anxiety.

  Scratch that. I did hate myself for the pain I'd caused Lincoln and Morgan.

  The rest was a combination of indifference, confusion, anguish… Some emotions I couldn’t identify, but there were times when every fiber of my being ached and convinced me it was love. I could wake up in the morning and be so drawn to Lincoln's warmth that nothing was right until I was in his arms. I could sit and watch him and just smile at his little Lincoln-isms.