by Nora Roberts
“Noah.”
“Yes, I got that from Mike already. He likes my friend.” She fluttered a hand toward the table where the blonde sat looking wide-eyed and prettily distressed. “She likes him. Why don’t you join us?”
She had a voice like cream, and skin to match, intelligent interest in her eyes and a sympathetic smile. And he was just too damn tired to start the dance. “I appreciate it, but I’m going to take off. Go home, soak my head. I’m considering entering a monastery.”
She laughed, and because he looked as if he could use it, touched a light kiss to his cheek. “Don’t do anything rash. Ten, twenty years from now, you’ll look back and smile at this little incident.”
“Yeah, that’s about right. Thanks again, and tell Mike I’ll catch him later.”
“Sure.” She watched him go with a little tug of regret.
He was lost in the forest, the lovely, deep woods with the low glow of light edged with green. There was silence, such silence he could swear he heard the air breathing. He couldn’t find his way over the slick carpet of moss, through the tangle of dripping vines, beyond the great columns of trees that rose like an ancient wall.
He was looking for something . . . someone. He had to hurry, but whichever direction he took, he remained cupped there, in the ripe and green darkness. He heard the faint murmur of water from a stream, the sigh of the air and the drumming inside his head that was the frantic beat of his own blood.
Then, under it, like a whisper, came his name. Noah . . . Noah . . .
“Noah.”
He shot up in bed, fists raised, eyes still glazed and blinded by the dream, his heart cartwheeling madly in his chest.
“And you used to wake up with a smile on your face.”
“What? What?” He blinked his vision clear as the sharpest edge of the dream dulled and faded. “Mom?” He stared at her, then flopped back, buried his face in his pillow. “Jeez. Why don’t you just bash me over the head with a tire iron next time?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t expect to find you still in bed at eleven o’clock in the morning.” She sat on the edge of the bed, then rattled the bakery box she carried. “I brought pastries.”
His pulse had nearly leveled out, so he opened one eye—and it was full of suspicion. “Not that carob crap?”
She sighed heavily. “All my hard work for nothing. You still have your father’s stomach. No, not carob. I brought my only son poisonous white sugar and fat.”
The suspicion remained, but around it was greedy interest. “What do I have to do for them?”
She leaned over, kissed the top of his head. “Get out of bed.”
“That’s it?”
“Get out of bed,” she said again. “I’ll go make coffee.”
The idea of coffee and food thrilled him so much he was out of bed and pulling on his jeans before it struck him how weird it was to have his mother drop by with pastries on a Sunday morning.
He started out, rolled his eyes and went back for a T-shirt. She’d never let him chow down bare-chested. Since he’d gone that far, he brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face.
Coffee was just scenting the air when he walked out.
“You know, you’re a very creative young man,” Celia began. “It baffles me that you didn’t take a little more time, a little more care in furnishing your home.”
“I just live here.” He slid onto a stool at the counter. “And this stuff suits the place.”
“Actually, it does.” She glanced back at the simple, straight lines and dark blue cushions. “There’s just not much of Noah around here.”
“I lost a lot of stuff.” He lifted his shoulder. “I’ll pick it up here and there, eventually.”
“Hmm.” She said nothing more, and turned away to get out mugs and plates until she could bank some of the fury. Every time she thought about what had been done to him, she wanted to march over to wherever that Caryn creature lived and wade in.
“So, what’s Dad up to?”
“A basketball game, what else?” She poured the coffee, arranged the pastries on a plate. He’d already grabbed one when she turned and opened the fridge. “You know, you’d be so much better off using your juicer than buying this processed stuff.”
His answer was muffled around Bavarian cream and only made her shake her head as she poured orange juice into a glass for him.
Leaning on the counter, she watched him eat. His eyes were heavy, she noted, his hair tousled and his T-shirt torn at the shoulder. Love, wonderfully warm, spurted through her.
He grinned a little, licking cream and chocolate off his thumb. She was so damn pretty, he thought, her hair bright as polished copper, her eyes an all-seeing blue. “What?”
“I was just thinking how good-looking you are.”
The grin widened as he reached for another pastry. “I was thinking the same thing about you. I get my good looks from my mom. She’s a beaut. And right now, she’s got something on her mind.”
“Yes, she does.” Taking her time, Celia moved around the counter, took a stool. She propped her feet on the stool between them, lifted her coffee and sipped. “You know how I’ve made it a policy not to interfere in your life, Noah?”
His grin faded. “Ah . . . yeah. I always appreciated that.”
“Good. Because with that foundation between us, I expect you to listen to what I have to say.”
“Uh-oh.”
She let that pass, tossed back the hair she still wore long enough to wrap into a fat braid. “Mike called me this morning. He told me what happened last night.”
“Biggest mouth in the west,” Noah muttered.
“He was worried about you.”
“Nothing to worry about, and he shouldn’t have bothered you with it.”
“Like he shouldn’t have bothered me when you were twelve and that pimply-faced bully decided you’d make a nice punching bag every day after school?” She cocked an eyebrow. “He was three years older and twice your size, but did you tell me he was pounding on you?”
Noah tried to sulk into his coffee, but his lips curved. “Dick Mertz. You drove over to his house and went head-to-head with his Neanderthal father, told him to send his little Nazi out and you’d go a couple of rounds with him.”
“There are times,” Celia said primly, “when it’s difficult to remain a pacifist.”
“It was a proud moment in my life,” Noah told her, then sobered. “I’m not twelve anymore, Mom, and I can handle my own bullies.”
“This Caryn isn’t some playground misfit either, Noah. She’s proven she’s dangerous. She threatened you last night. For God’s sake, she talked about burning your house down around you.”
Mike, you moron. “It’s just talk, Mom.”
“Is it? Are you sure?” When he opened his mouth, she merely stared until he shut it again. “I want you to get a restraining order.”
“Mom—”
“It’s basically all the police can do at this point, and it might very well intimidate her enough to make her stop, go away.”
“I’m not getting a restraining order.”
“Why?” A trickle of the genuine fear she felt broke through in the single word. “Because it’s not macho?”
He inclined his head. “Okay.”
“Oh!” Frustrated, she slammed her coffee down and pushed off the stool. “That’s unbelievably stupid and shortsighted. What is your penis, your shield?”
“It’s about as effective a shield as a piece of paper would be,” he pointed out as she stormed around the room. “She’ll lose interest quicker if I lie back a bit, then she’ll latch onto some other poor bastard. The fact is, I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling over the next several months. I’m heading up to San Francisco in a few days.”
“Well, I hope you don’t come back to a pile of ashes,” Celia snapped, then blew out a breath. “I’m so angry, and I’ve got nowhere to put it.”
He smiled, opened his arms. “Put it here, p
al.”
She sighed again, hugely, then walked over to wrap her arms around him. “I want to punch her, just once. Just one good shot.”
He had to laugh, and tightened his grip into a fierce squeeze. “If you ever get the chance, I’ll go your bail. Now stop worrying about me.”
“It’s my job. I take my work very seriously.” She eased back, looked up. Despite the man’s face, the man’s stubble of beard, he was still her little boy. “Now, I guess we move on to phase two. I know you and your father are tiptoeing around each other.”
“Let it go, Mom.”
“Not when it involves the two most important people in my life. The two of you were like a couple of polite strangers at my birthday dinner.”
“Would you rather we’d fought about it?”
“Maybe. Boy, I seem to have latent violent tendencies.” She smiled a little, smoothed a hand over his hair, wished she could smooth out his troubles as easily. “I hate seeing both of you unhappy and distant.”
“This is my job,” he pointed out. “And I take it very seriously.”
“I know you do.”
“He doesn’t.”
“That’s not true, Noah.” Her brow furrowed because she heard the unhappiness under the anger. “He just doesn’t completely understand what you do and why you do it. And this particular case was—is—very personal to him.”
“It’s personal to me, too. I don’t know why,” he said when she studied him. “It just is, always has been. I have to follow through.”
“I know that, and I think you’re right.”
The tension and resentment eased off his shoulders. “Thanks.”
“I only want you to try to understand your father’s feelings on it, and actually, I think you’ll come to as you go deeper into the people and the events. Noah, he ached for that little girl. I don’t think he’s ever stopped aching for her. There’ve been other cases, other horrors, but that child stayed with him.”
She stayed with me, too, he thought. Right inside me. But he didn’t say it. He hadn’t wanted to think it. “I’ll be going up to Washington, to see if she’s still there.”
Celia hesitated, suffered through the tug-of-war with loyalties. “She’s still there. She and your father have kept in touch.”
“Really?” Noah considered as he got up to pour more coffee. “Well then, that should make things easier.”
“I’m not sure anything will make this easier.”
An hour later, when he was alone and slightly queasy from having inhaled four pastries, Noah decided it was as good a day as any to travel. This time he’d drive to San Francisco, he thought as he went to the bedroom to toss what few clothes he had in a bag. It would give him time to think, and he could make arrangements on the way for a few days at River’s End.
It would give him time to prepare himself for seeing Olivia again.
sixteen
Sam’s nerves slithered under his skin like restless snakes. To keep them at bay he recited poetry—Sandburg, Yeats, Frost. It was a trick he’d learned during his early stage work, when he’d suffered horribly, and he had refined it in prison, where so much of the life was waiting, nerves and despair.
At one time he’d tried to calm himself, control himself, by running lines in his head. Bits and pieces of his movies in which he would draw the character up from his gut, become someone else. But that had led to a serious bout of depression during the first nickel of his time inside. When the lines were done, he was still Sam Tanner, he was still in San Quentin and there was no hope that tomorrow would change that.
But the poetry was soothing, helped stroke back that part of himself that was screaming.
When he’d come up for parole the first time, he’d actually believed they would let him go. They, the tangled mass of faces and figures of the justice system, would look at him and see a man who’d paid with the most precious years of his life.
He’d been nervous then, with sweat pooling in his armpits and his gut muscles twisted like thin rope. But beneath the fear had been a simple and steady hope. His time in hell was done, and life could begin again.
Then he’d seen Jamie, and he’d seen Frank Brady, and he’d known they’d come to make certain the doors of hell stayed locked.
She’d spoken of Julie, of her beauty and talent, her devotion to family. Of how one man had destroyed all that, out of jealousy and spite. How he had endangered and threatened his own child.
She’d wept while she’d addressed the panel, Sam recalled, quiet tears that had trickled down her cheeks as she spoke.
He’d wanted to leap to his feet when she’d finished, shouting, Cut! One-take wonder! A brilliant performance!
But he’d recited poetry in his head and remained still, his face blank, his hands resting on his thighs.
Then Frank had had his turn, the dedicated cop focused on justice. He’d described the scene of the murder, the condition of the body in the pitiless, formal detail of police-speak. Only when he’d talked of Olivia, of how he’d found her, did emotion slip into his voice.
It had been all the more effective.
Olivia had been nineteen then, Sam thought now. He’d tried to imagine her as a young woman—tall and slim with Julie’s eyes and that quick smile. But he’d only seen a little girl with hair as golden as dandelion who’d always wanted a story at bedtime.
He’d known as Frank had looked at him, as their eyes had met and held, that parole wouldn’t be granted. He’d known that this same scene would be repeated year after year, like a film clip.
The rage he’d felt wanted to spew from his mouth like vomit. In his head he’d found Robert Frost and gripped the lines like a weapon.
I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
For the last five years he’d formed and refined those promises. Now, the son of the man who’d murdered his hope was going to help him keep them.
That was justice.
Over a month had passed since Noah had first come to see him. Sam had begun to worry that he wouldn’t come back, that the seeds he’d so carefully planted hadn’t taken root after all. Those plans, those hopes, those promises that had kept him alive and sane would shatter, leaving him only the sharp edges of failure.
But he’d come back, was even now being led to this miserable little room. Interior scene, day, Sam thought as he heard the locks slide open. Action.
Noah walked to the table, set down his briefcase. Sam could smell his shower on him, the hotel soap. He was dressed in jeans, a soft cotton shirt, black Converse high-tops. There was a small healing cut at the corner of his mouth.
Sam wondered if he knew how young he was, how enviably young and fit and free.
Noah took his tape recorder, a notebook and a pencil out of the briefcase. And when the door was shut and locked at his back, tossed a pack of Marlboros and a book of matches in front of Sam.
“Didn’t know your brand.”
Sam tapped a fingertip on the pack, and his smile was sly and wry. “One’s the same as the other in here. They’ll all kill you, but nobody lives forever.”
“Most of us don’t know when or how it’s going to end for us. How does it feel being someone who does?”
Sam continued to tap his finger on the pack. “It’s a kind of power, or would be if I were in the world. In here, one day’s the same as the next anyway.”
“Regrets?”
“About being in here, or dying?”
“Either. Both.”
With a short laugh, Sam opened the cigarettes. “Neither one of us has enough time for that list, Brady.”
“Just hit the high points.”
“I regret I won’t have the same choices you do when this hour’s up. I regret I can’t decide: you know, I’d think I’d like a steak tonight, medium rare and a glass of good wine to go with it and strong black coffee after. Ever had prison coffee?”
“Yeah.” It was a small thing to sympathize with. “It’s worse than cop coffee. What else do
you regret?”
“I regret that when I’m finally able to make that choice again, have that steak, I’m not going to have much time to enjoy it.”
“That seems fairly simple.”
“No, there are those who have choices and those who don’t. It’s never simple to the ones who don’t. What choice have you made?” He slid a cigarette out of the pack, angled it toward the recorder. “With this. How far are you going to go with this?”
“All the way.”
Sam looked down at the cigarette, effectively shuttering his eyes and whatever was in them. He opened the book of matches, tore one off, struck it to flame. Now, with his eyes closed he drew in that first deep gulp of Virginia tobacco.
“I need money.” When Noah only lifted an eyebrow, Sam took a second drag. “I’m getting out when my twenty’s up, my lawyer’s done that dance. I’m going to live on the outside for maybe six months. I want to live decently, with some dignity, and what I’ve got isn’t going to run to that steak.”
He took another drag, a calming breath while Noah waited him out. “It took everything I had to pay for my defense, and what you make in here isn’t what you’d call a living wage. They’ll pay you for the book. You’ll get an advance, and with your second best-seller out there, it won’t be chump change.”
“How much?”
The snakes began to stir under his skin again. He couldn’t keep his promises without financial backing. “Twenty thousand—that’s one large one for every year I’ve been in. That’ll buy me a decent room, clothes, food. It won’t set me up at the BHH, but it’ll keep me off the streets.”
It wasn’t an unusual demand, nor did Noah consider it an unreasonable amount. “I’ll have my agent draw up an agreement. That suit you?”
The snakes coiled up and slept. “Yeah, that suits me.”
“Do you plan to stay in San Francisco when you’re released?”
“I think I’ve been in San Francisco long enough.” Sam’s lips curved again. “I want the sun. I’ll go south.”
“L.A.?”
“Nothing much for me there. I don’t think my old friends will be planning a welcome-home party. I want the sun,” he said again. “And some privacy. Choices.”
