River's End

by Nora Roberts

  “He’s gone.” He glanced around the room, found a blanket and tucked it around her.

  “I had to hide. He was looking for me. He had Mama’s scissors. I want Mama.”

  God. Dear God, was all he could think.

  At the sound of feet coming down the hall, Olivia let out a low keening sound and tightened her grip around Frank’s neck. He murmured to her, patting her back as he moved toward the door.

  “Frank, there’s—you found her.” Detective Tracy Harmon studied the little girl wrapped around his partner and raked a hand through his hair. “The neighbor said there’s a sister. Jamie Melbourne. Husband’s David Melbourne, some kind of music agent. They only live about a mile from here.”

  “Better notify them. Honey, you want to go see your aunt Jamie?”

  “Is my mama there?”

  “No. But I think she’d want you to go.”

  “I’m sleepy.”

  “You go on to sleep, baby. Just close your eyes.”

  “She see anything?” Tracy murmured.

  “Yeah.” Frank stroked her hair as her eyelids drooped. “Yeah, I think she saw too damn much. We can thank Christ the bastard was too blitzed to find her. Call the sister. Let’s get the kid over there before the press gets wind of this.”

  He came back. The monster came back. She could see him creeping through the house with her father’s face and her mother’s scissors. Blood slid down the snapping blades like thin, glossy ribbons. In her father’s voice he whispered her name, over and over again.

  Livvy, Livvy love. Come out. Come out and I’ll tell you a story.

  And the long sharp blades in his hands hissed open and closed as he shambled toward the closet.

  “No, Daddy! No, no, no!”

  “Livvy. Oh honey, it’s all right. I’m here. Aunt Jamie’s right here.”

  “Don’t let him come. Don’t let him find me.” Wailing, Livvy burrowed into Jamie’s arms.

  “I won’t. I won’t. I promise.” Devastated, Jamie pressed her face into the fragile curve of her niece’s neck. She rocked both of them in the delicate half-light of the bedside lamp until Olivia’s shivers stopped. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  She rested her cheek on the top of Olivia’s head and let the tears come. She didn’t allow herself to sob, though hot, bitter sobs welled and pressed into her throat. The tears were silent, sliding down her cheeks to dampen the child’s hair.

  Julie. Oh God, oh God, Julie.

  She wanted to scream out her sister’s name. To rave it. But there was the child, now going limp with sleep in her arms, to consider.

  Julie would have wanted her daughter protected. God knew, she had tried to protect her baby.

  And now Julie was dead.

  Jamie continued to rock, to soothe herself now as Olivia slept in her arms. That beautiful, bright woman with the wickedly husky laugh, the giving heart and boundless talent, dead at the age of thirty-two. Killed, the two grim-faced detectives had told her, by the man who had professed to love her to the point of madness.

  Well, Sam Tanner was mad, Jamie thought as her hands curled into brutal fists. Mad with jealousy, with drugs, with desperation. Now he’d destroyed the object of his obsession.

  But he would never, never touch the child.

  Gently, Jamie laid Olivia back in bed, smoothed the blankets over her, let her fingertips rest for a moment on the blond hair. She remembered the night Olivia had been born, the way Julie had laughed between contractions.

  Only Julie MacBride, Jamie thought, could make a joke out of labor. The way Sam had looked, impossibly handsome and nervous, his blue eyes brilliant with excitement and fear, his black hair tousled so that she’d smoothed it with her own fingers to soothe him.

  Then he’d brought that beautiful little girl up to the viewing glass, and there’d been tears of love and wonder in his eyes.

  Yes, she remembered that, and remembered thinking as she smiled at him through that glass that they were perfect. The three of them, perfect together. Perfect for one another.

  It had seemed so.

  She walked to the window, stared out at nothing. Julie’s star had been on the rise, and Sam’s already riding high. They’d met on the set of a movie, fell wildly in love and were married within four months while the press raved and simpered over them.

  She’d worried, Jamie admitted. It was all so fast, so Hollywood. But Julie had always known exactly what she wanted, and she’d wanted Sam Tanner. For a while, it had seemed as happy-ever-after as the stories Julie told her daughter at bedtime.

  But this fairy tale had ended in a nightmare—blocks away, only blocks away while she’d slept, Jamie thought, squeezing her eyes shut as a sob clawed at her throat.

  The sudden flash of lights had her jumping back, her heart pumping fast. David, she realized, and turned quickly to the bed to be certain Olivia slept peacefully. Leaving the light on low, she hurried out. She was coming down the stairs as the door opened and her husband walked in.

  He stood there for a long moment, a tall man with broad shoulders. His hair of deep brown was mussed, his eyes, a quiet mix of gray and green, full of fatigue and horror. Strength was what she’d always found in him. Strength and stability. Now he looked sick and shaken, his usual dusky complexion pasty, a muscle jumping in his firm, square jaw.

  “God, Jamie. Oh, sweet God.” His voice broke, and somehow that made it worse. “I need a drink.” He turned away, walked unsteadily into the front salon.

  She had to grip the railing for balance before she could order her legs to move, to follow him. “David?”

  “I need a minute.” His hands shook visibly as he took a decanter of whisky from the breakfront, poured it into a short glass. He braced one hand on the wood, lifted the glass with the other and drank it down like medicine. “Jesus, God, what he did to her.”

  “Oh, David.” She broke. The control she’d managed to cling to since the police had come to the door shattered. She simply sank to the floor in a spasm of sobs and shudders.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He rushed to her and gathered her against him. “Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

  They stayed there, on the floor in the lovely room, as the light turned pearly with dawn. She wept in harsh, racking gasps until he wondered that her bones didn’t shatter from the power of it.

  The gasps turned to moans that were her sister’s name, then the moans to silence.

  “I’ll take you upstairs. You need to lie down.”

  “No, no, no.” The tears had helped. Jamie told herself they’d helped though they left her feeling hollowed-out and achy. “Livvy might wake up. She’ll need me. I’ll be all right. I have to be all right.”

  She sat back, scrubbing her hands over her face to dry it. Her head throbbed like an open wound, her stomach was a mass of cramps. But she got to her feet. “I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me everything.” When he shook his head, her chin came up. “I have to know, David.”

  He hesitated. She looked so tired, so pale and so fragile. Where Julie had been long and willowy, Jamie was small and fine-boned. Both had carried a look of delicacy that he knew was deceptive. He’d often joked that the MacBride sisters were tough broads, bred to climb mountains and tramp through woods.

  “Let’s get some coffee. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Like her sister, Jamie had refused live-in staff. It was her house, by God, and she wouldn’t sacrifice her privacy. The day maid wouldn’t be in for another two hours, so she brewed the coffee herself while David sat at the counter and stared out the window.

  They didn’t speak. In her head she ran over the tasks she would have to face that day. The call to her parents would be the worst, and she was already bracing for it. Funeral arrangements would have to be made—carefully, to ensure as much dignity and privacy as possible. The press would be salivating. She would make sure the television remained off as long as Olivia was in the house.

  She set two cups of coffee on the count
er, sat. “Tell me.”

  “There isn’t much more than Detective Brady already told us,” David began. “There wasn’t any forced entry. She let him in. She was, ah, dressed for bed, but hadn’t been to bed. It looked as though she’d been in the living room working on clippings. You know how she liked to send your folks clippings.”

  He rubbed both hands over his face, then picked up his coffee. “They must have argued. There were signs of a fight. He used the scissors on her.” Horror bloomed in his eyes. “Jamie, he must have lost his mind.”

  His gaze came to hers, held. When he reached for her hand, she curled her fingers around his tightly. “Did he—was it quick?”

  “I don’t—I’ve never seen—he went wild.” He closed his eyes a moment. She would hear, in any case. There would be leaks, there would be media full of truth and lies. “Jamie, she was . . . he stabbed her repeatedly, and slashed her throat.”

  The color drained from her face, but her hand stayed firm in his. “She fought back. She must have fought him. Hurt him.”

  “I don’t know. They have to do an autopsy. We’ll know more after that. They think Olivia saw some of it, saw something, then hid from him.” He drank coffee in the faint hope it would settle his jittery stomach. “They want to talk to her.”

  “She can’t be put through that.” This time she jerked back, yanking her hand free. “She’s a baby, David. I won’t have them put her through that. They know he did it,” she said with a fierce and vicious bitterness. “I won’t have my sister’s child questioned by the police.”

  David let out a long breath. “He’s claiming he found Julie that way. That he came in and found her already dead.”

  “Liar.” Her eyes fired, and color flooded back into her face, harsh and passionate. “Murdering bastard. I want him dead. I want to kill him myself. He made her life a misery this past year, and now he’s killed her. Burning in hell isn’t enough.”

  She whirled away, wanting to pound something, tear something to pieces. Then stopped short when she saw Olivia staring at her from the doorway with wide eyes.

  “Livvy.”

  “Where’s Mama?” Her bottom lip trembled. “I want my mama.”

  “Livvy.” As temper drained into grief, and grief into helplessness, Jamie bent down and picked her up.

  “The monster came and hurt Mama. Is she all right now?”

  Over the child’s head, Jamie’s desperate eyes met her husband’s. He held out a hand, and she walked over so the three of them stood wrapped together.

  “Your mother had to go away, Livvy.” Jamie closed her eyes as she pressed a kiss to Olivia’s head. “She didn’t want to, but she had to.”

  “Is she coming back soon?”

  There was a ripple in Jamie’s chest, like a wave breaking on rock. “No, honey. She’s not coming back.”

  “She always comes back.”

  “This time she can’t. She had to go to heaven and be an angel.”

  Olivia knuckled her eyes. “Like a movie?”

  As her legs began to tremble, Jamie sat, cradling her sister’s child. “No, baby, not like a movie this time.”

  “The monster hurt her and I ran away. So she won’t come back. She’s mad at me.”

  “No, no, Livvy.” Praying for wisdom, Jamie eased back, cupped Olivia’s face in her hands. “She wanted you to run away. She wanted you to be a smart girl, and run away and hide. To be safe. That was what she wanted most of all. If you hadn’t, she’d have been very sad.”

  “Then she’ll come back tomorrow.” Tomorrow was a concept she knew only as later, another time, soon.

  “Livvy.” With a nod to his wife, David slid the child onto his lap, relieved when she laid her head against his chest and sighed. “She can’t come back, but she’ll be watching you from up in heaven.”

  “I don’t want her to be in heaven.” She began to cry now, soft, sniffling sobs. “I want to go home and see Mama.”

  When Jamie reached for her, David shook his head. “Let her cry it out,” he murmured.

  Jamie pressed her lips together, nodded. Then she rose to go up to her bedroom and call her parents.

  two

  The press stalked, a pack of rabid wolves scenting heart blood. At least that was how Jamie thought of them as she barricaded her family behind closed doors. To be fair, a great many of the reporters were shocked and grieving and broadcast the story with as much delicacy as the circumstances allowed.

  Julie MacBride had been well loved—desired, admired and envied—but loved all the same.

  But Jamie wasn’t feeling particularly fair. Not when Olivia sat like a doll in the guest room or wandered downstairs as thin and pale as a ghost. Wasn’t it enough that the child had lost her mother in the most horrible of ways? Wasn’t it enough that she, herself, had lost her sister, her twin, her closest friend?

  But she had lived in the glittery world of Hollywood with its seductive shadows for eight years now. And she knew it was never enough.

  Julie MacBride had been a public figure, a symbol of beauty, talent, sex with the girl-next-door spin, a country girl turned glamorous movie princess who’d married the reigning prince and lived with him in their polished castle in Beverly Hills.

  Those who paid their money at the box office, who devoured glossy articles in People or absurdities in the tabloids, considered her theirs. Julie MacBride of the quick and brilliant smile and smoky voice.

  But they didn’t know her. Oh, they thought they did, with their exposés, their interviews and glossy articles. Julie had certainly been open and honest in most of them. That was her way, and she’d never taken her success for granted. It had always thrilled and delighted her. But no matter how much print and tape and film they’d run on the actress, they’d never really understood the woman herself: her sense of fun and foolishness, her love of the forest and mountains of Washington State where she’d grown up, her absolute loyalty to family, her unshakable love and devotion to her daughter.

  And her tragic and undying love for the man who’d killed her.

  That was what Jamie found hardest to accept. She’d let him in, was all she could think. In the end, she’d gone with her heart and had opened the door to the man she loved, even knowing he’d stopped being that man.

  Would she have done the same? They’d shared a great deal, more than sisters, more than friends. Part of it came from being twins, certainly, but added to that was their shared childhood in the deep woods. The hours, the days, the evenings they’d spent exploring together. Learning, loving the scents and sounds and secrets of the forest. Following tracks, sleeping under the stars. Sharing their dreams as naturally as they had once shared the womb.

  Now it was as if something in Jamie had died as well. The kindest part, she thought. The freshest and most vulnerable part. She doubted she would ever be whole again. Knew she would never be the same again.

  Strong, she could be strong. Would have to be. Olivia depended on her; David would need her. She knew he’d loved Julie, too, had thought of her as his own sister. And her parents as his own.

  She stopped pacing to glance up the stairs. They were here now, up with Olivia in her room. They would need her, too. However sturdy they were, they would need their remaining child to help them get through the next weeks.

  When the doorbell rang, she jumped, then closed her eyes. She who had once considered herself fearless was shaking at shadows and whispers. She drew a breath in, let it out slowly.

  David had arranged for guards, and the reporters were ordered not to come onto the property. But over that long, terrible day one slipped through now and then. She wanted to ignore the bell. To let it ring and ring and ring. But that would disturb Olivia, upset her parents.

  She marched toward the door intending to rip off the reporter’s skin, then through the etched-glass panels beside the wood she recognized the detectives who had come in the dark of the morning to tell her Julie was dead.

  “Mrs. Melbourne. I’m sorry to distu
rb you.”

  It was Frank Brady who spoke, and he whom Jamie focused on. “Detective Brady, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, may we come in?”

  “Of course.” She stepped back. Frank noted that she had enough control to keep behind the door, not to give the camera crews a shot at her. It had been her control he’d noted, and admired, the night before.

  She’d rushed out of the house, he recalled, even before they’d fully braked at the entrance. But the minute she’d seen the girl in his arms, she’d seemed to snap back, to steady. She’d taken charge of her niece, bundling her close, carrying her upstairs.

  He studied her again as she led them into the salon.