River's End

by Nora Roberts

  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, pal.”

  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.”

  “I spoke with Jamie Melbourne.”

  Sam’s hand jerked where it rested on the table. He lifted it, bringing the cigarette that smoldered between his fingers to his lips. “And?”

  “I’ll be talking to her again,” Noah said. “I’ll be contacting the rest of Julie’s family as well. I haven’t been able to hook up with C. B. Smith yet, but I will.”

  “I’m one of his few failures. We didn’t part ways with great affection, but he had one of his young fresh faces spring the lock at twenty.”

  “Affection isn’t what you’re going to get from the people I interview.”

  “Have you talked to your father?”

  “I’m doing background first.” Eyes sharp, Noah inclined his head. “I won’t agree to getting your approval on who I interview or what I use in the book. We go with this, you’ll have to sign papers waiving those rights. Even if my publishers wouldn’t insist on that, and they will, I would. Your story, Sam, but my book.”

  “You wouldn’t have a book without me.”

  “Sure I would. It’d just be a different book.” Noah leaned back, his pose relaxed, his eyes hard as iron. “You want choices? There’s your first one. You sign the papers, you take the twenty thousand and I write the book my way. You don’t sign, you don’t get the money and I write it my way.”

  There was more of his father in him than Sam had realized before. A toughness the beach-boy looks and casual style skimmed over. Better that way, Sam decided. Better that way in the end.

  “I’m not going to live to see the book in print anyway. I’ll sign the papers, Brady.” His eyes went cold, eyes that understood murder and had learned to live with it. “Just don’t fuck me up.”

  Noah angled his head. “Fine. But remember, you don’t want to fuck me up either.”

  He understood murder, too. He’d been studying it all his life.

  Noah ordered a steak, medium rare, and a bottle of Côte d’or. As he ate, he watched the lights that swept over the bay glint and glow against the dark and listened to the replay of his latest interview with Sam Tanner.

  But most of all he tried to imagine what it would be like to be eating that meal, drinking that wine, for the first time in over twenty years.

  Would you savor it, he wondered, or feed like a wolf after a long winter’s famine?

  Sam, he thought, would savor it, bite by bite, sip by sip, absorbing the flavors, the texture, the deep red color of the wine in the glass. And if his senses threatened to overload from the sudden flood of stimuli, he’d slow down even more.

  He had that kind of control now.

  How much of the reckless, greedy-for-pleasure, out-of-control man he had been still strained for release inside him?

  It was smarter to think of Sam as two men, the one he’d been, the one he was now, Noah decided. Pieces of both had always been there, he imagined, but this was very much a story of what had been and what was. So he could sit here, try to picture how the man he knew now would deal with a perfectly cooked steak and a glass of fine wine. And he could imagine the man who’d been able to command much, much more at the flick of a finger.

  The man who’d taken Julie MacBride to bed the first time.

  I want to tell you how it was when Julie and I became lovers.

  It hadn’t been an angle Noah had expected Sam to take, not so soon, and not so intimately. But none of his surprise came through in his voice as he’d told Sam to go ahead.

  Listening now, Noah let himself slide into Sam’s place, into the warm southern California night. Into a past that wasn’t his. The words on the recording became images, and the images more of a memory than a dream.

  There was a full moon. It sailed the sky and shot beams of light, like silver swords, over the dark glint of the ocean. The sound of the surf as it rose, crested, crashed on shore was like the constant beat of an eager heart.

  They’d taken a drive down the coast, stopped for a ridiculous meal of fried shrimp served in red plastic baskets at a smudgy little diner where they’d hoped to go unnoticed.

  She’d worn a long flowered dress and a foolish straw hat to hide that waterfall of rich blond hair. She hadn’t bothered with makeup and her youth, her beauty, her outrageous freshness hadn’t been any sort of disguise.

  She’d laughed, licked cocktail sauce from her fingers. And heads had turned.

  They wanted to keep their relationship private, though so far it consisted of drives like this one, a few more-elegant meals, conversations and their work. Shooting had begun the month before, drastically cutting into any personal time they could steal.

  Tonight, they’d stolen a few hours to walk along that foaming surf, their fingers linked, their steps meandering.

  “I love doing this.” Her voice was low and smooth, with just a hint of huskiness. She looked like an ingenue and sounded like a siren. It was part of the mystique that made her. “Just walking, smelling the night.”

  “So do I.” Though he never had before her. Before Julie he’d craved the lights, the noise, the crowds and the attention centered on him. Now, being with her filled all those needy corners. “I love doing this even more.”

  He turned her, and she circled fluidly into his arms. Her lips curved as his met them, and they parted, inviting him in. She flowed into him, with tastes both sweet and sharp, scents both innocent and aware. The quiet sound of pleasure she made echoed in his blood like the crash of the surf.

  “You do it so well, too,” she murmured, and instead of easing away as she most often did, she pressed her cheek to his, let her body sway in tune to the sea. “Sam.” His name sighed out of h
er. “I want to be sensible, I want to listen to the people who tell me to be sensible.”

  Desire for her was an ache in his belly, a burning in the blood. It took every ounce of control to keep his hands gentle. “Who tells you to be sensible?”