River's End

by Nora Roberts

  at the house. Tell her to stay put, with the doors locked.”

  “What? Aunt Jamie?”

  “She got here just as I was leaving. Do it now.”

  She shook herself to break out of the fog, then watched in dull horror as Noah strapped her knife to his own belt. “No, you’re not going after him.”

  He simply gave her one steel-edged look, then turned her in the direction of the lodge. “Go inside now.”

  “You won’t find him.” She shouted it, snatching at Noah’s arm as he strode away. “You don’t know what he’s capable of if you do.”

  “He doesn’t know what I’m capable of either. Goddamn it.” He whirled on her, fury hardening his face. “Love isn’t enough. You have to trust me. Go get your cop, and let’s deal with this.”

  With no choice, Olivia watched him sprint to the trees and vanish.

  Noah had to rely on his senses. His hearing, straining to catch the rustling of brush. To the left? The right? Straight ahead. As he moved deeper, the false green twilight fell so that he strained his eyes, waiting to see a movement, the subtle sway of a low branch, the vibration of a thickly tangled vine.

  He was younger, faster, but the forest itself could cloak prey as well as hunter.

  He moved deeper, keeping his breathing slow and even so the soft sound of it wouldn’t distract him. As he walked, his boots treading silently on the cushion of moss, he could hear the low rumble of thunder.

  A storm was brewing.

  “There’s no point in running, Tanner,” he called out as he closed his hand over the hilt of Olivia’s knife. It never occurred to him to wonder if he could use it. “It’s already over. You’ll never get to her. You’ll never touch her.”

  His own voice echoed back to him, cold and still, and was followed by the strident call of a bird and the rush of wind through high branches.

  Instinct had him winding in the direction of the house, into the thick beauty of the ripe summer forest, past the gleaming white river of deadly mushrooms, around the delicate sea of fanning ferns.

  Rain began to hiss through the canopy and slither in thin trickles to the greedy green ground.

  “She’s your own daughter. What good will it do you? What point is there in hurting her now?”

  “None.” Sam stepped out from the bulk of a fir. The gun in his trembling hand gleamed dull silver. “There was never a point. Never a reason. I thought you knew.”

  Olivia hit the doors of the lobby and burst inside. She looked frantically right and left. Guests were milling around or parked on the sofas and chairs. The hum of conversation roared in her ears.

  She didn’t know where to find Frank. The dining room, the library, his own suite, one of the terraces. The lodge was a honeycomb of rooms and carefully arranged spaces where guests could loiter at their leisure.

  Noah was already in the forest. She couldn’t take the time.

  She spun on her heel, raced to the front desk. “Mark.”

  She grabbed the young desk clerk, dragged him toward the door leading to the back rooms. “My grandparents, have you seen them?”

  “An hour or so ago. They came through with some people. What’s the matter? What’s the problem?”

  “Listen to me.” Panic was trying to claw through control. “Listen carefully, it’s important. I need you to find Frank Brady. He’s a guest here. I need you to find him as quickly as you can. You tell him . . . Are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sure. Frank Brady.”

  “You find him, and you find him fast. You tell him that Sam Tanner went into the forest. The east side, Lowland Trail. Have you got that.”

  “East side, Lowland Trail.”

  “Tell him Noah went after him. Tell him that. Get one of the staff to call my house. My aunt’s there. She’s to stay inside. It’s vital that she stay inside and wait to hear from me. No one’s to go into the forest. Make an announcement. No one’s to go in there until I clear it. Do whatever you can to keep guests in or around the lodge. Whatever it takes.”

  “Inside? But why—”

  “Just do it,” she snapped. “Do it now.” And shoving him aside, she sprinted into the rear office.

  She needed something, anything. Some kind of weapon. A defense. Frantic, she swept her hands over the desk, yanked open drawers.

  She saw the scissors, the long silver blades, and snatched at them. Was it justice? she wondered as they trembled in her hand. Or was it just fate?

  She slid the blades under her belt, secured the eyes of the handles and bolted.

  The rain began to fall as she raced out of the clearing and into the trees.

  Noah’s mind was clear as glass, detached from the physical jeopardy of the gun and focused on the man. A part of him knew he could die here, in the verdant darkness, but he moved past it and faced whatever hand fate had begun to deal him twenty years before.

  “No point, Sam? All of it, all those years you spent away come down to you and me standing in the rain?”

  “You’re just a bonus. I didn’t expect to talk to you again. I’ve got some tapes for you. For the book.”

  “Still looking to be the star? I won’t make you one. Do you think I’ll let you walk out of here, give her one more moment’s pain? You’ll never touch her.”

  “I did.” Sam lifted his free hand, rubbed his thumb and fingertips together. “I was so close. I could smell her. Just soap. She grew up so pretty. She has a stronger face than Julie’s. Not as beautiful, but stronger. She looked at me. She looked right at me and didn’t know me. Why would she?” he murmured. “Why would she know me? I’ve been as dead to her as her mother for twenty years.”

  “Is that why you arranged all this? To come alive for her? Start me on the book so I’d dig up old memories. Put you back in her head, so when you got out you could start on her.”

  “I wanted her to remember me. Goddamn it, I’m her father, I wanted her to remember me.” He lifted his hand again, drilled his fingertips into his temple where pain began to hammer. “I’ve got a right. A right to at least that.”

  “You lost your rights to her.” Noah edged closer. “You’re not part of her anymore.”

  “Maybe not, but she’s part of me. I’ve waited nearly a third of my life just to tell her that.”

  “And to terrify her because she knows what you are, she saw what you were. She was a baby, innocent, and taking that innocence wasn’t enough? You sent the music box to remind her that you weren’t done. And the phone calls, the white roses.”

  “Roses.” A dreamy smile came to his lips. “I used to put a white rose on her pillow. My little princess.” He pressed his hand to the side of his head again, dragging it back, knocking his cap aside. “They don’t make drugs like they used to. The kind I remember, you’d never feel the pain.”

  He blinked, his eyes narrowing abruptly. “Music box?” He gestured with the gun, an absent gesture that had Noah halting. “What music box?”

  “The Blue Fairy. The one you broke the night you knocked your wife around in Olivia’s room.”

  “I don’t remember. I was coked to my eyeballs.” Then his eyes cleared. “The Blue Fairy. I knocked it off her dresser. I remember. She cried, and I told her I’d buy her another one. I never did.”

  “You sent her one a few days ago.”

  “No. I’d forgotten. I should have made that up to her. I shouldn’t have made her cry. She was such a good little girl. She loved me.”

  Despite the cold wall of rage, pity began to eke through. “You’re sick and you’re tired. Put the gun down and I’ll take you back.”

  “For what? More doctors, more drugs? I’m already dead, Brady. I’ve been dead for years. I just wanted to see her again. Just once. And just once, I wanted her to see me. She’s all I have left.”

  “Put the gun down.”

  With a puzzled expression, Sam glanced down at the gun in his hand. Then he began to laugh. “You think this is for you? It’s for
me. I didn’t have the guts to use it. I’ve been gutless all my fucking life. And you know what, Brady, you know what I figured out when I stuck the barrel in my mouth? When I had my finger on the trigger and couldn’t pull it?”

  His voice became confident and clear. “I didn’t kill Julie. I wouldn’t have had the guts.”

  “Let’s go talk about it.” As Noah stepped forward, reaching out with one hand for the gun, there was a crash in the brush, a blur of movement.

  He felt pain rip along his shoulder as he turned, heard a scream that wasn’t his own. He saw David Melbourne’s contorted face as the force of the attack sent him ramming against Sam, tumbling them both to the ground.

  Noah rolled aside, agony spearing through his wounded shoulder as he thrust his hands up, caught the wrist of David’s knife hand. Noah’s lips peeled back in a snarl of effort as his bloody hands began to slip.

  The blade stabbed into the rain-slimed moss, a breath from his face. Rearing up, Noah bucked him aside, then rolled for the gun that lay on the ground.

  As he snatched it up, David fled into the trees.

  “I never thought of him.” With the side of his face scratched and oozing blood, Sam crawled over. His eyes were glassy from the pain rolling inside his head. “I should have known, because I never thought of him. A dozen other men, I thought of them. She would never have looked at them, that was my delusion, but I thought of them. Never him.”

  As he spoke, he fumbled to tie his handkerchief around the gash in Noah’s shoulder. “He should’ve just waited for me to die instead of trying to kill me.”

  Wincing against the pain, Noah gripped Sam’s shirtfront. “Not you. It’s Olivia he wants now.”

  “No.” Fear coated over the agony in his eyes. “No, not Livvy. We have to find him. Stop him.”

  There wasn’t time to debate. “He’s heading deeper in, but he may circle around, head toward the house.” Noah hesitated only a moment. “Take this.” He unsnapped Olivia’s sheath. “They’re looking for you by now. If my father comes across you with a gun—”

  “Frank’s here?”

  “That’s right. Melbourne won’t get far. You head toward the house. I’ll do what I can to pick up his trail.”

  “Don’t let him hurt Livvy.”

  Noah checked the gun and raced into the green.

  Olivia wanted to rush headlong into the trees, run blindly through the shadows, shout for Noah. It took every ounce of control to move slowly, to look for signs.

  Her turf, she reminded herself.

  But there’d been dozens of people in that edge of the forest, leaving crisscrossing prints. The ground was percolating with rain now, and she would lose even these prints if she didn’t choose soon. He’d come in at a sprint, she remembered, and judged the length between strides.

  Noah had long legs.

  So did her father.

  She headed due south and into the gloom.

  The rain was alive, murmuring as it forced its way through the tangle of vines and drapery overhead. The air was thick with it and the pervasive scent of rot. Small creatures scurried away, sly rustles in the dripping brush. And as the wind cooled the treetops, a thin fog skinned over the ground and smoked over her boots.

  She moved more quickly now, trying to outpace the fear. Every shadow was a terror, every shape a threat. Ferns, slick with rain, slithered around her legs as she hurried deeper into the forest and farther away from safety.

  She lost the trail, backtracked, could have wept with frustration. The quiet chuckle of panic began to dance in her chest. She focused on the forest floor, searching for a sign. And caught her breath with relief, with something almost like triumph, when she picked up the tracks again.

  Nerves skipped and skidded over her skin as she followed the trail of the man she loved. And of the man who’d shattered her life.

  When she heard the scream, fear plunged into her heart like a killing blade.

  She forgot logic, she forgot caution and she ran as though her life depended on it.

  Her feet slipped, sliding wild over the moldering ground. Fallen logs seemed to throw themselves into her path, forcing her to leap and stumble. Fungi, slimy with rain, burst wetly under her boots. She went down hard, tearing moss with the heels of her hands, sending shock waves stinging into her knees.

  She lunged to her feet, breathless, pushed herself off the rough bark of a hemlock and pushed blindly through vines that snaked out to snatch at her arms and legs. She beat and ripped at them, fought her way clear.

  Rain soaked her hair, dripped into her eyes. She blinked it away and saw the blood.

  It was soaking into the ground, going pale with wet. Shaking, she dropped to her knees, touched her fingertips to the stain, and brought them back, red and wet.

  “Not again. No, not again.” She rocked herself, mourning in the sizzle of rain, cringing into a ball as the fear hammered at her, screamed into her mind, burst through her body like a storm of ice.

  “Noah!” She shouted it once, listened to the grieving echo of it. Shoving to her feet, she ran her smeared fingers over her face, then screamed it.

  With her only thought to find him, she began to run.

  He’d lost his direction, but he thought he still had the scent of his quarry. The gun was familiar in his hand now, as if it had always been there. He never doubted he could use it. It was part of him now. Everything that was primitive about the world he was in was inside him now.

  Life and death and the cold-blooded will to survive.

  Twenty years, the man had hidden what he was, what he’d done. He’d let another grow old in a cage, had played the devoted husband to his victim’s sister, the indulgent uncle to her daughter.

  Murder, bloody murder had been locked inside him, while he prospered, while he posed. And when the key had started to turn in the door to Sam Tanner’s cage, it had set murder free again.

  The break-ins, the attack on Mike. An attempt to stop the book, Noah thought as he moved with deliberate strides through the teeming woods. To beat back the guilt, the fear of exposure that must have tried to claw out of him hundreds of times over twenty long years.

  And once again, he’d turned the focus on Sam, once again structured his acts to point the accusations at an innocent man.

  But this time it was Olivia he’d hunted. Fear that she’d seen him that night, would remember some small detail that had been tucked in a corner of her mind all this time. A detail that might jibe with the story Sam wanted to tell.

  Yes, it was logical, the cold-blooded logic that would fit a man who could murder his wife’s sister, then live cozily with her family for another generation.

  Then the balance had shifted on him, with the possibility of a book, another in-depth look at the case, the interviews with Olivia urging her to talk about the night her family had conveniently buried along with Julie.

  But she couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t remember if she was too afraid. Or if she was dead.

  Then he heard her scream his name.

  thirty-three

  The monster was back. The smell of him was blood. The sound of him was terror.

  She had no choice but to run, and this time to run toward him.

  The lush wonder of forest that had once been her haven, that had always been her sanctuary, spun into a nightmare. The towering majesty of the trees was no longer a grand testament to nature’s vigor, but a living cage that could trap her, conceal him. The luminous carpet of moss was a bubbling bog that sucked at her boots. She ripped through ferns, rending their sodden fans to slimy tatters, skidded over a rotted log and destroyed the burgeoning life it nursed.

  Green shadows slipped in front of her, beside her, behind her, seemed to whisper her name.

  Livvy, my love. Let me tell you a story.