River's End (36 page)

“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.

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.

Breath sobbed out of her lungs, set to grieving by fear and loss. The blood that still stained her fingertips had gone ice-cold.

Rain fell, a steady drumming against the windswept canopy, a sly trickle over lichen-draped bark. It soaked into the greedy ground until the whole world was wet and ripe and somehow hungry.

She forgot if she was hunter or hunted, only knew in some deep primal instinct that movement was survival.

She would find him, or he would find her. And somehow it would be finished. She would not end as a coward. And if there was any light in the world, she would find the man she loved. Alive.

She curled the blood she knew was his into the palm of her hand and held it like hope.

Fog snaked around her boots, broke apart at her long, reckless strides. Her heartbeat battered her ribs, her temples, her fingertips in a feral, pulsing rhythm.

She heard the crack overhead, the thunder snap of it, and
leaped aside as a branch, weighed down by water and wind and time, crashed to the forest floor.

A little death meant fresh life.

She closed her hand over the only weapon she had and knew she would kill to live.

And through the deep green light haunted by darker shadows, she saw the monster as she remembered him in her nightmares.

Covered with blood, and watching her.

Fury that was as much hate as fear spurted through her in a bitter kind of power. “Where’s Noah? What have you done to him?”

He was on his knees, his hand pressed to his side where blood spilled out of him. The pain was so huge it reached to the bone, to the bowels.

“Livvy.” He whispered it, both prayer and plea. “Run.”

“I’ve been running from you all my life.” She stepped closer, driven forward by a need that had slept inside her since childhood. “Where’s Noah?” she repeated. “I swear I’ll kill you if you’ve taken someone else I love.”

“Not me. Not then, not now.” His vision wavered. She seemed to sway in front of him, tall and slim with her mother’s eyes. “He’s still close. For God’s sake, run.”

They heard it at the same moment, the thrashing through the brush. She spun around, her heart leaping with hope. At her feet, Sam’s heart tripped with terror.

“Stay away from her.” Sheer will pushed him to stand. He tried to shove Olivia behind him, but only collapsed against her.

“You should have died in prison.” David’s face was wet with rain and blood. The knife in his hand ran with both. “None of this would have happened if you’d just died.”

“Uncle David.” The shock of seeing him, his eyes wild, his clothes splattered, had her stepping forward. With a strength born of desperation, Sam jerked her back, held her hard against him.

“He killed her. Listen to me. He killed her. He wanted her and couldn’t have her. Don’t go near him.”

“Step away from him, Livvy. Come here to me.”

“I want you to run,” Sam said urgently. “Run the way you did that night and find a place to hide. Find Noah.”

“You know better than to listen to him.” David’s smile made her blood go cold. “You saw what he did to her that night. He was never good enough for her. Never right. I’ve always been there for you, haven’t I, Livvy?”

“She never wanted you.” Sam’s voice was slurred and slow as he fought to stay conscious. “She never loved anyone but me.”

“Shut up!” The parody of a smile became a snarl. His face flushed dark and ugly. “It should have been me. She would have come to me if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“Oh God. Oh, my God.” Olivia stared at David and braced to take her father’s weight. “You. It was you.”

“She should have listened to me! I
loved
her. I always loved her. She was so beautiful, so perfect. I would have treated her like an angel. What did he do for her? He dragged her down, made her miserable, only thought of himself.”

“You’re right. I treated her badly.” Sam slumped against Olivia, murmured, “Run.” But she only shook her head and held on to him. “I didn’t deserve her.”

“I would have given her everything.” Tears slipped out of David’s eyes now, and his knife hand dropped to his side. “She would never have been unhappy with me. I settled for second best and gave Jamie everything I would have given Julie. Why should I have settled when she was finally going to divorce you? When she finally saw you for what you were. She was meant to come to me then. It was meant.”

“You went to the house that night.” Sam’s side was numb. He levered himself straight, caught his breath and prayed for the strength to step away from his daughter.

“Do you know how much courage it took for me to go to her, to give her everything that was in my heart? She let me in and smiled at me. She was doing her clippings and having a glass of wine. The music was on, her favorite Tchaikovsky. She said it was nice to have company.”

“She trusted you.”

“I poured my soul out to her. I told her I loved her, always had. That I wanted her. That I was leaving Jamie and we could be together. She looked at me as if I were insane. Pushed me away when I tried to hold her. She told me to leave and we’d forget I’d ever spoken of it. Forget.” He spat the word out.

“She loved my father,” Olivia murmured. “She loved my father.”

“She was
wrong!
I only tried to convince her she was wrong, I only wanted to make her see. If she hadn’t struggled against me, I wouldn’t have ripped her robe. Then she turned on me, shouted at me to get out of her house. She said she would tell Jamie everything. She said I was scum. Scum! That she would never see me again, never speak to me. I—I couldn’t hear what she was saying, it was so vile. She turned her back on me, turned away as if I were nothing. And the scissors were in my hand. Then they were in her. I think she screamed,” he said softly. “I’m not sure. I don’t know. I only remember the blood.”

His eyes focused again, fixed on Olivia. “It was an accident, really. One moment, one terrible mistake. But I couldn’t take it back, could I? I couldn’t change it.”

She had to be calm, Olivia ordered herself. Her father was bleeding badly. She had no doubt that she could outdistance and lose her uncle in the forest. But how could she leave her father? How could she run away and hide again?

She would stand, protect. And pray for help to come. “You held me while I cried for her.”

“I cried, too!” It enraged David that she didn’t understand. Just like her mother. Just like Julie. “If she’d only listened, it would never have happened. Why should I have paid for that? He’s the one who hurt her; he’s the one who deserved to pay. I had to protect myself, my life. I had to get out. There was so much blood, I was nearly sick.”

“How did you get out of the house and back home?” Olivia asked and strained her ears for a sound—heard only the thrashing of rain. “Aunt Jamie would have seen the blood.”

“I stripped off my clothes, bundled them up. I went outside,
to the pool, and washed the blood off. I washed it all away. There were always spare clothes in the changing house, no one would ever notice. I could get rid of my own later, a Dumpster in the city. I went back in the house because I thought it might be a dream. But it wasn’t. I thought I heard you upstairs. I thought I heard you, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“I woke up. I heard Mama scream.”

“Yes, I found out later. I had to get home in case Jamie woke up and realized I’d slipped out. It wasn’t until they brought you to us that I wondered if you’d seen me. I wondered if you’d heard. Twenty years, I’ve wondered. I’ve waited.”

“No, I didn’t see you. I never knew.”

“It would have stayed that way. Everyone put it aside, everyone closed the door, until the book. How could I be sure? How could I know for sure that you hadn’t heard my voice, that you hadn’t looked out the window, seen my car? It ruined my life, don’t you see? I’d done everything to make it work, everything to make up for that one single night.”

“You let my father go to prison.”

“I was in prison, too.” Tears leaked out of his eyes. “I was paying, too. I knew you’d be just like her. I knew when it came down to a choice, you’d choose him. I always loved you, Livvy. You should have been ours. Mine and Julie’s. But that’s over now. I have to protect myself. I have to end it.”

He lunged toward her, leading with the knife.

It was like his dream, the dark, the trees, the murmur of rain and wind. He could run until his heart burst out of his chest and he couldn’t find her. Every rustle had him turning in a new direction, every call of a night bird was the sound of her voice.

The bone-numbing terror that he would be too late, that he would never wake up from this nightmare and find her curled against him, drove him harder.

She was somewhere in the vast, twisting maze of the forest. Somewhere just beyond his reach.

He stopped, leaning against the bulk of a hemlock to clear the tumble of his mind. The air was so thick, every breath he took was like gulping in water. His shoulder was on fire, the white handkerchief tied over the wound long since gone red.

He stood very still for a moment and listened. Was that the murmur of voices, or just the rain? Sound seemed to shoot at a dozen different angles, then swallow itself. The only compass he had now was his gut. Trusting it, he turned west.

This time, when she screamed, he was close.

Sam shoved her clear and, with the little strength he had left, drove his body into David’s. When the knife sliced through him again, he felt nothing but despair. As he staggered and fell, Olivia leaped to her feet and tried to catch him.

It happened quickly, her father slipping out of her hands, the sound of running feet slapping against the saturated ground. And the quick prick of a knife at her throat.

“Let her go.” Noah braced his feet, held the gun in the classic police grip. Fear was a hot river in his blood.

“I’ll kill her. You know I will. Drop the gun, or I’ll slice her throat and be done with it.”

“And lose your shield? I don’t think so.” Oh God, Liv, oh God, don’t move. He gazed quickly at her face, saw the blank shock in her eyes, the thin trickle of red sliding down the slim column of her throat. “Step away from her, step back.”

“Put the gun down!” He jerked Olivia’s head up with the flat of the blade. “She’s dead, do you hear me. She’s dead if you don’t do it now!”

“He’ll kill me anyway.”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” He nicked her again, and she saw Noah’s hands jerk, then start to lower.

“Don’t do it. Don’t hurt her.”

“Put it down!”

She heard the roar of their voices in her head, saw the decision in Noah’s eyes. “He’ll kill me no matter what you do. Then he’ll kill you. Don’t let him take someone else I love. Don’t let him win.”

Her hand closed over the cold metal eyes of the scissors, drew them out in one quick, smooth motion, then plunged them viciously into his thigh.

He screamed, high and bright, his knife hand jerking up, then dropping. She shoved her body away from his, yanking the scissors clear. Then held them out as he leaped toward her.

She heard the bullet ring out, one sharp snap. Saw the bright blossom of blood bloom high on his chest and the puzzled shock in his eyes as he fell toward her.

She didn’t step back. And she would never ask herself if she’d had time to do so. The killing point of the scissors slid silently into his belly.

The weight of him bore her to the ground. Before she could roll clear, Noah pulled her up and against him. His arms that had been so steady began to quiver.

“You’re all right. You’re okay.” He said it again, then once again as his hands ran shakily over her. “He cut you.” His fingers brushed gently at her throat. “Oh God, Liv.”

She was crushed against him again, burrowed into him. Her head went light, seemed to circle somewhere just beyond her shoulders. “I thought he might have killed you. I saw the blood and I thought . . . No!” She jerked back, her hands vising on Noah’s face. “Daddy.”

She pulled away and stumbled to the ground beside her father. “Oh no, no, no. Don’t. Please. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Daddy.” She had nothing but her hands to press against his wound to try to stem the bleeding.

“Don’t cry, Livvy.” He reached up to touch her face. “This is the best way for me. My time’s running out, anyway. I needed to see you again. It was the last thing I had to do. You’ve got your mother’s eyes.” He smiled a little. “You always did. I let her down in so many ways.”

“Don’t, please don’t.” She pressed her face to his neck. “Noah, help me.”

“If I’d been what I should have been, what she believed I could be, she’d still be alive.”

“Don’t talk now. We have to stop the bleeding. They’ll find
us soon.” Her hands fumbled with the scraps of cloth Noah gave her. “They’re looking, and we’ll get you to the hospital.”

“You’re a smart girl, you know better.” His eyes were clouding over, but they shifted to Noah. “She’s a smart one, isn’t she, Brady?”

“That’s right.” He pressed another scrap of his shirt to the wound in Sam’s side. “So listen to her.”

“I’d rather die a hero.” His short laugh ended in a racking cough. “There’s enough of the old me in here to rather enjoy that. Is that son of a bitch dead?”

“As Moses,” Noah told him.

“Thank Christ for that.” The pain was floating away. “Livvy.” He gripped her hand. “When I was looking for you that night, when you saw me, I wasn’t going to hurt you.”