River’s End

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