River's End (11 page)

“Good morning. I saw a deer out my window this morning. She stepped through the fog like something out of a fairy tale. By the time I snapped out of it and dug out my camera, she was gone.”

“You’ll probably see more. The blacktail is common in the forest. You might catch sight of a Roosevelt elk, too.”

Celia tapped the camera hanging from a strap around her neck as she stepped out. “This time, I’m prepared.”

“If you’re ready, we’ll get started.” Olivia had already, subtly she hoped, checked out their shoes and clothes and gear. It would do well enough for the short, easy hike. “You can stop me anytime you want to take pictures or rest or ask questions. I
don’t know how much you know about Olympic, or the rainforest,” she began as she started the walk.

She’d practiced her presentation that morning as she’d dressed and led into it very much as she had when her aunt had played tourist for her.

When she mentioned bear, Celia didn’t squeal as Jamie had, but sighed. “Oh, I’d love to see one.”

“Jeez, Mom, you would.”

Celia laughed and hooked an arm around Noah’s neck. “Hopeless city boys, Livvy. Both of them. You’ve got your work cut out for you with these two.”

“That’s okay, it’s good practice.”

She identified trees for them, but got the feeling only Celia was particularly interested. Though Noah did seem to perk up when she spotted an eagle for him high in the moss- and lichen-draped trees. But when she cut over to the river and the world opened up a bit, all three of her charges seemed to get into the spirit.

“This is the Quinault,” Olivia told them. “It runs to the coast. The Olympic Range rings the interior.”

“God, it’s beautiful. It takes your breath away.” Celia had her camera up, busily framing and snapping. “Look at the way the mountains stand against the sky, Frank. White and green and gray against that blue. It’s like taking a picture of a painting.”

Olivia scrambled around in her head for what she knew about the mountains. “Ah, Mount Olympus is actually less than eight thousand feet at its peak, but it rises from the rain forest at almost sea level, so it looks bigger. It has, I think it’s six, glaciers. We’re on the western slopes of the range.”

She led them along the river, pointing out the clever dams the beavers built, the stringlike petals of wild goldthread, the delicate white of marsh marigold. They passed other hikers on the trail, singles and groups.

Celia stopped often for pictures, and her men posed with patience if not enthusiasm. When Olivia managed to catch a red-legged frog, Celia took pictures of that as well, laughing in delight when it let out its long feeble croak.

Then she surprised Olivia by stroking a long finger over the frog’s back. Hardly any of the women Olivia knew wanted to pet frogs. When she released it, she and Celia smiled at each other in perfect unity.

“Your mother’s found a soul sister,” Frank muttered to Noah.

Olivia was about to point out an osprey nest when a toddler raced down the trail, evading the young parents who called and rushed after him.

He tripped and came to a skidding halt on knees and elbows almost at Olivia’s feet. And wailed like a thousand bagpipes.

She started to bend down, but Noah was faster and had the boy scooped up, jiggling him cheerfully. “Uh-oh. Wipeout.”

“Scotty! Oh, honey, I told you not to run!” The frantic mother grabbed for him, then looked back at her out-of-breath husband. “He’s bleeding. He’s scraped his knees.”

“Damn it. How bad? Let’s see, buddy.”

As the boy screamed and sobbed, Olivia slipped off her pack. “You’ll need to wash his cuts. I have some bottled water and a first-aid kit.”

She went to work so efficiently, Frank signaled Celia back.

“You’ll have to hold him still,” Olivia said. “I can’t clean it if he’s kicking.”

“I know it hurts, honey, I know. We’re going to make it all better.” The mother kissed Scotty’s cheeks. “Here, let me clean off the cuts. Thanks so much.” She took the cloth Olivia had dampened and struggled with her husband to keep the child still long enough to see the damage.

“Just scrapes. Knocked the bark off, buddy.” The father kept his voice light, but his face was very pale as his wife cleaned the blood away.

Olivia handed over antiseptic, and one glance at the little bottle had Scotty switching from wails to ear-piercing screams.

“Hey, you know what you need.” Noah pulled a candy bar out of his back pocket, waved it in front of Scotty’s face. “You need to spoil your lunch.”

Scotty eyed the chocolate bar through fat tears. His lips
trembled, but instead of a screech he let out a pitiful whimper. “Candy.”

“You bet. You like candy? This is pretty special candy. It’s only for brave boys. I bet you’re brave.”

Scotty sniffled, reached out, too intent on the bar to notice his mother quickly bandaging his knees. “ ’kay.”

“Here you go, then.” Noah held it out, then tugged it just out of reach with a grin. “I forgot. I can only give this candy to somebody named Scotty.”

“I’m Scotty.”

“No kidding? Then this must be yours.”

“Thanks. Thanks so much.” The mother shifted the now-delighted child to her hip and shoved back her hair with her free hand. “You’re lifesavers.”

Olivia glanced up from where she was repacking her first-aid kit. “You should make sure you pick up one of these if you’re going to do much hiking. The River’s End Lodge gift shop carries them, or you can get them in town.”

“First on my list. Along with emergency chocolate. Thanks again.” She looked over to Frank and Celia. “You’ve got great kids.”

Olivia started to speak, then ducked her head and said nothing. But not so quickly that Celia hadn’t seen the look of unhappiness. “You two make a good team,” she said cheerfully. “And that little adventure worked up my appetite. When’s lunch, Liv?”

Olivia looked up, blinked. Liv, she thought. It sounded strong and sure and smart. “There’s a nice area just a little farther down. We might get lucky and see a couple of beavers instead of just their dams.”

She picked her spot, a shady area just off the trail where they could sit and watch the water, or gaze off toward the mountains. The air was warm, the sky clear in one of those perfect summer days the peninsula could offer.

Olivia nibbled at her chicken and held herself back just a little. She wanted to watch the Bradys together. They seemed so easy, so meshed. Later, when she was older and looked back on that comfortable hour, she would call it a rhythm. They had a
rhythm of movement, of speech, of silences. Little bits of humor that were intimately their own, tossed-off comments, teasing, body language.

And she would realize, remembering, that however much she and her grandparents loved one another, they didn’t have quite that same connection.

A generation stood between them. Her mother’s life, and her death.

But just then all she knew was that she felt a tug of longing, an ache of envy. It made her ashamed. “I’m going to walk down a little more.” She got up, ordering herself to do so casually. “I’ll see if I can spot some beavers. If I do, I’ll come back and get you.”

“Poor little thing,” Celia murmured when Olivia walked down the trail. “She’s lonely. I don’t even think she knows how lonely she is.”

“Her grandparents are good people, Celia.”

“I’m sure they are. But where are the other kids? The ones her age she should be playing with on a beautiful day like this?”

“She doesn’t even go to school,” Noah put in. “She told me her grandmother teaches her at home.”

“They’ve put her in a bubble. A spectacular one,” Celia added as she looked around, “but it’s still closed.”

“They’re afraid. They have reason to be.”

“I know, but what will they do when she starts to beat her wings against the bubble? And what will she do if she doesn’t?”

Noah got to his feet. “I think I’ll walk down, too. Never seen a beaver.”

“He has a kind heart,” Celia commented, smiling after him.

“Yeah, and he also has a curious mind. I hope he doesn’t try to pump her.”

“Give him some credit, Frank.”

“If I didn’t, I’d be going to look for beavers, too, instead of taking a nap.” With that, he stretched out and laid his head in his wife’s lap.

Noah found her sitting on the bank of the river, very quiet and very still. It made a picture in his mind—very much like, yet so
very different from, the one he had of her as a small child running from grief.

Here she simply sat, her cap over her butterscotch hair, her back straight as a die, staring out over water that ran fast and bright and clear.

She wasn’t running from grief this time, he thought. She was learning to live with it.

It was sort of her personal river’s end, he supposed.

Her head turned quickly at his approach. She kept her gaze steady on his face, those rich eyes of hers solemn, as he moved to her and sat down.

“They come to play here,” she told him in a low voice. “They don’t mind people too much. They get used to them. But you have more luck if you don’t make a lot of noise and movement.”

“I guess you spend a lot of time just hanging around.”

“There’s always something to see or do.” She kept scanning the river. He made her feel odd in a way she couldn’t decide was pleasant or not. She only knew it was different from anything she’d felt before. A kind of drumming just under her heart. “I guess it’s nothing like Los Angeles.”

“Nothing at all.” At that point in his life, L.A.
was
the world. “It’s okay, though. Mom’s big on nature and shit. You know, save the whales, save the spotted owl, save the whatever. She gets into it.”

“If more people did, we wouldn’t need to save them in the first place.”

She spoke with just enough heat to make him smile. “Yeah, that’s what she says. I got no problem with it. Mostly I like my nature in the city park, with a basketball hoop.”

“I bet you’ve never even been fishing.”

“Why should I?” He sent her a quick flash of a grin that had the drumming inside her picking up its beat. “I can walk right into McDonald’s and buy a fish sandwich.”

“Yuck.”

“Hey, you want yuck? Sticking a defenseless worm on some hook and drowning it so you can pull up some flopping, slimy
fish.” The fact that she smiled a little, that her eyes shimmered with a mild and adult kind of humor, pleased him. “That’s disgusting.”

“That’s skill,” she corrected, almost primly, but she was looking at him now, instead of at the river. “Isn’t it crowded in the city, and full of noise and traffic and smog and stuff?”

“Sure.” He leaned back comfortably on his elbows. “That’s why I love it. Something’s always happening.”

“Something’s always happening here, too. Look.” Forgetting her shyness, she laid a hand on his leg.

A pair of beavers swam cheerfully upriver, their slick heads skimming the surface, ripples shimmying over the water in widening pools around them. Then, like a dream, a heron rose up over the opposite bank and glided with a majestic flap of wings across the river, so close its shadow flowed over them.

“Bet you never saw that in the city.”

“Guess not.”

He amused himself with the beavers. They were really pretty cute, he decided, circling, splashing, flipping over to swim on their backs.

“You know about my mother.”

Noah looked over sharply. She was facing the water again, her face set, her jaw tight. There were a dozen questions he’d wanted to ask if he found the opportunity, but now that she’d opened the door he found he couldn’t.

She was just a kid.

“Yeah. It’s rough.”

“Have you ever seen any of her movies?”

“Sure. Lots of them.”

Olivia pressed her lips together. She had to know. Someone had to tell her. He would. She hoped he’d treat her like a grown-up instead of someone who needed constant protecting. “Was she wonderful in them?”

“Haven’t you ever seen one?” When she shook her head, he shifted, not sure how to answer. The best answer, his mother often said, was the simple truth. “She was really good. I mostly
like action flicks, you know, but I’ve watched hers on TV. Man, she was beautiful.”

“I don’t mean how she looked.” Her voice snapped out, surprising him into staring. “I mean how she
was.
Was she a good actress?”

“Sure. Really good. She made you believe. I guess that’s what it’s all about.”

Olivia’s shoulders relaxed. “Yes.” She nodded. “She left here because she wanted to act. I just wanted to know if she was good. ‘She made you believe.’” Olivia murmured it, then tucked that single statement into her heart. “Your father . . . he came here because I asked him to. He’s a great man. You should know that. You have parents who care about things, about people. You should never forget that.”

She got to her feet. “I’ll go get them so they can see the beavers before we head back.”

Noah sat where he was. He hadn’t asked her the questions in his head, but she’d answered one of them. How did it feel to be the daughter of someone famous who’d died in a violent way.

It felt lousy. Just lousy.

It takes two to speak the truth—

one to speak, and another to hear.

—Henry David Thoreau

There was nothing to be nervous about. Noah reminded himself of that as he checked the address of the trim two-story house. He’d been planning this trip, this connection for a long time. And that, he supposed as he parked his rental car at the curb in the quiet tree-lined neighborhood, was exactly why he was nervous.

Maybe he sensed his life could change today, that seeing Olivia MacBride again could alter the course he was on. He was willing to take that new direction. There was no gain without risk, after all. That’s where the damp palms and jumpy belly came from.

It was nothing personal.

He combed back his hair by using the fingers of his hands in two quick rakes. He’d thought about getting a trim before coming here, but hell, he was on vacation.

More or less.

Two weeks away from the newspaper, where his struggle to make a name for himself as a crime reporter wasn’t as satisfying as he’d thought it would be. Politics, print space, editors and advertising concerns got in the way of stories he wanted to tell.

And he wanted to tell them his way.

That was why he was here. To write the one story he’d never been able to forget, and to tell it his way.

Julie MacBride’s murder.

One of the keys to it lived on the second floor of this pretty house that had been converted into four apartments. They and others like it had been designed to accommodate the overflow from the college campus. For those who could afford separate
housing, he thought. Who could pay the price for privacy. And who wanted it badly enough—who didn’t look for the pace and companionship, the bursts of energy in college life.

Personally, he’d loved his years on campus at UCLA. Maybe the first semester had been mostly a blur of parties, girls and drunken late-night philosophical discussions only the young could understand. But he’d buckled down after that.

He’d wanted his degree in journalism. And his parents would have killed him if he’d washed out.

Those two incentives had worked for him in equal measure.

And what, he wondered, was Olivia’s incentive?

If after nearly three years on the job he’d learned he wasn’t a reporter at heart, he was still a good one. He’d done his research. He knew Olivia MacBride was majoring in natural resource science, that her grades were a straight four point oh. He knew she’d spent one year, her freshman year, on campus in a dorm. And that she’d moved out and into her own apartment the following fall.

He knew she belonged to no clubs or sororities and was monitoring two extra classes while shouldering an eighteen-credit load during her spring semester.

That told him she was focused, dedicated and probably a little more than obsessive about her studies.

But there were things he couldn’t research through computers, through transcripts. It didn’t tell him what she wanted, what she hoped for.

What she felt about her parents.

To know all that, he needed to know her. To write the book that fermented in the back of his heart and his mind, he had to get inside her head.

The two images of her that burned brightest in his mind were of the child’s tear-stained face and the young girl’s solemn eyes. As he walked into the house, noted the hallway cutting the space precisely in two, he wondered what he would see now.

He climbed the steps, noted the small plaque that identified apartment 2-B. No name, he thought. Just the number. The
MacBrides still guarded their privacy like the last gold coin in an empty sack.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, and pressed the buzzer.

He had a couple of basic plans of approach in mind, believing it best to be flexible until he gauged his ground. Then she opened the door and every plan, every practical thought ran out of his mind like water from a tipped bowl. Slow and steady and completely.

She wasn’t beautiful, certainly not if you measured her by her mother’s staggering image. It was almost impossible to do otherwise when you saw the eyes, rich golden brown under slashing dark brows.

She was tall and slim, but with an efficient toughness to her build he found surprisingly, almost ridiculously sexy. Her hair had darkened since he’d seen her last, but was shades lighter than her eyes and drawn back in a smooth ponytail that left her face unframed.

The child’s face had refined, sharpened and taken on the edge of young womanhood Noah always thought of as faintly feline.

She wore jeans, a WSU sweatshirt, no shoes and a vaguely annoyed expression.

He found himself standing, staring foolishly, unable to do anything but grin at her.

She cocked one of those killer eyebrows, and a surprising kick of lust joined his sheer pleasure at seeing her again. “If you’re looking for Linda, she’s across the hall. Two-A.”

She said it as though she said it often and in a voice that was throatier than he remembered.

“I’m not looking for Linda. I’m looking for you.” And the thought crossed his mind that he always had been. That was so absurd, he dismissed it immediately. “And you just put a huge hole in my ego by not remembering me.”

“Why should I remember . . . ?” She trailed off, focusing those fascinating eyes on him as she hadn’t when she’d thought he was just another of the nuisance men who flocked around her
across-the-hall neighbor. And as she did, her lips parted, those eyes warmed. “You’re Noah. Noah Brady. Frank’s son.” Her gaze shifted from his, over his shoulder. “Is he—”

“No, it’s just me. Got a minute?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Come in.” Flustered, she stepped back. She’d been deep into the writing of a paper on the root symbiosis of fungus. Now she went from being buried in science to flying back over time, into memories.

And into the lovely little crush she’d had on him when she’d been twelve.

“I can make some coffee, or I probably have something cold.”

“Either’s fine.” He took the first-time visitor’s circling scan of the tidy room, the organized desk with its humming computer, the soft cream walls, the deep blue sofa. The space was compact, creatively arranged and comfortably simple. “Nice place.”

“Yes, I like it.” Relished, hoarded the blissful thrill of living alone for the first time in her life.

She didn’t fuss, fluttering around as some women were prone to, apologizing for the mess even when there wasn’t one. She simply stood there, looking at him as if she didn’t know quite where to begin.

He looked back and wondered the same thing himself.

“Ah . . . I’ll just be a minute.”

“No rush.”

He followed her into the kitchen, flustering her again. It was hardly more than a passageway, with stove, refrigerator and sink lining one side and stingy counter space between.

Despite the limited space, he managed to wander around. When he stood at the window, they were close enough to bump shoulders. She rarely let a man get close. “Coke or coffee?” she asked when she’d pulled open the fridge and taken a quick survey.

“Coke’s fine. Thanks.”

He would have taken the can from her, but she was already reaching for a glass.

For God’s sake, Olivia, she scolded herself, open your mouth and speak. “What are you doing in Washington?”

“I’m on vacation.” He smiled at her, and the drumming that had been under her heart six years before started up as if it had never stopped. “I work for the
L.A. Times.
” She smelled of soap and shampoo, and something else, something subtle. Vanilla, he realized, like the candles his mother liked.

“You’re a reporter.”

“I always wanted to write.” He took the glass from her. “I didn’t realize it until I was in college, but that’s what I wanted.” And because he felt her wariness slide between them like a band of smoke, he smiled again and decided there was no hurry about telling her what he’d come for. “I had a couple of weeks coming, and the friend I was going to flake out at the beach with for a few days couldn’t get away after all. So I decided to head north.”

“You’re not up here on assignment, then.”

“No.” That was the truth, absolutely true, he told himself. “I’m on my own. I decided to look you up, since you’re the only person I know in the entire state of Washington. How do you like college?”

“Oh, very much.” Making a deliberate effort to relax, she led him back into the living room. “I miss home off and on, but classes keep me busy.”

She sat on the couch, assuming he’d take the chair, but he sat beside her and companionably stretched out his legs. “What are you working on?” He nodded toward the computer.

“Fungus.” She laughed, took a nervous sip of her drink. He was wonderful to look at, the untidy sun-streaked brown of his hair, the deep green eyes that reminded her of home, the easy sensuality of his smile.

She remembered she’d once thought he looked like a rock star. He still did.

“I’m a natural resource science major.”

He started to tell her he knew, stopped himself. Too many explanations, he thought, and ignored the little whisper of guilt in his ear. “It fits.”

“Like a glove,” she agreed. “How are your parents?”

“They’re great. You told me once I should appreciate them. I do.” He shifted, his eyes meeting hers, holding hers, until the blood that had always remained calm and cool around men heated. “More, I guess, since I moved out, got my own place. That distance of the adult child, you know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you still work at the lodge?”

“Summers, over breaks.” Do other men look at me this way? she wondered. Wouldn’t she have noticed if one had ever looked at her as if her face were all that mattered? “I—did you ever learn to fish?”

“No.” He grinned again and his fingers trailed lightly over the back of her hand.

“So it’s still fish sandwiches at McDonald’s?”

“They never miss. But I can occasionally do better. How about dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“As in eating, the evening meal. Even a natural resource science major must have heard of the ritual evening meal. Why don’t you have yours with me tonight?”

Her ritual evening meal usually consisted of whatever she had time to toss together in her miniature kitchen or, failing that, what she picked up on the way home from a late class.

Besides, she had a paper to finish, a test to study for, a lab project to prepare for. And he had the most beautiful green eyes. “That would be nice.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at seven. Got a favorite place?”

“Place? Oh, no, no, not really.”

“Then I’ll surprise you.” He got up, giving her hand an absentminded squeeze as she rose to lead him to the door. “Don’t fill up on fungus,” he told her, and grinned one last time before he left.

Olivia quietly closed the door, quietly turned to lean back against it. She let out a long breath, told herself she was being ridiculous, that she was too old to indulge in silly crushes. Then
for the first time in longer than she could remember, she had a purely frivolous thought:

What in God’s name was she going to wear?

He’d bring up the subject of her father, of the book, during dinner. Gently, Noah told himself. He wanted her to have time to consider it, to understand what he hoped to do and the vital part she’d play in it.

It couldn’t be done without her cooperation. Without her family’s. Without, he thought, as he stuck his hands in his pockets and climbed the steps to her apartment again, Sam Tanner.

She wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d be sensible. And when she understood his motivations, the results he wanted to accomplish, how could she refuse? The book he wanted to craft wouldn’t just be about murder, about blood and death, but about people. The human factor. The motivations, the mistakes, the steps. The heart, he thought.

This kind of story began and ended with the heart. That’s what he had to make her understand.

He was connected to it, and had been if not from the minute his father had answered the call to go to the house in Beverly Hills, then from the instant he himself had seen the image of the child on his living-room television screen.

He didn’t just want to write about it. He had to.

He’d be straight with her about that.

Before he could push the buzzer of 2-B, the door of 2-A opened.

“Well, hello.”

And this, he thought, must be Linda. The smile was a knee-jerk reaction to the smoldering brunette with laser blue eyes. His blood ran just a few beats faster, as the little red dress painted over female curves meant it to.

He knew her type and appreciated it. Just as he appreciated the way she moved, the metronome sway of hips, as she stepped out into the hall, crossing to him on ice-pick heels the same hot sex color as the dress.

“Can you give me a hand with this? I’m just . . . all thumbs tonight.”

She dangled a thin gold bracelet from her fingertips, breathed in and out slow and deep, just in case he hadn’t noticed the really lovely breasts straining against the slick red.

“Sure.” There was nothing more flattering to the male ego than an obvious woman. He took the bracelet, circled it around her wrist and enjoyed the way she shifted her body closer, angled in to tip her face back and look into his.

“If Liv’s had you tucked away, it’s no wonder she never goes out.”

He fastened the bracelet and wallowed in the come-and-get-me fragrance pumping off Linda’s skin. “Doesn’t she?”

“All work and all work, that’s our Liv.” She laughed and gave a skilled shake of her head that tossed her luxurious dark curls. “Me, I like to play.”

“I bet you do.” He still had Linda’s wrist in his hand, and the friendly grin on his face, when the door behind him opened.

He forgot Linda had ever been born. He forgot the book. He very nearly forgot his name.

Olivia was anything but obvious. She stood in the doorway, wearing a dress of quiet blue that covered a lot more area than Linda’s red. And made him wonder just what was under all that soft material. She’d left her hair loose so that it fell straight as rain and gave him a glimpse of glints of gold at her ears.

He already knew he’d have to get close, very close, to catch her scent. Her lips were unpainted, her eyes cool.