River’s End Read Free

Mama’s scissors. I want Mama.”
    God. Dear God, was all he could think.
    At the sound of feet coming down the hall, Olivia let out a low keening sound and tightened her grip around Frank’s neck. He murmured to her, patting her back as he moved toward the door.
    “Frank, there’s—you found her.” Detective Tracy Harmon studied the little girl wrapped around his partner and raked a hand through his hair. “The neighbor said there’s a sister. Jamie Melbourne. Husband’s David Melbourne, some kind of music agent. They only live about a mile from here.”
    “Better notify them. Honey, you want to go see your aunt Jamie?”
    “Is my mama there?”
    “No. But I think she’d want you to go.”
    “I’m sleepy.”
    “You go on to sleep, baby. Just close your eyes.”
    “She see anything?” Tracy murmured.
    “Yeah.” Frank stroked her hair as her eyelids drooped. “Yeah, I think she saw too damn much. We can thank Christ the bastard was too blitzed to find her. Call the sister. Let’s get the kid over there before the press gets wind of this.”
    He came back. The monster came back. She could see him creeping through the house with her father’s face and her mother’s scissors. Blood slid down the snapping blades like thin, glossy ribbons. In her father’s voice he whispered her name, over and over again.
    Livvy, Livvy love. Come out. Come out and I’ll tell you a story. And the long sharp blades in his hands hissed open and closed as he shambled toward the closet.
    “No, Daddy! No, no, no!”
    “Livvy. Oh honey, it’s all right. I’m here. Aunt Jamie’s right here.”
    “Don’t let him come. Don’t let him find me.” Wailing, Livvy burrowed into Jamie’s arms.
    “I won’t. I won’t. I promise.” Devastated, Jamie pressed her face into the fragile curve of her niece’s neck. She rocked both of them in the delicate half-light of the bedside lamp until Olivia’s shivers stopped. “I’ll keep you safe.”
    She rested her cheek on the top of Olivia’s head and let the tears come. She didn’t allow herself to sob, though hot, bitter sobs welled and pressed into her throat. The tears were silent, sliding down her cheeks to dampen the child’s hair. Julie. Oh God, oh God, Julie.
    She wanted to scream out her sister’s name. To rave it. But there was the child, now going limp with sleep in her arms, to consider.
    Julie would have wanted her daughter protected. God knew, she had tried to protect her baby.
    And now Julie was dead.
    Jamie continued to rock, to soothe herself now as Olivia slept in her arms. That beautiful, bright woman with the wickedly husky laugh, the giving heart and boundless talent, dead at the age of thirty-two. Killed, the two grim-faced detectives had told her, by the man who had professed to love her to the point of madness. Well, Sam Tanner was mad, Jamie thought as her hands curled into brutal fists. Mad with jealousy, with drugs, with desperation. Now he’d destroyed the object of his obsession.
    But he would never, never touch the child.
    Gently, Jamie laid Olivia back in bed, smoothed the blankets over her, let her fingertips rest for a moment on the blond hair. She remembered the night Olivia had been born, the way Julie had laughed between contractions.
    Only Julie MacBride, Jamie thought, could make a joke out of labor. The way Sam had looked, impossibly handsome and nervous, his blue eyes brilliant with excitement and fear, his black hair tousled so that she’d smoothed it with her own fingers to soothe him.
    Then he’d brought that beautiful little girl up to the viewing glass, and there’d been tears of love and wonder in his eyes.
    Yes, she remembered that, and remembered thinking as she smiled at him through that glass that they were perfect. The three of them, perfect together. Perfect for one another.
    It had seemed so.
    She walked to the window, stared out at nothing. Julie’s star had been on the rise, and Sam’s already riding high. They’d met