Chapter 27
Noah pulled out of the airport lot with the gun pressed against the base of his ribs.
The metal was warm from being held too long and the hand holding it was not steady.
He could feel the tremor through the barrel, the small involuntary pulses from someone running on adrenaline and fear rather than any kind of plan.
"What are you doing, Samuel?"
"Drive."
"Where are we going?"
"Just keep driving." Samuel's voice was tight, compressed, pushed through a jaw that was clenched hard enough to crack a tooth. "Take a left up here and follow the road northeast."
Noah took the left. Route 86 opened up ahead of them, the road cutting north through the valley with the mountains rising on both sides.
The afternoon sun was low enough to throw long shadows across the pavement and the light came through the trees in broken shafts.
Other vehicles passed going south, their shapes flashing across the windshield and briefly illuminating Samuel's face in the rearview mirror.
The gun was held in his right hand while his left gripped the headrest of Noah's seat.
They drove in silence. Just the sound of the engine and the air conditioning pushing stale air through the vents.
Noah kept his hands at ten and two and his speed five miles below the limit.
Nothing that would draw attention. Nothing that would give a passing patrol car a reason to pull them over. Not with a gun behind his head.
"So was the plan to pretend you took the flight to the Big Apple and then slip away?" Noah asked.
"I was going to get on that plane." Samuel shifted in the back seat. "But a security guard got suspicious. I figured you'd phoned it in to be on the lookout. I was going to bolt but didn't figure I'd get far by taxi."
"Look, this isn't beyond repair, Samuel. But if it gets out that you have a gun on a cop, things could spiral."
"They already have."
"It doesn't need to get worse."
"No?" A sound that might have been a laugh if it had any warmth in it. "Oh please. Shut up. You just want me to surrender."
"You can just drop me off. Take the car."
"And go where?" The gun pressed harder. “No, with all the ruckus this case has caused, it's gained national attention.
My face would be plastered all over the news within twenty-four hours.
" He paused. The tremor in his hand worsened and then steadied.
"This was my home. This was my life. And now it's over. "
"Doesn't have to be," Noah said. "Just give me the gun and..."
"Stop with that negotiation shit. It won't work." The barrel moved from Noah's ribs to the side of his neck. Cold against the skin just below his ear. "I've done nothing wrong."
Noah glanced at the rearview mirror. Samuel's eyes met his.
"Taking a dead person's name isn't right," Noah said.
Samuel stared at him through the mirror. A truck passed going the other direction and the shadow of it rolled across the cab.
"I didn't have much choice."
"You did it to cover up your history. So what do I call you? Samuel or David Hughes?"
"It doesn't matter." He shifted the gun to the base of Noah's skull. "Stay on this road. Don't go too fast."
They passed through Bloomingdale. The houses thinned out and the forest closed in on both sides, black spruce and balsam fir pressing up against the road like a wall.
A gas station sat on the right, its pumps empty, a clerk visible through the window.
Then it was behind them and the trees closed in again.
"To everyone I'm already guilty," Samuel said.
"If you're not, why run?"
"Why run?" He chuckled and the sound of it filled the back seat like something loose and broken rolling around.
"Oh please. Give me some credit." He was quiet for a moment.
The road rose and fell through the hills.
"I didn't rape that girl in Colorado. They got it all wrong. I was cleared. They let me go. But it ruined my reputation. I couldn’t have continued even if I wanted to. "
"And so you changed your name and moved across the country."
"Because it didn't matter that they let me go.
The accusation was enough. My name, my real name, was finished.
Every time someone searched David Hughes they got 'Model Mogul's Studio of Secrets.
' Every client gone. Every model gone. Four years of work gone because a girl with mental health issues decided I was her target.
" The words came faster now, as if he'd been holding them for years and the gun in his hand had given him permission to finally let them out.
"I came here to start over. That's all. A new name.
A new agency. A chance to do the work without the past following me. "
"And Hailey?"
The gun shifted. Not harder. Looser. Samuel's grip was changing, the adrenaline giving way to something heavier.
"Hailey came to me," he said. "Not the other way around.
She had problems at home. She was lonely.
She didn't have anyone to talk to and I had always been nice to her.
I never laid a hand on that girl. She came to the agency that night.
She'd been drinking. A lot. She was upset about something with her parents and she wanted to talk. I let her in."
"And?"
"She kept drinking. I had some beers in the office. She helped herself. I should have sent her home but I didn't. She got worse. Started crying. I tried to comfort her and she took it the wrong way. Thought I was coming on to her. She struck me on the head with a bottle and ran out."
"And you went after her."
"I went looking for her. She'd been drinking, she was upset, it was dark.
I wanted to make sure she was safe. But I never found her.
" His voice dropped. "And now none of that matters.
Because no one is going to believe me. Not after Colorado.
Not with all those murders. Not with Hailey still missing. "
Noah watched the road. They were on River Road now, heading toward the Whiteface Memorial Highway. The mountains filled the windshield ahead of them, massive and indifferent, a landscape that made everything human feel small.
"That's why you called her multiple times the night she went missing," Noah said. "And when you heard she'd shown up and was at the hospital."
Samuel nodded. Noah could see the movement in the mirror.
"I just wanted to talk to her."
"Before she talked to us?"
He nodded again. Slower this time. "I know how that looks. I know how all of it looks. But I swear to you, I didn't hurt her. I didn't hurt any of them."
They passed through Wilmington. The Hungry Trout Resort sat on the right, its parking lot half full, a couple standing on the porch watching the road.
The road curved and the sound changed beneath the tires, the pavement rougher here, patched and repatched, a road that the county maintained just enough to keep it passable.
"Pull off up here," Samuel said. "On the right.”
Noah saw the sign for Flume Falls. He gripped the wheel tighter, sweat beading along his hairline. The pull-off appeared on the right, a gravel lot edged by gnarled pines and wooden trail signs that leaned at angles in the mist coming off the river. The lot was empty. No other vehicles. No one.
He killed the engine. Below them, the West Branch of the Ausable River roared through the gorge, a sound so constant and so loud that it swallowed everything else.
The narrow steel-truss bridge spanned the gap ahead of them and the spray from the falls rose in a fine mist that drifted across the lot and clung to the windshield.
"End of the line," Samuel said. "Get out."
Noah opened the door and stepped onto the gravel.
The cold hit him immediately, the river mist carrying a chill that cut through his jacket.
Samuel climbed out behind him, the gun leveled at Noah's back now, no longer hidden behind a seat.
Out here in the open, under the trees, with the river thundering below them, the situation was stripped down to its simplest terms. Two men. One gun. The edge of a gorge.
"Walk," Samuel said. "Down the trail."
The dirt track was slick with moisture, loose rocks and exposed roots running through it like veins.
Noah walked with his hands slightly out from his sides, each step measured, feeling the ground before he committed his weight.
The sound of the river grew louder as they descended.
The gorge opened up below them, the water white and violent where it squeezed between the rock walls, and the mist rose around them until Noah could feel it on his face and taste it in every breath.
Samuel stopped him near the edge. A flat section of rock overlooking the falls. The water was maybe thirty feet below, churning through a narrow channel with enough force to tear a tree apart. The spray was constant. Noah's shirt was damp. His boots were wet on the stone.
The gun pressed into the back of his skull.
Noah stared out at the gorge, the white water, the mist rising from the rocks.
He could feel Samuel standing behind him and slightly to his right.
Close enough that the barrel was flush against his skin.
The cold of the metal and the cold of the mist were indistinguishable.
This was where it ended. A flat rock above a river with a desperate man behind him and no one who knew where he was.
Noah's mind ran through the options the way it always did, the training, the instinct, the calculations that happened whether you wanted them to or not.
Spin left, go for the arm, try to redirect the barrel.
But the ground was wet and the footing was bad and the margin for error was nothing at all.
"Why did you do it, Samuel?"
"I didn't." His voice was almost lost in the roar of the falls. "I never touched those girls. Hailey. That was different. But the others." A pause. "I didn't do it."