"Dad. Stay with me."
Hugh's eyes were open. They were losing focus, the edges going soft while the center held for a few more seconds. He found Noah's face and held it. "I never blamed you," Hugh said. His voice was thin. "For your mother. For Carol."
"Dad."
"I'm sorry, son.”
His grip tightened. A final effort.
"I'm proud of you,” he said. "I always was."
His hand loosened. It didn't tighten again.
The room was silent except for his own breathing and the sirens that were no longer distant. The police were here. Doorsopening. Boots on gravel. Voices calling out positions and commands.
The house filled with movement.
Radios crackled. Red and blue light pulsing through the study windows and across the stone walls. Two officers came through the front. Then more. Then paramedics with equipment bags and stretchers.
A medic crouched beside Hugh and checked for a pulse. He looked up and gave a slow shake of the head.
Another moved to Liam.
Same result.
Luther was alive. Bleeding from the shoulder. They restrained his wrists with cuffs. They loaded him onto a stretcher. He was trying to speak, to direct, to control something that had already slipped beyond his reach. Insisting on a lawyer. Insisting on a phone call. Insisting on the deference he believed the world still owed him.
The stretcher passed through the front door. Luther Ashford left his estate under escort.
Callie was the first face Noah recognized.
She came through the study door and took in the room in a single sweep. Hugh on the floor. Noah beside him, covered in blood. Liam across the room. The rifle on the hardwood. The smell of gun smoke still hanging in the air.
She didn't ask questions. She crossed the room and put her hand on Noah's shoulder and stood there while the paramedics worked around them.
Noah didn't move. He stayed on the floor beside his father's body. He could feel Callie's hand and the weight of it was the only thing anchoring him to the room.
Ray arrived last.
Noah heard him before he saw him. Heavy footsteps in the hallway. Then silence at the study door.
Ray stood in the doorframe and looked at the room. The blood on the floor. The two bodies. His brother kneeling beside one of them.
He looked at Hugh.
He didn't move. He didn't speak. He stood in the doorway and his face went through something that Noah would carry for the rest of his life. Something breaking that couldn't be put back.
Noah rose. He walked to the doorway.
They stood together, two brothers looking at their father. He had failed them both in different ways. And loved them both in the only way he knew how.
Ray put his hand on Noah's arm.
He didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say.
34
