Page 41 of Silent Bones (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #7)

T he St. Regis Mountain Fire Tower loomed above them like a steel skeleton against the darkening sky, its weathered framework creaking softly in the mountain wind.

Noah crouched behind a cluster of boulders at the base of the clearing, studying the observation cabin thirty-five feet above where two silhouettes moved behind open windows.

McKenzie was positioned to his left, rifle trained upward but with no clear shot. Callie flanked right, her service weapon drawn but equally useless at this range and angle. The helicopter circled at a distance, its rotors a distant whisper.

Above them, the observation cabin door opened with a rusty screech. Dale Thurston appeared on the narrow walkway, dragging Avery with him. Even from ground level, Noah could see the terror on her face, the way she stumbled as Dale positioned her near the platform's edge.

"Stay back!" Dale's voice carried clearly in the thin mountain air. "Anyone comes up here and she dies! I'll throw her over the side right now!"

Callie started to move forward, but Noah grabbed her arm. Something in Dale's voice, the panic beneath the control, told him this wasn't going according to the man's plan. Maybe Dale had expected to die alone with his victim, not to be surrounded by law enforcement.

Noah stepped out from behind the boulder, his hands visible and empty.

"Dale! Wait!"

The effect was immediate. Dale froze, his grip on Avery's arm tightening as he stared down at Noah with obvious surprise. He hadn't expected to be addressed by name, hadn't expected someone to try to communicate rather than just demand surrender.

“I know you don’t want to do this.”

"You don't know one damn thing about me," Dale called down, but there was uncertainty in his voice now.

"I know exactly who you are," Noah replied, his voice carrying the steady calm of a trained negotiator. "You're Dale Thurston. Twenty-three years with the DEC. Lost everything when you tried to tell the truth about what really happened at Wallface."

Dale's posture shifted slightly. The wild desperation was still there, but Noah had his attention now.

"Let me come up and talk," Noah continued. "Just me. No weapons. We can discuss this properly."

"I don't want to talk!" Dale shouted, but even as he said it, he was studying Noah with the intensity of a man who'd been waiting a year for someone to understand his story. "This isn't about talking anymore."

"Then what is it about?" Noah asked. "Because I know what they did to you. I know how the system failed you. And I know why you killed those teens."

A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of the wind through the tower's steel framework and the distant helicopter rotors.

Dale was weighing his options, torn between his desire for quick resolution and his desperate need to make someone understand the injustice he'd suffered.

"Keep your team back," Dale finally called down. "You come up alone. Slowly. Any tricks and she goes over the side."

McKenzie grabbed Noah's arm as he moved toward the tower. "This is insane. He's got the high ground, a hostage, and nothing to lose."

"He's got everything to lose," Noah replied quietly. "That's why he might listen."

The steel ladder was built into the tower's framework, each rung a rectangular bar welded between the vertical supports.

As Noah began to climb, he could feel Dale watching his every move from above.

The wind grew stronger with each foot of elevation, making the entire structure sway slightly, a reminder of how far he had to fall if this went wrong.

"Tell me about this place, Dale," Noah called up as he climbed, his voice steady despite the growing height. "Tell me about why this place."

"Shut up and climb," Dale replied, but there was less venom in it than before.

Noah continued upward, the ground falling away below him with each rung. At twenty feet, he paused and looked up at Dale, who was leaning over the platform railing with Avery pressed against his side.

"Let me guess, you were young,” Noah said. “Maybe the same age as Avery is now. You came here with dreams about protecting these forests, didn't you?"

"I said shut up!"

But Noah pressed on, both with his climb and his words. "This tower was special to you. It's where you learned what it meant to be a guardian of the wilderness. Where you decided to dedicate your life to protecting places like this."

He was at twenty-five feet now, close enough to see the conflict playing across Dale's weathered features. The man who'd orchestrated so many murders was still there, but so was the ghost of the idealistic kid who'd first climbed this same ladder decades ago.

"They took that away from you," Noah continued, pulling himself up another rung. "When you tried to do the right thing about Wallface, they destroyed everything you'd worked for."

"You don't understand," Dale said, but his voice had lost its edge. "Nobody understands."

"I understand more than you think," Noah replied. "I've been where you are, Dale. Fighting corruption, watching the system protect the wrong people while honest cops get thrown away."

He was thirty feet up now, just below the platform level. Close enough to see the tears in Dale's eyes, the way his hands shook as he held Avery against the railing.

"My brother Luke uncovered corruption in this same town," Noah said. "High Peaks is rotten to the core, and I know what it's like when nobody wants to hear the truth."

Dale stared down at him, recognition flickering in his expression. "Luke Sutherland was your brother?"

"Yeah. And just like you, he paid the price for trying to do the right thing."

"Then you know," Dale said, his voice breaking slightly. "You know what it's like when they destroy everything you believed in."

Noah reached the top of the ladder and slowly pulled himself onto the platform.

The observation cabin was small and cramped, barely ten feet square, with open windows on all sides that had once allowed fire observers to scan the entire wilderness for signs of smoke.

Now they framed a confrontation thirty-five feet above the forest floor.

Dale had positioned himself and Avery near the platform's edge, where a single push would send them both plummeting to the rocks below.

"I know," Noah said softly. "But I also know we can't change the past."

The observation platform was smaller than Noah had expected, barely wide enough for three people with the cramped cabin taking up most of the space. The wind was stronger up here, making the entire structure sway gently and creating an eerie whistling sound through the steel framework below.

Dale held Avery against the platform railing, one arm wrapped around her throat, the other gripping the steel bar that was all that stood between them and a big drop.

Her hands were bound behind her back with zip ties, and a strip of duct tape covered her mouth.

Terror filled her eyes, but she was alert and alive.

Noah kept his hands visible and non-threatening, his body language open despite every instinct screaming at him to assess tactical options.

The platform was maybe eight feet by eight feet, with a waist-high cabin wall behind Dale and the deadly drop in front of him.

No room to maneuver, no angle for a safe takedown.

"Is this where it started for you?" Noah asked, genuinely curious. "Was I right about the tower?"

Dale's grip on Avery shifted slightly, and for a moment his eyes lost focus as he looked out over the wilderness spread below them.

"Summer of 1989. A year before they closed this place.

I was eighteen, just graduated high school.

My dad got me the job through a friend at the DEC.

Thought it would teach me responsibility. "

"What was it like?"

"Magical," Dale said, the word coming out like a confession. "Sitting up here for ten hours a day, watching over hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness. Feeling like I was the guardian of something important. Something worth protecting."

Noah nodded, taking a small step closer. "That's a big responsibility for an eighteen-year-old."

"I loved it. Every sunrise, every storm, every season change. I knew I'd found my calling." Dale's voice hardened again. "Then they shut it down. Said aerial surveillance made towers obsolete. Progress, they called it."

"But you kept the dream alive and became a forest ranger."

"For twenty-three years," Dale said, nodding. "Twenty-three years of protecting these forests, keeping people safe, enforcing rules that existed for good reasons." His voice cracked. "Until menaces like her came along."

He jerked Avery closer to the edge, making her whimper behind the tape. Noah fought every instinct to lunge forward.

"Dale, listen to me," Noah said, putting a hand out. "I know what happened at Wallface. I know those kids caused the death of that family. I know you tried to report it and got destroyed for telling the truth."

"They killed four people," Dale said, his voice rising.

“Is that why you killed four and took Stephen alive?”

“I needed him for the confession.”

“But why kill those teens?”

"Four innocent people died because these spoiled brats thought warning signs were a joke. That could have been my family. And when I tried to get justice, they buried me instead."

"You're right," Noah said, and meant it. "The system failed completely. Those kids should have faced consequences. You should have been listened to, not silenced."

Dale stared at him, searching for deception. "Then why are you trying to stop me?"

"Because this isn't the way. This isn’t justice," Noah replied. "This is revenge. And there's a difference."

"Is there?" Dale's laugh was harsh. "Four murders went unpunished. Now five murderers are dead. Sounds like justice to me."