Page 117 of Silent Bones
"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, tornbetween 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.
