Wait Until Dark, page 38
"No, no," she assured him. "I'll be fine."
If she appeared to be a willing participant, would he be more likely to let his guard down?
"Well, you just call me if you do." He gestured for her to go down the hallway to her bedroom as if he were at home there.
The dress bag containing the gown draped over her arm like a lead weight. She was halfway down the hall when he called her name. She turned back at the sound of his voice.
"You forgot your shoes." He walked toward her and placed the box into her hands.
"Thank you," she whispered.
His fingers touched her face and she fought with every ounce of her will to not flinch.
She backed down the hall to her bedroom door. When she finally was able to close the door behind her, she slumped back against it, trying frantically to figure out a way to escape.
"Valerie," he said from the other side of the door, and she nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice.
She dropped the dress on the floor and ran to the closest window and sought to open it.
"Don't do that." The cool voice spoke from the door she'd not heard open. "Don't... do ... that."
"I... I need some air." She swallowed hard. "Daniel."
He stared at her, his eyes cold and flat. "You were going to run away."
"No, no ... I..." She backed toward the wall as he stepped into the room.
"Your wedding dress is on the floor, Valerie. That's no way to treat something you cherish."
"It must have slid off the bed when I turned to open the window," she said, forcing down the tremble in her own voice. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll get dressed."
"Don't try to run away from me, Valerie," he said stonily.
"I wouldn't do that, Daniel." She met his eyes. "After all, this is our wedding day. Why would I run?"
His smile was very slow in coming. "That's my girl." He walked to her and leaned down, kissing the side of her face. She fought the grimace that threatened.
"It won't take me long," she said through clenched teeth. "I promise."
"All right, then. I'll just be right outside the door, Val." He ran his hands up and down her bare arms, raising gooseflesh every place he touched. "I'll be putting on my tux, right out there on the other side of the door." She nodded, and closed the door gratefully as soon as he passed through it, and cursed the fact that she'd never had locks installed on the inside doors.
Val pulled her T-shirt over her head and unsnapped the top of her denim shorts, then turned to the bed where the white dress lay. Unzipping the bag, she removed the gown. It was beautiful, with rows of seed pearls on lace and a gently scalloped neck. It was a dress that, under other circumstances, would have been a delight. But for Val, it had all the appeal of a shroud. She turned and twisted to zip up the back, all the while looking for something, anything, that she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing. She had nothing but her wits, and they seemed to be failing her.
Think, her voice screamed inside her head. There has to be something. Something...
"How're we doing in there?" Rafferty asked from the other side of the door.
"Fine. Almost ready." She dumped the contents of her handbag onto the bed. Was there nothing there that she could use?
Not even a nail file.
Damn.
She glanced at her watch. It was almost seven-thirty. A half-hour more and Sky would be at the cabin. But Daniel had a gun, and Val had absolutely no doubt that he wouldn't hesitate for a second to use it.
"Sweetheart, are you ready?"
"Almost," she said, the panic beginning to rise within her. She had to think of something. There had to be something...
Without warning, he opened the door.
"You're beautiful." He sighed. "Just as I knew you'd be."
"Thank you," she whispered, her heart sinking.
"Need help with pinning on your veil?"
"I'm afraid I don't have any hair pins."
"The sales lady gave you some. Didn't you look in the box?" His hands slipped into his pants pockets, and she could see that under his tuxedo jacket, the handgun was in place. The groom was apparently taking no chances.
"I... I left the veil in the front room," Val told him.
"Well, slip into those shoes and come on out, and I'll help you with it." He smiled and held out his hand. With a sinking heart she followed him down the hallway.
"Have you decided where you'd like us to exchange our vows?" he asked when he leaned over her to secure the veil in place.
"I... I haven't had much time to think about it."
"There must be a place that's special to you." He dipped his hands into his pockets, and once again she saw the flash of metal.
"Daniel, why do you have a gun with you?"
When he didn't respond, she said, "It isn't the one you had with you when you came to investigate the break-in. That one looked bigger."
"I bought this one special for the occasion," he replied.
Along with the gown and the bouquet? Valerie shivered.
"It's for us, darling." He held up the small handgun.
"For us?" And in that moment, Val realized that neither of them would be coming back down the hill after the ceremony had concluded.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why, Daniel?"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but it's really the only way. You understand."
"No. No, I don't understand."
"Valerie, it's the only way that I can be sure that we'll always be together. We're supposed to always be together."
"But we can be. We can be together... "
"No." He cut her off. "No. They'll always be looking at you. They'll always be wanting you."
"But, Daniel, I won't want anyone but you. I won't look at anyone else. Not ever. We can live happily together...."
"I can't take that chance, Valerie." He shook his head slowly.
She was staring at the door, wishing with all her might that it would swing open and that Sky would come in and rescue her. But the door remained closed, her jacket hanging on the back and her old boots standing on the floor right next to her camera bag.
"Daniel" she said as an idea slowly - oh so slowly - formed in her head.
It was such a long shot.
"Yes, my love?"
"What about pictures?"
"Pictures?" He frowned.
"Pictures of our wedding." She smiled up at him.
"I ... I hadn't thought of pictures." The omission clearly bothered him. He'd been so certain that he'd covered every base.
"Look, I have my equipment here. I can set up the camera on a tripod, and use a remote control to take some pictures. And when Cale sees them, he'll realize that we'll always be happy together."
"Then you do understand."
Val nodded. "It's the only way to keep our love pure. Eternally pure."
He beamed. He knew she'd come around.
"Then certainly, let's take your equipment. Do you have film?"
"I have rolls of film. Enough to fill a whole album." She pointed to the door where the bag stood.
"Great. Let's get going." He paused when he reached the door. "Have you decided on a place yet?"
"I... yes. Yes, I did," she told him.
"Is it someplace special?"
"Oh, it's very special," she assured him.
But how to let Sky know where they'd gone?
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Daniel." Val sighed as if exasperated. "I don't have a bit of makeup on."
"You don't need makeup, sweetheart. You're just naturally beautiful without it."
"Thank you. But I really would like to dash into the bathroom, just for a little lipstick. I don't want to appear pale in the pictures. I'll just be a minute."
"I'll be counting the seconds."
I'll just bet you will, Val thought as she rushed down the hallway and into the bathroom. She lifted the small basket of makeup from the window ledge and rifled through the tubes and containers for a red lipstick. Finding it, she traced the outline of her mouth, then with shaking fingers, wrote upon the mirror, and prayed that Sky would find it.
"Val?" She heard Daniel in the hallway.
"All done." She smiled as she stepped out to meet him and closed the bathroom door behind her.
Taking his arm, she led him back toward the front room. There was only one more thing she needed to do.
Stopping at the front door, she picked up her leather boots and began to slip off the dressy heels.
"What are you doing?" He frowned. "You can't mean to wear cowboy boots with your wedding dress."
"Oh, it's just until we get to where we're going." She looked up at him with what she hoped would pass for an adoring gaze. "I appreciate that you went to all the trouble to bring my sandals, but I won't be able to walk up the hill in anything so delicate. I'll bring these with me." She held up the sandals.
"Oh, all right, then." He nodded. "Ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be." She blew out a breath that she'd held way too long and handed him the bag holding her equipment.
She grabbed her bouquet, and tucked her tripod under her arm. She wished it was heavy enough to bash him with.
Val followed Rafferty out the door, knowing that she had one chance to get it right. She could only hope that Mother Nature was feeling real cooperative that morning.
She'd never understood the concept of dying for love. Living for love, now that she understood.
She thought of Sky and his whiskey dark eyes and his easy smile and the possibility that she might never see him again.
Live for love, she told herself sternly.
Live.
11
THE MORNING WAS WELL ON ITS WAY TO BEING A HOT ONE, the sun having risen early, when Sky knocked on Valerie's cabin door. When she did not appear to let him in, he turned the knob and pushed the door aside.
"Valerie?" he called.
He stepped inside and called again. "Valerie?"
Maybe she was in the shower.
He stood in the hallway, but heard no sound of running water.
Sky poked his head into the kitchen. An empty cup stood on the counter, a trace of black coffee pooled in the bottom. Sky frowned. Val drank her coffee light, never black. Had she had a visitor already this morning?
Where could she have gone off to? And with whom?
He walked back into the front room, and noticed the suitcase standing at one end of the sofa. He opened it up, and found several items of men's clothing. Val hadn't mentioned that she'd been expecting a visitor the night before.
"Val?" Sky called again toward the back of the small house.
A chill settled in the back of his brain, and he went back down the hallway and flung open her bedroom door. A red T-shirt and a pair of shorts lay discarded on the floor. Not like her to be messy with her things, he noted.
He pushed open the bathroom door, and stared at the writing on the mirror.
Jed's rock.
Jed's rock? Sky frowned. What in the world would she being doing at Jed's rock? Hadn't Trevor told her just a few nights ago how bad rattlers were this year?
He started toward the door when his glance fell upon a white object lying on the floor. Picking it up, he turned it around and around in his hands. A wedding cake. It was hinged and opened, like a box.
Hadn't Val said that her intruder had taken nothing but a box shaped like a wedding cake?
And there, on the floor. Was that a scattering of rice?
"Shit," he said aloud. "Shit."
He bolted through the door and left it standing open, stopping at his pickup only for the hunting rifle that he left under the front seat, and headed off in the direction of Jed's rock. He hoped he wasn't too late.
"Here?" Rafferty climbed to the center of the large boulder. "Is this good?"
Valerie took a long look at the outcropping of rock that hung over the valley, all the while searching the nooks and crannies for movement. The sun was warming, but apparently not quite warm enough to coax out the reinforcements.
"Wait a minute," Val called to the eager groom. "It will take a few minutes to set up and then to get the aperture adjusted correctly for the light." She flashed a broad smile to reassure him.
"How long will this take?" he asked.
"Not long." Val set up the tripod about eight feet back from the rock.
"Why is this such a special place?" he asked.
"There's a story about how my ancestor, Jedidiah McAllister, stood on that rock and watched the Crows set up camp down in the valley below." She reached in the bag for the remote for her camera; at the same time she studied a deep pocket in the rock. "He fell in love with a Crow woman and they married and had several children, I forgot how many."
"Did they live together in the cabin?"
"No. They stayed mostly with her people. The story is that Jed went hunting buffalo with her brothers, and when he returned, he found that the camp had been attacked by soldiers and his entire family had been massacred."
"That's terrible." Rafferty frowned. "Valerie, what are you doing?"
Trying to figure out a way to wake up those rattlers without making it obvious.
"Just trying to get everything set up right." She dove back into her bag, hoping against hope that she had packed the small light she sometimes used. Her fingers closed over it happily.
Now, if the battery pack is in there, I have a chance to pull this off....
Yes!
"What's that?" Rafferty asked, clearly anxious to get on with it.
"It's a portable light," she told him with a smile. "It's battery operated so that I can use it anywhere and take the shots I want even if the light isn't just right."
Rafferty looked around at the bright sunny day.
"There's plenty of sunlight," he pointed out.
"But it's casting shadows that I don't want in our photos." She hooked the light to the battery pack and turned it on, then let it drop to the ground, its beam focused on a crevice about a yard from Rafferty's right foot. "Now I'll drop the film in and we'll be ready to take some pictures."
She took her time loading the camera, keeping one eye on the break in the rock. The shadows were beginning to move, slowly at first. Then there, right there... a scaly face appeared, drawn to the warmth of the light.
A little more ... just a little more... come on, handsome ... just another foot or so...
"I'm going to take one or two shots of you by yourself," she told him, "so stand up straight and smile...."
Val raised the camera to her face and focused on the rattler. A second head now poked out to investigate the source of heat.
She snapped off the first shot.
"I think I want you to take a step to the side."
"This way?" he asked, stepping to the left.
"No, I think just a little to the right might do it." The camera still to her face, she watched the larger of the two snakes begin to coil. The second one followed its lead.
"Val, do you hear..." Rafferty called to her.
He didn't get to finish the sentence. The first snake struck right at the ankle. The second struck at the back of his calf.
Stunned, he looked down. Then, barely flinching, he reached for his handgun and shot both snakes before turning back to the spot where Valerie had stood only seconds before.
She was gone.
"You bitch," he said softly, calmly.
He stepped off the rock and sought the path they'd taken from the cabin. His right leg was beginning to burn. In old cowboy movies, snakebites were treated by sucking the poison out. Well, he'd have to be a damned contortionist to do that, given the location of the bites. He'd tend to them when he got down the hill. For all the mystique about them, he wasn't really sure that rattlesnakes were all that poisonous. He'd never heard of anyone actually dying after being bitten.
"Valerie, stop playing games," he called out "We both know that this is inevitable, so come back here and let's do this."
The only sound was that of a bird at the top of a far-off tree.
"Come on, now, Valerie." Rafferty stood still, the gun dangling from his right hand, as he sought to get his bearings where the path branched off into a Y.
"I think the lady has had second thoughts," said a voice from close behind.
"Don't try it," the voice warned as Rafferty began to spin around.
But his training and years on the street had served the detective well. Sky never saw the elbow until it smashed into the middle of his face.
"Stupid son of a bitch," Rafferty hissed. "Who do you think you're dealing with?"
He lowered the gun to Sky's head.
"No, don't!" Valerie screamed. "Don't."
"I can't think of one good reason not to blow his brains out." Rafferty looked up to see his bride - the hem of her dress a bit tattered - standing before him.
"I'll marry you" she told him, "I promise. I'll do whatever you want."
"I know you will, Valerie."
Rafferty attempted to line up Schuyler in his sight, but his head was beginning to buzz. His leg had grown numb as the venom began to move through his bloodstream, and his arm began to feel disconnected from his body. He managed to squeeze off a shot, but it missed his target by nearly a foot.
Valerie lunged for Sky's rifle, but Rafferty blocked her way.
"You wouldn't even want to think about that," he said unsteadily.
He reached for her, his left hand closing over her throat. He attempted to hold on to her, but his grip lacked strength.
The last things that Detective Daniel Rafferty would know, the last memory that he would take with him into the next world, was the sound of the rifle's blast, and the force that threw him back onto the ground like a broken doll.
12
THIN FINGERS OF SUNLIGHT SLIPPED through the narrow blinds, making a hazy trail across the carpet. Valerie turned over and pulled the thin blanket up to her chin, not quite asleep, not quite awake.
