Wait Until Dark (34 page)

4

HE STOOD IN THE SHADOWS,
watching. Waiting.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then glanced at his watch. She should be here. It was time.

It was past time.

She'd told him that her evening flight from Florida was scheduled to land at nine-fifteen. The flight had been on time, he'd checked that, of course. It was now moving toward eleven.

What was taking her so long?

He wanted desperately to clear his throat, but dared not make a sound, lest a chain reaction of barking dogs spread along the row of town houses ending who knew where. Everyone, it seemed, owned a dog these days. He just couldn't risk setting them off. He had a job to do.

And it was time.

Just when he began to feel somewhat desperate - perhaps her shoot had been held over until the next day and she'd changed her flight plans? - he heard the sound of the car door slam. Leaning forward ever so slightly to enable him to see through the dense foliage without being seen himself, he saw her open the rear passenger door and pull out her travel bag. This she slung over her shoulder, then hopped up that one flagstone step from the sidewalk to the walkway leading directly to her door. As always, he was mesmerized by her long-legged stride and easy gait and the nonchalant beauty of that face.

It was a shame, really.

But he had no choice. Anyone could see that.

She passed by his hiding place, and the scent of her drifted to him on a soft evening breeze. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, to savor it before reminding himself that he had a job to do. Soon enough, there'd be time - endless time - to drink her in, in every way. They just had to get through
this
to get to
that.

Someday, he hoped, she'd understand.

With new resolve, he went on full alert.

Now at her doorstep, he heard her sigh of exasperation when she realized that her outside light - the one over her small porch - had gone out. He heard her there in the darkness, shuffling her travel bag from one shoulder to the other. Heard her keys jangling in her hand...

NOW.

He emerged with barely a sound through the long, thin blades of tall ornamental grasses, but at his passage they had shifted slightly, disturbing the stillness just enough to alert her.

"What..." She half-turned, but he was there, in one smooth motion. Fingers closed around her throat until the darkness closed in from every side and she slumped to the ground. A flash of a knife, quick and sure.

And in that moment, Valerie McAllister's life changed forever.

By the next morning, the gruesome story of the vicious attack on the beautiful young model whose flawless face had been slashed by an unknown assailant seemed to be everywhere, with various degrees of embellishment. How she'd been left to bleed to death on her own front doorstep. How only the barking of her neighbor's dog and that same neighbor's quick thinking had saved her life.

Details at noon. Then again at six. And again at eleven.

The first thing an awakening Val became conscious of were the tubes in her arm and in her nose and in other places that were flat-out uncomfortable to think about.

The second was the stinging tightness, the burning on the left side of her face.

The third was the aching pressure that seemed to circle her throat like a too-tight neck chain.

She raised a hand to her face, to touch the spot where the stinging began, and winced at the pain.

Gingerly her fingers traced the throbbing line that began an inch from the corner of her eye and ended just below her left ear.

Stitches.

Her mind blurred.

Stitches running up the side of her face.

Would there be a scar? Gently her fingers sought to assess the damage.

"Val?"

At the sound of her brother's voice, Val jumped, unaware that the exploration of her wound had been witnessed.

"Cale?" She forced her eyes to focus. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you to wake up." He rose from his chair and took two steps to the bed, reaching gently for the hand that had been trying to count stitches and held it between his own.

"Isn't it still baseball season?" Val asked, trying to pinpoint place and time. "Is it still July?"

"Yes, it's still July," Cale assured her.

"Aren't you supposed to be ... doing something baseball?" Her groggy mind tried to remember just what that might be.

"Not this week," he told her. "I took a few days off."

"How can you do that if it's still baseball season?"

"Oh, they'll get along just fine without me. Probably haven't even noticed that I'm gone," he assured her.

"That's the beauty of being one of several assistant coaches, see. No one's really sure who you're assisting at any particular time."

Val tried to swallow, and wondered why it hurt so much to do so.

"What happened to me?" Val whispered.

"We were hoping you could tell us." A deep voice came from the doorway.

Val shifted somewhat to look around Cale to see Detective Rafferty nearing the foot of the bed.

"Hi," she greeted him quietly.

"How are you doing?" the detective asked.

"Apparently not as well as I'd like to be." She turned to her brother and said, "Cale, this is Detective Rafferty. He investigated the..."

Val paused, recalling that she had neglected to tell her brother about the break-in at her town house the week before. She hadn't wanted to worry him or Quinn.

"Yes, we've met And don't bother to try to cover it up. We heard all about the break-in. Why didn't you tell us?" Cale's eyes narrowed.

"I didn't want you to worry," she told him. "I thought it was just a random thing, and when the person realized that I had nothing worth stealing, he left. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it."

"Well, it's a big deal now. In all the papers." Cale's wife, Quinn, came into the room, carrying a cardboard tray of cold drinks in tall paper containers and several sandwiches wrapped in cellophane.

"Quinn, you're here." Val tried to smile, but the muscles on the left side of her face were uncooperative and sore.

"Of course, I'm here." Quinn McAllister leaned over her sister-in-law and smoothed the tangle of hair back from the right side of Val's face.

"Where are the boys?" Val frowned, referring to Cale's twin sons, now six, a product of his brief marriage to a former Miss Tennessee.

"We shipped them off to my parents two weeks ago," Quinn told her. "They'd wanted to spend some time being real cowboys with their uncles and their grandparents this summer, so we packed 'em up and shipped 'em out for a few weeks of ridin' the range and sleepin' under the stars."

Val tried to laugh, but the pain in her throat brought tears to her eyes.

"Why does my throat hurt so much?" she asked.

"Ms. McAllister, don't you remember what happened?" Rafferty asked.

She shook her head, as if trying to clear it.

"Why don't you tell us what you
do
remember?"Quinn suggested.

"I remember driving home from the airport. Getting out of the car. Walking up to my front door ..." She paused, frowning. "The light was out. The one over the porch. I remember wondering why it was so dark. I had a flashlight in my purse, but I couldn't find it, so I thought I'd just fiddle around with the key until I found the lock."

Val closed her eyes, as if forcing the scene to replay in her mind.

"I heard something ... like a
shimmer
…" She said, her voice lowering an octave with each utterance.

"Soft..."

"We think he must have been hiding behind those tall grasses near the side of the building," Rafferty told them. "That might have been what you heard."

"Yes," she nodded. "Almost like a really soft breeze, but... yes, it could have been the grasses."

"What else do you remember?" Cale asked. "Did you hear anything else? Did you see anything at all?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then... ?" The detective sought to urge her on.

"I'm not sure. Someone was behind me. There was a hand over my mouth. Then here ..." Her hands reached toward her throat. "Hands around my throat ... couldn't breath ..."

"That's all?" Rafferty asked.

"That's the last thing I remember. Black spots before my eyes, then bright lights, then nothing at all..."

"You never saw anyone?" Rafferty continued his questioning.

"No one," she told him.

"Any impressions you might have about your assailant?"

Val frowned again. "Seems as if there should be, somehow, but, no ..."

"No idea of how tall, how heavy ... ?"

She closed her eyes again, forcing herself back to that moment when she first realized that she was not alone on the walkway.

"He would have been tall," she rasped, her throat raw now from the effort to speak. "When he grabbed me from behind and pulled me back, I hit his jaw or the side of his face with the top of my head."

"What else?" Rafferty leaned closer, as if to urge her on.

"Strong. His arms were strong. He had no trouble at all even though I know I struggled. His hands went right for my throat and that's just about the last thing I can remember." She touched her fingers to her throat gingerly. "That's why it hurts so to talk. He was strangling me...."

"And fortunately, he wasn't able to do more than give you a sore throat."

"Did he cut my face?" Valerie attempted to frown, but the effort pulled at the stitches. "Why don't I remember anything about my face being cut?"

"You don't remember anything about that at all?" Cale asked.

"No. Nothing. Not pain, not... anything. Why?"

"Would he have cut your face after he strangled you?" Quinn said, a puzzled look crossing her face. "Why would he have done that?"

"We don't know that he did," Rafferty pointed out.

"I think most people would remember something like having their face slashed, Detective." Quinn turned to him. "And if Val doesn't remember, I'd have to think that maybe it's because she wasn't conscious at the time."

"Maybe, subconsciously, she's choosing not to remember." Rafferty offered.

"Maybe he just didn't want her to feel it," Cale said. "But then that sort of muddles the theory that he was strangling her and only stopped because he was interrupted, doesn't it?"

"Ms. McAllister, are you sure you don't recall anything else?" Rafferty persisted gently. "Nothing at all about seeing a knife at any time..."

Val shook her head. "The last thing I remember is hearing a dog bark someplace far away as I started to blackout."

"It wasn't so far away," Rafferty told her. "It was right next door."

"Prudence? Bruce's dog?" Val asked.

"Yes. She may have saved your life. She started barking, then the dog on the other side barked...."

"Tell Bruce I owe Pru a very large box of her favorite treats" Val whispered.

"We'll do that." Cale reached over and patted Val's hands. "Now, if Detective Rafferty is finished, why don't you try to get a little more sleep, and rest your throat?"

Val's eyelids fluttered at the mere suggestion, and she nodded dreamily. "Just for a minute..."

She appeared to drop off, then half-opened her eyes and asked, "The cut on my face... how bad is it?"

The silence, as both her brother and his wife tried to decide what to tell her, told her all.

"Oh." Val's spirits visibly lowered.

"It's going to take some time to heal, Val," Quinn responded a bit too quickly. "It will be a while before they'll know...."

"Before they'll know just how bad the scar will be?" Val completed the thought when Quinn hesitated to do so.

"Let's give it some time to heal, honey," Cale answered softly.

"Will I be able to work again?"

"I think it's a little early to worry about that."

"That bad, is it?"

"Val, they really don't know just yet how it will heal, but it doesn't mean your career is over. Not by a long shot," Quinn assured her.

"It's okay," she told her brother as she stopped fighting the fatigue and allowed herself to drift off. "It's okay...."

"How do you think she'll react when she's really conscious of what's going on?" Quinn stood behind her husband and worked at the knot of tension that always plagued his right shoulder whenever he became anxious.

"It's hard to say," Cale replied thoughtfully. "Val has always said that modeling was no more than a means to an end for her. I don't know that she ever enjoyed the work all that much. It was a job, albeit one that paid extremely well and allowed her a lot of freedom. Allowed her to travel to wonderful places. Gave her a chance to develop a skill."