Wait Until Dark (41 page)

"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.

From somewhere in the distance a phone rang and sleepily she reached an arm out to answer it, hands blindly searching on the nightstand. The ringing stopped and Val wondered vaguely who had picked it up. It was then that she realized that she wasn't in her own bed in her town house, and she opened her eyes. The room was familiar, but one she hadn't slept in for years. Liza's room at the High Meadow.

She sat bolt upright when she realized where she was - and why - and fought back a wave of nausea. It had been less than a day since a man had fallen dead at her feet, and the memory sickened her. That it had been Sky who fired the fatal shot - gentle Sky, who had never raised a hand to anyone, who rarely even raised his voice in anger - was almost incomprehensible.

The entire afternoon and evening seemed to have passed in a blur. The sound of the gun like an unexpected dap of thunder, loud enough to make Val's knees quake in the aftermath of its deafening blast. The look of sheer surprise on Daniel Rafferty's face. The rapid spread of red across the front of his crisp white shirt. His stumble and fall to the ground, the dense thud as he hit it, face first. Sky taking Val back down to the High Meadow and turning her over to his mother, while he and his dad, Hap, called the sheriff. Val sitting in the living room of the ranch house wrapped in an old quilt, shivering in spite of the summer heat, trying to make sense of what had happened. Sheriff Brown bringing the body down from the hills and sending it along to the county coroner, then staying a while himself to ask about Val's relationship with the deceased.

And later, still, Catherine insisting that Val stay there at the ranch for a few days. Val had been more than happy to comply. She simply wasn't ready to spend a night alone in the cabin.

Val wondered if Daniel Rafferty had a family, and what they would think when they found out what had happened. She glanced at the clock on the dresser across the room. Eight
A.M.
Perhaps they already knew.

Would they blame Val? Or Sky? Or might they somehow have known that something was not quite right?

Val desperately wanted - needed - a hot shower, wanted to wash it all away, the sights, the sounds, the smells. After foraging in Liza's dresser for an old, forgotten sweatshirt and a pair of shorts, she headed for the small bathroom that the Hollister girls had all once shared on the second floor of the ranch house. She turned on the hot water and let it fill the room with steam before stepping in and lowering her head, allowing the little spikes to first work on the muscles at the back of her neck, then on her left shoulder, which ached where she'd hit the ground the day before.

The aches and pains were insignificant, Val reminded herself, when one considered that, had all gone according to Rafferty's plan, she'd be on a slab at the morgue by now. In her heart, she couldn't help but feel sorry that Daniel Rafferty was dead, but not so sorry that she'd have sacrificed herself or Sky or their future together for his sake.

Val shivered again, and cranked the hot water up just a little higher.

Twenty minutes later, Valerie padded down the steps in bare feet. While she could fit into Liza's clothing, her feet were and always had been two sizes smaller than Val's.

Voices were heard in the kitchen, and Val followed them to find Sky at the old worn table with his parents.

"There you are." Catherine jumped up when Val entered the room. "How did you sleep, honey?"

"Much better than I'd have expected," Val assured her.

"You okay?"Sky asked with clear concern.

"All things considered, I'm better than I have any right to be."

"I'm glad to hear that, honey," Hap pulled out a chair for her and gestured for her to sit.

"We had pancakes, Valerie." Catherine went to the old white stove and turned a burner on. "I saved some batter so that you could have some when you got up."

"Thank you," Val said, knowing it would be fruitless to protest. Catherine had already poured batter into the frying pan.

"Here's your coffee." Sky brought her a mug of fragrant dark liquid, then passed her a small white pitcher covered with little red flowers.

"Liza's pitcher," Val said without thinking.

"Oh, my, Valerie, do you remember that pitcher?" Catherine turned and smiled.

"I was with Liza in Reynold's Drug Store when she bought it for you." Val nodded. "It had a little sugar bowl that went with it."

"I can't believe the sort of things that you women remember." Hap shook his head as he pushed back from the table to answer the phone that was ringing again.

"He's just covering for the fact that he was the one who broke the sugar bowl," Catherine nodded toward her husband.

Val sipped at her coffee and sniffed at the aroma from the frying pan, caught Sky's eyes and smiled. Sitting there in a well remembered room, surrounded by people who cared about her, was balm to her ragged nerves. There was a tranquility to the morning, even in the aftermath of what had happened the day before. The contrast was almost staggering, surreal, and made her feel lightheaded.

The storm had preceded the calm, she was thinking, as Hap hung up the phone.

"That was Sheriff Brown, again" Hap told them.

"Again?" Val raised her eyebrows.

"Third time he called already this morning." Hap nodded. "The first time, he called to assure us that no one would be charged with Rafferty's death."

"Why would someone be?" Val asked. "It was self-defense."

"It's just a formality," Hap assured her. "The second time was to tell us that the department Rafferty worked for in California called back a little while ago. He'd called them last night to tell them what had gone on up here yesterday. Well, they sent someone out to this fellow Rafferty's apartment."

"And?" Sky asked when his father hesitated.

"And ... they found that his walls were covered with pictures of Val. Some that he cut from magazines, some that he'd apparently taken himself."

"What?" Val's cup nearly slid from her hands.

"There were pictures of you everywhere, they said. Walking down the street, looking in a shop window, getting into your car, walking a dog, sitting on a deck...."

"The deck behind my town house." Val's skin crawled.

"And some photos of you in a wedding."

"Cale and Quinn's wedding." She looked up at Sky and grimaced. "The pictures that were stolen from my house. He answered the 911 call. He came and made the report. All the while he had the photos. He had the little porcelain box. And a pair of my shoes."

"They also found a journal he'd been keeping. He'd been planning this for some time, Val. He apparently felt you and he were somehow destined to be together."

Sky sat down next to Valerie and rubbed the back of her neck. In his eyes, she felt she could see her true destiny. But had Rafferty felt the same way, looking at her?

Catherine sat a plate of pancakes in front of her and put out a knife and fork.

"Then, that last time that the sheriff called, he wanted to warn us that the California press caught on to this story. He said they can't answer the phone fast enough down there, that we should expect an onslaught of reporters from all over."

"When ... ?" Catherine met her husband's eyes from across the room.

"Within the next few hours."

"Val, if there's a place you can go to stay - to sort of hide out for a few days, you might think about heading there this morning," Hap said.

"The cabin was always the place I'd go to when I needed sanctuary," Val told them. "There's never been anyplace else. I could go to Liza's - I told her when she called the other night that I'd be coming for a visit real soon."

"Sooner or later, someone will think to look for my sister," Sky said as he took her hand. "When you've finished eating, we'll run up to the cabin and grab your things. I know just the place where no one will think to look...."

The pickup bounced over the ruts in the dirt road, and Val was glad that the coffee she'd brought with her was safely in one of those cups that had a nice, tight lid. Val turned off the air-conditioning and rolled down the windows to listen to the sound of the long, thin reeds of grain that lined the road on either side and shivered in the late morning breeze. The sky was china blue and cloudless, the wheat still green, the barn off to the left a deep red, and the old farmhouse, still a quarter of a mile away at the end of the lane, was a cheery yellow.

The colors lay vivid against each other and the sun, now nearing its midpoint in the sky, shed a graceful glow over all.

"This is the most beautiful place I've ever seen," Val told him. "It takes my breath away."

"I thought you might feel that way." Sky slowed the pickup and tried - unsuccessfully - to avoid yet another large hole.

"Are you sure your grandmother won't mind?"

"She'll be delighted to have helped. You wait and see. She'll be sending someone over loaded down with strawberry preserves before the day is over."

They reached the end of the drive, and Sky stopped the truck. Val hopped out, took a deep breath, and hugged herself.

"You're looking better," Sky said as he wrapped his arms around her from behind.

"I'm feeling better." Val leaned back against his chest.

"Val, if there had been any way to have saved you without killing him..."

"I know."

"I never killed a man before," he said softly. "I never believed there could be any force powerful enough to make me take a life. But in that split second when I realized what he was going to do, I knew that I'd do anything - anything - to keep you safe. There wasn't even a choice. I just couldn't let him kill you. I love you too much, Val."

"I love you, too, Sky. I think maybe I always have."

"It's been a roundabout course we've taken to get to each other, wouldn't you say?" He gently rubbed the side of her face with his own.

"Ummm," she agreed. "But the point is, we got there. And look at us, Sky. We're both alive. We're here, together, in the most beautiful place on the face of the earth."

"Now, wait a minute. All of the places you've been - Paris, London, Hawaii, all those islands..."

"Can't hold a candle to this place," she insisted. "No other place even comes close."

"Then there's a chance you could get used to it?"

"Well, gee, holing up here for a few days could be a sacrifice." She nodded slowly.

"I mean, beyond just laying low until the press loses interest."

Val turned in his arms to look into his eyes.

"I'm thinking of taking over the farm for good, Val. My cousin Will and I are serious about breeding some fine quality horses here. It won't be a part-time thing. Can you give up what you've had - the travel, the ... "

She placed a finger to his lips.

"In a heartbeat."

He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed all ten of them.

"Farming's not an easy life."

"I don't imagine it is. But after the week I've had, it might not seem so bad." She smiled up at him.

"Come on then." He kissed the tip of her nose and took her by the hand. "It's time you met my babies."

He pointed to a pasture where several colts stood watching on spindly legs. "We have a few that hold great promise...."

They walked toward the fence, Sky pointing out the stallion he'd bought from a famous ranch in Texas to serve as stud for a mare he'd bought in Kentucky.

"Wait right here, and I'll bring her over to meet you."

Val leaned against the fence and watched Sky stride across the field to the large chestnut mare he'd identified as his favorite. The horse nuzzled at him and began to follow him back toward the place where Val stood waiting. The sun spread out across the landscape in golden strands of light.

A golden afternoon, Val thought, filled with golden promises.

Of a life to share.

A love to live for.

Truly, a love to live for.